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Your nose knows when death is imminent
The Guardian ^ | 10/02/2014 | Mo Costandi

Posted on 10/02/2014 7:37:57 PM PDT by SeekAndFind

Until as recently as 1987, British coal pits employed caged canaries as sentinels that alerted miners to the presence of poisonous gases. Being more sensitive to them than we are, the birds would get distressed before the gases reached levels that are dangerous to humans, giving the miners time to evacuate and avoid suffocation.

According to new research, the sense of smell is the canary in the coalmine of human health. A study published today in the open access journal PLOS ONE, shows that losing one’s sense of smell strongly predicts death within five years, suggesting that the nose knows when death is imminent, and that smell may serve as a bellwether for the overall state of the body, or as a marker for exposure to environmental toxins.

The study involved more than 3,000 participants, all of them between 57 and 85 years old, from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), a longitudinal study of factors affecting the well-being of older people living in America.

In 2005-6, Jayant Pinto of the University of Chicago and his colleagues asked all the participants to perform a simple test that involved identifying five common odours (rose, leather, fish, orange, and peppermint), using the number of incorrectly identified odours as a score of the severity of smell loss.

Five years later, the researchers tracked down as many of the same participants as they could, and asked them to perform this smell test a second time. During the five-year gap between the two tests, 430 of the original participants (or 12.5% of the total number) had died. Of these, 39% who had failed the first smell test died before the second test, compared to 19% of those who had moderate smell loss on the first test,.

(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...


TOPICS: Health/Medicine; Science
KEYWORDS: death; nose; smell
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To: Salamander

I thought of you when I saw this article, but I didn’t ping.

I figgered you’d think something smelled fishy.

But I see you sniffed it out anyway.

I should have known you’ve a nose for such things.

Reeks of irony doesn’t it?

Given your family background you’d know if ‘something was rotten in the State of Denmark.’


21 posted on 10/02/2014 9:52:05 PM PDT by shibumi (Cover it with gas and set it on fire.)
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To: Salamander
So whaddaya call an omlette made with a cured pork product?

Why, a "Hamlette" of course!

22 posted on 10/02/2014 9:54:30 PM PDT by shibumi (Cover it with gas and set it on fire.)
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To: shibumi

Anosmia jokes are almost as funny as a heart attack.


23 posted on 10/02/2014 10:00:12 PM PDT by Salamander (People will stare. Make it worth their while.)
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To: SeekAndFind

I can’t smell this carrot, I CANT SMELL THIS CARROT, HALP!


24 posted on 10/02/2014 10:17:31 PM PDT by MaxMax (Pay Attention and you'll be pissed off too! FIRE BOEHNER, NOW!)
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To: SeekAndFind

May I hire you summarize every lengthy, over written article posted on FR?


25 posted on 10/03/2014 4:17:49 AM PDT by poobear (Socialism in the minds of the elites, is a con-game for the serfs, nothing more.)
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To: Salamander

the horse I mistakenly tried to ride would not ground work and warned me that if I persisted in trying she would trample my azz into the Texas dust.


26 posted on 10/03/2014 9:24:14 PM PDT by RitchieAprile
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To: RitchieAprile

This was horse so docile, it was nearly a zombie, until my aunt slammed a heavy metal screen door which echoed through the ‘shotgun’ hallway of my gramma’s house.

So, he jumped sideways.

I was the immovable object.


27 posted on 10/03/2014 10:24:52 PM PDT by Salamander (People will stare. Make it worth their while.)
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