Study Shows Drinking Alcohol Improves Your Sense of Smell, Scientific Wonders Never Cease

Science says alcohol makes you smell better! Thanks science! Oh, wait, sorry—alcohol improves your sense of smell, according to new research into the wondrous powers that humans gain from alcohol. It doesn’t, in fact, make you smell better. It mostly just makes you smell like alcohol.

Since other drugs (and brain trauma) have been known to boost the sense of smell in the past, something in the brain must naturally dampen the human sense of smell (probably so we smelly apes can stand to be around each other longer than five minutes). Much like alcohol lowers your inhibitions and convinces you you can dance, sing, do ninja flips, or whatever other thing you actually should never do ever, it also lowers inhibitory signals in the brain that tone down your sense of smell.

At least, that was the theory that Yaara Endevelt of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel set about testing with her colleagues. Their study, published in Behavioural Brain Research, concluded out of a group of 170 participants in different tests that after consuming alcohol (with BAC ranging from 0.005% to 0.11%), test subjects displayed a heightened sense of smell compared to sober participants as well as to themselves before alcohol consumption.

Endevelt hopes to use brain scans to better understand how the smell dampening mechanism in the brain works and help people who have inexplicably lost their sense of smell. She’ll need to keep her subjects liquored up though: As with most alcohol-based powers, the positive results at lower thresholds of alcohol deteriorated as the participants got too drunk.

So, your nose eventually gets beer goggles, and then every smell is totally its best friend and should just start a band together or open their own bar and stuff! WOOOOOOOOO!

(via New Scientist, image via Pedro Ribeiro Simões)

Previously in alcohol’s many blessings

• Alcohol has been shown to improve monkeys’ immune systems
• Moderate alcohol consumption may help you live longer
• You can buy non-alcoholic wine for cats

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Dan Van Winkle

Dan Van Winkle (he) is an editor and manager who has been working in digital media since 2013, first at now-defunct Geekosystem (RIP), and then at The Mary Sue starting in 2014, specializing in gaming, science, and technology. Outside of his professional experience, he has been active in video game modding and development as a hobby for many years. He lives in North Carolina with Lisa Brown (his wife) and Liz Lemon (their dog), both of whom are the best, and you will regret challenging him at Smash Bros.

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