Why do people insist there’s a link between smelling burnt toast and having a stroke? (For context, I have chronic migraines and experience a far wider range of phantom smells than that. So… why these two specifically?)
In: Biology
The theory goes that smelling burnt toast indicates a stroke.
There is no hard scientific evidence for this, but it has come into common folklore.
One possible source was a Heritage Minutes video on Wilder Penfield
The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) used to do short vignettes on TV about Canadian history and these became a part of Canadian folklore and culture for that generation.
One of the most famous ones was on Wilder Penfield a pioneer neurosurgeon. The Vignette is about him probing the surface of a patients brain trying to find the cause of her seizures which ends up being the same part responsible for her smelling burned toast.
You can find it on Youtube if you are curious
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