Women, Their Social Life, and Her Sense of Smell

Ladies, are you feeling “disconnected”? “Out of the loop”? Does your social life consist of more online avatars and fewer real people? Some scientists believe your sense of smell may be to blame.

Researchers from the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia have completed a study that indicates that older women who do less well on a smell identification task also tend to have fewer social connections.

“Our findings confirm that the sense of smell is a key aspect of overall health in the aging population,” said Johan Lundström, PhD, senior Monell author on the study. “Over 20 percent of the U.S. population over 50 years old has a reduced sense of smell. We need to better understand how olfaction is linked to social behavior in order to improve quality of life as we age.”

The scientists drew their data from the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (NSLHP), a population-based study of health and social factors, aiming to understand the well-being of older, community-dwelling Americans. The data used by Monell was collected in 2005 and 2006 from a sampling of 3,005 American adults between the ages of 57 and 85.

The study shows a positive link between a woman’s olfactory ability and her overall social life score. That is, women with good olfactory ability tended to have more active social lives while those with diminished olfactory function were associated with a poorer social life score. That score was determined by a number of factors that included the participants' number of close relatives and friends, and how often they socialized. Adjustments were made for possible confounding factors, such as education level, tobacco use and mental and physical health.

“We know that social interactions are closely linked to health status, so older women who have a poor sense of smell may want to focus on maintaining a vital social life to help improve their overall mental and physical health,” said study lead author Sanne Boesveldt, PhD.

The researchers did not find the same association between olfactory function and social life in older men.

“This intriguing sex difference could suggest that smell training, which has been shown to improve a reduced sense of smell in both men and women, may have an additional beneficial function in older women by helping to restore both the sense of smell and, by extension, social well-being,” said Lundström.

“You hear anecdotal accounts from women who have lost their sense of smell about having fewer friends than they had previously,” said Lundström. “We hope our findings can help reassure them that they are not alone in feeling that way.”

The study was published in Scientific Reports.