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“It was black bean pasta with almonds and chunks of turmeric and I was like, ‘I don’t eat that, it’s disgusting,'” said Sarah Yeats, 31, an emergency nurse. of Atlantic Beach, Florida.
The couple both work at a hospital in Jacksonville, Fla., And she had contracted Covid-19 at work and brought it home in August.
Like many people who have contracted the coronavirus, they noticed shortly after testing positive that they had lost much of their sense of smell and taste.
For weeks, they had drawn any sensation they could get into food by sprinkling chicken in lemon juice, throwing handfuls of fresh herbs in soups and salads, and daring textures in an attempt to bring excitement to the table.
The day Sarah noticed she couldn’t find the acceptable bits of turmeric on the pasta anymore, she said, was when she realized that her sense of taste might rebound.
Anosmia – a condition known as ‘smell blindness’, or loss of smell – is a common symptom of Covid-19 (and other viruses), and can seriously affect people’s ability to taste, because the senses are intertwined.
“It appears that loss of smell or taste is among the more specific indicators of Covid-19, especially the first indicators,” said Dr. Leana Wen, emergency physician and CNN medical analyst. “Even without having other symptoms, including congestion, (Covid-19 patients) report that they cannot smell or taste.
And while most people regain their sense of smell or taste within days to weeks, Wen said, “There are still many who haven’t regained their sense of smell after months.”
People still need to eat, of course, and they modify their meals accordingly.
Put new flavor combinations on the table
Days after testing positive for the virus in mid-December, Althea Mullarkey, 53, suddenly realized she could no longer smell the strong gardenia scent from her shampoo.
She tore up the house, sniffing anything she could find, and realized her sense of smell was gone.
The self-proclaimed foodie who lives in New York’s Hudson Valley said she no longer liked the mouth feel of eggs because she couldn’t taste them. And she doesn’t want to waste her blunt sense of taste on a good piece of blue cheese, an old favorite.
Recently, Mullarkey said, she ate leftover “spicy-sweet coleslaw with pulled pork” for breakfast. Her favorite dinner became a squeezed lemon dill hummus with more lemon, a side of pitted kalamata olives and a piece of toasted naan smeared with spicy oil.
“I can taste the salt, pepper, and lemon and I love the crispy textures,” Mullarkey said, but none of the layers of flavor she loved to experience in the kitchen come through.
“Certain sensations in our food – spicy, minty pepper – are things that we experience with the heat and cold sensors in our mouth,” she says. “You can get acid, heat, even salt, but not the layers of things like cilantro and chipotle.”
Most of our sense of what we think of as taste, Becker said, isn’t really taste at all.
“All the interesting things about our food that we use to identify things like cheese and fruit and chocolate and coffee are not made with our mouths,” she said. “They are done with our noses.”
“We don’t think it’s very common for people to lose their sense of taste (with Covid-19). If you really dig deep, it’s the olfactory function of the nose that isn’t working.
This could explain why texture, color, and even the rituals around the kitchen have become more important to some people right now.
“Texture has become a lot more important to me,” said Alex Yeats, 42. He and Sarah eat salmon several times a week because it has a fuller body, more umami, and better mouthfeel than a flaky white fish, which “just tastes dry.”
“I wanted to make sure there was green in everything,” Sarah said. “Foods that are white and gray, they’re so unappealing now.”
Diving into the cooking and meal planning processes each week also helped her stay interested in food preparation. “Having Covid inspired us to use our raclette oven because it’s a cooking process that makes it fun.”
When strange smells are a promising sign
Phantom smells are a common topic in Covid-19 online support groups.
Even months after their diagnoses, the couple smelled of jet fuel and cigarette smoke where there was none. Mullarkey said she smelled such intense phantom smoke and smells of ash, they almost made her gag.
According to Becker, this is promising news.
“A lot of people get garbage, or smoke, something rotten or hot rubber,” Becker said of the phantom smells his patients have noted. “It’s really disgusting, but it’s usually a good sign that things are trying to work out. When recovery occurs, sometimes the threads can cross.”
While it is still not clear why people lose their sense of smell with Covid-19, Wen said: “It is believed that the coronavirus does not affect the nerve cells that control smell but rather the cells around them” .
This, too, is considered good news for recovery, as supporting cells regenerate more easily than neurons.
“When cells grow back, it can take some time and retraining to get back to normal,” she says.
Olfactory formation can help
Recycling her sense of smell is something that Kaya Cheshire – who said she still misses 90% of her sense of smell since she contracted a mild case of Covid-19 last July – has tried, in addition to add a lot more herbs and spices than usual. to his food.
“It’s so nostalgic to smell food cooking,” she says. “Add lemon or cloves and those aromatic things uplift it all up and make me feel like I don’t miss that much – even though I know I am.”
At the suggestion of her doctor, Cheshire recently started “scent training”, using things like roses, lemons, cloves, garlic, eucalyptus, and smelling mints. very strong to retrain his brain.
“I’m trying to think about how things used to smell so I can remember it and recognize that smell again,” she says.
Becker said it was a tactic she recommended to patients because there was no cure for the anosmia.
“Recycling your brain to smell things so that you can remember them is a bit of a mystery,” she said. “But using memory to retrain neurons can work both ways. Memory can help you smell and smell can help you remember.”
And you don’t need a fancy essential oil kit, she says. “Just use the things you have to match that scent with the memory of your scent.”
It could also be something aromatic and nostalgic for dinner.
Sarah Yeats – who has recovered most of her smell and taste, but not all of it – recently made a bowl of ramen bursting with cilantro and green onions in a rich broth.
“I try to serve foods that look tastier and prettier,” she says.
For her husband, Alex, the dish was a form of memory in itself.
“Since I remember what it smells like and what it tastes like, I can imagine it, and it’s useful,” he says.
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