Smell and taste dynfunction after covid-19:
"It was sudden, like turning an electric switch off." This is how one patient described her abrupt loss of smell and taste following infection with covid-19. "I was eating some lunch on day three after contracting covid-19 and one moment I could still smell and taste the flavours of my soup, and the next everything vanished."
She was not alone in this. In fact, smell and taste loss are common complaints among patients with covid-19, with an estimated 50% of patients reporting these symptoms. This is thought to occur due to conductive barriers and nerve damage from the extensive inflammation in covid-19 infection.
The recovery of smell and taste is very much a gradual process for some. In our analysis of 3699 patients from 12 countries, recently published in The BMJ, we found that at the 30 day mark following the initial infection, only 74% and 79% of patients are expected to recover their smell and taste respectively. Recovery rates rise with each passing month, reaching a peak of 96% for smell and 98% for taste after six months. [...]
Besides a quantitative impairment in smell, a sizeable proportion of patients also report qualitative smell impairment following covid-19 infection, manifesting as distortion of odour (known as parosmia) or a perception of smell in the absence of an odour (known as phantosmia). These patients often struggle to tolerate everyday smells and become increasingly withdrawn. Such a phenomenon has been postulated to occur due to aberrant regeneration of the neurons in the olfactory system during recovery.
[...] Our sense of smell and taste is something that we very much take for granted. In one patient's words, "I don't think that as human beings we can truly understand, appreciate, and comprehend how important and how deeply connected to all aspects of our life our sense of smell is until we lose it." The abrupt loss of smell and taste that covid-19 infection brings has a formidable impact on patients' quality of life. Smell and taste impairments may hinder the enjoyment of food, causing patients to feel as if eating has become "a chore, a merely functional transaction with the only scope of providing nutrients." It is unsurprising that smell and taste loss has been linked to malnutrition.
Many patients struggle with lack of support as medical practitioners have not been equipped to deal with long covid and this unprecedented wave of patients with persistent smell and taste loss. There are too many questions and far too few answers. Why are women particularly affected by persistent smell loss? Is the sensory loss going to be permanent? Is there anything that patients can do to hasten the recovery? Will olfactory training improve outcomes? These are important questions, and ones that need to be taken seriously and investigated by the medical and research community.
I completely lost my sense of smell and taste early in the pandemic and it was devastating. Eating indeed became a chore and turned into an ordeal to get through. Within a month my senses (as far as I can tell) fully recovered, but to this day I do get bouts of phantosmia. Did any of you experience this, and if so, how did you get through it?
Journal Reference:
Benjamin Kye Jyn Tan, Ruobing Han, Joseph J Zhao, et al., Prognosis and persistence of smell and taste dysfunction in patients with covid-19: meta-analysis with parametric cure modelling of recovery curves [open], 2022. DOI: 10.1136/bmj-2021-069503
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday July 31 2022, @07:55PM (9 children)
... they've been mostly gone since some time in my teens because I am always stuffed up, and smell is so important to the 'taste experience'. Probably have a deviated septum along with my allergies...
I did get a 'dead' patch on my leg: it's a 4"x6" stretch of skin that always feels like it's JUST 'waking up'. If you hit the spot, it feels numb but a tiny bit tingly whereas the rest of the leg just feels normal.
Weird.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Informative) by krishnoid on Sunday July 31 2022, @08:47PM (5 children)
If you've just got the stuffiness, and not the itchy throat and eyes or other allergy symptoms, it may no longer be allergies. Persistent sinus stuffiness could be a result of non-allergic rhinitis [nih.gov], or 'vasomotor' rhinitis. From "rhino-", meaning rhinoceros, and -itis meaning "inflammation", which produces swelling and sometimes secretions that can collect, cistern-like, in your rhinoceros based on how they're structured [patrickholford.com] and how the openings can be swollen shut.
Some causes include cold [youtu.be], exercise, barometric pressure variations, and stress. For me, it took a combination of:
A lot of people do either the neti pot or the prescription spray, but it makes sense that you may need to do both to empty them out and then keep them from re-inflaming in the future. Endoscopic sinus surgery [stanford.edu] and balloon sinuplasty [clevelandclinic.org] are also options, but I think they recommend nasal steroids afterwards to tame the recurrent inflammation anyway.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday August 01 2022, @12:06AM (4 children)
Interesting: might look at this.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday August 01 2022, @02:08AM
If you don't have the time to look at yourself, maybe bookmark it and have it available next time you see an ear-nose-and-throat doctor, along with your history of stuffiness.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday August 01 2022, @02:54PM (1 child)
Definitely worth asking a doctor about or just trying something like Flonase (over the counter) allergy nasal spray.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday August 01 2022, @08:38PM
You can definitely try the Flonase, but it didn't work for me, while one of the prescription sprays did. Note that they're not acute-symptom sprays, more ones that over time get the tissue to stop the inflammatory response.
(Score: 1) by chr on Wednesday August 03 2022, @12:05PM
FYI, it's also possible to x-ray your skull to see if your sinuses are "aired" - might be worth discussing with your physician.
If you're lucky and you for some reason already previously x-rayed your skull, maybe the existing images can shed light on the status of your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by coolgopher on Monday August 01 2022, @04:34AM (1 child)
Meralgia paraesthetica [wikipedia.org]?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday August 01 2022, @02:32PM
Velly intelesting! Spanks! :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday August 01 2022, @06:34PM
I did, but it wasn't a burden, but as I have previously been a cigarette smoker I didn't even notice until my sense of smell came back. I think later strains may not have affected smell, I had it before they knew it was in my county. I thought it was a bad cold until they started talking about the symptoms on TV, I'd been over it by then.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Booga1 on Sunday July 31 2022, @08:07PM (9 children)
We have seen death rates improve with the availability of the vaccines, but long COVID remains a serious issue. Loss of taste and smell is just the tip of the iceberg of long term problems. Some long COVID symptoms are so severe that they drive people to suicide. [npr.org]
Even if COVID doesn't kill you outright, you could still end up having nasty, permanent issues like:
Attention fatigue has set in around here. People let their guards down, had Fourth of July parties, and the results are rather predictable. The COVID infection rate is back up to almost the same as when we last had to put in mask mandates. It's looking more and more like we'll have to start all over again.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday August 01 2022, @12:11AM (4 children)
We just went to an agricultural fair here and only saw about 6 other people wearing masks.
I think all governments will be resisting mask mandates like aristarchus resists making sense. :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 01 2022, @06:48AM (3 children)
Masks are pretty much useless outside. The funniest things were people alone in their cars on the highway wearing masks, and people on a sunny beach wearing masks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 01 2022, @07:41AM (2 children)
I'd use the word "unnecessary" rather than useless. They're not really needed when you have enough fresh air circulating and distance between people. Fairgrounds and beaches can be pretty packed, or they can be sparsely populated. Hard to know without being there.
Wearing them in the car all by your lonesome seems likely to be a case of an unnecessary masking. If I was already wearing it at one store and going to be getting right back out to go into another store, I might wear it for the couple of minutes on the road. Other than super short term situations like that, why bother?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Monday August 01 2022, @01:51PM (1 child)
This place was packed and we had people around us who were coughing:
my wife has leukemia and so we just mask for her and my sons safety.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 01 2022, @02:26PM
If you're immunocompromised then a good mask (N95 or better) is probably a good idea in those places regardless of COVID. There are plenty of other bugs people carry that could mess her up. Remove it carefully and don't forget to sanitize your/her hands too.
Hope your wife is doing well.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by jdoe3 on Monday August 01 2022, @01:06AM (2 children)
and he was probably vaxxed but you shills don't ever mention that.
"we last had to put in mask mandates. It's looking more and more like we'll have to start all over again."
stfu, you stupid piece of shit. You scum will start getting what you deserve soon.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 01 2022, @02:39PM
(Score: 3, Touché) by https on Monday August 01 2022, @07:12PM
"Ninety eight percent of those admitted to ER for motor vehicle accident injuries were wearing a seat belt. Clearly, seat belts don't work."
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Monday August 01 2022, @06:38PM
My daughter lost the sight in one eye due to inflammation. Had she not gone to the ER and gotten a steroid IV drip her loss of sight would have been permanent. She may not have gotten all of her sight back yet. And she was masked and fully vaccinated when she caught it.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 31 2022, @08:40PM (10 children)
Sounds like Fast Food America. Show of hands: Who takes time to savor their garden vegetables? How many can distinguish between one kind of beef and another - Angus vs and old Hereford milk cow, for instance? Are we aware that there are many varieties of both tomatoes and potatoes, and that the flavors are very different among them?
After years of eating on the road, settling for whatever was available, that choice of words really struck me.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by krishnoid on Sunday July 31 2022, @08:50PM (1 child)
I'm wondering if it could be paired with a dietary regimen, so this side-effect could help with the obesity epidemic. If eating becomes a chore, wouldn't that be an opportunity to change what, when, and how much you eat?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Monday August 01 2022, @02:27AM
Some may benefit, others will just end up trading obesity for malnutrition.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Monday August 01 2022, @06:17AM (1 child)
I wouldn't be able to distinguish between breeds of beef, but then I think of Hereford as a place to get good cider. My in-laws do grow a mean selection of tomatores in all shaprs and colours, which beat shop-bought stuff hands down.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday August 01 2022, @06:46PM
I've never eaten a store bought tomato that wasn't tasteless. Farmers' market tomatoes aren't bad, but those grown in a back yard are usually best. But that goes for any kind of vegetable.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday August 01 2022, @02:35PM (4 children)
Every year i plant cherry tomatoes in my garden (unfortunately, the squirrels got to it and killed it before i could protect it with a wire cage): i LOVE picking them fresh from the plant and eating it.
Best thing ever.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday August 01 2022, @06:49PM (3 children)
I have a nectarine tree in my front yard. Ever since the neighbor with the big noisy dog moved, the God damned squirrels destroy them all before they're even anywhere near ripe.
If it was legal to fire a gun in the city I'd buy a .22 for squirrel season. At least squirrels are tasty.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday August 01 2022, @08:31PM (1 child)
Never tried squirrel, though i'd like to: i hear, though, that, like deer, there's a disease going through squirrels.....
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday August 06 2022, @03:13PM
Haven't eaten any in decades, but I always liked it deep fried like chicken. If the disease can't affect humans it would be okay (of course, it could be Covid, that seems to affect all mammals).
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday August 03 2022, @08:25PM
I'm lucky enough to have a plum tree and a few apple trees. Birds are my major competition for the fruit, but I don't mind if the apples end up half-pecked: they can still get juiced for brewing cider!
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday August 01 2022, @06:43PM
Who takes time to savor their garden vegetables?
Well, I do (not garden but fresh/frozen), but I'm seldom in the middle of the curve, always in one long tail or another. I seldom eat fats food (that was not a typo, the typo is "fast foods"). I'm also not fat like 98% of Americans these days.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 5, Funny) by inertnet on Sunday July 31 2022, @10:01PM
I can't say if the loss of smell was sudden, because I only noticed it after waking up. I suspected something was wrong when I didn't smell the usual hints of bed odors. After going to the bathroom I was sure I lost me sense of smell completely. After failing to smell my morning coffee I got very sad about it. I could still taste my food though, but very rudimentary.
After about 2 weeks my sense of smell gradually came back fully. The fact that I enjoyed smelling things in the bathroom while doing my business, made me happy. Which of course was hilarious, something I would never have believed before. Being joyous to smell your own waste products.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Monday August 01 2022, @12:50AM
Average bronchitis during the Delta wave, eight weeks after second BioNTech shot (according to Ugur Sahin himself that should give 10 weeks of sterilizing immunity), on a Thursday. RAT on Friday, the worst day, negative. Getting better on Saturday, mostly fine on Sunday, except my Mom's excellent chicken fricassee seemed a bit bland. Even better on Monday. Wanted to clean the kitchen and got mad at a friend because she filled up the chlorine-releasing cleaner with something else. Went to get the big bottle of that to top up, no chlorine. Got suspicious and sniffed through the little jars of the spice rack. No spice smell either. Alright, friend not at fault... Other brand RAT next day marginally positive, PCR confirmed the day after (other than the smell I felt perfectly fine by then). Spent my quarantine with daily sniffing exercises, vanillin was still barely noticeable, a perfumed deodorant too. Cinnamon and curry powder came back a few days after, mostly back to normal after a week. No persisting damage, thank the gods.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 01 2022, @01:58PM
Anyway sense of smell is quite important - sometimes food goes bad before the "Best before date" and smell is one of the ways you can use to detect if something is bad.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Tuesday August 02 2022, @07:33AM
At one point in the second quarter of 2020 the Wyrm family began to experience some mild symptoms that were broadly consistent with COVID-19. Nothing too serious but we all lost our sense of smell for a time. We couldn't get properly tested since at the time there was a shortage of tests and you could only get them if you were experiencing severe symptoms. I almost didn't notice; it was only when the chore of cleaning out the cats' litterboxes became more onerous that I knew something was amiss. The little wyrm also didn't get much affected. Mrs. Wyrm though was much less fortunate. She completely lost her sense of smell for almost two months, and when it returned, it was all weird. Many common things like garlic, onions, cucumbers, beef, chicken, and so on were completely inedible because they smelled and tasted rotten or rancid. Many of these have improved and normalised over the past two years, but garlic still remains an odd one out; seems to depend on how it was prepared, beef still occasionally has a funny taste, and the characteristic flavour of butter is for some reason still inaccessible to her sense of smell. She occasionally winds up smelling smoke when she lies down in a funny way. We've not been able to get any help from medical science as this is all quite new. She found a support group on social media where it seems many other people have experienced broadly the same thing as she's been experiencing so we know it's not unique to her case.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by choose another one on Tuesday August 02 2022, @01:40PM
Missed this article at the time, but anyway:
My wife had Covid in April 2020, recovery to full fitness (or so we thought) took over a year, but she was running half marathons again in July 2021.
Lost taste / smell, mostly recovered BUT:
- she used to really like Gin (which I haven't liked the taste of, ever), has a cupboard full of various expensive special bottles of different flavours / types of it
- now... she doesn't really like the taste of it, at all, will still drink it occasionally, but nowhere near as often as used to
- and the gin cupboard is on a permanent expansion program because people still gift her nice expensive new gins, far faster than she drinks them
ALSO, taste and smell now seem to keep disappearing with other infections that are not actually covid (or never show as despite daily testing).
Of course all that is now dwarfed by the fact that she now has cancer, or hopefully doesn't anymore following treatment. Except cancer treatment, it seems, even for the smallest earliest grade/stage screening-detected stuff turns out to be utterly brutal and has completely destroyed her (even without any chemo, but with Tamoxifen, "the utter bastard cherry on the top of the cancer treatment shitcake" - sorry I forget where I saw that so can't give credit).
Which just goes to show there are worse things than covid / long-covid...
except...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33914346/ [nih.gov]
Gonna be interesting to watch how cancer rates turn out in the had/didn't-have covid cohorts over next decade or so.