Loss of Smell & Taste

That is depressing. Long covid scares me and the thought of not being able to taste or smell.

I lost my sense of smell and taste in March 2020 and it has partially returned but still pretty limited.

1 week now with no smell or taste, very frustrating. It seems fairly common so that’s a little comforting.

Just lost sense of smell and most of my taste today, very suddenly.

Enjoyed (and tasted!) a meat pie & cuppa at 12.00pm, and bam, at 2.00pm I couldn't taste dark chocolate, smell garlic or peppermint oil.

My nose is still stuffed up and swollen inside from covid. Not sure what to expect or do next.

Some say to do training right away with essential oils and strongly scented food/coffee but to be honest, i can't smell a thing.

I can taste sweet, savory, bitter, sour and astringent but that's all in the mouth.

Yes it's definitely a unique experience. I had heard that when we taste something it's 90% the nose and 10% the mouth. That always sounded odd, but I totally understand now. The mouth is just basic taste.

I guess i'll have to be patient. So far my symptoms are mild overall, so i guess i'm not too unlucky.

Have you tried olfactory training?

True about BO and bad smells, not really missing that. But it's important to be able to taste rotten/mouldy/spoiled food.

The training is only 4-5 minutes per day and €10 euro worth of investment. Even if it's placebo effect, it's worth a shot.

Do you lose smell completely or partially?

I was able to smell coffee and oranges very faintly today. Amazing how much a simple thing like this can change your mood!

I feel like my sense smell is slowly coming back but some smells & tastes (orange, apple, pear, salmon, pepperoni, coffee, whiskey) are coming back faster than others (banana, mint, chocolate).

I'm on day 3 of the essential oil olfactory training. It's progressing very slowly.

Covid has no impact on taste, try a spoon of sugar followed by a spoon of salt if you're not convinced.

As people have said, a large amount of what we perceive as taste is in fact based on smell.

When my sense of smell went completely, I was still able to taste sweet, savory, acidic, bitter, spicy. Maybe that's what our basic sense of taste (mouth based only) really is.

I'm on the same path as you tempnam, about a week behind.

I'd say i'm at:

Smell 8-10%

Taste 30-40%

We've got this ;-)

I've had COVID for the past week now, no real physical symptoms apart from a bit of a cough. But the taste and smell have been affected since the weekend, weirdly for me I can still smell basically everything but my taste has really taken a hit. I can taste the basics, whether something is sweet or salty etc but otherwise it's completely gone.

I'm used to losing my sense of smell and taste when I get colds but with COVID it's pretty depressing reading tbh. Whenever you see people writing about their experiences (on here for example) it seems like almost no one fully regains their taste or smell from what I can see. It's always 90% or something like that. Is there anyone who's completely regained it?