How does nose blindness work?
MINNEAPOLIS — When you visit friends and relatives over the holidays, you'll likely notice that each home has a special scent, but you probably can't smell your own house.
Every home has a distinct smell, and chances are your home smells just as strong to other people.
Why can't we notice our own home's smell but we can notice everyone else's?
"There's really two places where we stop smelling," odor scientist Pamela Dalton said. "The first place is on our nose and that happens very quickly, but over time, our brain will start to filter out some of these signals because it just doesn't make sense for us to pay attention to them anymore."
Dalton says familiar and pleasant smells fall to the wayside first, allowing room for our brains to alert us to new smells.
How long does it take for our noses to adapt to a smell?
"You'll see a reduction in intensity of about 50% in the first minute, so it happens very rapidly," Dalton said.
She says it can happen even as quickly as a second sniff.
"I notice the smell of my home when I go on vacation. When we're gone for a week or so then we come back, then I'm reintroduced to the smell," Reggie Carter said.
Dalton says that's when you'll experience the smell of your home the way visitors do.
"That's often distressing for people... But what's interesting is you will adapt very quickly, much faster that time because you already know what your home smells like," Dalton said.
It's an adapted process to keep us safe.
"I think that one of the most important things that our sense of smell does is it keeps us from danger," Dalton said. "In that respect, it makes sense why we're not paying attention to all the good smells around us because we need our nose and brain to be alert and respond to a new odor that might be a problem."
So before you spritz that second or third spray of perfume or cologne, Dalton says remember: your nose may have already adjusted to it, but others might find it to be strong.
