If you’ve been watching your parent and thinking something seems off – but you can’t quite put your finger on it – this might explain why.
Researchers say the earliest sign of Alzheimer’s isn’t memory loss at all. It’s a gradual loss of smell – the inability to detect familiar things like coffee, flowers, or cleaning products – appearing years before any memory symptom surfaces. A landmark study from the Rush Memory and Aging Project found that older adults who scored in the bottom 10% on smell identification tests were more than twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease. The reason is that the brain’s smell center is one of the first places where Alzheimer’s-related changes actually show up. There’s a simple 15-minute smell test called the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test available through neurologists and some primary care offices. It’s not routinely offered – so you have to ask for it by name.
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