Be confident! Your feeling that "perfume stinks" may be true!

Dizziness, a mysterious phenomenon in the perfume world.

Many people experience chest tightness, nausea, or even vomiting after smelling a particular or random perfume. This motion sickness-like state is collectively referred to as aroma sickness.

Image source: pexels

Why do some people get dizzy by the same scent while others don't? In fact, there are two reasons for this. One is caused by unavoidable reasons, and the other is caused by external influences.

Unavoidable reasons

Olfactory preference

Everyone's sense of smell is different, with different sensitivities and acuities. Our sense of smell is determined by the different olfactory G protein-coupled receptors inherited by individuals. In humans, the pseudogenesis of the olfactory G protein-coupled receptor gene has reached more than 65%. In other words, the degree of overlap between the expressible olfactory G protein-coupled receptor gene you inherit and another person is only 35%. It is normal for others to be able to smell the same chemical structure while you cannot.

Even perfumers are not immune to differences in olfactory sensitivity and acuity; if a perfumer has a weaker sense of a certain fragrance, they will unconsciously add a large amount of that molecule, which will naturally be considered too strong by people with normal perception.

Personal experience

In addition to sensory differences, the ability to accept smells is also related to personal experience. Scientific research has found that the memory of fragrance is the longest and most stable, and fragrance can easily evoke people's memories. Just like you don't like a certain experience of being sick in the hospital, but when you smell disinfectant far away from the hospital, the experience of the hospital will most likely emerge in your mind, and the smell of disinfectant will cause strong physical discomfort and resistance.

If you also have an inexplicable aversion to a certain scent, you might want to think back and see if you have any bad memories associated with this smell.

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Avoidable causes

The scent molecules are sprayed from the perfume bottle into the air, then onto the skin, and finally into the nasal cavity, where they are captured by the body's odor receptors and transmitted to the brain to give people an intuitive feeling. Although this seems to be a very fast process to us, there are many conditions that can be changed, and the change of each condition may change our perception of the scent.

Temperature and humidity are the most common influencing conditions

Woody notes are particularly popular in winter, but the opposite is true in summer. This is closely related to the temperature and humidity of the environment. The higher the temperature, the more intense the molecular movement. The high temperature in summer will make the molecules active, so the richer the fragrance molecules, the easier it is to give people a stuffy and suffocating feeling.

Environmental conditions

When you are in a confined and narrow space like an elevator, aroma molecules can easily fill the entire space. Most of these places have poor air circulation, are hot, cold, and humid, which may affect our senses. In addition, the high carbon dioxide content in a closed environment will cause our brain to be in a state of hypoxia, thus producing a physiological reaction of rejection to odors.

Personal physical factors

Scent dizziness is like motion sickness. Even people who don't usually get motion sickness may get motion sickness under certain conditions (such as eating too much, feeling depressed, or having a cold). This condition may be both physiological and psychological. The same is true for smells. For example, if you have a cold or rhinitis, you may just want to breathe clean, fresh air, and too much fragrance may make your dizziness worse.

Generally speaking, there are many reasons for dizziness caused by fragrance. If you want to avoid it accurately, you must avoid the following "scent dizziness-prone areas" in time~

The most affected area

Aquatic

Aquatic notes smell like sea breeze or moist air. These abstract elements cannot be extracted from nature and can only be synthesized artificially, so they inevitably have a chemical feel. When these scents do not conform to our experience of "freshness and comfort", they can easily cause people to be disgusted.

On the other hand, some aquatic perfumes add ozone to highlight the freshness of the smell. Ozone itself has a slightly fishy smell, which smells very refreshing at low concentrations, but when it is concentrated in perfume and sprayed at high concentrations, only a "stinky" smell remains, which makes people feel physically uncomfortable.

Leather tone

As for natural leather, its manufacturing process will produce a lot of unpleasant gases. The smell of leather can only be simulated artificially, after all, you can't extract the aroma from leather. This artificial simulation can easily give people the impression of being unnatural and artificial. This chemical feeling will make people think of some toxic and harmful chemicals, which can easily lead to a "dizzy fragrance" experience.

White flower fragrance

Common white flowers in nature, such as jasmine, tuberose, gardenia, etc., have a high content of natural indole. They have both floral fragrance and a special odor. This is the indole in the white flowers. When the concentration of indole is less than 0.3%, it will emit a fresh floral fragrance; high concentrations of indole will emit an unbearable rancid odor. In addition, indole derivatives are widely found in animal feces, which makes people "think about it".

Image source: pexels

In summary, it is not so much that the "scent dizziness" makes us dizzy and vomit, but rather that we are overly sensitive to certain smells, which leads to a strong hatred. If it is simply a certain smell that makes you uncomfortable, then please stop using it. After all, there are millions of bottles of perfume in this world for you to choose from. If the discomfort is caused by a closed environment, then immediately go to a place with smooth air and suitable temperature.

Finally, here’s a little tip for everyone: don’t really lick the perfume with your tongue, because it only tastes bitter (don’t ask me how I know this).

Audit Expert

Yuan Xiandao, deputy chief physician of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery, Beijing Anzhen Hospital

END

Tadpole Musical Notation original article, please indicate the source when reprinting

Editor/Xiaotu Asi