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Just as his senses of smell and taste were beginning to regain after being infected with coronavirus in April 2020, Ricky Thomson tested positive for COVID-19 again and lost these senses again: “They were starting to come back and then they just disappeared again,” he told DW.
For the 28-year-old Australian the six months that he spent with loss of taste and smell are a reminder of the importance of the senses in connecting us with reality. It also turned out to be very uncomfortable: “When the gyms started to reopen I was very self-conscious that I could smell bad and couldn’t notice it. I couldn’t older the deodorant or anything, ”he said.
Loss of the sense of smell – or anosmia – was a relatively unknown condition. Now it is a key part of the diagnosis of COVID-19. The exact percentage of people who experience loss of smell varies from study to study, but most research considers it to be a common side effect. Some may even experience loss of chemeshesis – tenderness of the skin and mucosa, for example on the tongue.
What are the consequences?
Many say they could do without the oflate, but experts warn that it is a much more important sense than you think. Loss of smell can be “extremely traumatic for people. Unfortunately, many people don’t realize that, ”explained Rachel Herz, a psychologist and neuroscientist at Brown University in the United States.
Smells are processed differently from the other four senses. It is the only sense that bypasses the thalamus – the brain’s sensory transmission center – and goes directly to the primary olfactory cortex, where memories are processed and stored: “This neurobiological pathway is the reason why smell evokes memories and causes such strong reactions, “says Julie Walsh-Messinger, a clinical psychologist at the University of Dayton, in the US.
“Our sense of smell is really what drives social behavior“Added Walsh-Messinger, who has been studying loss of smell academically for years and was infected with the virus in March 2020, so he experienced these symptoms himself.
Loss of smell has been linked to higher rates of depression and anxiety. Research published in July 2020 found that people who had regained their sense of smell after suffering from COVID-19 experienced an improvement in their mental well-being and in their level of social interaction.
How does COVID-19 cause loss of smell?
Although science has yet to fully agree, an emerging consensus holds that the coronavirus disrupts cells in the nose, causing loss of smell. In the nose is the olfactory epithelium, which houses olfactory neurons – responsible for detecting odor – and two other types of cells, basal and support cells. The latter have a high number of the type of enzymes that SARS-CoV-2 needs to enter.
This means that the virus binds very easily to these types of cells in the nose And in doing so, scientists believe it creates inflammation that causes olfactory sensory neurons to shut down, Rachel Herz noted.
“It bothers me that people don’t cover their nose with a mask. That is one of the main routes of entry for the virus, “he told DW.
And the taste?
Still unclear how the virus affects the sense of taste and the burning of people, warned Masha Niv, an associate professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.
“Taste is altered in many COVID-19 patients (~ 70%), and we know that it is really that symptom, because sweet, salty, bitter and sour tastes are reported to be altered,” Niv explained to DW.
A large international study conducted in June 2020, co-authored by Niv, found that chemeshesis affected about 50% of COVID-19 patients who reported having lost their smell and taste.
Although taste and chemeshesis are distinct senses that depend on taste receptors and sensory nerves, in combination with smell, all three play a role in what we consider “taste” of food and beverages.
What can you do about it?
In its early days, researchers they feared the virus would infect olfactory neurons in the nose that send signals to the brain, and therefore have a direct route to the brain. However, the theory was discarded with subsequent studies, which showed that it barely reached the brain.
The experts assure that smell can be recovered. To do this, they recommend bringing together a series of powerful aromas – such as lemon, cinnamon or mint – and smelling them individually for about 10 seconds each, several times a day and for a few months.
In this way, the brain is retrained to recognize odor, causing olfactory receptors to re-stimulate and activate: “The good news is that COVID-19 has not produced neurological damage to these sensory neurons. There is hope for a recovery, ”Herz added.
As for Thomson, his sense of smell and taste have returned to normal without the need for smell training. And when the gyms in London reopen, you can go more relaxed.
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