Does having a stroke actually smell like burning toast?

I wanted to know why strokes smell like burnt toast. It turns out they don’t really, but there are other warning signs you can look out for. Feat. Bo, Sonic, and a new backdrop.

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References

General articles on strokes and smelling toast

Research articles/papers on olfactory hallucinations

[SophsNotes]

For the thumbnail I was gonna write 'very rarely' or 'definitely not always' but it turns out a piece of toast is quite a small canvas

[agwilt]

I remember being in the Bay of Biscay feeling really seasick, lying in my bunk, and then smelling burnt toast and wondering if I actually managed to have a seasickness-induced stroke and would finally die. But it turned out the cook had just burnt some toast 😂

Also, I love how you confirm Betteridge's law of headlines in the thumbnail!

[williandalsoto]

Love this video, straight and to the point. Well, as straight as Soph's notes can be...

[johnmcgimpsey]

I smell burnt toast fairly often (and occasionally hay). Was just having a discussion with family about this - good to know the facts with sources!

[RossParker]

Hey 😊 Soph. Just saying how much I enjoyed last night's stream and this video

[DarklordZagarna]

I remember a similar use of phantosmia from the movie Bandits where Billy Bob Thornton's character, who is a hypochondriac, becomes convinced that he has a brain tumor because he imagines that he is smelling burning feathers.

I need to watch that movie again someday. It's odd but frequently hilarious.

[corneliawindstroem]

Hey 😆 Thanks to Nebula I just found you and now I go for a round of binge watching lol And yes, the myth of burnt toast is pretty common here too, but tbh I am not sure if that not came up with the popularity of certain US TV shows here.

[pedromatosportugal]

Had never heard of it before! i learnt both about the myth and its busting in one go!

[ThatHUTattedOnMyArm]

I’m glad that sneezing isn’t a sign, otherwise people would think I’d have a stroke all the time with my hay fever

[MrTapierwithmustache]

The thumbnail only loaded after I had read the title and clicked the video. Had a good chuckle, well done!

[tubebrocoli]

I had never heard of this before (maybe it's a more regional thing? maybe more common in English-speaking countries?), but hey, I'm glad to learn about a myth preemptively =)

[Konzertheld]

Just 4 minutes and 40 seconds but the density of was amazing! Thanks Soph, love what you do. :)

[leahmckeen]

hey, just came to see the video on youtube to see if anyone commented on the Canadian Heritage Moment about the brain surgeon Wilder Penfield. For Canadians of certain generations, we strongly associate "I smell burnt toast" with that educational commercial. I'm glad to see that some other people have commented on this.

[ADream]

Hey: in the 90's Canada had a popular and repetitive commercial on TV about its early contribution to science history, something for its citizens to proud of, where a doc probed the brain of a patient during a craniotomy and she said "I smell burnt toast" when he found a troubling area - stroke or seizure or something. It totally caught on from there, or at least it did in my highschool. Turns out it went farther afield than I thought.

[therealteardrop]

Hey, watched you on nebula and now I'm here. Not sure why I didn't do this earlier

[mariannetfinches]

Hey! The acronym joke made me laugh an unreasonable amount. Perfect delivery. Thanks for the explainer

[TheRuthyToothy]

Hey! I just had to come here to say that the auto subtitles on Nebula to your singing outtake made me choke on my coffee! Apparently, you were singing "the fan too of the Ellesmere is here" 😂😂

[Kurckie]

I haven't heard about the burnt toast smell before, but I have heard about the other symptoms. It made me wonder: is there a difference between men and women in those symptoms?

[cheekychappy]

Never heard of that myth and nobody in the house has heard it as well. I do, on the other hand, get brief Phantosmia at the very start and very end of a cold and its always the smell of stale cigarettes despite this household being 100$ smoke free.

[Peter-iqyy]

It wouldn’t surprise me if phantosmia was most commonly a smoky smell because if you think about it there’s an evolutionary advantage to, if some wires get crossed between the brain and the nose, just tell you there’s shit burning as a safety thing. This is based on nothing more than idle speculation but it kinda makes sense that the brain would default to that if it can’t reliably figure out what you’re smelling because of some impairment. I suppose the cave people who smelt orchids or haribo when suffering phantosmia all died in fires smh