Your Nose Knows If You Might Be Dead Soon

Wanna know if you'll be DEAD in five years?  Or if your parents or your Me-maw and Pappa will be headed to that great farm in Florida with lots of space to run?

According to a new study, the best way to predict whether you'll die soon has to do with your sense of smell.

Researchers looked at more than 3,000 men and women between the ages of 55and 85, and asked them to identify five different scents: Peppermint, fish, oranges, roses, and leather.

Then after five years, they counted up how many of those people had died.

Over 60% of those who failed the test were no longer alive,  compared to the people who passed the smell test.  Out of those only 10% were dead.  That’s a pretty big swing, a 50% difference.

The authors of the study say they're not sure why that's the case.  But they think losing your sense of smell is an early warning sign of other age-related issues.

So whether or not you can smell those five things : Peppermint, fish, oranges, roses, and leather.  This apparently is a better way of predicting death than anything else anybody has been able to come up with so far.

Now because people in the tested age category are more prone to death anyway,  that is the only group they tested.  But I’m wondering if the same predictions could be made on younger people too.  We'll have to wait and see if they do another study on younger people.