Why don't we smell our perfume anymore?

This is a confession we hear about three times a week. If you knew the number of people who encounter this problem. So why on earth do we no longer recognize the perfumes we wear after a while and, of course, how do we fix that?

In this post, we will leave aside the aspect of concentration (treated here ) which intervenes in the perception that we have of a perfume. Because even if a tenuous fragrance will fade more quickly and a powerful smell will have a greater chance of lasting, both can very well find a similar destiny and disappear little by little from the nose of the wearer.

So who is guilty? I give it to you in thousand: habit. The nose is a spectacular organ on which, for a long time, our survival depended. This sense of alert mainly made it possible to sense danger. It was therefore necessary to quickly hide the familiar smells to focus on what could make us spend a bad quarter of an hour. The start of a forest fire, the characteristic smell of a bear-type furry animal or even the feverish smell of a toxic mushroom, so many alerts that the nose had to be able to perceive in all circumstances. Then, in order to avoid any personal pollution, the brain took the fold, over time, of occulting the familiar and continuous smells. This is called olfactory adaptation: if an odor is notoriously inoffensive, there is no need to send perception signals to the brain and thus leave the field open to the interpretation of an unknown odor. Be careful all the same to differentiate olfactory adaptation from olfactory saturation. The latter comes into play when, by dint of spraying themselves with a fragrance or smelling a very strong smell, the receptors “go on strike”.

But then ? How to remedy millions of years of evolution? Your solution is to prevent your brain from getting used to the fragrance. You can therefore alternate between the perfumes, spray a handkerchief that you will keep out of reach of your nose and that you will come to smell from time to time or even take a break. Be careful, if you can no longer smell yourself, that doesn't mean that the others don't either! 

And then, tell yourself that perfumes are a bit like relationships; if you can't feel yourself anymore, it's time to take a break.