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Subscribe to RSSWhen Bridget Lewis began to lose her sense of smell, her friends and family thought she couldn't be serious.
"Everyone thought I was joking," says Lewis, who's 42 and lives in Arlington, Texas. "My mom even had fun with it, and 'tested' me. She asked me to hold out my tongue and had my little sister grab things from the kitchen, like Tabasco sauce and lemon juice and they squeezed drops of it on my tongue! When they saw I had no reaction, they believed me."
In Lewis's case, a severe bronchial infection stole her sense of smell in 2002; nine years later, it's only partially returned. Most of us have experienced a temporarily diminished sense of smell -- it's part of the super fun side effects of a cold, along with the dripping nose and general malaise. But before it happened to her, Lewis says she didn't even realize a long term loss of smell was even possible -- there is blindness, and deafness, but many people aren't familiar with the word for a lost sense of smell: anosmia.
"It's not as dehabilitating [as losing other senses]," says Dr. Beverly Cowart of the Monell Chemical Senses Center. "But I think people find it hard to relate to; I think people don't appreciate how much they use their sense of smell."
An estimated 1 to 2 percent of people in North America say they have a smell disorder, according to government figures. It's more common in men than in women, and it's much more common in older people, occurring in nearly 25 percent of men aged 60 to 69 and 11 percent of women in that age range, according to the National Institutes of Health.
High inside your nose is a grouping of cells called olfactory sensory neurons. These neurons each possess an odor receptor, which picks up on the tiny molecules released by things like a just-peeled orange, a bag of microwaved popcorn or your coworker's tuna fish lunch. The neurons then pass the information to your brain, which interprets the smell.
As Cowart explains, there are a few common ways to lose your sense of smell: a chronic nasal sinus disease, a viral infection, inhaling something toxic or a head injury. Unlike most nerves, the brain's olfactory nerve fibers are continuously replaced, "so occasionally people can gradually regain their sense of smell as new fibers grow in." And some people are born without the ability to smell.
Lacking a sense of smell can be dangerous -- anosmics wouldn't notice a gas leak, or the smell of smoke. Personal hygiene is a big worry for some. "The biggest effect is on food-flavor perception," Cowart says. "It actually creates social difficulties for people. Sometimes, people become more isolated; they don't go out as much."
Smelly stuff reaches the olfactory neurons in one of two ways: either through your nostrils, or through a pathway connecting the roof of your throat to your nose. If that second passageway is blocked, we're unable to pick up on the odors -- and, consequently, the flavors -- emitted by food.
One rainy day four years ago while Lewis was pregnant, she remembers bursting into tears over her anosmia."I was sad and I think depressed because I realized I couldn't smell the rain ... and realized I wouldn't be able to smell the scent of my newborn," Lewis remembers. "Horrible day."
On the upside, potentially smelly tasks like cleaning out the fridge don't bother her at all -- but she adds that she tends to go overboard. "I have always been scared that I could make our daughter sick — if I even suspect something has been in the fridge for too long, I throw it out. I've also burned many pots and foods in the oven because as they cooked, I couldn't smell them!"
Have you or a family member lost the ability to smell? How has it impacted your life?
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I haven't had a sense of smell since I was about 10 years old (now 54). My doctor then thought it was caused by a sinus infection. I don't have any real problems with it, but it does drive my wife nuts as I can't smell her perfume at all.
I lost my sense of smell in 2002 from a head injury... I don't mind not having it but am fearful of a gas leak or fire. I laughed at this article where she said she threw food away even if it was prematurely, I do this alot and my boyfriend thinks I'm silly. He on the other hand loves the no smell factor ;) I would say my taste is ok but I do always prefer it to be very flavorful. It is hard to function properly around others though who can seem to NEVER remember haha.. I've had to fake it a few times at the asian nail salons and places where it would be too difficult to explain.
I have the opposite problem. I can smell everything. I avoid going out because it gets sickening. I can identify which soap people have used, which fabric softener (which smells so strong to me I get headaches and nausea from it), what people ate for lunch, if they are getting a sinus infection, if they have a sore throat, if there is any minute gas leak whatsoever in my apartment building. I can follow my nose to the exact source of mold in a home, I can smell who my friends saw that day by the smell on their coat from hugging the person hello & goodbye. I can smell it the second I walk in the door if my cats used the litter pan even if they cover it. I can smell everything. I can smell the smoke from the people in the car in front of me as it blows back. I can smell if my husband has washed his hands at work from across the room the second he walks in the door. I have to order all fragrance free products because it is so sickening. I can't have people over to my apartment because their smells stay on my couch for weeks and no one else can smell it and they all think I'm nuts. I can only go to really open places with a lot of fresh air. If someone has B.O. - forget it! And public bathrooms are out of the question. Kids smell sour and elderly people smell stale. if people wear open toe shoes or flats without socks I can smell their feet - I have to get out of there! If I get in a new car, the smell makes me sick. Lysol and bleach smell so strong I wound up in the hospital with asthma attacks. I get sick when I have a job because I smell the carpet cleaners and all my coworkers hygiene cleansers/hand lotions and they make me ill. I can smell when people don't wash their hair every day or when they have had fast food in their car in the past week. I have to caulk every crack in my apartment so I don't have to smell my neighbors and all their food & candles & smoke & soaps. I looked for the nasal spray that was taken off the market for damaging sense of smell, but it was all gone. It sounds funny but it is horrible having a really keen sense of smell. It interferes with every aspect of my life.
I can totally understand why you think it's horrible! I'd definitely rather deal with my problem of having almost no sense of smell than what you have to deal with. Good luck!
I have the same issue but with hearing, it's magnified, bionic-like. I have to sleep with machines that produce white noise on a moderately high volume or any little noise (a plane flying overhead or even the blanket falling on the floor) will wake me in a jump from a deep sleep and then I have a hard time falling back asleep due to my heart racing and the adrenaline rush. Therefore, I can understand how having a highly magnified sense of something can be a true bother in life.
Pisces, have you ever seen the film "Perfume" or the book it's based upon? It's a work of historical fiction, but I think that you might find it interesting because of your overly keen sense of smell.
I have this issue as well, and am homebound because of it, because even the detergent people use on their clothes makes me stop breathing; it's strong enough in my case to qualify as multiple chemical sensitivity.
On the other hand, I have saved my household three times by smelling several gas leaks (which apparently astounded the guys who came to fix it, as they were very difficult for them to detect, but were in dangerous locations; they didn't take me seriously at first but then asked if I wanted a job!), and a fire that started overnight.
I don't allow gas lines in the house anymore. Even just the slightest smell of it makes me extremely sick.
Folks don't realize how strongly they perfume themselves. I can't even go to a store or a restaurant because just being around someone who wears the usual scented stuff makes me asphyxiate. And there's no use asking for them not to, because they get upset. I can't even touch packages that were bagged by others, because their perfume comes off their hands and gets all over the bags and boxes!
I had a loss of smell due to chronic Sinusitis (polyps). After each endoscopic sinus surgery, I would get the senses back for about 6 months, and as the polyps regrew in my nose, the smell would slowly go away.
Finally after my 4th surgery to remove the polyps, (not even Prednisone was helping), my doctor (out of the university of Penn hospital in Philly) prescribed using a nebulizer solution as drops in my nose twice a day (as a topical steroid), in conjunction with rinsing my nose 2X daily with a NeilMed bottle saline rinse.
I'm happy to say, after 1 year, Polyps are controlled, I'm back to smelling, allergies are almost gone, and I feel great!
anosmia - Thanks, I finally have a name for this condition. I normally cannot detect odors unless they are very very strong. Most perfumes I can detect must be in a liquid state under my nose. Skunks are detected as what I would describe as a sweet smell, when I can detect it. Most others cringe at the skunk smell. I have limited taste of foods with saltly stuff being highly desired, while sweet stuff is so-so. I like hot sauses, too. My eyes tear up with what others perceive as bad smells, including onions.
Like many said here, most others don't get it and the explaination takes too long.
I lost my sense of smell when I was about 29 years old. We don't know why. I think it sucks. I would gladly smell all the bad odors just to be able to smell the good ones. Like onions cooking or the smell of fresh cut grass etc. I am still allergic to the fresh cut grass but can not enjoy the smell before I start sneezing. I first noticed this with perfume, I had gotten some new perfume and was putting it on, i couldn't smell it good, i thought maybe I got a bad batch or something. That first day I must have put on so much perfume that I smelled like a cheap hooker. Now I don't wear perfume anymore.
As for taste I have found that my taste is muted. I like things a lot more spicy than I had in the past. Lots of onions and pepper. I too find myself getting rid of food from the refridgerator. I throw out enough milk to feed a third world country. But I would rather be safe than sorry.
re: grass, I'm the same way with cigarette smoke. I'm allergic to it but can't smell it, so unless I'm in a venue that's visibly thick with smoke, I don't notice it until I'm ready to start vomiting!
How do you not notice it if it's visibly thick?
For the most part, I've never had a sense of smell. One specialist said I was born without it due to faulty olfactory stem cells; another said my olfactory nerve is buried under scar tissue caused by the two craniosynostosis-related skull surgeries I had at ages 3 and 6 months. I don't know which doctor is right, but the end result is the same: I've never known what it's like to have a sense of smell. I can't even imagine it; when people say things like, "Oh, a banana smells like it tastes," it's like they're saying that bells look like how they sound. It makes no sense. I, too, am relieved that I didn't become anosmic later in life.
It does have its advantages but I'd say that they're outweighed by the disadvantages. It's aggravating how so many people don't take it seriously. The condition has genuine risks! Then there are all the aspects of it that aren't life threatening but are still depressing, such as the inability to smell cookies baking, enjoy scented body lotions and candles, etc.
My sense of taste is okay, but not normal. I can differentiate between, say, white chocolate and milk chocolate and blueberries and raspberries. The range of what I can taste seems adequate and I know what I like and what I don't like. I really do enjoy food and don't think flavorable items taste like cardboard. But I can't differentiate between flavored coffees and different teas and most alcohol tastes the same to me. Blueberry beer tastes the same as regular beer; all wine tastes pretty much the same, only with varying levels of bitterness; and Starbucks hazelnut coffee tastes the same as instant coffee from Giant.
I lost my sense of smell at the age of seven while "helping" my mom clean the windows with ammonia...smelled a rag of ammonia so soundly the brain unplugged from the nose and has not accepted signals since. I rarely miss the sense of smell, as I've had three boys with dirty diapers, and numerous sports teams with a locker room full of hygiene-proof teens. I can enjoy a box of wine and the most basic of meals...and a dead skunk in the middle of the road is lost on me. I'm pretty sure, having lost one of my 5 major senses, I should qualify for some sort of handicapped discount, parking permit or at least special treatment, but I'll give it all up for the ability to use a port-a-potty without even thinking about the smell. Aaaaah...ignorance is bliss! The doctors did say my smell could come back at any time....and i am worried that would really be hard to deal with.
I've had terrible sinuses for a long time (getting hit by that softball over 30 years ago didn't help, either)--but I can still pick out dirty diaper a mile away, go figure. When I was a nurse's aide, though, I was able to help all the patients who really couldn't help being the way they were (like the guy with colon CA), without reacting badly (the guy with CA was still all the way with it, and could tell if you were gagging). And I'm the 'dispose of the bad food' expert at home--husband smells it, but I dump it, because I don't throw up from it.
The problem is that no sense of smell robs most of your sense of taste as well. I had it temporarily with a sinus infection, and everything tasted like mush. My grandfather had it permanently from an auto-immune disorder, and I never realized how bad it was until I experienced it myself.
Anosmia Shmanosmia. 13 years ago I sat on a sun drenched roof with my anosmic friend Jen Moniz and gave her a word for her condition: SNEFT. Lo and behold, it's turned up in the urban dictionary. How will YOU be remembered when you die? ;)
had surgery to fix my bone spur and remove several polyps. soon after the surgery, i noticed scents were alot stronger, cologne, etc. as the years went on my sense of smell diminished and now i am back to not being able to smell anything. BTW im 26 now. I went in a short while back, they put a camera through my nose, and told me that I had a bone spur, and several polyps blocking the airway. So pretty much the first surgery was a complete failure. Any advice on what i should do, i really don't have the time, or money for a repeat surgery.
-j.cole
Surgery wasn't a failure. The ones taken out are gone. You just grew some more.
Before I lost most all my sense of smell/taste from a head injury, I had an extremely sensitive 'odiferous' sense (similar to the person above, but not that much). I'm in agreement with the person who referred to "we dont know what we've got til its gone'. I was a gourmet cook and loved the smell/taste of food ... now I really can't .... like osmeone else said, I do still 'enjoy' food though because, I REMEMBER how it used to and is supposed to taste, and that, combined with the texture, (there is a lot to texture) gives me some enjoyment .. I can still seem to 'know' if something is 'good' or 'bad'. also, I SALT & PEPPER the HELL out of everything, and also lotsa hot sauce or peppers!! we still retain the hot, sweet, salty sour from the tongue, you know. Also, like other(s), for instance, when I get gas, I get this brief "nanosecond" whiff, say, of the gas vapors ... thats gone in another nanosecond. same if I walk by someone smoking... a quick "nanosecond" of the smoke .. then its gone. Dont smell my old fave perfumes, tho, no matter how I try ... even tho I put them on every day, I'm sort of stopping becuz I'm forgetting (this has been 4 years now) becuz I'm fogetting what it used to smell like, to me. its a very sad thing for someone like me, who was such a gourmet cook. I dont cook much like I used to anymore, all sorts of eclectic dishes, etc., and have guests over. Its just not the same somehow... altho I do cook, of course, for sustenance and try new recipes now and then ... but its NOTHING like I used to be. The neurosurgeon said it should come back after a year ... and if it didnt, it wouldnt ever. it never did, even tho she and others said they thought it would. boohoo. also, I would not know if something 'toxic' was around (ie, gas, etc). its a very sad thing for me, man we just dont know what we got til its gone. what I'd GIVE.
My doctor told me that it could be 5 years or more for mine to recover (or not). I didn't start getting some of it back until about a year later. Mine was caused by pressure from subdural hematoma that pressured that part of the brain. It is still possible that you might get some back I would think if you have "flashes" of signals that make it through perhaps with time you might get some back. Nerves are VERY slow healers. My doctor said that as long as they were not severed there was always the chance of them repairing themselves over time.
Man that would suck to have a smell disorder! My whole business industry is based on my sense of smell. I made my own fragrance using: and now I make almost 2,000 bucks a month!
Totally lost my sense of smell in 1969, and haven't smelled anything since. I can sometimes tell when there is something strong in the air, but I can't actually smell it. Odd thing is, I can still taste and distinguish most foods. I do miss the good smells.
I took a header from the top of a horse and lost my sense of smell. Its been 3 years now and I have had partial recovery; some neurons are firing and some are not. What used to smell bad now sometimes does not and the reverse is true also. For example, all citrus smells rotten now. And scents in the bathroom or out on the farm is not nearly as bad . I don't know how many sensors need to be clicked on/off to make smells (in the thousands I believe) but when you are getting mixed signals you have some surprising results. I still have my memory of what things are supposed to smell like but that is fading. In many cases good is now bad and bad is now good. Although there are a few things that should have odor that is undetectable now, most smells I can sense. But none of them are what they used to be. And honestly I cannot even begin to describe the odors; they defy description from me because there are no comparisions in my memory to equate them to. Everything is unique again. But I am adjusting and it is not the end of the world. I should be dead or paralyzed by all rights. The only after affect was the mixed up sense of smell. Compared to all the senses that is the one most easily adjusted to for most I would think. I guess the only thing disappointing now is food like meat and fruit have a rotten odor to them and they used to be my favorites. And flowers and perfume is not the same anymore. But on the plus side; some naturally smelly environments are not bad now and sometimes smells ok. I have to be on guard now when it comes to food mostly because if it smells good that might be my first warning sign :)
I have little or no sense of smell and it is simply no big deal. I do have a dog, though, and when she starts wandering around acting like there is something in the air, I will make a real effort to check it out. Dogs are wonderful.
My friend got a stomach virus (food poisoning) from Benihana last year, after eating some of their well-done steak and assuming the odd taste must have been from their seasoning, as it was well-cooked, after all. For some reason, for 3 months after, everything he'd eat would taste like rotten meat. Desserts, anything...he would lose his appetite as soon as he'd take a bite and get an instant recall of that foul taste, courtesy of his taste buds. He'd feel nauseous if he ate and basically lost a good 20 lbs. Then, just as it came, it disappeared, and he got his sense of taste back as if nothing had ever happened. I wonder if just like a cold can affect your sense of smell and taste, if a stomach virus could do the same and he temporarily had this disorder?
This is a common side effect of food poisoning. I really suspect it is like Pavlov and his dogs. The nausea and vomiting for three days that goes with food poisoning can condition us just like the dogs. I was that way with Mexican food for a while after a good three day vomit session. All someone at work had to do, even a year later, was suggest we have Mexican food for lunch, and it was enough to make my stomach roll over.
Agreed grump. Back in the day when I could smell I got hold of some bad shrimp. Got sick as a dog and after that for about two years I couldn't stand the smell or taste of them. I think the primal part of our brain that teaches lessons the old fashioned way decided I didn't like them anymore and even though I knew exactly what was going on and tried to eat them again the animal part of the brain over-ruled my reasoning part so I gave up :) Shrimp never was the same after that.
I have congential anosmia too and as others have reported I have what seems to me to be a perfectly functioning sense of taste. I love food, love flavours and easily distinguish between food based on taste alone. I assume I do this by being more aware of combinations of the primary tastes and am unaware of a vast spectrum of flavours that people with a sense of smell can perceive.
However, I can detect tastes that other people can't and I believe that is because the flavour doesn't have an odour component, so people with less well tuned taste buds aren't aware of it.
My anosmia was a problem when I was training to be a chemistry technician and I always worried that a dangerous chemical may leak and I wouldn't be aware of it, but in general I'd say it hasn't been a liability.
Certainly I almost never hear people commenting on a pleasant odour, it's always "that stinks", so as a kid it seemed to me that all I was missing out on was perceiving a great deal of unpleasantness. I'm sure that isn't the case.
And it's a huge advantage when my predominately male colleagues return from a lunch time session at the eatery which serves the specially souped up curries they love. Unfortunately anosmia doesn't do anything to help with the noise pollution.
I have been sitting here reading all these wonderful posts and enjoying each and every one. Then I suddenly realized that this reader comment section was simply and wonderfully lacking TROLLS.
No one has blamed the Republicans or the Democrats or unions or the government for their lack of a sense of smell.
It has been a genuine pleasure reading these posts.
Now, someone might ruin it for us--just cause I said it out loud.
Me too! I remember the time when I was a kid and I realized that smelling was an alien concept. People don't believe me when I say I can taste food, but I can. I do prefer spicier foods, which seems to suggest my sense of taste may be a little duller than most normal people. Agree that if I have to lose a sense, this is definitely the one.
When I was in my teens I had a friend who's Dad had no sense of smell. We could smoke pot in my friends room without his Dad having a clue.
Wow i wish i had that non smelling nose. This dude i work with busts his ass all day long. He makes the truck i drive in smell like a monkey cage.
Of course, it gets even worse once you think about how your sense of smell actually works. Bits of stuff that were inside of him came out and went up your nose. What a nice thought.
Now you're thinking too much Grump. Sometimes "ignorance is bliss" is a good thing :)
My dad never did have a sense of smell, also my son lost his about two years ago. Is there some sort of family history that can cause this?
I don't ever remember having a sense of smell either, and I can "taste" foods. I'm sure I really can't - if I think about, there's no difference to me between a smoked meat and regular, but I don't know any better! I don't wear perfume either for the same reason, and if anybody tells me that my hair smells good, I freak and think it's their nice way of saying I used too much shampoo! I do put on about 10 swipes of deodorant per arm to make sure I don't stink. But I don't pay too much attention to spoiled foods - I once drank sour milk three days straight before getting my husband to smell it for me.