A 32-year-old woman with heavy periods developed an intense urge to smell pine-scented cleaning products. Her blood work showed that her iron stores were almost gone. Her ferritin, a protein that reflects how much iron the body has in reserve, measured just 1 ng/mL. The reference range in her report starts at 30.
The case was described in a report published in the peer-reviewed journal Cureus on April 3, 2026. The symptom has a name, desiderosmia, which means a compulsive craving for specific smells. Published cases are so scarce, the report notes, that the term has yet to gain recognition in the medical literature. Once the woman's iron was replenished, the craving went away.
