Here is why you may be losing your sense of smell

Humans beings use their sense of smell much more than its generally assumed.

It affects how we experience food and even our surroundings.

We all love the smell of coffee in the morning or the earthy scent dust produces when rain hits dry soil but science has proven that we are slowly losing our sense of smell.

A study published in the journal PLOS Genetics is the first to demonstrate how humans have evolved less sensitive noses over the years.

During the primal era, primitive man's sense of smell may have been much more powerful, helping him to detect enemies and food.

And even though the need of smell for survival has largely disappeared, its effects on the brain and body remain.

Scientists also attributed this to the changes in the set of genes that code our smell receptors in the brain.

"Genome-wide scans identified novel genetic variants associated with odour perception, providing support for the hypothesis that the primate olfactory receptor repertoire has degenerated over time," authors of the paper said.

They concluded that everyone experiences smells in their own unique way while the same scent can be pleasant, too intense or even undetectable to different noses.

They further said that the sensitivity of humans' and other primates' sense of smell has degenerated over time due to changes in the set of genes that code for our smell receptors.