When neurons deteriorate, a whole system breaks down: the nervous system! The consequences of this neuronal degeneration are a series of diseases that affect the brain by causing the death of nerve cells. These diseases are progressive and the most frequent and known are Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Huntington's disease, Charcot's disease, etc. The list is actually much longer but very often unknown to the general public.

When our nervous system fails us, we get sick

There are signs that do not deceive and very often doctors do not make the connections right away. Unfortunately, some symptoms are put on the back burner because they may not seem serious. Because they are not taken seriously or maybe simply because they are too banal?

Smell disorders in neurodegenerative diseases

Indeed, the loss of smell is one of the first signs of Alzheimer's disease or even Parkinson's disease in 85 to 90% of the cases studied. Anosmia is the result of a deterioration of the neurons located in the olfactory bulb. When we smell an odor, we transform a chemical message which goes up to the brain, in the olfactory bulbs which are located in the cranium. Whether we have difficulty perceiving or differentiating between this or that smell - vanilla and cinnamon, chocolate and coffee, rose and tulip, etc. - or whether we have forgotten the details of each of the smells in our lives, the result is, whether we are talking about Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, a neuronal failure.

Why aren't we talking about it? Perhaps doctors do not take this important information into account, perhaps they do not consider this sign to be of capital importance? Perhaps, simply, this information would be able to panic the population? So let's not mix everything, not every anosmia leads to a degenerative disease of the nervous system, but they are a very real sign that something is not working (except for loss of smell caused by traumatic shocks such as a fall or a physiological problem such as a cyst on the path of the olfactory nerve)

Impaired sense of smell should be considered an important sign and including olfactory testing as soon as the senses are impaired should be implemented as a screening test. When we know that these diseases settle down many years before the first symptoms appear, detecting this type of disease in an early way would make it possible to slow down the evolution of these by the optimization of the various treatments or at least to avoid the installation of a deep dementia.
We do not of course advance these assertions thus without bases. Numerous tests and experiments have been carried out by various scientists, laboratories and doctors on a fairly large panel of people. The evidence that emerges is positive for scientific evolution: people who made olfactory errors in this type of experiment over the long term were more likely to develop brain problems.

According to the WHO (World Health Organization), Alzheimer's disease affects approximately 25 million people, a number that is likely to increase in the next 20 years, with more than 600 new cases per day. The consequences of this disease are to be evaluated at different levels: social, emotional, and even financial. As much as to say that it destroys where it passes and not only the patient. If you have the slightest doubt, do not hesitate to talk to your general practitioner who will be able to contact your ENT specialist and thus a medical collaboration will be able to bring you a complete assessment and a defined analysis of your situation.