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I lived the first 20 or so years of my early life not knowing about smells. I think I already "knew" that I can't smell but I never really appreciated this abou
by anon-3988 3y ago
I lived the first 20 or so years of my early life not knowing about smells. I think I already "knew" that I can't smell but I never really appreciated this about myself. I had always been "immune" to smelly things like animal poo, dead animals or whatever (which is abundant since I lived in a remote area). I think the receptors are there because I do feel weird or "sense" that something is wrong when there's smell (only once they told me about it so maybe its just psychological) but I do feel a "sensation" when something that gives out a strong smell is put close to my nose (like perfume and things like that).
However, my brain can't seem to connect which is what. I have no idea what "smelly things" smell like, or what makes a perfume smell "good".
So my family would often asked me to dispose of things that really smell or enter a really smelly room and things like that because they thought I am just "stoic" in this sense. I think they first realized that I don't smell is when I was shocked when they said that my coffee smelt nice. They went "Wait, you don't know coffee smell?". I had always faked my responses when people ask about smell and basically gave awkward smile or grief whenever is appropriate lol.
It didn't dawned on me until recently that I am missing out on a 1/5 a human experience. It also meant that I am very anxious if I am cleaning up properly (do I smell? did I miss a spot?)
Does anyone share the same experience? I wonder how you cope with this issue. I don't have any SO so I don't have a mirror that I can reflect on if the room or myself smell or whatever.
- depereo 3y agoI knew a pair of brothers with no sense of smell. Probably genetic for them.
- teraflop 3y agoI don't have any personal experience with this, but Simon Tatham (creator of the PuTTY SSH client) has written about having anosmia: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/smell.html https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/smell.html
- naet 3y agoI had a friend who couldn't really smell until he got some kind of olfactory surgery. Before the surgery he felt like maybe he was missing out on some stuff like certain tastes or smell experiences (and he had a similar "immunity" to stinks). After the surgery he could smell to some degree and while it was a novelty he didn't feel like it really opened him up to a whole new set of experiences and was a bit underwhelmed. He was more thankful for the ability to breathe through his nose. I think smell is way less impactful than sight or sound, if that makes you feel any better.
- dghughes 3y ago> I think smell is way less impactful than sight or sound I hate to be a downer but smell is incredibly powerful. Vivid memories can rush back from a smell. Food is probably 90% smell and 10% taste.
- otreblatercero 3y agoThat's not a fact at all. For example, memories seldom come to me when smelling, like they say they do with everyone.
- lacrimacida 3y agoYeah sure it does and colors life to some extent but think you had to lose one of your senses and you could choose. Which would it be? Would you lose your hear or vision to keep smell intact?
- imp0cat 3y agoSo are you sayning that without the sense of smell, it would be much easier to keep one's weight in check? :)
- kortilla 3y agoUnlikely related. Fat and sugar cravings are pretty basic. I would argue it makes eating healthier things a little more exciting because seasonings and aromas can cover up an otherwise bland meal of tofu and rice.
- lm28469 3y agoSeeing the absolute dog shit junk food people eat I'd say they're either already not able to smell or that it doesn't matter much
- Broken_Hippo 3y agoSure, it can make for vivid memories if you have a sense of smell. But if you haven't had a sense of smell for years - or have never really had one - you won't have those memories. If you've never had smells, your brain won't be trained to make those associations. You simply won't feel like you are missing anything.
- hypertele-Xii 3y agoDoes your lack of smell extend to a lack of taste, as well?
- anon-3988 3y agoNo idea, how could I tell lol. My taste in food is, by others account, shite tho. I can eat the same things for days for all I care.
- rhtgrg 3y agoGet some (sugar free) rose water [0] and drink it. Compare with water. If they taste the same, you might be missing out on a lot of taste (but you will still be able to taste, say, salt vs. sweet). More simply put though, if you definitely don't have a sense of smell, you most likely don't have a sense of taste either. I lost my sense of smell due to Covid for a bit, so I have some first-hand experience. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Cortas-Rose-Water-1-Count/dp/B00V8TRZG4/ https://www.amazon.com/Cortas-Rose-Water-1-Count/dp/B00V8TRZ...
- anon-3988 3y agoWhy rose water specifically? I can definitely differentiate sugary water vs pure water.
- xedrac 3y agoBecause rose water is subtle, not sugary.
- xeromal 3y agoBecause it's a suble difference especially if its sugar free. I think they're trying to test your ability to differentiate "perfumed" water vs regular. Sweetened or spiced things are more of a hammer.
- rhtgrg 3y agoAs the other commenters said, it's about testing your palate vs. your tongue. I made a mistake in my original comment where I said you don't have a sense of taste without smell, I meant to say you have only taste (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami) absent the flavors your olfactory equipment provides.
- appleflaxen 3y agoCongenital absence of smell is a medical issue, and you may want to consider speaking to a physician. For example: it can be caused by Kallmann syndrome, which is associated with other midline defects, especially of the hyothalamus (delayed puberty) or palate (resulting in a cleft). It can affect the eyes, ears (hearing loss), and kidneys.
- FollowingTheDao 3y agoIf you bring this up to a doctor, like I have countless times, they just won’t care. And I’m already on disability for two illnesses.
- carlmr 3y agoThe problem is that that's a bad doctor, and there's an abundance of those. A good doctor would care.
- xedrac 3y agoSmell and taste are very intertwined. I wonder if your taste is very subdued as well. When I had covid, I couldn't smell anything, and eating a world class meal may have just as well been some cardboard...
- cgearhart 3y agoPeople say this a lot, but I’m very skeptical whether it matters much if you never had smell to begin with. I have had no real sense of smell for as long as I can remember but I’m a more than competent cook. This would be very contradictory if smell was truly essential to the experience. I can believe that it’s important if you had it and lost it, but I don’t think smell is essential to taste in general. (However, I do agree with GP that it feels like I’m missing a major piece of human experience.)
- eightysixfour 3y agoAs someone who has had the ability to smell go away and come back, I can confirm that smell is important for taste, but not the way it is often described. For me, I can taste the “basic components” of flavor, but smell is necessary to add nuance/complexity.
- alpaca128 3y ago> I don’t think smell is essential to taste in general Depends on the ingredient. Some, like cinnamon, rely more on the sense of smell, while with others it doesn't matter much. In the end other senses always have some kind of effect on it, even if it's just the placebo kind.
- carlmr 3y agoSame experience. I normally enjoy food a lot, for a while there nothing tasted amazing. A sad experience. But even better when it came back.
- mnd999 3y agoI thought that too, but when I got Covid I lost my sense of smell for a few days, but could still taste things.
- broknbottle 3y agoI had somewhat similar experience. It wasn’t until I was around 16 that my parents raised concerns. It came to light for me with my parents coming home and freaking out because I had apparently bumped the stove while they were out and accidentally turned on the gas burner and the entire house apparently smelled of something but I was relaxing in my room without a clue. My parents initially freaked out but later my step dad shared another incident where I had been working on something in the garage and there was gas can that had been tipped over and the whole garage smelled of gas and I had no idea. For the garage incident I could tell something was off around me like spider senses tingling but I couldn’t tell what it was exactly.
- anon-3988 3y ago> gas burner and the entire house apparently smelled of something but I was relaxing in my room without a clue Oh yea you just awoken multiple memories of almost causing housefires. I am pretty much banned from cooking, ever.
- gibolt 3y agoGet an electric or induction stove top. Obviously still possible to leave it on, but you'll get visual cues.
- thunfischbrot 3y agoMore specifically: Induction doesn‘t inherently provide visual cues–eben better, they shut off themselves if no pan is detected.
- imp0cat 3y agoFrom a safety standpoint, induction is the clear winner. Induction stoves shut off when they overheat or when they run longer than 2 hours. They can also keep a present temperature. But the downside is you'll need compatible cookware, which can be expensive.
- cgearhart 3y agoYeah, same thing for me. I was probably 20 or so when I really understood that I had no sense of smell. It was much later when I realized that this was a gap in my version of human experience. As these things go it seems like not much of a disadvantage though.
- pjerem 3y ago> As these things go it seems like not much of a disadvantage though. Well I think it’s more that you are used to. I’ve lived my whole life with only one eye (amblyopia) and it never ever bothered me until the boom of 3D movies which looked like standard movies for me. Plus, I’ve always been bad at catching balls but that’s just something I avoided as much as I can.
- londons_explore 3y agoPeople without smell have a far higher chance of dying (statistically) in any given year than people with smell. This article suggests that loss of smell might be an indicator of various brain diseases (which then might also kill you). However, other leading theories are that without the ability to smell, there is a much higher chance of eating bad food or toxins, contaminating things with faeces or chemicals, or otherwise harming yourself in ways smell would have prevented.
- antisthenes 3y agoI lost 90% of my smell due to a traumatic brain injury (including face/nose damage), so I've lost the ability to smell nuanced things and taste subtle flavors. It was hard at first, but I've since coped by using things with strong smells that I can still recognize. Coffee, lemon, copious amounts of cumin and parmesan, cinnamon, vanilla, etc. What's interesting is that I can still "remember" the original smell, but it doesn't smell the same anymore. As far as personal hygiene/cleaning...I kind of just gave up on it. I don't really care if someone tells me I smell. That's a them problem now, and I have much worse things to worry about after my brain injury.
- Sunspark 3y agoNo need to be anxious. Just use soap and water and you're fine. I personally use fragrance-free soap. And above all, please don't overcompensate and become one of those people who drenches themselves in perfume and air fresheners thinking people like it. They don't and there is a reason why you see signs at hospitals and schools saying to please not use that stuff.
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y agoHow is your sense of taste? Sensitive or no? I use fragrance free soap and cedarwood scented body wash and deodorant. As long as you're clean you should be fine. It's not something you have to worry about if you practice basic hygiene.
- lexandstuff 3y agoMy mother went her entire 59-year life without a sense of smell. She heavily leaned on my dad to check if the meat was off, if the house smelt before guests arrived, etc. But overall, I felt it was somewhat of a superpower. Who wouldn't love to say they have never experienced the smell of a poorly maintained public toilet or someone else's fart? She spent about a decade of her life trying to find solutions before giving up and just living with it.
- xwdv 3y agoSince you don’t have a sense of smell, have you wondered if perhaps one of your other senses is enhanced in some way from using the spare brain matter? Do you have synesthesia?
- wredue 3y agoFWIW you mostly can’t smell yourself the same way other smell you. So even if you did stink, you wouldn’t normally notice. When people smell their pits, they can tell when it stinks, but they have to really get their nose in there, whereas other people smell you from 10 feet away.
- freilanzer 3y agoCore fear unlocked.
- behringer 3y agoLuckily most people can't tell if they smell (unless it's really bad). We typically rely on cues from those around us if were bathing right!
- FreshStart 3y agoYou have smell blindsight. Your subconscious can smell, but your aware part can not?
- Seb-C 3y agoGot any references to this? I never had any smell, but lately I have very short episodes when I was surprised to smell something, until it disappears again. I didn't notice any specific pattern about when it happens either, it's just a couple of seconds sometimes.
- rob74 3y agoI lost my sense of smell temporarily because of a Covid infection, and it was gone completely - I could stick my nose into a jar of ground coffee and not smell a thing. Funnily enough, they say that if you can't smell, your sense of taste is also impaired, but I could taste food just fine...
- saiya-jin 3y agoHad the same, but both taste and smell... anything eaten was just tasteless goo for maybe 6 weeks, no point in fine cuisine. I tested myself daily with sniffing a bottle of 52% home made slivovitz, it was like breathing mountain air, no reaction to even rather concentrated alcohol vapors. Weird times... I'll never know if my smell came back 100%, or just some fraction of it. In fact, it took good additional 6 months to get my personal perfume to smell nice again, while normal smells kid of came back, this was a litmus paper for me that I am not 100% there yet. Btw you can lose smell easily permanently, all it takes is 1 good hit in the nose. Nerves going through the skulls go through these tiny pores in the bone, and if the nose cartilage moves enough suddenly they all get severed/chopped. Doctors are quite familiar with this, no way to get this repaired.
- dryrun 3y agoWould you have some sources/info regarding the nerves part? This would explain quite a lot personally.
- friendly_chap 3y agoI was similar to you (maybe not to that extreme) and I don't see zinc mentioned in this post. I did have a minimal sense of smell, as in I could faintly smell perfumes if I sprayed it on my nose but often not animal feces or similar. I started supplementing zinc because I suspected I was deficient in it and in about two weeks of taking 25-40mg per day (be careful, 40mg is the upper limit) I started smelling things properly. It got to a point now after a few years that I can tell what happened in a room in the previous 30 mins when I step in. There are upsides (smelling the sea) and downsides (dirty humans are truly something) but I love every minute of it.
- alpaca128 3y ago> what makes a perfume smell "good" Which is very subjective. I personally can't handle it, in the past I've even got headaches just from a couple perfume bottles standing around in the same room. I had to get rid of a perfumed shaving soap because it was a guaranteed headache and smelled like a chemical plant to me, while others just shrugged and said it's fine.
- dgellow 3y agoPerfumes, some deodorants (e.g Axe), and candles are the worst for me. I have to stop breathing and protect my eyes when entering department stores, for some reasons they often have a large area full of perfumes directly at the entrance.
- Seb-C 3y ago33 years old and I have had this issue for as far as I remember. As for hygiene, I learned about that late (thanks to a boss who had the courage to speak to me about it), and now I just strictly follow the same daily routine. No more being complacent with showering, and I always wash my clothes every day regardless. It worked well so far. But when it comes to changing the bed sheets or cleaning the toilet, I tend to let my wife handle it. Because smells does not mean anything, so for me as long as it is white and without stains, it is clean. That said, I noticed lately that I sometimes actually smell things, but it is very random and episodic, like a few seconds every few weeks or so. So now I am wondering what is actually going on and if that may be curable in my case.
- jansan 3y agoAs I mentioned above, make sure you get your sinuses checked for nasal polyps and if you have any, ask your doctor if cortisone nasal spray can be used to shrink them.
- xii23 3y agoSame experience here. I can once in a while smell things, but it doesn't last long, and I can't correlate the smell a perfume is supposed to represent to what it actually represents (so, a perfume that smells like roses smells like something, but I can't correlate it with the actual smell of roses, because I don't know how they smell). There are some smells that are quite strong and I can identify, like alcohol, fuel, acetone, but I wonder if what I call 'smell' in those cases is just a chemical reaction you get from the abrasive? properties of those things, rather than actual smell. I cope with it in my own case by being thorough in my own cleanliness - I shower and use perfume (three sprays!) every time I have to leave my house. For other things I rely on my SO. I'm a bit of a hypochondriac but I've lived like this for 30 years so I guess if I was having some kind of mental degradation it would have been noticeable already!
- jansan 3y agoDid you have your sinuses checked for nasal polyps? I frequently lost my sense of smell when I was younger, and if I had known erlier, I would have started using cortisone nasal spray, which can help reduce polyps significantly (of course consult your doctor, first).
- xii23 3y agoI'll talk to my physician about this soon, let's see!
- empyrrhicist 3y agoThree sprays of perfume means you're probably overcompensating in the opposite direction. Not to make you anxious, but being around overpefumed people gives me headaches - hate it. Daily showers, deoderant, and shower after workout or heavy sweat should be more than sufficient.
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoAnd the one spray of perfume is best done towards the hair: it diffuses slower
- Tade0 3y agoMy sense of smell is weak, my SO's is particularly strong. Net effect is that we eat different things, because I like "garbagey" tastes like seaweed, anise, liquorice, anchovies etc. and she can sense if dairy or fruits/vegetables will give her food poisoning past expiration date. As for hygiene I stick to a routine and rely on other senses - if I'm feeling sort of sticky then it's definitely time to bathe.
- indigochill 3y agoI wasn't born with it, but after catching Covid my sense of smell got for lack of a better term "muffled". Some things merged together. I could still "smell" shampoo and hand sanitizer, but they smelled identical to me and unlike either what they used to smell like or anything I could really place. There were quite a few times when I'd smell something and have no clue what it was because the scent was unlike anything I'd ever smelled before. During that time I was definitely self-conscious about how I might smell because I just couldn't tell. Since then I think it's mostly recovered. Things smell how I think they should most of the time. But I always wonder if there's something out there that I'll smell completely "wrong" some day because the receptors for that particular smell just never recovered.
- Naomarik 3y agoI got extremely sick in 2017 for about a week. Went through about 6 boxes of tissues in that short time period and was barely able to feed myself. Only months after when someone was vaping near me did I realize I wasn't able to smell. Only after a few years after long and intense cardio I would sometimes regain some sense of smell for about 20 minutes. Now in the last month seems to be coming back more permanently. I'm someone who spends a lot of money on expensive perfumes like Creed and regularly burn incense in my house. I honestly didn't feel like I was missing out on much with no sense of smell, definitely did not feel like I was missing 1/5th of the human experience. It really didn't bother me and I never went to a doctor for it. That said, I'm glad the sense is slowly coming back again.
- andrem 3y agoNot being able to smell sucks. I was able to smell for the first 20+ years of my life and then lost it. After years of going to doctors getting treated for polyps and allergies and all kinds of things I was diagnosed with Samter's Triad. I know you have this since birth and it most likely is not what you have, but other people with similar symptoms may want to look into that, because not many doctors that I came across knew this.
- treeman79 3y agoCouldn’t smell much of my life. Later on got diagnosed with autoimmune Sjogrens. Seems like it could be related. https://creakyjoints.org/living-with-arthritis/symptoms/sjogrens-syndrome-impaired-smell-higher-disease-activity/ https://creakyjoints.org/living-with-arthritis/symptoms/sjog... Much later in life I got migraines really bad. During which all my senses went into overdrive. Sense of smell was vastly better than those around me.
- matusfaro 3y agoAfter covid I lost my sense of smell, and for almost 2 years my smell only recovered to about 5% of my original. Honestly, I thought about it and I'm perfectly fine not being able to smell for the rest of my life. On the flip side, I'm actually happy I'm not impacted by unwanted smells in my environment. Having smelt before, I don't miss it, but if I was born without it I would always wonder. Well let me tell you there's not much to miss.