Here's a simple way to make yourself feel better. Air out your house, and add some fragrant flowers. Make your home smell nice, and you will feel the effects.
Five hundred years ago, soldiers in Europe used goodsmelling spices to distract the injured from their pain. Today, doctors are experimenting with aromatherapy in the hospital,
using good smells to comfort those in postoperative recovery.
Bad smells are crafty characters. They get in our lives, and they never leave. If you live with them long enough, you can't even notice them, because they've been around too long. An old
musty carpet or some other source of odor is really an attack on our senses. Not noticing the smell is not the same as the smell not being there. We've just surrendered our sense of smell and
our brain, unwilling to continue processing something so unpleasant.
Good smells, on the other hand, as soldiers knew in the fifteenth century, and doctors are rediscovering today, awaken the senses and the brain and at a subconscious level remind us of
good things.
Our senses operate all the time, offering us important signals about our environment. Pleasant smells evoke surprise and happiness for more than eight out of ten individuals, while unpleasant odors trigger disgust and unhappy reactions.
Alaoui-Ismaieli, Robin, Rada, Dittmar, and Vernet-Maury 1997
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