4 ms·
Chewing gum restores dad's taste and smell years after Covid
- retinaros 6mo agomy smell never recovered fully from first waves of covid. I am at 70%. ill try this.
- someperson 6mo agoWhere can somebody with regular taste senses buy these specially formulated chewing gum to try and develop super senses? I wonder if it dulls other senses the opposite of blind people who develop more sensitive hearing.
- readthenotes1 6mo agoDoes it work for people who aren't dad's?
- bullfightonmars 6mo ago"dad's" is possessive not plural
- readthenotes1 6mo agoI figured it was a typo. But it does raise the intriguing question that would work for more than one dad? What was special about that dad??
- elkrapo 6mo agoIt's too early to tell if it worked because he was a dad or because he was once a mama's boy.
- gitaarik 6mo agoThe trial and chewing gum were designed specifically for dad's with no taste
- graypegg 6mo ago> The dad-of-two, from Litchfield, Staffordshire, could eat the spiciest curries with no effect I know this is probably just a bit of "editorial spice" because it's an obvious example for "what would you do if you could eat anything" I guess, but I thought capsaicin/spicyness was NOT a taste-perception thing. Isn't more of a pain feeling? I would've assumed you would retain that, while losing the olfactory perception you need for flavours. I am no expert in this sort of thing, so if anyone knows I'd be genuinely curious about why COVID would affect both of those senses.
- luxuryballs 6mo agothe damage seems to be neurological / local nerves, I haven’t tried chewing gum but the best/fastest results I’ve had for this so far has been lions mane + micro dose of other mushrooms, smell therapy has been reported to show benefit also which probably matches the chewing gum thing, rebuilding/recalibrating the nerves slowly over time
- cyberpunk 6mo agoI developed tinnitus on one side after covid, anecdotal but it slowly went away after I started taking a b complex daily, apparently it can promote nerve repair. Not totally sure I fully believe it; but it seemingly worked for me.. shrug
- intheitmines 6mo agohow long before you noticed a change?
- cyberpunk 6mo agoA long time. Like 5-6 months. So I'm not convinced it's totally related. Kinda risk-free to try it though.
- spidercat 6mo agoAnecdotally, when my best friend first caught covid, his sense of smell was heightened, but his ability to perceive spiciness from both capsaicin (peppers) and allyl isothiocyanate (e.g. mustard, wasabi, radishes) completely disappeared. I just went back to check the messages he sent me to make sure I'm not spewing nonsense, and sure enough: "I didn't even have that nose feeling from wasabi." He couldn't perceive any spice at all. Not from peppers, not from hot sauce, not from wasabi. Nada. He tried everything he had in his kitchen. Covid is a weird virus. I'd be really curious about the mechanism behind this. I'm sure it's nothing great, like some sort of nerve damage, but at least in my friend's case he and his senses made a full recovery as far as he can tell.
- cactusplant7374 6mo ago> “The chewing gums were specially formulated to keep their flavour for longer, and actually change flavour as you chew. Sounds like an amazing product that I would want to buy. I probably chew 20 sticks of gum a day.
- Agingcoder 6mo agoYeah this is willy wonka
- MrDresden 6mo agoI had my fourth Covid infection just a month ago. Fully vaccinated, and having had it three times before, it still hit me like a brick. It took 10 days to get rid of the flu like symptoms, two weeks to get to semi normal, but my taste hasn't been the same since. Not entirely gone, but very muted. If these gums were available off the shelf I would buy them in a heartbeat!
- craftkiller 6mo ago> Fully vaccinated How long ago? Covid vaccine efficacy drops significantly over time so if you haven't had a booster recently, you are not vaccinated: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/why-protective-antibodies-fade-after-covid-19-vaccines https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/why-pro... Which that reminds me, I should schedule a booster since I'll be attending a party and a wedding soon.
- Geonode 6mo agoPeople are still doing this. Unreal.
- elliottkember 6mo agoDoing what, getting vaccinated against infectious diseases?
- array_key_first 6mo agoPeople have been getting flu shots yearly for decades at this point. There's this weird delusion or socially-induced amnesia that comes with COVID. I got COVID maybe a year ago, and I stayed home from work for a week. One of my friends couldn't believe it. He said "wow you're really gonna stay home for an entire week just because you have COVID?" Uh... yes? Isn't that how we have always done things? If you're sick, you don't go to work because you'll get others sick. I recall being a kid and getting strep and flu many times and yup - the school nurse would send me home. But something about the political environment around COVID has caused people to refuse to believe things that they know to be true. It's fascinating.
- jnwatson 6mo agoI lost my sense of smell from a minor virus I caught a couple years ago. It probably wasn't COVID (I tested negative at least). It came back very slowly, and unevenly. My coffee/chocolate taste is still quite dim. Of all the possible smells to lose, why did it have to be those?
- gradientsrneat 6mo agoHard to say without more info but most at-home COVID tests have a very high false negative rate due to the virus mutating and generally how the test is designed.
- phainopepla2 6mo agoIt's also the case that respiratory viruses predating covid often cause temporary loss of smell, it just wasn't much in the public consciousness before covid
- nsxwolf 6mo agoDefinitely possible, I lost my sense of smell completely for a couple of months over a decade ago after a minor cold. Completely gone, could not even smell gasoline. It was pretty upsetting. One day it was a faint scent of peanut butter that came back, and a few days later it recovered completely.
- pipeline_peak 6mo agoHow it feels to chew 5 gum
- tylerritchie 6mo agoMultimodal Chewing Gum Flavour Training to Aid Flavour Perception Recovery - a Pilot Study https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT07498062 https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT07498062 looks like it uses flavorings from these folks https://www.tastetech.com/ https://www.tastetech.com/
- aaron695 6mo ago[dead]
- layman51 6mo agoI remember losing sense of smell, and one thing that was interesting was being able to perhaps train it back by sniffing different essential oils, and writing a note about what I was able to smell.
- bilsbie 6mo agoI believe this condition is called parosmia. I had a mild version for four years. It’s finally resolving (except shampoos and some sodas smell really strange)
- jaggederest 6mo agoIt's weird hearing about this now, because I've always had a mild version each time I had a cold - mint would taste strangely kind of... floral? hard to describe, and orange juice would just taste sour, for a couple weeks after. It's strange how much these things are hard to discuss without the immediate context - I remember what it was like, but the translation without ready access is surprisingly challenging.
- jdechko 6mo agoAs far as I know, anosmia would be the inability to smell. Parosmia would be scents smelling like other things, or the inability to identify certain smells. And since taste and smell are so closely related, I haven’t been able to drink colas for about 3 years. Dr Pepper is fine though, so I’m okay.
- bilsbie 6mo agoFor the first year I had no idea this was a real condition and my family thought I was crazy when I said things smelled wrong. It was a relief when I stumbled upon reddit group and found others.
- foo12bar 6mo agoI lost my sense of smell from Covid for a few weeks once, too. I used to eat mulberrys right off the tree in my backyard, but I realized that I could no longer tell if they had gone bad without my sense of smell. The smell/taste of my favorite foods no longer there is one thing, but the lack of ability to tell whether there is something wrong with whmy food was far more concerning.
- nkrisc 6mo agoI only partially lost my sense of smell and taste from covid. Certain foods started to taste different, but I could still taste them. Then I noticed that a particular cologne I had was now completely odorless to me, so it kind of seemed like there was some particular type of smell/odor/taste that I couldn’t sense. I eventually adjusted and got used to it and then everything tasted weird again for a while when my senses finally restored after a few months.
- andix 6mo agoI have a friend who doesn't have a sense of smell since birth. It's more of a problem than one would think. His diet is rather plain, and he doesn't enjoy a lot of food. It's mostly meat, fried things and sweets he enjoys. Most vegetables and low-fat dishes he just can't enjoy at all. Luckily he doesn't get a lot of pleasure from eating and that's what keeps him from getting obese. It also gives him a lot of anxiety that he or his clothes smell bad. He often just can't assess it from other clues. He often needs to ask people to smell him during the day, which leads to some hilarious situations sometimes, but it's not by choice. It's driven by the fear of smelling bad and not realizing it. It can also get dangerous in some situations, not being able to smell a gas leak, only noticing smoke once it got so thick it will hurt when breathing, and not being able to smell when food goes bad.
- hmokiguess 6mo agoI wonder how the anxiety developed, I would think they would not be self-aware given they cannot understand it, so maybe they were bullied as a kid by smelling bad once and it created traumatic memories for him as it's sort of an unexplainable thing to his nose.
- thornewolf 6mo agoI can't smell much at all. one time when i was 17 my friend told me i was kinda smelly (i had just exercised). I've been stressed about it since. the human brain can latch on to the oddest things
- phainopepla2 6mo agoEven those of us with a good sense of smell often can't smell ourselves, so I don't think you're at too much of a disadvantage there
- andix 6mo agoFrom embarrassing situations in the past.
- u8080 6mo ago
- indoordin0saur 6mo agoI remember this happened to me after catching covid very early. Wasn't sick beyond a flu, but it knocked my sense of smell and taste out completely for about a month. Once it started to recover it came back quick but it was a very worrying month because before it started to recover there was no sign that I was going to improve. I definitely feel sympathy for anyone who had to do with this for a long time.
- ecshafer 6mo agoInteresting. So the idea is that the senses are just damages, not dead. So use a really strong scent/smell to invigorate them, get something going through them, and have that redevelop the neural pathways (not a biologist).
- registeredcorn 6mo agoI'd be interested to hear if this also has positive results on non-C19 related people, too. I've had Hyposmia (partial inability to smell) for essentially [1] my entire life. I don't really enjoy the taste or smell of things, and I usually only notice stuff if it's especially strong, or right next to my face. I see that whole sensory thing to being a kind of distraction from living life. Like, why should you care if something smells good or not? I just don't see the point. Regardless, I'd still be interested in it because I can smell stuff like rotting fruit or feces or whatever, so I do understand that there are clear and obvious benefits to knowing "Hey, don't eat that!" because it can make you sick or kill you or whatever. I think that, being able to smell and taste everything would probably be kind of gross and overwhelming, but it may be worth exploring since so many people make such a big deal out of it. From my perspective though, it all feels like a kind of mass hallucination on a global scale. If nothing else, it would probably make my cooking a little bit better. I obviously tend to go very crazy with spices and stuff, and my wife kind of suffers through some of it. I've wondered what it'd be like to be able to detect anything other than a kind "terrible taste" for something like wine, or what the hell Swiss cheese is actually (supposedly) "taste" like. And for the record, I still refuse to believe that: Munster, Swiss, Provolone, American, Feta, Parmesan, Beaufort, Camembert, and Romano cheese have an actual "taste" to them! Blue cheese and Roquefort have some flavor, but everything else is just tastes like slightly different cuts of a cold, textured "food substance". It's like insisting that lettuce or spinach have a "flavor"! They're just some crunchy nonsense that you put in between the bread to make the mouth-feel vaguely more interesting; little green piles of nonsense. [1] I don't know if my issue was from birth, or came on later from a blow to the head, or what. I didn't realize I had Hyposmia until I mentioned how, "All bread tastes exactly the same" in my mid 20's and multiple people started looking at me funny.
- bitwize 6mo agoInteresting life-imitates-art moment reading that he tried this flavor-changing chewing gum and then noticed that his taste was restored when he ate a blueberry. In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka formulates a new kind of gum that provides the flavor of a full-course meal in a single stick. Violet Beauregarde steals and chews a piece, but the formula hasn't been worked out yet so when it gets to the blueberry pie she plumps up and turns into a giant human blueberry.
- shoopadoop 6mo agoPlease send me some gum
- anilgulecha 6mo agoI have anosmia, triggered by AERD/polyps. I have been mostly without the sense for the past ~12 years, but int eh past year have had bouts of smell again, via a doc who finally diagnosed AERD, and suggested steroid intervention + mepolizumab.
- partomniscient 6mo agoI liked the article, I think the general understanding is correct, but question the numbers/statistics, you can't have 67% (or 83%) of 16 people...
- flowerthoughts 6mo agoLooks like the basis for this is the press release from the gum production company: https://www.tastetech.com/updates/using-encapsulated-flavourings-to-aid-the-recovery-from-a-loss-of-smell-and-taste/ https://www.tastetech.com/updates/using-encapsulated-flavour... I can't find the relevant publication from Dr Ni Yang: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/biosciences/people/ni.yang https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/biosciences/people/ni.yang