“If someone totally loses their sense of smell, they’re missing a lot of that input,” he said.

The mouth feel from sensory nerves and the airborne substances that find their way to olfactory cells in the nose “give you a lot of information about the chemical qualities of food,” Goldstein said. Sensations from tastebuds in the mouth are just one part of how we experience flavor. I’ve done blind taste tests with different potato chip flavors to confirm this.Ī person can taste with a dysfunctional nose, Goldstein said. Luckily my sense of taste has not been dramatically affected. My close friends understand the need to say that bakeries we pass smell like caramelized sugar, and that college parties we attend smell like sweaty boys and old beer. (Tropical fruity and wild berry fruity are two very distinct scents - that, I remember.)Īt some point, I started saying “compare the smell to something” rather than “describe it.” It’s much easier for me to imagine a scent when someone likens it to, say, a wet dog or strawberry Jell-O. These are better than “good,” but still hard for me to wrap my head around. If they’re really trying, people will add a ‘y’ onto the end of another word. Most of the time people just default to “good” or “bad.” I’ve learned that the English language is lacking in scent descriptors. Sometimes when walking into a restaurant or store for the first time, I’ll say out loud, “What’s that smell?” just in case there is one for someone to tell me about. Or that the pasta my sister ordered for dinner made the whole table smell like truffles. I want to know that the Subway sandwich shop across the street from my apartment still emits wafts of warm, strangely sweet bread. “It’s OK, just describe it to me,” I’ll respond. “Oh crap, I’m sorry,” my Dad started saying every time he instinctively commented on a passing aroma.īut I actually like when people bring up surrounding scents. I was embarrassed to tell them that I really didn’t know. I went to Goldstein’s clinic to take a smell identification test and get a nasal endoscopy.Įarly on, I’d smile and nod when people who didn’t know about my anosmia would ask me things, like to confirm that their candle from Bed Bath & Beyond smelled good. I’ve tried them all: the burnt orange trick, the flick to the back of the head trick, aromatherapy with essential oils and a daily nasal steroid. People love to tell me about the latest cure they saw on TikTok.

While researchers look for a cure, the internet has filled with suggestions - sometimes well meaning, but mostly ineffective. Still other researchers study how the virus attacks the olfactory nerve, which conveys smell sensations to the brain. “We’re still learning more about what exactly is damaged or where exactly the damage is,” he said. Starting in 2020, they began to biopsy the nasal tissues of patients with post-COVID anosmia to see if they could uncover what was responsible for the loss of smell. Researchers in Goldstein’s lab have undertaken similar work.

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