Want to Get Healthier? Hack Your Five Senses.
Touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound can improve your well-being in all sorts of surprising ways
About a quarter of the human brain’s mass is devoted to processing information from the five senses. Given that the brain plays such a central role in health, it’s not surprising that the five senses are closely tied to well-being.
But beyond merely proving those connections exist, researchers have recently started to explore ways to purposely manipulate them for people’s benefit. “Interventions based on what we see, feel, and even taste can have a seemingly dramatic effect on health,“ says Charles Spence, an Oxford University PhD researcher who runs a lab dedicated to studying the role that perception plays in behavior and health. “They can reduce pain, speed recovery from illness, and much more.”
SMELL
Smell plays an important role in overall health. “Smell is associated with neurodegeneration, heart disease, and early demise, among other problems,” says Richard Doty, a PhD smell researcher who directs the Smell and Taste Center at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school. Doty notes that multiple studies have shown that people whose sense of smell becomes heavily dulled over time are at a higher risk for those…
