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Thursday, March 28, 2024

When you lose your sense of smell

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“What I miss most is the smell of my son when I kiss him, the smell of my wife’s body,” says Jean-Michel Maillard.

Anosmia – the loss of one’s sense of smell – may be an invisible handicap, but is psychologically difficult to live with and has no real treatment, he says.

And it is the price that an increasing number of people are paying after surviving a brush with the coronavirus, with some facing a seemingly long-term inability to smell.

“Anosmia cuts you off from the smells of life, it’s a torture,” says Maillard, president of anosmie.org, a French group designed to help sufferers.

If you have the condition you can no longer breathe in the smell of your first morning coffee, smell the cut grass of a freshly mown lawn or even “the reassuring smell of soap on your skin when you’re preparing for a meeting,” he says.

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You only truly become aware of your sense of smell when you lose it, says Maillard, who lost his own following an accident. AFP

And it is not just the olfactory pleasures you lose. He points out that people with anosmia are unable to smell smoke from a fire, gas from a leak, or a poorly washed dustbin. AFP

Eating is a completely different experience too, as so much of what we appreciate in food is what we can smell, says Alain Corre, an ear, nose, and throat specialist at the Hospital-Fondation Rothschild in Paris.

“There are dozens of causes of anosmia,” he says, including nasal polyps, chronic rhinitis, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s.

Now the new coronavirus has been added to that list, says Corre – with the symptom alone allowing a diagnosis of COVID-19 in some cases.

“When people lose their sense of smell and don’t get it back, we note a real change in the quality of life and a level of depression that isnot insignificant,” he adds.

The problem is when the condition persists, he says.

“To be deprived of your sense of smell for a month, it’s not serious,” says Maillard. “Two months, it starts to become a problem. But aftersix months, you’re all alone under a bell jar. There’s a psychological aspect to this which is very difficult to live with. You need to gethelp.” 

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