Bottling essence of cognitive stimulation

Lemon, clove, eucalyptus and rose.

A pair of Winnipeg entrepreneurs have bottled the four scents and are selling packs, touting the vials as tools to boost memory health.

Memorease’s launch comes as researchers increasingly explore the connection between olfactory training — or smell training — and the brain.

“We just kind of got on this mission to get the word out,” said Jon Askholm, Memorease’s co-founder.

His father died of dementia nearly eight years ago. Roughly a decade earlier, the elder began to lose his sense of smell.

Dominika Dratwa, Askholm’s partner, watched the health decline and found it “devastating.” She owns Verde Candle Bar, an Academy Road site where customers make candles by choosing and blending scents.

“I did a deeper dive into how … your sense of smell affects your well-being and your memory,” Dratwa said.

She came across articles and research papers studying olfactory training. Some found test subjects’ memories improved after consistently smelling concentrated scents.

Dratwa, 47, decided to try: “It’s so easy, so I thought, ‘Why not?’”

She believes the practice has strengthened her memory, including her word recall.

Length of time and frequency of smelling scents varies by study. Dratwa and Askholm landed on recommending 20 to 30 seconds per scent daily, twice a day, to customers. (Memorease’s website highlights studies published in Behavioural Neuroscience and Laryngoscope, among others.)

Each $49 kit should last eight months to a year, Dratwa said.

“We’re promoting it as a lifestyle change,” Askholm added. “I don’t think this is a cure for dementia, but I can only wonder: what would have happened if my dad had been doing something like this over that decade or two of his life? What would have been different?”

Companies like Memorease are worthwhile endeavours; they need to be considered within the proper context, said David Vance, a University of Alabama at Birmingham psychology professor.

Vance and colleagues published a systematic review titled “Does Olfactory Training Improve Brain Function and Cognition?” in Neuropsychology Review last year.

The paper considered 18 studies on olfactory training impacting brain health. It concluded there’s evidence of olfactory training improving brain function, but the reviewed sample sizes are small.

Verbal fluency, memory and increased volume in certain brain areas (like the hippocampal and cerebellum regions) were recorded.

“We’re gonna have to do a lot more studies — and rigorous studies,” Vance said, adding the preliminary findings are “encouraging.”

Most of the 18 studies didn’t have a control group; none followed up with subjects in the long term. There wasn’t a standardized set of scents or frequencies for smelling, Vance noted.

“We don’t know if the (brain) effects will carry on,” he said. “We don’t know if it’s just the novelty of doing the intervention or if it’s actually the olfactory training itself.”

He’s studying olfactory training on older adults with HIV who may be at risk for cognitive decline. The sense is important but under-studied because it’s taken for granted, Vance said.

“There’s a lot of neural connection between olfaction and the brain,” he added. “I think it’s underutilized.”

Olfactory training appears to be an “emerging field,” Vance said.

His 37-page systemic review is among the papers Memorease’s co-founders have read. They list studies on the company’s website, memorease.care.

“I’m not surprised that olfactory stimulation is being trialled,” said Colleen Millikin, a clinical neuropsychologist and clinical health psychology assistant professor at the University of Manitoba.

She asks older adult patients being assessed for memory changes whether their sense of smell has worsened. Roughly 20 to 30 per cent say yes, Millikin estimated.

Memorease products may bring benefits, including mindfulness, which has evidence of being good for the brain. Still, it’s important to remember olfactory training isn’t a cure for age-related memory loss or neurodegenerative disease, Millikin said.

“In general, cognitive stimulation is good,” she said. “We don’t actually have anything that we can prove stops memory loss.”

The Alzheimer Society of Manitoba is always wishing for more research, said Jessica Harper, a senior manager with the organization.

“We hope that the value of smell stimulation in the management of dementia symptoms will become clearer,” Harper said, adding the Alzheimer Society encourages people who are curious to speak to health-care providers.

Dratwa and Askholm are selling Memorease kits on the company’s website and in Verde Candle Bar.

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com