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1. andix

   272d

   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.

   1. krackers

      32d

      >He often needs to ask people to smell him during the day, which leads to some hilarious situations sometimes

      Smell and taste seem to be the last two senses/modalities we can't really work with using technology. Vision (cameras) and sound (microphones) have existed for a long time but it's only within the last decade that they've become ubiquitous in the form of a smartphone, and only within the last 5 years that ML is good enough to work across them (ocr, stt).

      But for some reason (maybe lack of easy commercial opportunities) we haven't even come close to making "artificial noses" to record raw input. Maybe as part of the push for "embodied humanoid AI" (e.g. Figure) we'll find a way to do that.

      1. roughly

         12d

         Two notes on this - one is that smell and taste are the earliest senses we have. The first thing organisms began to sense about their external environments were chemical gradients, and that’s in essence what smell and taste are doing.

         The second is that what they’re doing is _fantastically_ complex from a physical standpoint compared to sight and vision - sight is the detection of photons of various wavelengths and energy levels; hearing is the detection of vibrations. Smell and taste are molecular docking problems: they are the detection and identification of the actual structures (or at least substructures) of molecules. The closest we have to that is mass spectrometry, which basically involves flinging molecules hard enough to break them and weighing the parts.

         1. krackers

            02d
   2. fsckboy

      02d

      >He often needs to ask people to smell him during the day

      tell him to use Dry Idea antiperspirant (I'd say unscented), the stuff blows anything else away. no need to thank me. (no I don't work there, long term user who ever now and then runs out and is reminded how good it is)

      what's up with vegetables though? I love vegetables, but if I were asked what was the thing I least liked about them, I'd say "the smell"

   3. quickthrowman

      02d

      > 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

      I can smell just fine but I still have carbon monoxide and smoke detectors in my house to alert me if I am asleep and there is a gas leak or fire.

   4. jorts

      02d

      I always wondered whether my poor sense of smell dictated my diet. I share your friend's food preferences.
   5. hmokiguess

      42d

      I wonder how the anxiety developed, I would think they would not be self-aware given they cannot understand it, so maybe they were bullied as a kid by smelling bad once and it created traumatic memories for him as it's sort of an unexplainable thing to his nose.

      1. thornewolf

         12d

         I can't smell much at all. one time when i was 17 my friend told me i was kinda smelly (i had just exercised). I've been stressed about it since. the human brain can latch on to the oddest things
   6. [deleted]

      02d

      [deleted]

   7. klondike_klive

      52d

      My mother lost her sense of smell after surgery for nasal polyps in her teens. She was mortally afraid of fire breaking out in the night and not being able to smell it.

      1. andix

         22d

         Maybe not reassuring at all: but we can't smell a lot while we are asleep. A bad smell won't wake us up. That's why fire alarms exist, noise (or bright light) does wake us up.
   8. warumdarum

      01d

      How does he react to electro magnetic stimulation of the nerve region?
   9. gib444

      01d

      What about drizzling the veg with some olive oil (or even lard), salt and a small pinch of sugar? This is what restaurants do to make veg more appealing (plus some acidity)

      Better than subsisting on fried food and sweets - take the fatty and sweet element from that and apply to veg

   10. dyauspitr

       52d

       My dad lost his sense of smell after having surgery for his meningioma. According to him he doesn’t even notice a reduction in the quality of his life. I asked if food tastes worse and he said he hadn’t really thought about it and no it doesn’t. It really is the least of the senses.

       1. tw04

          22d

          Having lost my sense of taste during a bout of covid I would say he’s absolutely the anomaly - or he only partially lost it. A complete loss of smell and taste is impossible to ignore. Imagine standing in the direct path of a bonfire and not noticing at all until your lungs start to hurt. You can’t not notice it.
2. graypegg

   282d

   > 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.

   1. esikich

      22d
3. MrDresden

   162d

   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!

   1. indoordin0saur

      02d

      The thing that helped me is "smell training". At random moments throughout the day try and sniff things that are just beyond your ability to smell. When I was fully in covid I could just barely perceive some sensation when sticking certain bottles of spice up to my nose.
4. foo12bar

   02d

   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.

5. tylerritchie

   12d

   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/

   1. aaron695

      02d

      [dead]

6. flowerthoughts

   01d

   Looks like the basis for this is the press release from the gum production company: https://www.tastetech.com/updates/using-encapsulated-flavour...

   I can't find the relevant publication from Dr Ni Yang: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/biosciences/people/ni.yang

7. nkrisc

   02d

   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.

8. jnwatson

   32d

   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?

   1. gradientsrneat

      12d

      Hard to say without more info but most at-home COVID tests have a very high false negative rate due to the virus mutating and generally how the test is designed.
9. someperson

   02d

   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.

10. registeredcorn

    02d

    I'd be interested to hear if this also has positive results on non-C19 related people, too. I've had Hyposmia (partial inability to smell) for essentially [1] my entire life.

    I don't really enjoy the taste or smell of things, and I usually only notice stuff if it's especially strong, or right next to my face. I see that whole sensory thing to being a kind of distraction from living life. Like, why should you care if something smells good or not? I just don't see the point. Regardless, I'd still be interested in it because I can smell stuff like rotting fruit or feces or whatever, so I do understand that there are clear and obvious benefits to knowing "Hey, don't eat that!" because it can make you sick or kill you or whatever.

    I think that, being able to smell and taste everything would probably be kind of gross and overwhelming, but it may be worth exploring since so many people make such a big deal out of it. From my perspective though, it all feels like a kind of mass hallucination on a global scale.

    If nothing else, it would probably make my cooking a little bit better. I obviously tend to go very crazy with spices and stuff, and my wife kind of suffers through some of it. I've wondered what it'd be like to be able to detect anything other than a kind "terrible taste" for something like wine, or what the hell Swiss cheese is actually (supposedly) "taste" like. And for the record, I still refuse to believe that: Munster, Swiss, Provolone, American, Feta, Parmesan, Beaufort, Camembert, and Romano cheese have an actual "taste" to them! Blue cheese and Roquefort have some flavor, but everything else is just tastes like slightly different cuts of a cold, textured "food substance". It's like insisting that lettuce or spinach have a "flavor"! They're just some crunchy nonsense that you put in between the bread to make the mouth-feel vaguely more interesting; little green piles of nonsense.

    [1] I don't know if my issue was from birth, or came on later from a blow to the head, or what. I didn't realize I had Hyposmia until I mentioned how, "All bread tastes exactly the same" in my mid 20's and multiple people started looking at me funny.

11. bitwize

    02d

    Interesting life-imitates-art moment reading that he tried this flavor-changing chewing gum and then noticed that his taste was restored when he ate a blueberry.

    In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka formulates a new kind of gum that provides the flavor of a full-course meal in a single stick. Violet Beauregarde steals and chews a piece, but the formula hasn't been worked out yet so when it gets to the blueberry pie she plumps up and turns into a giant human blueberry.

12. bilsbie

    32d

    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)

    1. jaggederest

       02d

       It's weird hearing about this now, because I've always had a mild version each time I had a cold - mint would taste strangely kind of... floral? hard to describe, and orange juice would just taste sour, for a couple weeks after.

       It's strange how much these things are hard to discuss without the immediate context - I remember what it was like, but the translation without ready access is surprisingly challenging.

13. ecshafer

    02d

    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).
14. cactusplant7374

    12d

    > “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.

    1. Agingcoder

       02d

       Yeah this is willy wonka
15. indoordin0saur

    02d

    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.
16. anilgulecha

    01d

    I have anosmia, triggered by AERD/polyps. I have been mostly without the sense for the past ~12 years, but int eh past year have had bouts of smell again, via a doc who finally diagnosed AERD, and suggested steroid intervention + mepolizumab.
17. partomniscient

    01d

    I liked the article, I think the general understanding is correct, but question the numbers/statistics, you can't have 67% (or 83%) of 16 people...
18. layman51

    02d

    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.
19. readthenotes1

    32d

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

    1. elkrapo

       02d

       It's too early to tell if it worked because he was a dad or because he was once a mama's boy.
20. retinaros

    02d

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

    02d

    Please send me some gum
22. pipeline_peak

    02d

    How it feels to chew 5 gum

1. phainopepla2

   02d

   Even those of us with a good sense of smell often can't smell ourselves, so I don't think you're at too much of a disadvantage there

1. toast0

   12d

   > A bad smell won't wake us up.

   I've woken up at night to investigate weird smells. Maybe the smell didn't wake me up, or maybe it didn't wake me up quickly, but I smelled the smell as I was waking up and then did the find the vaguely burning smell game. Last one I remember was a neighbor's bonfire left going when they went to sleep inside.

   1. phainopepla2

      02d

      I have also been woken at night by the smell of smoke from a wildfire. Could be only possible during the lighter phases of sleep I suppose

1. dyauspitr

   12d

   I think people are different (also he only lost his sense of smell, not taste). It’s all about perspective. If you didn’t know that a lack of smell affects flavor you might not notice. It probably also helps that he is Asian and Asian food is significantly more flavorful.

   When I had covid I noticed a difference in how food tasted but it was kinda irrelevant. Food still tasted very good. It might be genetic or something as well. For instance, I can have a double shot of expresso and go to sleep 30 minutes later.

   1. dpark

      02d

      Smell is a huge part of perceived taste.

      In lost some smell with Covid and it sucked. Food was bland.

1. m463

   12d

   I eat thai food hot and love it. (scale=mild,medium,hot,thai hot)

   but I wonder: it is me becoming strong and tolerant of hot... or my old body breaking down and having dull senses.

   1. asddubs

      02d

      you do develop a tolerance to spiciness

1. phainopepla2

   02d

   It's also the case that respiratory viruses predating covid often cause temporary loss of smell, it just wasn't much in the public consciousness before covid

1. pinkmuffinere

   02d

   oh sorry, not sure how i missed that! totally makes sense though, very remarkable that he lost both!

[deleted]

1. krackers

   32d

   I'm not sure what you mean, tetanus shots actually last 30+ years.

   1. armada651

      22d

      You need a booster every 10 years to maintain immunity.

      1. krackers

         12d

         No, there's quite a bit of evidence that they last much longer than that.

         1. armada651

            012h

            You may not have complete immunity beyond 10 years though, so the recommendation is that you get a booster every 10 years.

            But I don't see your point? Are you arguing that the COVID vaccine grants immunity for much longer than advertised? That seems unlikely given the mutation rate of coronaviruses.