Anosmia
Apart from congenital defects, they can suffer from anosmia due to head injury or the common cold. For example Tottenham manager, Harry Redknapp, who lost his senses after a car accident. INXS frontman Michael Hutchence and actor Bill Pullman was also suffering from similar disorders.
“The number of patients with anosmia is not accurate because most of them away and hide,” said the specialist sense of smell, professor Tim Jacob from the University of Cardiff, as quoted by the Daily Mail.
Jacob says, the majority of patients with congenital anosmia are also often unaware that they have no sense of smell to adolescence. “Teenagers do not want to be ‘strange’ in the group so they learn to recognize the good and the bad smell from the instructions of others,” he said.
Sadly, the public has never heard of anosmia even they do not consider this disease exists. This condition is exacerbated by the lack of attention from the medical world. “I received many letters from those who feel disillusioned with medicine and are expecting answers to their problems,” says professor Jacob.
Sense of smell works through nerve cells located at the tip of the nose. These nerves send signals through the olfactory nerve to the olfactory cortex in the brain. In patients with congenital anosmia, olfactory nerve violated because incomplete.
While in those accidents, impaired sense of smell due to nerve damage. “Most humans can not regenerate nerves. If the nerve is damaged or broken then drop it, although research continues, “he said.
Jacob adds, people with anosmia also potentially infected phantosmia, which allows a person to feel a certain smell that was not there. The data which he held, 17 percent of depressed patients anosmia due to loss of sensation when eating.
Anosmia is also always associated with loss of libido, although the cause remains unclear. “Many men lose half their olfactory acuity at the age of 80, whereas a woman can survive,” he said.
