The following comment is NSFW and n=1 and also I wouldn't post it if I wasn't anonymous so here goes. Don't keep reading if you're easily grossed out. Content warning; urine.
Knowing that I had lost my sense of taste from covid, I reviewed the things I could do that not having a sense of taste might benefit from, and I asked my boyfriend (who I'm aware has a mild watersports fetish) if he'd like to take advantage of my lack of sense of taste...
And he did.
And later that night, shortly after our experiment, my sense of taste came back! I don't know if it's a revolutionary treatment for Covid, but if you're desperate...
We need a larger sample size to be statistically significant. Please report back after 29 more attempts.
I don't want to get covid 29 more times so I need some people to volunteer as tribute.
Know anybody who can help, ToiletObserver?
If you figure it out let me know. It’s been 2 years for me.
I have heard of Stellate Ganglion Block which blocks the nerve and kind of reboots it. People talk about it literally working instantly. About $500/side (they can do one or both) and you have to find someone that can do it near you.
God I miss the taste of good coffee.
I saw some studies indicating diphenhydramine/Benadryl can reduce long Covid symptoms. Can try and dig them up again if you're interested, although the stellate ganglion block sounds a lot more effective.
I recall reading about Alpha-Lipoic Acid as a supplemental treatment for post viral loss of smell. I took some when I lost my smell after a bout of covid and mine did come back, YMMV!
There has been some recent progress on this: https://www.amsterdamumc.org/en/spotlight/tiredness-experienced-by-long-covid-patients-has-a-physical-cause.htm
Apparently, avoiding cardiovascular exercise helps. Anecdotal comments on Reddit suggest that adding in some weightlifting helps as well. Good luck.
It's a waiting game, unfortunately that's how viral infections & their symptoms work. It could be a few days, a few weeks, a few months.. and yes could even be a few years. And for some people the lingering symptoms due to a viral infection never really go away.
For what it's worth the people I know that have lost their sense of taste due to covid regained it after a few weeks/months.
I've had it twice. Got my 2 vaccine doses and I think we're up to 4 boosters? I work in a hospital in the cousin-fuckingly deep south, so I'm pretty much permanently in the middle of a plume of that shit.
Anyway, kept my sense of taste and smell both times, My symptoms were sore throat, fatigue, and horrific sneezing fits... like 10 mins straight of sneezing every couple seconds. Got to the point that it triggered nose bleeds and felt like I got punched in the sinuses.
Relatively mild compared to what covid has the potential to be, but still not a good time.
No. I’ve had it twice and have had no long-term effects (that I know of). I’ve been vaccinated twice and gotten a booster. I didn’t even lose my sense of taste while experiencing symptoms.
I caught Covid in Feb 2020, so I was part of the first wave when they weren’t sure it was a thing yet. I lost my sense of taste and smell for almost a year, to the extent I could stand next to a pan of frying onions or a trash can with rotting garbage and not smell it. It never fully recovered from that - I couldn’t say whether is 50% back or 30%, but it also still goes out sometimes. I’ve had every shot and booster available and have had a few influenza like illnesses since but with different levels of severity.
I’m going to hazard a guess here based on some related studies I’ve seen about the effects of covid and say that there’s likely a genetic component. I probably have a gene variant that makes this outcome more likely. I’m saying that because I’ve seen at least preliminary studies that looked at the severity of covid symptoms and found a genetic correlation.
For the majority of people who do lose their sense of taste and smell, they recover within a few weeks to a couple of months, but I am unaware of studies that show the degree to which they cover sensation. I know from my own experience that “recovery” can mean getting a fraction of your previous sensation back.
I remember someone I know who had COVID didn't lose sense of taste, but, rather, they felt that everything tastes awful.
Nope, I could still smell and taste, although it was perhaps slightly diminished. I wish I would have lost my sense of taste briefly because the cough medicine I was taking tasted absolutely disgusting.
Maybe not totally related, but I think my sense of smell has always been not as great as other people, even before COVID. People will sometimes complain about a specific smell and I don't always notice it.
I even got Long Covid, but I never lost my taste or smell. I kind of wish I did. Because I'm too weak to brush my teeth regularly.
No one is saying it explicitly below so I will. Loss of taste is a VERY low chance with current variants, albeit possible when getting Covid.
I got COVID 2-3 times IIRC and lost my sense of smell one time. It came back after a few weeks
When I had COVID, I couldn't taste anything, but I attributed it to my stuffy nose. It went away once the stuffy nose went away.
My wife and I have had it 2 or 3 times. We have never lost taste. My wife lost smell the first time briefly, but it came back after she was covid free. Other than that, we only had headaches and fatigue. Super mild. Never had vaccine.
I've heard some good things about fluticasone propionate. Normally it's an over the counter allergy med (nasal spray), but I saw a study where a lot of people that used it got their sense of smell (and by extension a lot of taste) back in about 5 days.
Worth a try, at any rate. They sell it at Costco and most drug stores.
I have read it could take about 3 months but may vary among individual cases. Ask your GP.
Mine gradually came back after some time (I think maybe a week or two before it fully recovered?)
Some things that helped me in the meantime while my taste buds were dead was orange juice. That's was probably the only thing I could taste and kept my sanity up throughout the ordeal.
Me too! Anything citrus still tasted like citrus, so I had a lot of lemon beverages, orange juice, etc.
My sense of taste came back quick though. Chocolate was good again, like, five days after symptoms ended.
That would have been a scary three days for me. My diet is terrible, but I enjoy it. Losing my sense of taste would absolutely suck.
I’m glad you’re OK!
Thank you! I love food very much, and it was very depressing to get excited about something I was going to eat, only to be reminded that I couldn’t taste it. Also, coffee was not nearly as enjoyable.
Allegedly Zink should have a role in sense of taste, so supplementing Zink may help restore poor sense of taste.
Vitamin D also plays a role, but you should probably be taking Vitamin D anyway. You can only make vitamin D when you are in the sun when it's at 45° or higher, and it's near impossible to eat food that has sufficient Vitamin D.
Eat spicy food. I ate the hottest wings I could find and my sense of taste started coming back the next day.
You don’t!
Remember this next time you interact with a conservative. They did this to you.
Doesn’t that make you mad?
A lot, considering we politicized the fuck out of that virus, which lead to global pushback against mitigating its spread and ultimately resulting in avoidable infections, unnecessary suffering, and senseless deaths. You're on the receiving end of that attack, so previous poster isn't wrong to include your personal suffering into the broader generalization of the covid dumpster fire as a whole.
That said, his delivery was shit, and he was wrong about the "You don't!" bit - you can absolutely retrain your senses. I've got nothing but heresay on the 'how' side of that though, so my advice would be to make an appointment with your doc and see if he or she can point you to an effective sensory therapy process.
And for real, good luck. I've gotten that shit twice now, and honestly losing taste was among my biggest fears. Food is one of the only things I can consistently look forward to on a daily basis... losing the ability to enjoy food would be depressing as fuck. Like literally, clinically depressing as fuck - food is a massive part of pretty much every culture, and our social events pretty much all revolve around food. Contrasted against the "it can kill you" side of covid, the taste and smell thing is kind of permanently out of the spot light, which doesn't do justice to the (albeit nonlethal) severity of that symptom.
While I will agree that everyone should get vaccinated to stop the spread, my best friend is a nurse and fully vaccinated, and he still got covid, and while still not as bad thanks to the vaccine, he still lost his taste and hasn't recovered it yet.
Your comment is ignorant and rude.
No, getting vaccinated after your infection shows some promise in reducing and treating long covid symptoms
The 5th booster brought my sense of smell back for a month, but it quickly disappeared again :/
It's spiking again, in fact.
But also, it's possible OP had COVID back in 2021 or some such and just still hasn't gotten their sense of taste back. You should look into "long covid" if you didn't know COVID could cause symptoms (sometimes debilitating symptoms) for years after the initial infection.
The US is currently in its second biggest spike of COVID infections ever. At the estimated peak on the 11th, they're expecting 2 million new infections per day. The current strain going around is supposedly different enough from the ones the vaccines up until September were designed for that it is effectively immune to those vaccinations.
COVID never left, and in fact the more recent strains have been more infectious and more severe than the original ones were, but we haven't heard much about them because basically everybody who can be is vaccinated.