Wellness

What it Means to be Brain Healthy

Wednesday, August 19, noon-1:00pm

In this webinar presentation, hosted by the Fairfax Area Agency on Aging, Dr. Jennifer Pauldurai, Cognitive and Behavioral Neurologist Medical Director with the Inova Brain Health and Memory Disorders Program will discuss brain health. As we age, we are all at risk for dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases. This isn’t an inevitable fate, and there are proactive changes we can make to our health and lifestyle to keep our brains working well for longer. These brain healthy tactics can even help protect and lessen the distress in someone who already has a brain disease. In this webinar we explore a checklist of things we can work on today, to better our brains for tomorrow.

Dr. Jennifer Pauldurai is a board-certified neurologist who obtained specialized training in Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology with the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. Registration required.

Saving Your Brain by Training Your Nose

By Joan M. Smith

Stop and smell the roses, it is said, and it will help you slow down and appreciate the present moments of life. But medical researchers suggest this could also improve brain health. Our sense of smell has not been given the attention that hearing and sight have had, regarding our overall, and especially brain, health. Yet we are constantly using our sense of smell, called olfaction, 24/7, usually without really noticing we do.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the University of Alabama, and several others all agree; loss of olfaction is often the first sign of neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, and it can manifest even up to a decade before other signs are noted. Richard Sima, in the Washington Post (July 20, 2026) reports that according to a 2021 paper in Ageing Research Reviews, 90% of people with early-stage Parkinson’s and 85% of those with early-stage Alzheimer’s have olfactory dysfunction. Startling!

Fortunately, we can change olfaction, so hope is on the way! But first we will look more closely at how this all works. Nicholas Rowan, an otolaryngologist and associate professor at Johns Hopkins, gives a clear explanation. He says, “our olfactory nerve casts out hairlike neural fibers that dangle into the upper part of our nasal cavity. These fibers contain specialized receptors that bind to odor molecules as they waft into our nose; each nostril contains about 6 million to 10 million olfactory sensory neurons — it’s a piece of your brain just hanging out of your nose”, sitting there exposed to the world (Rowan). He claims saying our sense of smell is deficient compared to dogs is a myth – studies show we can detect between 10,000 and 1 trillion different scents! And even outperform dogs for certain odors!!!

Moreover, our olfactory sense is the only sense that passes directly from the olfactory bulb to the olfactory cortex, making a direct connection; all other senses go through other circuits first. It is thought this direct connection could explain why certain smells are strongly tied to emotions and memories.

What I found amazing is that the olfactory nerve is the only one (of 12) cranial nerves able to regenerate, or replace itself; smell therapy is using this feature in smell training programs, which in turn show improvement of cognition such as verbal learning and memory, in adults with or without deficiencies!!

But before we home in on regeneration, let’s consider a few of the causes of loss of olfaction. The Mayo Clinic website defines loss of smell as anosmia (total loss) or hyposmia (partial loss). Mayo says that many factors can cause the loss, among them are nasal polyps/common cold/seasonal allergies (blockage), or aging (decline in olfaction is natural with age), or viral infections (cold, COVID-19) or certain medications, lack of certain vitamins, or brain trauma. So, it seems if you experience loss of olfaction, you need to get checked out to determine a cause (since many can be easily reversed), but be sure to ask your doctor (ENT specialist) about all these possible causes first since you may be experiencing more than one.

Now, we start the “smell training”. Easily done at home with minimal cost and fuss. Any pungent scent can be used. Commonly used are cloves, rose, lemon and eucalyptus, but ground coffee or any other strong, identifiable scent can be used. Choose about 4, then inhale each one for 15-30 seconds, while visualizing the scent/source. Do this twice a day, consistently, and results show there probably will be improvement in cognitive abilities! The good news is that people who have no deficiencies show cognitive improvement as well.

I think the evidence is compelling and am hooked. So, I went to my cupboard and pulled out cloves, cinnamon, lemon juice from fridge, and ground coffee (I did not have eucalyptus but will get some). And I think I have an old vial of Patcholie oil (remember that?) in my closet.  I say let’s all try this for 2 months and see if it shows us any benefit.

Occasional diary entry from Retirement Community

So, our garden plot has gone crazy while we were away for a week! Weeds knee high have taken over; the California poppies are strangling, but we got two lovely cucumbers and many, many cherry tomatoes, as well as too much leaf lettuce. Still waiting on zucchini but the lavender and mint are doing well. I think we will plan better on what and where to plant next season!