SuperSenses: The Full Story (llms.txt)

Updated October 2026 · Site: super-senses.com · Contact: hello@super-senses.com

SuperSenses is standardized multi-sensory measurement and management. It measures all five senses (smell, taste, hearing, vision and touch) in 30 min, combines them into one Sensory Score, gives every result a next step, follows up until that step is done, and repeats over time to show what changed. Clinics, senior living communities and individuals use it to make brain health preventative instead of reactive.

SuperSenses makes brain health preventative: Measure. Manage. Repeat. Brain health starts with your five senses.

The idea in one line

The earliest signal of brain change is your five senses.

Why the senses

  • The senses are the brain's inputs. Sensory function can shift before memory does, while most brain-health tools measure the outputs (memory and thinking) after change is under way.
  • The senses are the largest set of modifiable risk factors for dementia, and hearing loss is the single largest. The 2024 Lancet Commission attributes 7% of dementia cases to hearing loss (tied with high LDL for first) and added vision loss (2%) as a new risk factor.
  • Smell is among the strongest early signals of neurological change. In the Health ABC study, poor smell alone carried a 2.16x dementia hazard.
  • Risk rises with every impaired sense. In the same study, dementia risk was 1.49x with one sensory impairment, 1.91x with two and 2.85x with three or more, compared with none (Brenowitz et al., Journals of Gerontology: Medical Sciences, 2019). A single-sense test cannot see this pattern; a five-sense measure can.
  • Acting on a sense can change outcomes that cognitive tests cannot see. In 2,777 adults followed for seven years, hearing aid prescription was associated with a 33% lower dementia risk (5.0% vs 7.5%), while cognitive test scores did not differ between groups (Cribb et al., Neurology, 2026; observational).

What a result means

  • A strong result across all five senses is reassuring.
  • A single low result is often local and fixable: a cold, earwax, an old glasses prescription, a medication, dry mouth. That is why every result comes with a next step and a recheck.
  • The pattern worth acting on is two or more senses lower together, or a change from the person's own last result.
  • SuperSenses does not diagnose any condition. It measures sensory function and shows what changed, so people and their clinicians can act early.

Why now

  • Brain health is becoming global infrastructure. The WHO counts sensory capacity as one of five domains of healthy ageing, and its ICOPE pathways include vision and hearing care. The Lancet Commission ranks hearing loss first among modifiable risk factors for dementia.
  • The senses are the foundation of that shift, and SuperSenses is the measurement and management layer underneath it. We can restore the brain's inputs; brain care shouldn't begin after dementia.
  • The landscape, with sources: https://super-senses.com/pages/sensory-health-landscape

How it works: measure, interpret, intervene, repeat

  • Measure: a kit plus the SuperSenses app. Smell cards, taste strips, a two-point touch disc, and the person's own phone and headphones. 30 min in total, at home, in clinic, or guided by community staff. One kit covers a person for a full year, retests included.
  • Interpret: a result for every sense in plain bands (stronger than expected, expected range, below expected, well below expected), a composite Sensory Score, and a simple status: On Track, Worth Monitoring, Needs Attention.
  • Intervene: every low result gets one clear next step in the app, which the person chooses whether to take. The app first checks whether anything affected the test (a cold, a noisy room) and offers a fair retest if so. The clinic or community sets where each step goes, once, at launch: a preferred provider, "ask our team," or the person finds their own. The app checks in afterward ("Did you get your eyes checked?") so steps don't fall through.
  • Measure: the first Sensory Score comes from all five senses within 14 days. After that, smell, hearing and vision are retested every 3 to 6 months depending on the result, and taste and touch every 12 months. Clinicians and community teams can move any retest date.
  • Example: a low smell result starts a 12-week smell practice plan (four scents, twice a day), then a retest with before and after side by side. If it improves, a second cycle; if it is lower or still low, the app points to an ENT or the clinic's chosen pathway with a one-page summary of what was tried.
  • For teams: one dashboard showing who needs attention, who has two or more senses low, who is due for a retest, and what has been done, with one suggested next step per sense that the clinician can confirm or change, PDF export, and the Clinician Guide built in.
  • Launch: one onboarding form configures the clinic or community, and one onboarding call includes staff certification, which takes about an hour and can be done by anyone on staff. Every clinician who recommends SuperSenses and every person who administers it gets their own kit.

What a next step can look like, by sense

  • Smell: smell practice (four scents, twice a day, for at least 12 weeks), the best-studied way to rebuild a reduced sense of smell; recheck at about three months; an ENT if it doesn't improve.
  • Taste: review medications, dry mouth, oral health and zinc; confirm it is taste and not smell, since much of flavor is smell.
  • Hearing: clear earwax, get a hearing check, and if needed, hearing aids or auditory training.
  • Vision: update glasses, get an eye exam, and improve lighting and contrast at home.
  • Touch: look for the cause (such as B12 or blood sugar), protect hands and feet, and retrain touch with a therapist when indicated.
  • The full evidence by sense, with evidence tiers and follow-up windows: https://super-senses.com/pages/protocols
  • SuperSenses never sells its own interventions.

Accuracy and validation

Each test is benchmarked against its clinical gold standard in an IRB-approved, international, multi-site study. Results expected 2027.

  • Smell: 12-odor forced-choice identification, against a 40-item clinical smell identification test.
  • Taste: seven-strip identification replicating the published Seven-iTT method (Mastinu et al., 2022).
  • Hearing: pure-tone thresholds, against clinical pure-tone audiometry.
  • Vision: Landolt C near acuity and contrast sensitivity, against ETDRS acuity charts and the Mars contrast sensitivity test.
  • Touch: two-point discrimination at four fingertips, against the Mackinnon-Dellon Disk-Criminator.

Each sense is evaluated on its own first; the composite Sensory Score is analyzed in the same study.

Results so far

  • 2,000+ sensory assessments delivered in 2025.
  • Vi at La Jolla Village (Vi Living): started with 12 independent living residents, all of whom returned for every session, and grew to 65 residents by word of mouth. Residents booked eye exams and updated glasses, cleared earwax and retested higher, and one resident was connected to more support before a crisis.
  • Clinics using SuperSenses include PALM Health, Gladden Longevity and Vida; AMFAS built it into its Enhance Protocol and ships kits straight to participants, who complete it fully remotely.
  • OvationLab, co-founded by the former CEO of the Institute for Functional Medicine, built SuperSenses into its ACE clinician program at Eudemonia (November 2026).
  • AARP AgeTech Collaborative, Spring 2026 cohort. AgeInnovate 2026 Live Pitch finalist. US and PCT patent filings.

People

  • Founder and CEO: Datar Sahi. He started SuperSenses after watching his mother's senses fade for years, written off as normal aging, before her memory went.
  • Science Advisory Board member Dr. Sita Kedia, neurologist and Chief Medical Officer of PALM Health, who uses SuperSenses with every patient.
  • Built with 16+ PhD researchers and clinicians from Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, the University of East Anglia, Newcastle and Swansea, with a scientific advisory board spanning neurology, otolaryngology, neuropsychiatry, vision science and biostatistics.
  • Forthcoming chapter: Prof. Andrea Tales invited SuperSenses to write a chapter on the sensory awareness gap for her Routledge series, A New Approach to Dementia, co-authored with researchers at Columbia.

Who it's for

  • Senior living communities: brain health programming residents ask for, with follow-up built in. One class (over Zoom or on site) gets residents started; after that, classes are only for new residents.
  • Preventive, longevity and functional medicine clinics: a neurological measurement and management layer alongside labs, imaging and cognitive testing.
  • Individuals: the SuperSenses Five Senses Kit, $299.99, FSA/HSA eligible: https://super-senses.com/products/five-senses-kit

Program pricing is available on request.

Data

Each person owns their record and can download it as a PDF at any time. Clinics and communities see results only for people in their own program. Data is used for research only in aggregated, anonymized form.

What it is not

SuperSenses is a general wellness platform for measuring and managing the five senses. It does not diagnose, treat or prevent any disease. A low or changing result is a reason to confirm and act, not a diagnosis. Clinicians make every clinical call, and the person always decides what to do.

Not to be confused with

Supersense Technologies (Cambridge, UK), an unrelated company that makes a home monitoring device.

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