So this morning I opened the cupboard just to the left of the sink, the one where we keep the dog's cookies and I was immediately in a dull green recliner waiting for chemo. The smell of the cupboard just rushed over me, enveloping me in a churning wave of nostalgia, nausea and sensory recollection. This was the cupboard where we'd stored my chemo drugs. Weirdly the sensation hasn't hit me before but I really did get dragged under by the smell this morning; very odd. And somewhat disconcerting - now wondering whether this was memory or premonition.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Amazing what a smell can do...
So this morning I opened the cupboard just to the left of the sink, the one where we keep the dog's cookies and I was immediately in a dull green recliner waiting for chemo. The smell of the cupboard just rushed over me, enveloping me in a churning wave of nostalgia, nausea and sensory recollection. This was the cupboard where we'd stored my chemo drugs. Weirdly the sensation hasn't hit me before but I really did get dragged under by the smell this morning; very odd. And somewhat disconcerting - now wondering whether this was memory or premonition.
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Yes, it's weird the way we are wired. Found this on the web:
Therapy using smell memory
If we smell (or taste something) before a negative experience, that smell (or taste) is linked to that experience. The memory is very robust. This can be a problem for unpleasant medical treaments, or surgery when the last meal is often associated with the pain or trauma. But this very effect could, in the future, be put to therapeutic advantage; if smell were to be associated with a positive, healing treatment then the smell itself can substitute for the treatment once the link has been reinforced. It works in rats!
Some very interesting research was published recently - insulin was injected into healthy male volunteers once a day for four days and their blood glucose was measured (it fell). At the same time, they were exposed to a smell. On the fifth day they were just given the smell, and, their blood glucose fell (Stockhorst & Gritzmann, (1999) Psychosomatic Medicine 61, 424-435).
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