Your Nose Knows When It's Your Time to Go

Can't smell as well as you used to? Prepare to die.

[A] surprising study has now claimed that losing your sense of smell when you're older could mean that your time is nigh.

Scientists from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago found that the more everyday odours a person can identify, the more likely they are to be alive several years later.

The team gave more than 1,000 volunteers, aged between 53 and 100, a standard 12-item smell test.

[...]

Amazingly, they found that the risk of death was 36 per cent higher for those who only got six of the answers correct compared to those who managed to identify 11 out of 12.

[...]

Writing in January's edition of the journal Chemical Senses, Dr Wilson and his team wrote: 'The results indicate that difficulty identifying familiar odours in old age is associated with increased risk of death.'

[Daily Mail]