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Loss of smell is one of the most common symptoms of COVID-19. While it allows for a fairly normal functioning, what happens later with some convalescents puzzles doctors. Perfumes, coffee and fruit smell like rottenness and make them gag. It happens that unpleasant smells, e.g. from the bathroom, seem pleasant to them. There are more and more people with such a disorder. What’s the matter with them? We explain what a parosmia is.
- More and more convalescents report disturbing odor symptoms
- What should smell nice, such as coffee or perfume, smells disgusting for them. It also happens that unpleasant smells seem pleasant to them
- The disorder is called parosmia – distortion of olfactory sensations. There may also be phantosmia – olfactory hallucinations
- Parosmia is a sign that the sense of smell is restored. It is suspected that in most cases the brain will “fix the problem”
- More current information can be found on the Onet homepage.
Loss of smell is one of the most characteristic symptoms of COVID-19
Loss of smell (anosmia) is one of the possible consequences of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection and one of the most characteristic. Patients with severe colds or the flu also experience it, but unlike them, anosmia with COVID-19 is usually sudden and is not accompanied by a stuffy or runny nose – most patients can still breathe freely. Moreover, patients with COVID-19 do not have a diminished taste (the senses of smell and taste are intertwined; the deterioration of the sense of smell tends to interfere with taste as well), they really cannot tell the difference between bitter and sweet.
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This symptom, although unpleasant, allows for a relatively normal functioning, and after the infection is overcome, the sense of smell usually returns. However, it does not happen “smoothly” for everyone. More and more convalescents report disturbing odor symptoms. What should smell nice, such as coffee, fruit, perfume or soap, smells disgusting for them. It also happens that usually unpleasant smells, e.g. from the toilet, seem pleasant to them.
This disorder is called parosmia (distortion of the olfactory sensation). It can also happen, although it happens much less frequently, to phantosmia, or olfactory hallucinations (the patient feels smells that do not really exist).
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According to the BBC, about 65 percent. people with coronavirus lose their sense of smell and taste. According to estimates, about 10 percent. of them experience “qualitative olfactory dysfunction”. “If this is true, approximately 6,5 million of the 100 million people who have contracted COVID-19 so far may now experience prolonged parosmia,” notes the BBC.
«Rot fills the house as soon as I turn on the oven. It’s unbearable »
One of the people who experiences parosmia is Clare, 47. He has been struggling with it for seven months. Since then, many of the daily pleasant smells are disgusting to her. When she cooks for her family, the smell makes her dizzy. «Rot fills the house as soon as I turn on the oven. It’s unbearable »he tells on the BBC.
Coffee, meat, fruit, alcohol, toothpaste, cleaning agents, perfume – make a woman feel like vomiting. This even applies to tap water (unfiltered), which makes daily washing difficult. “I can’t even kiss my partner anymore,” admits Clare.
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Clare contracted COVID-19 last March. Like many people, she lost her sense of smell during the illness. In May she regained this sense for a short time, but in June she was unable to eat her favorite dishes. Every time she turned on the oven to bake something, she could smell “chemicals overwhelmingly or burnt”. The only thing she is able to eat is bread and cheese. The situation also has its emotional consequences. As the woman admits, she cries most days. “Although anosmia wasn’t pleasant, I was still able to live and eat and drink normally,” says Clare. “I could work with it for the rest of my life, if it only meant getting rid of the parosmia,” she says.
The woman’s doctor admitted that he had never experienced a similar situation before. The internet came to the rescue. On social media, a frightened Clare found a group of people with a similar problem as hers. It was founded by Chrissi Kelly of the charity AbScent when she noticed that more and more people were reporting parosmia symptoms after COVID-19.
What smells do people with parosmia smell? Decay and rotten meat
“Common descriptors for the different smells in parosmia include: decay, rotten meat, feces,” says Chrissi Kelly. In describing the olfactory sensations, people used expressions such as “fruit wastewater” or “hot, soggy garbage” – so they tried to describe what they felt because it was unlike anything they would have encountered before. How can these impressions be explained?
One theory is that people with parosmia smell only some volatile compounds from a given fragrance. Feeling separately, they exude an unpleasant odor. As the example of the BBC gives the smell of coffee. Coffee contains sulfur compounds – in combination with all the other molecules that give the coffee its aroma, they smell nice, but when we only smell them, the experience is no longer pleasant.
Working with AbScent, Dr. Jane Parker, a taste scientist at Reading University, found that chocolate, meat, onions, and garlic usually trigger a bad reaction. As well as coffee, vegetables, fruit, tap water, and wine. Her research has also shown that unpleasant odors can be felt for a long time. For most people, the smell of coffee lingers in the nostrils for a few seconds. In the case of a parosmic, it can be hours or even days.
Another striking finding is that some people who suffer from parosmia may find unpleasant smells pleasant. – It’s as if human faeces now smell like food, and food smells like human faeces – notes Prof. Barry Smith, Head of the UK Global Consortium for Chemosensory Research.
Parosmia is a sign that the sense of smell has returned
What could cause parosmia? The dominant hypothesis is that disturbed perception of smells results from damage to nerve cells directly related to smell and taste sensations. When they start to regenerate – whether the damage was caused by a car accident, viral or bacterial infection – it is believed that the fibers may reattach to the wrong ‘tip’. As a result, the brain does not recognize the smell and, as Dr. Jane Parker notes, “it may be programmed to treat it as a threat”.
Parosmia is therefore a sign that the sense of smell has returned and it is suspected that in most cases the brain will “fix the problem”. How long can it take? Dr. Parker is cautious in making estimates. – Since few people had parosmia prior to COVID-19, it has not been the subject of extensive research. We don’t have any historical data on this, or that related to COVID-19 – that could take years, he said.
What can I do for those struggling with parosmia after undergoing COVID-19? Aside from waiting for your brain to adjust, there is no cure. But AbScent believes that ‘olfactory training’ can help. It is done by regularly smelling a series of selected essential oils, recalling the plant from which they were obtained.
Clare has already tried the “olfactory training”. In her case, the lemon, eucalyptus, and cloves began to smell as they should – although the smell was faint. As the woman points out, there was no such effect in the case of rose.
Dr Jane Parker notes that the loss of smell is fairly low on the priority list of those dealing with the pandemic. She and prof. Barry Smith said, however, that the disorder often affects mental health and impairs quality of life. – Only when you lose your sense of smell will you realize how much it was part of your experience – says Prof. Smith, emphasizing that human bonds, pleasure, memories – all this is related to smell. – People with parosmia say that they feel cut off from their own surroundings, strangers. They do not find pleasure in eating, they lose the reassuring closeness that the smell of people they love gives, says the scientist.
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