Lessons from Anosmia: Smell and Taste

faj
Posts: 710
Joined: Mon Oct 14, 2019 6:45 am
Location: Quebec

Mon May 15, 2023 7:25 am

Andrew S wrote:
Sat May 13, 2023 8:49 pm
Once I could recognise any smell at all (however frustrating fleeting that was - sometimes literally for just one second), I did try to expose myself to different aromas and try hard to sense, recognise, and differentiate between them, including in tea. It did feel like my mind was trying to fix itself and re-learn a bit...
My pattern of recovery was a bit different. After a period (say, a week) of total olfactory loss, I started noticing a sliver of perception was back late in the day. There was a small progression from one day to the next, and though I wondered if my mind was playing tricks on me at the beginning, there definitely was progression within the day, followed by a regression by the next morning. For the first time in my life I started drinking coffee back then in the morning because it was the best gauge of my progress, one morning at a time. It took a good while (a month or more) of that constant, slow progress to get back to what felt normal.
Randy the Intern
Posts: 35
Joined: Sun Aug 14, 2022 2:58 am
Location: USA

Mon May 15, 2023 6:37 pm

aet wrote:
Sun May 14, 2023 10:45 pm
Randy the Intern wrote:
Fri May 12, 2023 11:47 am
Hello tea friends. Recently I’ve had the worst thing imaginable happen to me. I’ve completely lost my sense of taste and smell after having Covid. I’m not sure how long this might last because I’ve heard many different experiences. Some people get their taste back in weeks, and some never seem to completely get it back.

Personally I’m going to take a more proactive approach to regaining my senses. I want to try remedies that have helped others regain their taste and smell more quickly. One method that has caught my attention is sucking on ginger or garlic. I was wondering if anyone knew of any other remedies I could try?

Needless to say this is a dark time for me. Without my tea there is no longer any light in this world. Only darkness.
how long do you have this issue?
Probably about a week. I was pretty sick for 2 whole weeks at least. I didn't start losing my senses until the second half of my sickness. Today I'm starting to regain a decent amount of my taste and smell, but I'm far from normal. Tea is still way too subtle for me to taste. I do feel sucking on ginger root has helped tremendously. One of the most fun parts of all of this was walking into a hot sauce store and sampling their hottest sauces and being unphased. Couldn't even feel the heat. It's wild.
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aet
Vendor
Posts: 409
Joined: Tue Feb 06, 2018 7:56 pm
Location: Kunming ( China )

Mon May 15, 2023 8:28 pm

Randy the Intern wrote:
Mon May 15, 2023 6:37 pm
aet wrote:
Sun May 14, 2023 10:45 pm
Randy the Intern wrote:
Fri May 12, 2023 11:47 am
Hello tea friends. Recently I’ve had the worst thing imaginable happen to me. I’ve completely lost my sense of taste and smell after having Covid. I’m not sure how long this might last because I’ve heard many different experiences. Some people get their taste back in weeks, and some never seem to completely get it back.

Personally I’m going to take a more proactive approach to regaining my senses. I want to try remedies that have helped others regain their taste and smell more quickly. One method that has caught my attention is sucking on ginger or garlic. I was wondering if anyone knew of any other remedies I could try?

Needless to say this is a dark time for me. Without my tea there is no longer any light in this world. Only darkness.
how long do you have this issue?
Probably about a week. I was pretty sick for 2 whole weeks at least. I didn't start losing my senses until the second half of my sickness. Today I'm starting to regain a decent amount of my taste and smell, but I'm far from normal. Tea is still way too subtle for me to taste. I do feel sucking on ginger root has helped tremendously. One of the most fun parts of all of this was walking into a hot sauce store and sampling their hottest sauces and being unphased. Couldn't even feel the heat. It's wild.
yep , stay calm , it will come back in full scale again ;-0

I had the 2nd wave of Covid ( in China ) pretty hard one. 2 days high fevers , muscule and joint pain , headache and almost no sleep , had rahter lucid dreams those 2 nights. 3rd day was better but tonsils were just filtering all that crap so my throat was in pain another day or two.
The most funny part was , that I've lost my sense of taste and smell right after those 3 critical days. So at the time when I was actuallly in recovery stage. My wife gave me to smell some parfumes and I could only feel that some stingy stuff is irritating my nose buds inside ( to make me feel almost sneeze ) but I couldn't actually identify the smell . It was like suddenly brain doesnt know / can't distinguish it.
As a tea vendor , believe me, I've got freaked out.
I've recalled that movie with Luis Def. ( French comedy ) when he was a wine degustator and lost his taste , so had to improvise ( judging by visual elements ) . I was preparing my self for similar scenario ;-) My thoughts were already going to the "plan B" for our biz. , how my wife would be fully in charge of selecting tea by taste and I'd be doing only heavy lifting work part ( which I normally do anyway ).
It came back again , after one week so. In fact, I have a funny feeling that now my nose and tongue are even more sensitive than before. Seems like that shock gave to my brain some modifications when I was trying hard to focus on smell and taste during that " dark age " I was going trought.
So stay calm , it will get back again.
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