Can you believe it? Some people can actually smell disease, and a super smeller has confirmed it!

In the novel "Perfume", the protagonist Grénoire is a man with a super sense of smell. Not only can he smell the body odor of a girl several kilometers away, he can even smell smells that ordinary people cannot smell, such as a piece of wood, a stone, or even a piece of moss.

In the real world, there are people with super sense of smell...

01

Super Smell

Surgeon Krati Garg is such a super smeller. She prevented a medical accident by smelling sevoflurane before an operation.

In medical treatment, sevoflurane is an inhaled general anesthetic. If the patient does not receive enough inhaled anesthesia due to a leak, the patient may wake up early during surgery, causing a serious medical accident. Fortunately, Cority's keen sense of smell prevented this accident from happening. Sevoflurane has a slightly sweet smell, which may be recognizable.

Another super smeller smelled something much more amazing - she smelled the smell of disease . A Scottish old lady named Joy Milne was the first to use her nose to diagnose her husband with Parkinson's disease before he was diagnosed with it by a doctor. It turned out that more than ten years ago, Joy had smelled a strange musty smell on her husband, especially on his shoulders and the back of his neck. Although the smell was obvious, she never paid attention to it.

It was not until her husband was diagnosed that she met more Parkinson's patients and smelled this familiar smell on them. Only then did she realize that the musty smell she smelled was actually the smell of Parkinson's disease .

Now, based on Joy's experience, a research team is developing a simple skin swab test. They hope to use this method to more easily diagnose whether people have Parkinson's disease. They mainly collect oil from the patient's back, which is usually not cleaned thoroughly enough and can reveal more information. According to the researchers' report, this test method can be accurate up to 95% under laboratory conditions.

Perhaps in the future, this technology can really help doctors diagnose Parkinson's disease faster and more accurately. After all, earlier diagnosis means earlier treatment, which is of great significance for a rapidly developing disease like Parkinson's.

02

"Superpowers"

Not all benefits

But for people like Joey who have a super sense of smell, such a superpower of smell is not entirely beneficial. After all, a more sensitive sense of smell means that you will smell more bad odors. For example, the rotten smell wafting from a distant trash can, or too strong perfume. After all, for a sensitive sense of smell, too strong a perfume is also a torture.

Just like in the movie "Perfume", the protagonist Grénoire lived alone in a cave for several months to avoid the messy smells of the crowd. Super smellers sometimes also wish there was a way to turn off this overly sensitive sense of smell, so that they can keep breathing without paying too much attention to the strange smells around them, and not be easily distracted by the complicated smells.

Super smellers are fairly rare, but they're not the only real superpower that exists among humans.

Supertasters are more sensitive than others to the sour, sweet, bitter, salty and fresh tastes in food, especially bitterness. Because most supertasters have the TAS2R38 gene, their perception of bitterness is enhanced, and the bitter taste in various foods and medicines will give them a significant stimulation.

Broccoli, lettuce and green tea, which are delicious to ordinary people, may be detected as bitter by supertasters and they may be unwilling to eat them. Chloramphenicol, which ordinary people can eat, may be difficult for supertasters to swallow because it is too bitter.

In addition to the influence of taste genes, other factors can also have an impact. For example, the tongues of supertasters will also have "mutations", and they may have more and denser taste buds. Ordinary tasters have only about 15 to 35 taste buds within the 6mm diameter of the tongue, while supertasters have 35 to 60 taste buds. This number of taste buds will naturally allow supertasters to taste more flavors that we cannot recognize.

People with tetrachromacy see a world that is much more colorful than ordinary people . Humans have three types of cones, and are trichromatic. Tetrachromatics, who have won the genetic lottery, have one more cone than ordinary people, so they can feel more subtle color changes than ordinary people. They can distinguish about 100 million colors, which is a colorful world that we can't imagine. By the way, the mantis shrimp we love to eat has 16 types of cones. Even the superhumans among humans are nothing compared to mantis shrimp.

So, are you a person with super powers? What are your super powers?

Author: Sydney

Review｜Ye Sheng Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics