Chewing gum restores dad's taste and smell years after Covid

> The dad-of-two, from Litchfield, Staffordshire, could eat the spiciest curries with no effect

I know this is probably just a bit of "editorial spice" because it's an obvious example for "what would you do if you could eat anything" I guess, but I thought capsaicin/spicyness was NOT a taste-perception thing. Isn't more of a pain feeling? I would've assumed you would retain that, while losing the olfactory perception you need for flavours.

I am no expert in this sort of thing, so if anyone knows I'd be genuinely curious about why COVID would affect both of those senses.

I lost my sense of smell from Covid for a few weeks once, too. I used to eat mulberrys right off the tree in my backyard, but I realized that I could no longer tell if they had gone bad without my sense of smell.

The smell/taste of my favorite foods no longer there is one thing, but the lack of ability to tell whether there is something wrong with whmy food was far more concerning.

I had my fourth Covid infection just a month ago. Fully vaccinated, and having had it three times before, it still hit me like a brick.

It took 10 days to get rid of the flu like symptoms, two weeks to get to semi normal, but my taste hasn't been the same since. Not entirely gone, but very muted.

If these gums were available off the shelf I would buy them in a heartbeat!

I have a friend who doesn't have a sense of smell since birth. It's more of a problem than one would think.

His diet is rather plain, and he doesn't enjoy a lot of food. It's mostly meat, fried things and sweets he enjoys. Most vegetables and low-fat dishes he just can't enjoy at all. Luckily he doesn't get a lot of pleasure from eating and that's what keeps him from getting obese.

It also gives him a lot of anxiety that he or his clothes smell bad. He often just can't assess it from other clues. He often needs to ask people to smell him during the day, which leads to some hilarious situations sometimes, but it's not by choice. It's driven by the fear of smelling bad and not realizing it.

It can also get dangerous in some situations, not being able to smell a gas leak, only noticing smoke once it got so thick it will hurt when breathing, and not being able to smell when food goes bad.

I remember this happened to me after catching covid very early. Wasn't sick beyond a flu, but it knocked my sense of smell and taste out completely for about a month. Once it started to recover it came back quick but it was a very worrying month because before it started to recover there was no sign that I was going to improve. I definitely feel sympathy for anyone who had to do with this for a long time.

Interesting. So the idea is that the senses are just damages, not dead. So use a really strong scent/smell to invigorate them, get something going through them, and have that redevelop the neural pathways (not a biologist).

I only partially lost my sense of smell and taste from covid. Certain foods started to taste different, but I could still taste them. Then I noticed that a particular cologne I had was now completely odorless to me, so it kind of seemed like there was some particular type of smell/odor/taste that I couldn’t sense.

I eventually adjusted and got used to it and then everything tasted weird again for a while when my senses finally restored after a few months.

Multimodal Chewing Gum Flavour Training to Aid Flavour Perception Recovery - a Pilot Study

https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT07498062

looks like it uses flavorings from these folks https://www.tastetech.com/

I lost my sense of smell from a minor virus I caught a couple years ago. It probably wasn't COVID (I tested negative at least).

It came back very slowly, and unevenly. My coffee/chocolate taste is still quite dim.

Of all the possible smells to lose, why did it have to be those?

I believe this condition is called parosmia. I had a mild version for four years. It’s finally resolving (except shampoos and some sodas smell really strange)

Where can somebody with regular taste senses buy these specially formulated chewing gum to try and develop super senses?

I wonder if it dulls other senses the opposite of blind people who develop more sensitive hearing.

I remember losing sense of smell, and one thing that was interesting was being able to perhaps train it back by sniffing different essential oils, and writing a note about what I was able to smell.

> “The chewing gums were specially formulated to keep their flavour for longer, and actually change flavour as you chew.

Sounds like an amazing product that I would want to buy. I probably chew 20 sticks of gum a day.

my smell never recovered fully from first waves of covid. I am at 70%. ill try this.

How it feels to chew 5 gum

Does it work for people who aren't dad's?