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#smell#taste#covid#sense#thing#spice#things#lost#senses#gum
Discussion (46 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
His diet is rather plain, and he doesn't enjoy a lot of food. It's mostly meat, fried things and sweets he enjoys. Most vegetables and low-fat dishes he just can't enjoy at all. Luckily he doesn't get a lot of pleasure from eating and that's what keeps him from getting obese.
It also gives him a lot of anxiety that he or his clothes smell bad. He often just can't assess it from other clues. He often needs to ask people to smell him during the day, which leads to some hilarious situations sometimes, but it's not by choice. It's driven by the fear of smelling bad and not realizing it.
It can also get dangerous in some situations, not being able to smell a gas leak, only noticing smoke once it got so thick it will hurt when breathing, and not being able to smell when food goes bad.
I know this is probably just a bit of "editorial spice" because it's an obvious example for "what would you do if you could eat anything" I guess, but I thought capsaicin/spicyness was NOT a taste-perception thing. Isn't more of a pain feeling? I would've assumed you would retain that, while losing the olfactory perception you need for flavours.
I am no expert in this sort of thing, so if anyone knows I'd be genuinely curious about why COVID would affect both of those senses.
Covid is a weird virus. I'd be really curious about the mechanism behind this. I'm sure it's nothing great, like some sort of nerve damage, but at least in my friend's case he and his senses made a full recovery as far as he can tell.
I didn't feel like looking up how to spell allyl isothiocyanate when writing my initial comment. Maybe I should have! I've edited it for clarity, since it's an important distinction which adds to why I'm so danged curious about the mechanism behind my friend's temporary inability to perceive pungency. I also see how my original wording may have implied I was conflating the two, so I've expanded on my friend's experience a bit. He experimented with pepper and radish based spice sources in his pantry.
But also, outside of Japan, 95% of the time the stuff with your sushi isn't wasabi, it's green-colored horseradish-and-mustard paste.
The heat sensation from capsaicin was unaffected. I was eating a lot of vegetable bowls at the time. Adding spiciness was the only that kept them palatable.
There were a few tastes that I could dully perceive but, stupidly, I didn't make notes about what they were.
I can recall one thing that I didn't like: I tried peanut butter, which I typically find delicious, and found it a horrifyingly disgusting soulless paste. It made me wretch. It was awhile, even after I got my sense of smell back, before I could eat it.
I don't believe my sense of smell has recovered to my pre-COVID capability. This story is very interesting to me.
The only “sensation” I had eas texture which I found very gross without flavor.
It was like that for about 2 months and it slowly came back over another 5 maybe 6. Salty was the first thing I noticed.
5 years later and I still don’t smell coffee, gas or a few other things. It’s weird walking down the coffee isle at the store and not smelling it at sll
It's powerfully off-putting, isn't it? I had no idea tasteless texture would be so upsetting.
I hope this treatment becomes something I can partake of personally. I find that I'm using a lot more salt than I used to trying to make up for lack of taste. I switched to a potassium salt substitute to try to reduce my sodium intake.
Not totally sure I fully believe it; but it seemingly worked for me.. shrug
It took 10 days to get rid of the flu like symptoms, two weeks to get to semi normal, but my taste hasn't been the same since. Not entirely gone, but very muted.
If these gums were available off the shelf I would buy them in a heartbeat!
How long ago? Covid vaccine efficacy drops significantly over time so if you haven't had a booster recently, you are not vaccinated: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/why-pro...
Which that reminds me, I should schedule a booster since I'll be attending a party and a wedding soon.
I'd definitely try this gum.
The smell/taste of my favorite foods no longer there is one thing, but the lack of ability to tell whether there is something wrong with whmy food was far more concerning.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT07498062
looks like it uses flavorings from these folks https://www.tastetech.com/
I eventually adjusted and got used to it and then everything tasted weird again for a while when my senses finally restored after a few months.
It's strange how much these things are hard to discuss without the immediate context - I remember what it was like, but the translation without ready access is surprisingly challenging.
It came back very slowly, and unevenly. My coffee/chocolate taste is still quite dim.
Of all the possible smells to lose, why did it have to be those?
I wonder if it dulls other senses the opposite of blind people who develop more sensitive hearing.
Sounds like an amazing product that I would want to buy. I probably chew 20 sticks of gum a day.