If you lost your sense of smell during Covid..

[Lugol]

Did it ever come back? Was there anything you did that helped?

I lost my sense of smell the first week of lockdown and other than very sporadically it's gone.

No, still gone here. If something has a really strong smell and it is right under my nose, I may occasionally get a tiny whiff.
Once had a situation where I was with a colleague chatting in the staff room while they were eating and noticed no smell, literally everyone else that came in commented on the strong food smell. That was when I fully realised the loss.

Same as Hippy, taste too, it’s quite sad actually

Does sense of smell diminish with age?
Im just into my 60s and I have to get up really close to flowers to catch the smell since covid but maybe it’s my age?

My dad's still isn't back.

I lost mine before COVID actually and whenever I get a cold it goes again, for weeks or months. What works is budesonide nasal spray on prescription. I have it on repeat so I can order it and use it daily (double the prescribed dose) for a week or two until it's back. Sometimes it takes longer than 2 weeks but it always comes back.

Not me. But this happened to a friend along with a million other horrible long covid symptoms. She has been seen(and helped) at the specialist clinic at UCLH www.uclh.nhs.uk/our-services/find-service/covid19-clinics/anosmia-clinic

Mine went for 3 weeks,it was utterly miserable as taste went too. I didn't realise how important your sense of smell is in everyday life. It hasn't returned completely,not quite as good as it was.

Don't make a fuss though OP "it's only a cold" as so many people like to point out🙄

I always know I've caught Covid as my sense of taste and smell not only decrease, but I have a persistent sense of smelling something burning. It's drives me crazy as I have to check things for safety repeatedly in case something really is burning. 😵‍💫
Recently, all I could taste of my coffee was mild bitterness after a "cold" around Easter. That lasted about 3-4 weeks.

So the first time I got Covid it came back after about a month. I however caught Covid in December last year and my smell still isn’t back. And my taste is very diminished

Yes. I lost both my sense of smell and taste in July 2021, and they didn't fully return until December 2023. It was very disorientating, and I don't think most people really appreciated how significant it was. People would try and make light-hearted jokes about it, but I found it quite distressing. You don't realise how much you rely on those senses until they're gone, and living without them for over two years had a much bigger impact than people seemed to understand.

It's awful isn't it? I'm sorry so many of us are suffering with it, it's pretty miserable. 💐

I remember seeing something on youtube about oranges cut in half with brown sugar on baked in the oven, apparently people were getting their sense of taste or smell back through eating them but I haven't tried it and have no idea if it actually works. I might give it a try, I have nothing to lose after all.

I was just gas-lit by my GP so never bothered asking about it again.

Mine was gone for months and it was a bit of a disaster - my DP travels for work a lot and I had to stop eating meat when he was away because I gave myself food poisoning with chicken I could neither taste nor smell was bad! (Thanks, Hello Fresh.) I also had an incident where I’d put bacon on to cook but the grill ignition hadn’t clicked in, so it was just belching out gas which again I couldn’t smell.

What I think - maybe - helped was doing what was called “smell training” at the time and I saw on Instagram. You could buy these little kits of essential oils that were designed to trigger scent memories or something. I didn’t buy a kit because they were expensive gimmicks but I got oils from Boots and the health food shop, eucalyptus, lavender, tea tree, a citrus one and did it religiously morning and night.

If I get a cold I immediately lose taste and smell now.

How awful for it to be long term.

Losing my smell/taste was actually my only symptom of Covid. I’d not have tested otherwise. It was so long ago, I’m struggling to remember how long it took to return, but it was less than a week, I think.

Took almost a year for my sense of smell to come back when I caught it in 2020, and even now it seems to be permanently altered 😩 DP had to change his aftershave because all I could smell was burning rubber and it made me feel ill!

Still gone mainly for me unless it is a very very strong smell and nearby. My taste is affected too.

Yep & I hate it, 2 years now 😭I can't taste much either, but oddly cleaning chemicals smell much stronger now.

I had exactly 24 hours where I could smell nothing at all, even very strong smells, then completely back to normal.

Mine came back after about 2 years.

I lost mine for about a month and then it came back.

I lost my sense of smell with covid and it has come back but nowhere near as good as it was. If there is a really awful smell I can usually smell it but not so good otherwise.

Still massively impaired here (along with my sense of taste). I'm really rather sad about it.

Mine has been gone for about two years now, both taste and smell. It’s quite upsetting, though I still find myself choosing foods and flavours based on what I used to like! I do sometimes get a hint of flavour poking through, notably natural tastes rather than anything artificial. My litmus test is a bag of Skittles, I can’t taste the different flavours, they all have a generic sweetness. Same with ice creams.

On the plus side, I haven’t smelt a fart in two years and judging by everyone elses’s reaction to my youngest’s, I’m winning there!

Mine came back, but there's an ingredient in many perfumes that I now find intolerable. I've not been able to identity what it is though!