‘Scent guru’ aims to recover loss of smell from COVID

GREENWICH — Ruth Sutcliffe grew up on a farm in Arkansas, so her childhood memories are full of the scents of the barnyard and hay — and some other more pungent aromas.

“I was raised on a farm and I was surrounded by good smells and bad smells,” said Sutcliffe, who had a long career developing scents and smells for household cleaning products. “I’m very aware of the aromas around me.”

As someone with a keen sense of smell and a love of the natural world, Sutcliffe especially enjoys springtime — and the of peonies and lilacs. She especially enjoys walks near hear home in Greenwich along Long Island Sound. . “I love the smell of Tod’s Point when I go out there, the wooded area, the damp earth. The leaves, the trees, subtle, it’s all mixed in together,” she said.

It is a pleasure that many people have lost: the ability to smell.

The technical term is anosmia, and it has been a symptom now coming in for greater attention as medical authorities say the loss of taste and smell is a common side effect of the coronavirus. Neurological maladies like Alzheimer’s disease and brain aneurysms are also associated with the loss of smell. It has been estimated that some 12.4 percent of Americans over the age of 40 are suffering from olfactory loss, which also leads to a loss of taste.

Sutcliffe has turned her long expertise in the field of scents and smells into a new career path, helping older people rediscover their sense of smell, and the memories that accompany it.

She is marketing a “smell training guide” she developed to people suffering from anosmia, including a new wave of coronavirus patients. The kit comes with little vials of concentrated smells and educational material that aims to accelerate recovery of the olfactory senses.

The so-called “Scent Guru” first became aware of the loss of smell when her mother-in-law developed Alzheimer’s and could not discern with her nose any of Sutcliffe’s produts. “That was part of the birth of this whole idea, to stimulate the sense of smell, and memory recall,” the Greenwich scent developer said.

Spending time in assisted-living facilities, Sutcliffee noted that the loss of smell was a real problem for many seniors, one that could be addressed. She has been visiting nursing homes and residences for seniors since 2016 with her smell kit, and selling them online.

“There’s music therapy, art therapy – why not smell therapy?” she asked. “It’s bringing a social activity into assisted living communities, for seniors to interact, recall memories, through smell prompts, such as the smell of grass and chocolate, cinnamon, baking in the kitchen.”

Sutcliffe collaborated with Rachel Herz, a neuroscientist working on brain functions and smell as an adjunct professor at Brown University, on a new version of the kit with coronavirus patients in mind. The kit is called the Essential Awakenings Smell Training Guide.

Herz wrote in the materials that accompany the smell kit: “Our sense of smell is directly involved in higher levels of thinking and has pronounced effects on cognition, memory and spatial orientation. Most fundamentally our sense of smell give us a sense of our self, our feeling of connectedness with others, and is a central component to the overall quality of our life. Unfortunately, most people don’t realize how important their sense of smell is until they lose it.”

Herz said, “Smell training helps people regain smell function.”

Sutcliffe won’t make any grand claims about the kit she is selling for $65, and there are no medical studies on the efficacy of the product, but she says she has been getting good feedback from the medical community and people who work with seniors. A doctor on Long Island affiliated with NYU Langone Health, for instance, has been recommending it informally to patients, she said.

Sutcliffe personally dropped off a scent kit at the home of a Wilton man who is in recovery from coronavirus and had lost his sense of smell, in addition to a “get well” card. It appears that his ability to smell has come back, she said.

“Medical professionals say it’s worth a try, to accelerate the regaining of your sense of smell, because it’s so important to well being,” she said. As someone who loves perfumes, fresh flowers and the smells she encounters on the shores of Long Island Sound, Sutcliffe said the sense of smell is one that she can’t live without, and no one else should, either.

Ruth Sutcliffe