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The Woman Who Can Smell Parkinson’s Disease
Joy Milne’s unusual talent may help doctors diagnose diseases before symptoms hit
Our sense of smell is an underappreciated asset that helped our ancestors detect food, predators, or foul odors emanating from things we should avoid. It’s also been linked to . Women prefer the smell of sweaty T-shirts worn by men who are more genetically distant from them, which gives their offspring a greater survival advantage.
The sense of smell is strongly , which encode the types and quantity of olfactory receptors lining our nasal cavity. Consequently, some people can detect certain odors better than others. But Joy Milne has a nose like no other: she can smell Parkinson’s disease.
Joy was born in Scotland 75 years ago. From an early age, it was clear that her sense of smell was much more powerful than normal, a rare condition known as . Still, she had no idea that her supercharged sense of smell could distinguish subtle changes in body odor brought on by disease. In fact, her unusual talent to sniff out Parkinson’s might never have been noticed if it weren’t for her husband, Les.
When Les turned 31, Joy noticed a change in his body odor. , “His lovely male musk smell had got this overpowering…
