Olfactory training may improve your sense of smell through repeated scent exposure. Learn why consciously smelling more may support olfactory function.

Why Are We Being Taught Not to Smell?

We spend enormous effort protecting our eyes, hearing, mobility and cognitive health.  But what are we doing with our sense of smell?  Increasingly, the message surrounding scent is simple: if you can smell something, avoid it or remove it.

Yet olfactory science presents us with a fascinating contradiction. One of the established approaches used to improve olfactory function is olfactory training — repeated, intentional engagement with different odours over time. In other words, to exercise the sense of smell, you have to smell.

That does not mean overwhelming people with “perfume”. It does not mean ignoring  sensitivities, asthma, migraines or other medical conditions. And it certainly does not mean that every chemical exposure is safe natural or synthetic. It means we need to stop treating the simple detection of an odour as synonymous with harm.

Smell is information. And perhaps instead of teaching people only how to avoid smell, we should also be teaching them how to use their noses.

Table of Contents

1. What Is Your Smell Threshold?
2. Can You Train Your Sense of Smell?
3. Why Perfumers and Chefs Smell Repeatedly
4. Pleasant and Unpleasant Smells Both Matter
5. Smell Exposure vs. Olfactory Training
6. Are Scent-Free Environments Always the Answer?
7. How to Start Smelling Consciously
8. Frequently Asked Questions

What Is Your Smell Threshold?

Your nose doesn’t simply work or not work. Olfactory function exists across a spectrum, and one of the ways scientists evaluate it is through the odour detection threshold.

What Does Smell Threshold Mean?

The detection threshold is essentially the lowest concentration of an odourant that a person can reliably detect. Imagine gradually diluting an odour. At stronger concentrations, you smell it easily. As the concentration becomes weaker, eventually you reach a point where you can no longer reliably detect it. That boundary helps describe your detection threshold. But detecting an odour is only one component of olfactory function.

Researchers may also consider:

• Detection: Can you smell something?
• Discrimination: Can you tell two odours apart?
• Identification: Can you recognize or name what you are smelling?

These abilities are important because smelling isn’t simply something occurring inside the nose. The brain is deeply involved in interpreting what the nose detects.

Can You Train Your Sense of Smell?

Yes. This is where olfactory training becomes particularly interesting. Olfactory training generally involves intentionally smelling selected odours repeatedly over an extended period. Research has found that this type of repeated olfactory stimulation can improve aspects of smell function in some people, particularly individuals experiencing certain forms of smell loss.

That concept should make us reconsider the way society talks about smell. We exercise muscles to maintain strength. We challenge the brain to support cognitive engagement. We practise balance to improve balance. And when scientists want to stimulate the olfactory system?

We smell.

Olfaction Is an Active Sensory Experience

Conscious smelling involves more than allowing an odour to pass underneath your nose.You can: detect it; focus your attention on it; compare it with another smell; identify differences; associate it with memories; determine intensity; recognize whether it is familiar; and attempt to identify it. This is cognitive scent engagement. The nose detects the stimulus, but the brain interprets the information.

Perfumers and Chefs Already Understand This

Long before we began discussing olfactory training clinically, two professions understood the extraordinary relationship between repetition and sensory ability: perfumery and culinary arts. A perfumer doesn’t become skilled by avoiding smell. They smell repeatedly.

Raw materials are evaluated individually and in combinations. Concentrations are compared. Materials are revisited. Differences that may initially appear almost imperceptible become increasingly recognizable. The same principle exists in the culinary world.

A chef smells. Tastes. Adjusts. Smells again. Tastes again. Over a career, a professional perfumer or chef may engage in thousands upon thousands of deliberate sensory evaluations. Ten thousand sensory experiences isn’t an extraordinary concept when a craft is built upon decades of repeated smelling and tasting. What we sometimes call a “great nose” or “great palate” is therefore not simply about the sensory equipment someone was born with. It also involves attention, experience, repetition, discrimination and memory. The craft itself depends upon sensory engagement.

Sometimes You Need to Smell Things You Don’t Like

This is where the conversation becomes more complicated. Smell is extraordinarily subjective. Coffee may be comforting to one person and unpleasant to another. The smell of fish cooking may make one person hungry and cause another person to leave the room. The same differences can occur with garlic, vinegar, flowers, perfume, cleaning products, animals and countless other everyday smells.

Personal preference matters. But preference and olfactory function are not the same thing.

An Unpleasant Smell Is Still Sensory Information

Our noses were not designed exclusively to experience beautiful smells. Olfaction helps us interpret our environment.

We smell: food; smoke; soil; cooking; fermentation; animals; spoiled food; our own bodies; other people; plants; cleaning products; and thousands of other environmental odours.

Some smell wonderful. Some are neutral. Some are offensive. Yet the olfactory system is still being asked to detect, discriminate and interpret information. The objective shouldn’t be to deliberately expose people to substances that make them ill. But neither should our objective automatically become eliminating every smell we find unpleasant. There is a difference between: “I can smell it.” “I don’t like that smell.” And “This exposure is harmful to me.” Those are three very different statements.

More Smell Does Not Mean More Fragrance

This distinction is critical. Encouraging olfactory engagement does not mean filling buildings with perfume, essential oils, air fresheners or additional scent. In fact, that misses the point entirely. The goal isn’t more fragrance. The goal is more meaningful smelling. Everyday life already contains an enormous olfactory landscape.

Coffee brewing. Toast cooking. Fresh herbs being chopped. Soap. Rain. Books. Wood. Flowers. A garden. Freshly washed clothing. Food cooking in a kitchen. The outdoors. These ordinary experiences provide opportunities to consciously engage the olfactory system without artificially adding fragrance to every environment.

Smell Exposure and Olfactory Training Are Not the Same

There is another scientific distinction we need to understand. Simply being surrounded by a strong smell does not necessarily train your nose. Continuous exposure to the same odour can lead to olfactory adaptation. Most of us have experienced this. You walk into a room and immediately notice a smell. Ten minutes later, you barely notice it. The odour didn’t necessarily disappear. Your perception changed.

Conscious Smelling Is Different

Olfactory training is intentional. You pay attention. You compare. You discriminate. You remember. You identify. That is fundamentally different from sitting in a heavily scented environment all day. This distinction matters enormously when discussing scent-driven cognitive therapy, aroma cognition support, memory scent activation, fragrance-based brain stimulation, neuro-scent therapy and cognitive scent engagement.

The therapeutic conversation should not simply be about adding aroma. It should be about purposeful engagement of the olfactory system.

Are Scent-Free Environments Always the Answer? Scent-free policies were generally created with an important objective: protecting people who experience sensitivities and adverse reactions and dealing with human resource complaints. That objective deserves respect. But our understanding of olfaction has advanced. The question now becomes whether policies should distinguish more carefully between scent exposure, hazardous substances, individual accommodation and normal everyday odours.

Cooking has a smell. Cleaning has a smell. People have smells. Nature has smells. Healthcare environments have smells. Life itself has an olfactory landscape. Trying to eliminate every detectable odour is very different from establishing reasonable controls around unnecessary aroma. And this is where scent policy needs to evolve alongside olfactory science. We should be able to protect people with genuine sensitivities while also recognizing that the human olfactory system has biological, cognitive and quality-of-life importance.

Those goals do not have to be mutually exclusive.

How to Start Smelling Consciously

You don’t need perfume to exercise your sense of smell. Start with ordinary life. The next time you make coffee, don’t simply drink it. Smell it. When preparing dinner, consciously smell the herbs before adding them. Compare a lemon with an orange. Smell fresh bread. Notice the difference between cinnamon and cloves. Go outside after it rains. Smell the soil.

Notice your environment. Then ask yourself: Can I detect it? Can I identify it? Can I distinguish it from something similar? Does it remind me of something? Is it stronger or weaker than I remember? That is conscious smelling. And it turns an automatic sensory event into an active neurological experience.

FAQ: Smell Training and Your Sense of Smell

Can you actually improve your sense of smell?

Research into smell training indicates that repeated, structured smell exposure can improve aspects of olfactory performance in some people, particularly those experiencing certain types of smell dysfunction.

What is smell training?

Smell training is the repeated and intentional smelling of selected odours over time to stimulate and engage the olfactory system.

Does smelling more make your sense of smell stronger?

Repeated intentional olfactory training may improve certain measures of smell function. However, simply exposing yourself continuously to stronger smells is not the same as olfactory training.

Do unpleasant smells help train your nose?

Olfactory discrimination isn’t limited to pleasant smells. Learning to detect and distinguish a wide variety of odours can provide sensory information. However, people should not deliberately expose themselves to hazardous substances or odours known to trigger medical symptoms.

Does smell affect taste?

Yes. Olfaction plays a major role in flavour perception. Much of what we experience as flavour involves aromas reaching the olfactory system while we eat.

Does avoiding smells weaken your sense of smell?

The scientific evidence does not currently justify saying that ordinary scent avoidance by itself causes smell loss. What research does demonstrate is that intentional, repeated olfactory training can improve olfactory performance in certain circumstances.

That distinction is important.

It’s Time to Start Using Our Noses Again

We have spent years talking about what people shouldn’t smell. Perhaps the next chapter should also ask: What should we be smelling? Protect people who require accommodation.  Understand hazardous exposures. But don’t confuse those objectives with eliminating olfactory engagement altogether.

The human sense of smell is extraordinary. It connects us with food, memory, emotion, people and our environment. And unlike the passive way we often think about our noses, olfaction can be deliberately engaged and trained.

A perfumer learns by smelling. A chef learns by smelling and tasting. Olfactory training works by smelling repeatedly. The common denominator is remarkably simple: If we want to become better at smelling, we have to smell.

How well are you actually using your sense of smell?

Learn more about olfactory training, smell testing and evidence-informed approaches to olfactory health through Smelling Pink. And if your organization is still operating under a traditional “scent-free” policy, it may be time to ask whether that policy reflects what we now understand about olfactory science and update to a “smell friendly “policy.

Don’t eliminate smell. Learn how to engage it intelligently.

Related Articles

Internal links to add:

• Your Scent Free Policy is Outdated
• Olfactive Science: Why Loss of Smell Is a Critical Indicator of Mental and Physical Well-Being
• The power of Limone how it is used at Smelling Pink: How Citrus Scent Therapy Helps Calm Anger and Fear.
• Scent Therapy and the Brain’s Energy Reward System
• The Unique Aroma of Spices in Smelling Pink Therapy

About Tracy Pepe

Tracy Pepe is a perfumer, author of Why the Nose, TEDx speaker and founder of Smelling Pink Inc. With decades of experience working with scent and olfactory education, her work focuses on changing the way healthcare, long-term care and the broader community understand and engage the sense of smell.