It was recently discovered that your skin has it's own neurons that can "think", and now it's been found that skin can smell too! It turns out the aroma from sandalwood, long considered sacred by Hindus, Buddhists and Sufis, triggers skin cells to heal more quickly. From neomatica.com:
German researchers have discovered that there is an odor receptor expressed in at least keratinocytes, a major skin cell type, and that this receptor, when stimulated, activates a number of cellular pathways that lead to important skin repair... Experiments showed that exposing the human skin cells to Sandalore [synthetic sandalwood extract] caused the cells to proliferate (or multiply) 32% more than unexposed cells. The exposed cells also exhibited “migration”, or enhanced movement. The combination of proliferation and migration is a strong sign that the wound-repair pathways were being activated. When the skin is injured, new skin cells must undergo motion to the edge of the injury to grow. Indeed, an experimentally set-up “wound scratch” assay showed that in laboratory conditions, the skin cells after exposure to Sandalore closed up artificially induced wounds quickly.
