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Letter: Scent therapy is not to be sniffed at (2)

Published 11 June 2025

From Malcolm Hunter, Leicester, UK

So pleasant smells can help reduce chronic inflammation, and being able to smell unpleasant things can help us avoid health threats and stimulate the immune system when necessary. There is also evidence that a declining sense of smell or its loss may be addressed by regularly exposing people to a wide range of scents. However, all the programmes described use only pleasant scents. Wouldn’t more stimulation be provided by also including unpleasant ones? I wonder if their exclusion may lead to lopsided recovery of this sense.

Issue no. 3547 published 14 June 2025

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