I'm Smelling Foods That Aren't Around?

Question

I've been researching this and have found nothing, and its making me paranoid. Can someone please help me with this? It's been going on for a couple weeks now..I'm not pregnant..but today has been the most I've experienced it...first pizza, then chicken noodle soup, then broccoli? im freakin out...i heard people sometimes experience this before having seizures :\ please help.

Answer 1

On TV there was an add for the first scratch and sniff television. They told you to go up and scratch and smell the television to see what you could smell. I was intrigued and smelt the television. Not two seconds after I had smelt the television, a voice over said that smelling things that aren't really there are an early sign of schizophrenia. Perhaps you should go to a doctor and get tested. But it could just be your scent glands playing up or your craving those foods and remembering the smell.
I hope it all works out for you :)

Answer 2

There is a type of seizure that can cause people to smell things that are not there, or hear familiar music or have a sense of deja-vu.

It is called "Temporal Lobe Epilepsy" or complex partial seizures.

This might not actually be the case with you - there might be someone having pizza/chicken noodle soup/broccoli somewhere and you just couldn't spot them.

If you are worried you might have TLE, perhaps you would do well to go and see your family doctor for a check up. There are some particularly specialized tests that would be needed to detect this form of epilepsy - a CAT scan and an EEG brain wave test.

This is an interesting form of epilepsy as it involves a discharge of brain electrical activity in the area to do with memory. You can thus trigger many sensations - sight/smell/taste/sound - that you have previously experienced. It can be tricky to diagnose, because of the overlap of "hallucinations" with psychiatric illness, but it is very uncommon for certain hallucinations to occur in psychiatric illness (hallucinations of smells, or of music - usually auditory hallucinations are voices in psychiatric illness).

Answer 3

Go see your Doctor you may have a partial lost in one of your senses, and your sense of smell is compensating for the lost, I have a slight hearing lost and no seizures and I smell food that is being cooked in the neighborhood, and I can tell what is being cooked.