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How to Get Your Smell and Taste Back After COVID-19 By Shellie Wass
T
he social media videos on eating strange combinations of food to get your sense of taste back may not be as crazy as they seem.
loss, which leads to their loss of the sense of taste. When you eat food, the aroma goes to the base of the tongue, and then it goes up into the nose for you to say, ‘Oh, this is cherry.’”
The first sign of COVID-19 is often the loss of taste and smell, also known as anosmia, and even those without other symptoms have experienced this. Not being able to smell or taste your food can be an alarming realization, but this doesn’t typically last long, and you can help decrease these symptoms from home. Dr. David Rosen, an otolaryngologist at Jefferson Health, spoke with us on why this is happening and how to get your sense of smell and taste back after recovering from COVID-19.
How to get taste and smell back after COVID-19
Understanding the loss of taste and smell
Many videos have surfaced online of people trying to trigger their sense of taste with aromatic foods like blackening oranges and eating them or biting into onions like they are apples. While some of these attempts may seem absurd, they may actually work. These unique exercises are similar to those of olfactory training.“Olfactory training actually utilizes the body’s neuroplasticity, which is the body’s ability to form new nerve pathways. These methods help the body create new neural pathways and help recover the sense of smell,” says Dr. Rosen.
Smell loss during and after a respiratory virus isn’t new. Typically, There is no wrong time to start trying to trigger your sense of smell post-viral smell loss includes a runny nose or nasal symptoms. This is and taste to return. If you have COVID or have recently recovered not the case with COVID, where the smell and taste loss arrive before but still have smell and taste loss, Dr. Rosen recommends starting any respiratory symptoms. COVID is a unique type of respiratory early smell exercises. Alpha lipoic acid, vitamin A supplements, virus with quick access to the nervous system. Dr. Rosen says that and over-the-counter steroid nasal sprays may be helpful.Olfactory this means that the virus easily travels up the nose and attaches itself training can easily be done at home and has been the most helpful to the olfactory nerve, which is at the top of the nose and responsible in promoting smell fibers to start working again. for conveying sensory information related to smell to your brain. Dr. Rosen recommends smelling readily available items around the Dr. Rosen says the most common complaint of those recovering house and slowly mastering new smells. It’s good to begin smelling from COVID is that they can smell fine but have lost their sense coffee, perfumes, citrus, or different types of essential oils—master of taste. After smell testing these patients, they’re only able to smell identifying these and then move on to a new scent. There is no some of the scents, and they realize they, in fact, don’t have a good downside to doing these tests, and data has shown that it helps sense of smell. “Generally, people can identify tastes, like sweet, patients recover quickly. sour, salty, bitter, and umami (savory), but if you can’t smell, you [Editor’s Note: Read how Dr. Rosen is helping patients like Nancy can’t tell the difference between something like cherry or grape. It Damato regain their sense of taste and smell through a clinical trial.] just tastes sweet,” Dr. Rosen says. So, most people are having smell 24 Philadelphia Medicine : Summer 2022
