The latest headline in Alzheimer’s news is perhaps a bit surprising: peanut butter might be helpful for detecting Alzheimer’s!
Initially, that notion sounds a bit confusing. But it’s really not as weird as it sounds. Loss of smell is symptomatic of Alzheimer’s disease. So researchers at the University of Florida designed a study to determine whether a smell test could be used to identify Alzheimer’s in its early stages.
Using a cup of peanut butter and a ruler, researchers tested participants’ sensitivity to smell in each nostril. Participants were asked to close their eyes and pinch one nostril shut as researchers measured the distance from which they were able to detect the scent of peanut butter.
It might sound like a silly test, but the study yielded promising results. The researchers found a significant difference between the right and left nostril’s sense of smell for participants in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. While the right nostril could detect the peanut butter from a normal distance, the left nostril was significantly impaired, unable to detect the scent of peanut butter until it was a full 10 centimeters closer than it was on the right side.
In the end, it’s not really the peanut butter that could prove useful for detecting Alzheimer’s early on, but rather, smell tests of any kind. Although such tests can currently only confirm a diagnosis, hopefully with future research, we’ll be able to use smell tests to predict Alzheimer’s.
The study has since been published in the Journal of the Neurological Sciences.