That’s the conclusion of Dr. Yehuda Shoenfeld, a physician and autoimmune disease researcher at the University of Tel Aviv in Israel, who studies “antibodies, a class of chemicals is launching attacks the body’s cells, often in patients with autoimmune diseases like lupus.
“Our scientific findings suggest that women who are depressed are also losing their sense of smell and may overcompensate by using more perfume,” he said.
Shoenfeld and colleagues used antibodies to cause depression in female mice and found that chemicals responsible defused the olfactory receptors for smell.
“Weight loss is one of the first signs of depression in patients with autoimmune diseases,” and “If you can not smell, do not eat because they enjoy the food, so if you do not eat, lose weight.”
But the link between depression and overly scented women limited only to patients with autoimmune diseases? Shoen-feld does not think so.
“Depression operates similarly in people who do not have a disease,” he said, which could explain why some men wear too much cologne after shave.
Whatever the case, Shoenfeld thinks that doctors should focus more on the nose with regard to the health of a person.
“We are aware of all the senses, but neglected the smell for a long time,” he said. “It was only three years ago that two scientists won the Nobel prize for deciphering the olfactory receptors in humans, so we still have much work to do what I think is an extremely important area for health”.
