This is Why We Have Strong Smell Memories

A whiff of something great, or terrible, can trigger a whole bunch of memories, this is why.

Last night I went to my parents' house before meeting a friend from high school for drinks. My hair was a humid disaster so I tried to help it out a little with my mom's curling iron and hair spray... VO5 hairspray.

Mom, why do you still own this? I'm almost 100 percent certain that the can I used was over 15 years old, and was from my cheerleading days, when we were required to have "competition curls" for our performances.

In case you are fortunate enough to have never worn these curls, I will fill you in on what that means.

"Competition curls," require an hour or two of a dedicated mom or sister to sit and roll tiny portions of your hair into sponge curlers the night before a competition and soak it with hairspray. Intensely soak. So much hairspray.

Which is why, after I sprayed my hair with that VO5 last night I was taken back to my cheerleading childhood. All the sudden, I felt like I was wearing an uncomfortable hard to snap bodysuit and I was practicing high-V's. Yikes, I know.

I still can't stop thinking about it, because I still can't stop smelling the spray. It's intense and lasts forever, so this morning I decided to investigate why smell and memory are connected. Science time.

According to Fifth Sense, smell is actually the sense most strongly connected to memory.

Dr. Mercola also says, "Smells get routed through your olfactory bulb, which is the smell-analyzing region in your brain. It’s closely connected to your amygdala and hippocampus, brain regions that handle memory and emotion."

Big words, but basically, I think it means the smells go up our nose and then straight to our brains which hold our memories and bam, we are transported to those cheerleader curls.

Here's some bonus smell info from Dr. Mercola we can all learn today, too!