Your whole nose is lined with mucous membranes ... and in the upper part of the nose, there's this very specialized mucous membrane, and that's where you sense smells. And this is really a unique kind of tissue in the body, first of all, it's the only place in the body where a neuron that's coming from the brain directly contacts the outside world … and the part that sticks out in the environment can is what actually can detect an [odor molecule]. … And then and then it sends a signal like straight to the brain.

Andrew Lane

I mean, there's a whole industry of different things that people give to people with olfactory loss, and mostly it's snake oil kind of stuff, and there’s very kind of skimpy data about it, but there is no medication that we have that restores a sense of smell.

Mostly, it's people saying, ‘Have you tried this? Have you tried this?’ But most of the people I see that say, ‘Oh, I did this, and it worked,’ is the alpha-lipoic.