Why do we lose taste and smell with COVID and how to recover it?

Scents are quantum slides that catapult us to another reality: to our parents' house in childhood, to our first kiss, to our teenage vacations. “There is no memory as precise, vivid, and evocative as the one recovered through smell, and it is closely tied to the sensations experienced alongside the scent,” confirms Dolores Redondo in her Legacy in the Bones.Those of us who have gone through COVID become aware of the celebration that the senses gift to our mood and health, to our bodies. After a few days without aroma and taste, I realized that the nose is intimately connected to emotions. Maybe that's why I missed it perhaps more than taste. Neurologist Paola Guraieb explained to me that it's because our olfactory capacity includes about 3,000 smells, while taste is much lower. “If you stop smelling, the alterations in taste will be predominant. What happens is that the virus replicates highly in the lungs, brain, blood, and nose. That's why it’s common for the sense of smell to diminish.” And it’s clear: without smell, we lose taste. Dr. Flor Luna, a specialist in medical-surgical emergencies and a consultant on Occupational Health in multinational companies, states that there is a constant 53 percent alteration in smell, while in taste it is 52 percent. “One in five patients with coronavirus presents these alterations as the first symptom of the disease. It is still unclear whether the prevalence is different with another strain,” she affirms. For many of us, taste is literally the salt of life. On the tongue, the roof of the mouth, and in the throat are taste cells, small particles within the taste buds that number about 10,000 at birth and decrease after the age of fifty. Tasting a mole, for example, with ageusia (inability to detect flavors in food) is to bring to the mouth a silky, hot sauce but devoid of soul. Over time –along with a dose of patience and love for my healing process– I learned to appreciate the textures, temperatures, and sensations that a food left behind as it passed through the mouth. I recovered my sense of smell before my taste, but according to Dr. Luna, several studies conducted in the European Union have observed a faster recovery of taste than smell. It is common for both senses to begin to recover three weeks after a positive diagnosis. If the illness was severe, it can take between six and eight months. And yes, there are cases where the senses do not recover or remain damaged. “It depends on many factors, for example, if the person is a smoker. They already per se have alterations in taste and smell, and they may never taste or smell at 100% again,” concludes Dr. Luna. How to recover the senses?Treatment strategies for alterations in smell depend on whether it is a total (anosmia) or partial (hyposmia) loss of the sense. “In the case of permanent loss, olfactory training is indicated,” confirms Dr. Luna. We should not let time pass. For neurologist Guraieb, timely recovery of smell can represent our brain's health in the future: “When anosmia exists, you need to recover in less than six months since the respiratory epithelia are connected to memory.” What happens is that scents connect with the brain cortices where emotions and episodic memory are located. “It has been proven that patients with degenerative diseases have suffered or suffer from smell problems, and it has also been observed in patients with Parkinson's or Alzheimer’s.” The solution lies in putting our nose and tongue to work; training them, so to speak. “As would happen in physical training, this technique consists of exposing patients to different concentrated scents in individual containers daily and for the time indicated by the specialist,” states Dr. Luna. She advises us to practice deliberate sniffing daily for three months. You will need lemon, a rose or a shot glass with rose water, some smoked food, a shot glass of vinegar, a shot glass of anise, and eucalyptus oil. Practice smelling each of these scents for 20 seconds twice a day. “There is clear scientific evidence that this systematic exposure to specific scents improves smell in neurodegenerative pathologies or head trauma,” concludes Dr. Luna.