Horrible taste and smells post covid, anyone have this?

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amother

Tue, Oct 26 2021, 6:17 am

I had covid in may, fairly mildly. Lost my taste and smell but it didn't bother me that much. I felt tired and headachy for about 3 months after. Than I started feeling better. Then a weird thing happened, gradually over a few weeks some foods started tasting horrible. Other things (like my favourite soap and detergent) smell sickly sweet. Coffee smells absolutely awful (prob tastes awful too but I don't drink it) and so does fried onions, garlic, meat, chicken, fish, eggs, candy, most chocolate, many vegetables, which taste horrible too. All these things have the same horrible taste (distinct to the sweet taste, more a burnt bad oniony smell, hard to describe).

It is also getting worse each day, even if something tasted fine last week it might not be good today.

You would think this would have a weight loss benefit (I would love to lose weight) but since I can only eat potatoes, pasta, some veggies, cheese..I haven't lost anything.

amother

Oleander

Tue, Oct 26 2021, 6:24 am

It’s very common. Myself and several family members all had variations of this. It’s mostly worn off for all of us though I still have a few lingering bad smells/tastes, and I had Covid close to a year ago. For what it’s worth my husband’s sense of smell returned to normal after getting the vaccine.

amother

Tangerine

Tue, Oct 26 2021, 6:43 am

Happened to me too
Not in the order you described but my sense of smell has not returned.
& some smells are GROSS to me.
Fabric softener, meat, chicken, coffee
Had Covid in December last year.

4g01o

Tue, Oct 26 2021, 7:01 am

Delete double post

Last edited by 4g01o on Tue, Oct 26 2021, 7:24 am; edited 1 time in total

4g01o

Tue, Oct 26 2021, 7:02 am

Yes I have the same thing, it's lasted me almost a year now on and off Sad

but it's gotten worse since having my baby recently so maybe the pregnancy stopped my senses from coming back Can't Believe It

amother

Rainbow

Tue, Oct 26 2021, 7:13 am

It's called parosmia you can Google it. I also didn't lose weight.

SYA

Tue, Oct 26 2021, 7:22 am

Taking Zinc, vitamin D3 has helped some people. Not sure what dosage though.

amother

Wed, Nov 17 2021, 1:38 pm

Anyone else have parosmia? My safe food list is getting shorter every day!!! This is really depressing. Crying

I am on a fb group with thousands of people, some have it really bad. I can still eat, and often eat foods that taste yucky to me because otherwise I will be hungry.

There is no cure except time. Sad

Wed, Nov 17 2021, 2:04 pm

Someone told me that elderflower extract helped to restore her daughter’s weird sense of smell& taste after Covid. Worth a try?

Chayalle

Wed, Nov 17 2021, 2:15 pm

I've also had a version of this, though not as bad as you describe. I had COVID in March of 2020, so it's been quite a while. Interestingly, I found that some foods that I continued to expose myself to started tasting better, while foods I avoided taste the same.

For example, wine tasted AWFUL at first, but I continued to have a Kiddush sip every week....and it tastes fine now. Coke was another baddie, so I just stopped drinking it, and here and there if I have a sip to check, I find that it tastes as bad as ever.

Ditto to eggs and onions which are okay now. Raw fresh peppers and apples are starting to taste not so bad, so I keep having some.

chanatron1000

Wed, Nov 17 2021, 2:22 pm

I think this happens because you have different scent receptors for different scents and when the sense of smell starts healing, the different types don't come back into action at the same time (and for some reason, the unpleasant ones are first, maybe because they're more important for survival). I had this for a while and eventually my sense of smell went back to normal.

ra_mom

Wed, Nov 17 2021, 4:28 pm

Keep positive. The parosmia / distorted sense of taste and smell means your neurons are regenerating.

Rubies

Wed, Nov 17 2021, 4:34 pm

I kept thinking I smell a gas leak, at some point.

chanatron1000

Wed, Nov 17 2021, 8:00 pm

Until your sense of smell goes back to normal, it can be helpful to try different spices and flavorings to see if it can help you enjoy food. For me, hot sauce helped a lot. If your diet is limited, you should also look into nutritional supplements so you can get the nutrients you're missing while you're unable to eat real food.

amother

Almond

Wed, Nov 17 2021, 10:18 pm

I saw someone used ivermectin to help this. also ppl took BOSWELLIA and it helped. so sorry you are going through this.

amother

Thu, Nov 18 2021, 5:27 am

Rubies wrote:

I kept thinking I smell a gas leak, at some point.

I kept thinking I had spilled some sickly sweet liquid in my fridge and cleaned it a few times until I realised.

Almost all my shower gels smell vile, I really need to find one that doesn't make me gag.

I am able to eat some veggies (yay). If you have this, interestingly bagged lettuce tastes awful, fresh lettuce is ok. And I am forcing down meat and chicken, sometimes it tastes ok. True about spices - I had chicken with a sweet chili based sauce and it was much better.

amother

Maroon

Thu, Nov 18 2021, 10:32 am

I had the same issue! I lost my taste and smell and when I started getting it back 6 months later the only thing I ate was applesauce! I couldn’t put a morsel of food in my mouth. Fried onions, mint toothpaste (I had to use nauseous cherry flavored but still tasted better than mint!), garlic, coffee, any citrus etc. Then I started aroma therapy. I bought essential oils on Amazon and smelled all 6 for 30 seconds twice a day. Two weeks later my taste and smell improved drastically now a year and a half after I had Covid I have 98% of my taste and smell back.

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