Can’t tast anything; can’t smell: can’t eat

[GettinPiggyWithIt]

It’s been a week and I’m getting worried now

I can’t taste anything
Can only eat by texture which means that most things are OUT

This isn’t a disaster as I am a bit of a porker (see username) however I am concerned that this virus has damaged my olfactory system and am not sure if I need to see a doctor? How long is this going to last?

Don't panic. The vast majority of people get both smell and taste back after a while.

It is very unsettling and worrying but it should be temporary.

Give it a little bit longer. Try some strong tastes and smells. DH could sense the tingling in his mouth of strong tastes like mustard and spices before his full sense of taste returned.

Thank you , that’s reassuring.

How long did it take?

I lost my smell completely & taste about 50%. My taste came back in two weeks but my smell only ever came back about 30%.. that was October 2021. In late January, my smell started to come back but completely incorrectly 😭 I’ve got parosmia, which means smell & taste is completely distorted 🤦🏼‍♀️ There’s a Facebook group with 50,000 of us with the same problem.

Unfortunately, there is nothing the docs can do. They aren’t sure if it’s olfactory damage or nerve damage in your nose. It could also be inflammation in the fluid around your nerves in the nose.. no-one really knows..

But get smell training. One of the best things you can do! Buy some essential oils & smell them all 3x a day for 20 seconds each. Also check out this website for ideas:

abscent.org/

For most people, the loss of smell & taste is very temporary. I’m an unlucky one but I have faith it’ll get better in time.

I lost mine for about a month then it slowly came back. My fathers taste and smell took 3 months to return. He suffered terribly as he is a real foodie and loves going out for meals. He got quite depressed.

I’m the same, I can smell more than taste and I’m also nauseous all the time. Both DH and I have lost weight as a result (didn’t need to). We’re in week three.

I’m into week three, but it is making me absolutely ravenous as I am getting no satisfaction from anything I eat. DP just “blind tested me” with some kitchen items and I was able to identify Branston pickle, but weirdly not vinegar.

I am still really choked up and coughing so hoping that if my face clears it might come back.

I'm in week 3 and my smell is coming back, taste a bit further behind. Nauseous still sometimes but the huge waves of nausea seem to have receded thankfully.
Haven't done any specific smell training but kept using a menthol inhaler stick when my nose was blocked and have carried on using it to see if my sense of smell was returning. I can now smell it, compared to absolutely nothing a few days ago.

DH completely lost his sense of taste & smell. We caught it at the beginning of December. Got his taste back in about a month, mostly. Smell is still very patchy & not very strong though, there's a lot of things he can't smell at all & a lot of things he can only smell faintly.

I lost my sense of taste slightly but only for a couple of days. When it came back I found I can no longer stand the taste of certain processed foods, they taste unpleasant & wrong somehow. I think I've lost the ability to taste some common additive that's in some of them. All fruits, vegetables, meat etc are fine but some processed items taste vile. I haven't figured out yet what it is that I can't taste. Also, I can't eat crisps anymore because they give me heartburn. They never did before. Odd.

I had Covid December 2020-Jan 2021 and it took about six months for my smell to return for the most part. Nothing smells as strong as it did now and a couple of smells are not as they used to.

A week is very early through the process, I’m afraid.

Yes my sense of taste only went completely for a couple of days, but my sense of smell I would say is still not back to normal after two years - it's ok though, just now quite as good as it used to be - I had a really good sense of smell before. It just gradually gets a bit better.