Further, many people recounted different sensory changes at different stages of the Covid journey, with concomitantly variable effects on weight loss, gain and nutritional compromise. Most participants described anosmia and the concomitant flavour changes as having major impacts on appetite, enjoyment, fullness and satiety. Food became bland and unappetising resulting in a reduced desire to eat, cook or participate in food related activities. Parosmia and phantosmia had even more harrowing effects on food and eating.
Only yoghurt is ok. So I lose weight instead of gaining it. The effect of these flavour changes on diet and diet quality and content varied greatly from person to person. Both with anosmia and parosmia people could be fearful about eating unsafe foods. Universally, parosmia resulted in a much-reduced selection of foods that almost always raised concerns about health.
Overall this experience of altered flavour was reported as pushing appetite and intake in one of two ways. Eating now involved chasing high impact taste and trigeminal sensations such as sugar, salt and piquancy. The most commonly described foods included crisps, chocolate, chilli crisps, and other items that provided unusual textural experiences.
For some this increase in consumption of snacks resulted in a reduction of intake at mealtimes. My weight has gone up. Just one more depressing reminder of this illness. For others flavours had become so unpleasant that food was avoided leading to weight loss as well as other cognitive and emotional consequences:. I dread eating and even going to restaurants or being around food is hard for me. I have absolutely no energy and severe fatigue. My eyes are sunken in from malnutrition. I eat mostly because my body tells me I need to.
More vegetables. Food and eating it with other people is a major source of daily pleasure and social bonding that is often not appreciated until it is no longer possible [ 16 , 17 ]. Research into altered eating in head and neck cancer survivors has shown that commensality—the social sharing of food—was one of the most grieved aspects of an altered relationship to food [ 10 ]. Posts revealed loss of food related joy and pleasure and the associated joy in anticipation of food.
Now food is just sustenance…As there is no pleasure in eating, I stop as soon as I am full. And with everything tasting bland, I find that I feel full very quickly… I find it extremely depressing. All I can comment on in the texture of the food I am eating. I have almost no appetite and eat because I know I have to in order to stay healthy. I get no enjoyment from my food anymore and the only thing I seem to enjoy eating are cold, peeled apples because I like the refreshing sensation in my mouth.
Several commented on the perceived effect on family life:. The disruption of these cues was reported as fundamentally changing the relationship to the world, self, and others in a way that was often described in terms of a fundamental existential upheaval or assault:. Or if not blank, shades of decay. I feel alien from myself. Like a part of me is missing as I can no longer smell and experience the emotions of everyday basic living.
Detached from normality. Lonely in my body. This profound disorientation can be traced in part to the uncoupling of objects, their associated smells and the emotions to which these normally give rise. Things not smelling at all was reported as inducing feelings of detachment, dissociation and unreality:.
The smell in the car was so horrible! Before I could hardly wait to be home to eat a slice of new made pizza. Now I had to drive with full aircon and open windows. I was on the edge of what I can take. Things no longer smelled like they should, and food became confused with non-food in unpredictable and upsetting ways:. As one person summarised it:. The effect of this was also for some felt in their professional life.
For those who partly relied on their nose to do their job e. Professionally, anosmia makes things so much more difficult. As well as the things in the world, people also reported their social world was impacted by taste and smell alteration:. Body odour is known to be significant to sexual relationships in facilitating the detection of key factors that signal compatibility, maintaining familiarity and security within a relationship, and moderating sexual desire [ 18 ].
This could also switch to active aversion and disgust with parosmia:. Like he is a stranger. I used to feel comforted being able to smell him while cuddling. Also I am constantly worried that I smell bad myself and it makes me very insecure.
It makes me really self-conscious. Is that roadkill smell me or him? Imagine your partner saying that to you? For those that did report talking about it, the result was not always a better understanding. The following long quote details the journey from a relatively unaffected sex life with anosmia, to much greater difficulties in intimacy and understanding brought on by parosmia:.
It was unbearable, no matter how hard I tried to put it out of my mind and make do. The first few times I turned away, he accused me of exaggerating, and he insisted that there was no possible way his breath was a problem.
It made me feel stupid. I wished so badly that I was making it up. I wished it were a figment of my imagination, a dramatic charade I could humbly admit to falsifying and then move on, put it behind us. But it was abhorrent. It still is. Too far. We have to play this odd game of fumbling around in bed to make sure the foul odor in question does not make its way to my defective nose and throw sex out the window entirely. However, there was also another side to this. One commentator reported better intimate relationships and a more adventurous sex life as the result of their anosmia:.
I used to be so sensitive to smells and that would get in the way of how much or how little I participated. It was not only romantic and sexual relationships that were affected. A few comments also addressed the impact on maternal bonding with babies and children, and the impact on dating for those looking for a relationship, issues that had come up frequently in our passive thematic analysis.
This last quote highlights the problems of an altered relationship to self, brought on by smell loss or distortion, as also evinced by some of the quotes above. Body odours were of particular concern both in terms of relationship to self and others, and because many commented that the loss of ability to register natural body odour was the first thing they noticed, and the last thing to return. Participants mentioned armpits, menstrual blood, faeces, urine, farts and sweat as casualties in their altered relationship to their own body odour.
Apart for the importance of self-smells to the perception of others, some also commented on the importance of it to the sense of self:. This exploratory co-produced research has brought to light the impact of smell and taste loss and distortion on a large cohort of self-reported COVID Facebook members. The impact is extensive. At the broadest level, the impact shows up in the work of having to manage a poorly understood and fluctuating condition; in an altered relationship with food that includes loss of pleasure and changes in appetite and weight; and in an altered relationship to the self, the world and other people.
Many of these impacts in turn negatively impacted upon mental health. People with smell and taste loss or distortion may have the burden of living with an invisible illness, which nevertheless leads to severe disruption of daily life and routines. The Altered Eating Framework [ 10 ] identifies that in an altered relationship with food, multiple domains of life can be affected.
This is evinced by this work where in addition to the interpersonal and cognitive labour of trying to understand and explain the condition to self and others, there were real, often worrying, physiological consequences in terms of weight loss, weight gain and malnutrition; there were profound disruptions to social, family and love lives; and an altered relationship to the world and the self.
Despite some exceptions, most of these impacts were negative. The altered eating framework suggests that the emotional domain of altered eating problems be seen, in part, as the cumulative tally of the impact of the issues with food on fundamental well-being. Some of these consequences were profound:.
Will I ever get better? This has left me so low in mood. When I look in the mirror there is definitely a slight sadness and emptiness in my eyes that was never there before. Of course, some of these comments may be attributed to the broader impact of COVID and post viral sequalae, though the group did tend to stay focussed on smell and taste loss and its impact. Previous medical and nutritional literature on smell and taste loss has not always brought to light this broad range of profound consequences, focussing more on how diet choices may change, but rarely is an association made with nutrient deficiency.
This was not the case for many of our participants, with widespread reports of weight gain, weight loss and malnutrition, and consequences that went far beyond the nutritional. In August the BRS issued consensus guidelines for treatment of smell and taste loss, noting the surge in cases that would need to be managed at the level of primary care [ 20 ]. Our research would suggest that this guidance be extended to other professionals and that it contains an awareness of the extent and seriousness of the broader psychosocial impact of smell and taste loss.
To date there is little input on this in the training curriculum of GPs, dieticians, nutritionists and psychologists. The significance of our findings suggests this should change. Part of the issue here, of course, is that this is an emerging field of research. As one of the commentators quoted above noted:. Of course, smell and taste loss are not new phenomena and there is a growing body research documenting its effects , but the global COVID pandemic has given this issue increased prominence and importance.
There is extensive literature on the impact of sight and hearing loss on quality of life, but much less on the loss of taste, smell or chemesthesis though see [ 21 — 23 ]. The contribution of our senses of smell, taste and chemesthesis to everyday experience, and the emotional importance of tasting and enjoying what we eat, are often not appreciated until they have gone.
It is not just health professionals but to a degree all of us who underestimate the importance of these senses to our quality of life. We hope that this paper will serve to convey the seriousness of this sensory disruption. A final word as to methodology. Even before Coronavirus limited the possibility of more traditional face-to-face research, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, and online digital platforms such as Facebook messenger have been recognised for their unique value to health research and knowledge translation [ 24 — 26 ].
The value of this online forum was even more pronounced because of the novelty of the condition under examination. From the Editors at Merriam-Webster.
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However, not knowing when or if your sense of smell will return can be worrying. If you wish to speed up the process, there are multiple treatments you can try at home.
Aaronson is a pediatric otolaryngologist at the Alfred I. She is also a Healthline medical advisor. In addition to medical treatments, Dr. Aaronson recommends this at-home strategy.
Each scent is gently sniffed for 20 seconds. This process is repeated three times daily for 6 weeks. Smell training may be most effective if you work on the same four odors each day, rather than alternating. This includes foul odors such as burning rubber or bodily waste. This is known as parosmia. Parosmia can last for several weeks or longer but is usually temporary. Sandra El Hajj , a naturopathic physician, recommends castor oil for anosmia. Ricinoleic acid may help fight infections.
Castor oil comes from castor seeds. It is used as a nasya, or nasal passage treatment for restoring sense of smell by Ayurvedic practitioners. Ginger has a distinctive, pungent scent that makes it beneficial for use in smell training.
You can use powdered or raw ginger for this purpose. Hajj also recommends drinking ginger tea. To try ginger tea for anosmia, try using readymade ginger teabags.
You can also make tea from raw ginger:. If you lost your sense of smell due to allergies or sinus congestion, a saltwater wash may help. This remedy flushes out allergens and mucus from the nasal cavity.
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