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In response, some researchers are revisiting the concept of physical therapy for the nose in order to help restore what Covid-19 and other ailments have taken away. The only problem: nasal physiology is incredibly difficult to study, and the experimental therapy — while helpful to some — doesn’t provide the kind of evidence doctors normally need to adopt a new treatment widely.
— Read more in Post-Covid, Many Patients Try Smell Therapy. But Does it Work? at Undark.
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Those with anosmia, or partial loss of taste and smell, on the other hand, can sometimes taste hints of basic flavours, like salt, lemon and sugar. Cooking with umami-rich elements – like mushrooms, cheeses, and soy sauce – can activate saliva flow while boosting other flavours in a dish, Smith said.
The cookbook, which was released 29 March, includes 17 recipes that emphasise texture, umami, layering and stimulating the trigeminal nerve, while eliminating common ingredients that could be offensive, like garlic and onions.
— Read more in If you lost your sense of taste and smell to Covid-19, this cookbook might help at the Independent. You can download the cookbook here.
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The prevailing wisdom is (that post-Covid) parosmia is a good thing – a sign of the neurons regenerating but failing to make their connection, like leads in the wrong port. But, [Barry Smith of the Global Consortium of Chemosensory Research] tells me, it’s not a simple “miswiring”. There appear to be certain volatile molecules, such as those found in coffee and roasted meat – which in high concentration would be quite toxic – that set it off, perhaps triggering a kind of warning alarm.
“It’s a bit like tinnitus in the ears,” Smith suggests, in that the brain is struggling to modulate the signals it receives; my nose is whining, always at the same high pitch.
— Read more in Searching for sense: what we lose when smell deserts us at New Statesman.
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[Charles Wysocki of Monell Chemical Senses Center] found 20 volunteers who also could not initially detect androstenone, and after six weeks of sniffing the pheromone for three minutes, three times a day, half of them became sensitive to the molecule. This finding is in some ways intuitive; the olfactory senses of perfumers and sommeliers, after all, become more attuned to perfumes and wine with time.
— Read more about the development of post-Covid-19 smell training in You Recovered From COVID-19. Now Your Coffee Smells Like Sewage. at The Atlantic.
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We really got to see what it was like not to smell at all, and it was probably one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever experienced. Food doesn’t taste like anything, so you have to rely on the texture of the food for pleasure. You realize how lucky you are when it comes back little by little. When you pick up some notes, you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I can smell pepper!’—you get to enjoy something that you took for granted.
— Sylvie Ganter of Atelier Cologne, on losing her sense of smell to COVID-19. Read more in COVID made this perfumer lose her sense of smell at ParrySound.