Can you lose sense of smell with a general cold/sinus infection?

[Smellgon]

I can’t smell anything, I’m surprised how unsettling it feels!

Yes it's normal. I usually lose my sense of smell for 2-3 days, it'll then come and go for another couple of days before it finally comes properly back x

Yes, of course. Anything that irritates your nose and sinuses can affect your sense of smell and therefore also taste - it’s not only Covid that can do it. I think with Covid, the difference for a lot of people was just that it took a lot longer to come back.

It is a bit unsettling, isn’t it? I had an awful cold the week before last and couldn’t smell or taste a thing. I ate a plate of pasta and spicy meatballs and thought “That was an interesting combination of textures…”

I used to internally roll my eyes when people said that they lose their sense of smell and/or taste.

That is until I got Covid in February (for the 5th bloody time) and completely lost all sense of smell and taste. It was the weirdest and most disconcerting thing ever!

Of course you can that's always been a thing with colds

Yes this happened to me last week of heavy cold . Not covid. Came back on day five .

I’ve never had it to the extent that I did when I had covid - for about 3 weeks I couldn’t smell or taste anything at all. When I have had colds I have had moments of being able to smell/taste for example just after blowing my nose I might get a short moment of being able to smell/taste. If yours have completely gone I’d suspect covid.

I always do and have done for years.

I remember being at a farmers market once and someone pestering me into a sip of that really strong ginger wine/ginger cordial/drink thing, its really really strong in taste. I couldnt taste a thing and another customer heard me say this to my OH and she didnt believe me, in quite a hostile way 'you cant taste that??', 'you're saying you cant taste that'

I find it depressing as mine lasts for weeks at a time and I find I eat more because Im craving the taste of something but of course it never comes.

I remember the episode of Hancocks Half Hour from the 1950s when he has a bad cold.
"What is it scrambled eggs or custard I don't know. They can put a man on the moon. A rocket half way round Venus and still there are blokes down here who can't taste their scrambled eggs."

Thanks! It’s never happened to me before and it’s so much more horrible than I imagined!

I’ve had no sense of taste or smell for about the last 6 weeks, I thought it was a bad cold but took a covid test which was negative, but assume it probably was. It’s come back a tiny bit a few times, but otherwise nothing. It’s horrible, I really miss it!

Yes I am 3 weeks in, severe bacterial sinus infection following a virus (not Covid).

I’m still tasting nothing and can now only constantly smell non existent smoke. Awful!

Happens to me every time I get a cold.

I find rinsing with a neti pot helps. You can get them on Amazon.

My father totally lost his sense of smell in his 20s. Caused by an incompetent nurse in a Scottish hospital who applied some solution undiluted after nose surgery. He remembered the smell of roses. It is actually quite a dangerous thing - you can't smell smoke or fumes or if food has gone off or if its burning.

Sounds exactly like what I had with covid (the smelling the non existent smoke afterwards)

I have chronic sinusitis and haven't smelled anything properly since September. It's horrible and ruins eating anything nice.

Yeah, had it with a bug in about 2004. Didn't even feel that ill, but smell and taste totally absent, nose wasn't clogged or anything, no sinus pain. It went away within a month though.

Not smelt anything for nearly 2 years. I used to have a keen sense of smell but I’ve got used to now having nothing. That said, I do miss it and am going to attempt acupuncture in the new year.

I had it with Covid as well last year but this time is definitely not Covid. I had extensive swabbing to identify the bacteria as it needed specific antibiotics as I was quite unwell. Definitely not viral.

Yes I do when blocked but not very badly. I’ve just had the awful cold/virus going round and it was bizarre how my smell and taste completely went and I was so unsettled, came back after 4 days - not COVID!

A month or so after I retired I had the worst cold I have have ever had in my life. I completely lost my sense of smell. I remember walking into a rose garden at one of the RHS gardens in June. It looked glorious but I couldn't smell a thing.

Had it been a year later, I would have assumed it was Covid, but this was the summer of 2019.

Don’t lose hope! I lost my sense of taste completely mid October after a horrible cold/virus thing. I did a Covid test (negative) but I am convinced that it was C19, as it felt exactly the same as when I had it in 2020. Over the last 10 days things have dramatically improved and I am now firing on all cylinders again. I know how awful it is, especially this time of year, but it will come back. If it helps, I am taking an anti-histamine and 2 puffs of a nasal spray each day.

Yes, but I've also had it with covid. I believe the difference is for me anyway that with a cold it's just due to the blocked nose (even if I'm not blowing it that much) it just stops you from.being able to smell properly.

With covid it actually kills the smell receptors cells, this means you can't smell anything (taste is only sweet and sower anyway). It was so much worse with covid and it wasn't until several months later I fully regained my full sense of smell. Although I could smell reasonably after about 3 weeks.

The current covid strain isn't well detected by the avaible tests. We have also had it twice in this house where some of us tested positive and others didn't, despite have the same symptoms.

With covid for me it was completely different. I could not smell or taste anything. Nothing at all. I put washing up liquid in my mouth, raw garlic,neat lemon juice. I was in hospital nine months later and had someone vomiting and having diarrhea next to me I could not smell a thing.

It's pretty unuasl to smell and taste zero. With a heavy cold if I smell nothing, but blow my nose, a snippet of smell comes back. Covid felt like a nerve had been removed or that part of my brain had died.

I've always lost my sense of smell with a bad cold or sinusitis, and after one particularly horrible series of sinusitis bouts one after the other, my sense of smell didn't come back properly. That was quite a few years ago now, and I can normally only smell a few things okay.

At the moment, it's all disappeared again as I have covid. Interesting what a pp says about the test kits not picking up the current strain very well, because they certainly did with mine. A bright red pretty much immediately.