Countering Paxlovid Mouth
December 26, 2022 6:42 PM   Subscribe

I have covid. I'm taking Paxlovid. I have what is called "Paxlovid Mouth" which is the horrible acrid flavor in your mouth that is a side effect of Paxlovid. It makes it so that drinking water is hard because it tastes terrible. Have you personally had any success with something that helped counter the flavor?

I googled this and the suggestions are everything from pineapple to red hots. I don't have either in the house, and honestly am not sure either actually work. I'd prefer to hear from people who have found a good solution with Paxlovid or another medicine that caused acrid, bitter, metallic, noxious flavors in the mouth. So far hot water and honey seems to work surprisingly well, as well as apple cinnamon tea. What else worked for you?
posted by Toddles to Health & Fitness (25 answers total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: I used Ricola herbal cough drops and strawberry lemonade flavored Pedialyte to combat the flavor since I was also coughing and dehydrated. The cough drops worked better than anything else I tried, in part because they already taste a little bit weird.
posted by A Blue Moon at 6:49 PM on December 26, 2022 [2 favorites]


The BIGGEST HELP for me was using a soft toothbrush and brushing my teeth, gums, and tongue with toothpaste every few hours, at least once overnight. I will look for my other suggestions and post them as a follow-up (I have several) but this was the most helpful. And it went away pretty quickly (within hours) after I completed the 5 days. Keep taking them and hang in there!
posted by happy_cat at 6:54 PM on December 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


Best answer: My other suggestions are sweet drinks - sweet juices, lemonade, sodas, and Gatorade. Sugar free where possible. The Gatorade was the biggest winner, I tended toward fruit punch types of flavors, but I think anything in the sweet arena would help.

Also as far as gum, candy, and cough drops: I found mint gum to be offensive, cinnamon gum to be pretty good, and sweet hard candies like Jolly Ranchers the best. I didn't worry too much about the merits of candy vs. cough drops - just use what gets you through it.

You will get past this!
posted by happy_cat at 7:04 PM on December 26, 2022 [2 favorites]


I went through about 6 tins of altoid cinnamons. Worked pretty ok.
posted by dmd at 7:28 PM on December 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


I also scarfed Ricola cough drops and ate a lot of vitamin c and probiotic gummies. So, essentially, sugar helps. Hope you feel better soon. Paxlovid made a huge difference for me, so totally worth it.
posted by mollymillions at 7:34 PM on December 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


Gummy bears and a ton of tea worked for me.
posted by limeonaire at 7:35 PM on December 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


I found it better if I was well hydrated.
posted by Sukey Says at 7:37 PM on December 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


Tic tacs and Altoids!
posted by sizeable beetle at 7:38 PM on December 26, 2022


Hi! Dietitian here, and what you're experiencing is called dysgeusia and is pretty common and short-lived/ treatment related for a number of different things like what some of us answered in an earlier post about a tonsillectomy. So, good news is this will very likely go away!

My recommendation that worked generally well for dysgeusia secondary to chemo was citrus and sweet flavors. The acid and citrus flavors counterbalance the metallic tastes; it's been long enough I don't remember the biochemistry behind it but it's fascinating and has to do with the chemoreceptors on your tongue.
posted by OhHaieThere at 9:15 PM on December 26, 2022 [6 favorites]


Almost everything I've seen listed as helpful has had a high citric acid content - which makes sense, it's a touchstone flavor and mouth sensation we know well and our brains can fill in the blanks even when something is interfering with normal perception. If you have your sense of smell, I suspect it helps that citric acid food/drink is often strongly scented, further assisting with both actually tasting it and the brain calling up the records of what it should taste like.

So you will probably have the best luck with lemonade, orange drink (note probably NOT good orange juice as the bitter receptors seem to be working overtime with pax mouth, so think orange gatorade, kool-aid, or "orange drink" like what I call "church punch"), fruit punch, fruity juices, and fruity sodas. If you have any jam in the fridge, try a spoonful. If you can compare sugar-free and regular sweet drinks, you may find one significantly more palatable than the other. If you hit on something that seems to come super-close to tasting right or at least okay, try spiking it with some lemon juice or vinegar.

Use a straw if you need to, to just chug water to get hydrated. If there's anything that you can watch or listen to that super-captures your attention or kind of maxes out your sensory inputs - cartoons or animated movies, sports, concert footage, roller coaster videos, standing outside in the cold, drinking while trying to solve a puzzle or play a game on your phone - try doing that during dedicated hydration attempts to see if you can use that as a sensory hack.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:23 PM on December 26, 2022 [2 favorites]


I think the Paxlovid was worse than the Covid to me. I brushed the tongue and roof of the mouth as well as the teeth. To cut the taste, Diet Coke worked best for me (but I am diabetic and couldn't use the drinks listed above.)
posted by a humble nudibranch at 9:35 PM on December 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


Don’t know if you’re going to the store anytime soon, but there’s a xylitol-sweetened hard candy called Ice Chips, and it worked a treat for me while on chemo. Xylitol is actually good for your teeth too - helps prevent the bacteria that cause calories.
The stores here stock on the candy racks by the registers. It comes in a rectangular blue tin.
posted by dbmcd at 10:49 PM on December 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


The magic trick for me was a Chinese sour/salty preserved plum; I think it might be called suan mei. It looks like a small prune coated in a whitish powder. It can be sucked like a lozenge, and has an extremely overpowering taste & aftertaste so you get an hour or two of relief from a single piece. I think there are similar items from other places like li hing mui, umeboshi, or saladitos so hopefully you have access to Asian or Mexican groceries. Tamarind candy might work too.
posted by acidic at 11:26 PM on December 26, 2022 [3 favorites]


A friend went to the store and bought several kinds of mints for me to try, including altoids, tic tacs, and mentos. I’d usually start about 30 minutes after taking paxlovid.
posted by bluedaisy at 11:45 PM on December 26, 2022


Gummy bears and tea for me as well. I also really only ate meals twice a day, breakfast and supper, i.e., right before taking the doses of Paxlovid, when my taste was as back to normal as possible. The rest of the day food was just appalling, except for gummy bears and tea.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:17 AM on December 27, 2022 [2 favorites]


Werther's Original did the trick for my spouse and I. We both had COVID with and without Paxlovid and promise the metal mouth is worth it.
posted by notjustthefish at 6:57 AM on December 27, 2022 [2 favorites]


Seconding Werther’s.
posted by umbú at 7:08 AM on December 27, 2022


I had Paxlovid Mouth, and it sucked. But, it was not as horrible as COVID without it, believe me.

What helped for me:

Toxic Waste and other extremely sour candies. Luckily, I like sour, so that was a delicious treat for me.

Black coffee.

Black tea.

Matcha ice cream.

Basically, anything with sour and/or slightly bitter notes helped counteract Paxlovid Mouth for me.
posted by spinifex23 at 9:53 AM on December 27, 2022


A friend who had Pax mouth reported success with cold watermelon.
posted by dws at 12:42 PM on December 27, 2022


My wife relied on cinnamon candies and a weird side effect (either of paxlovid or covid itself) that she couldn't taste capsaicin, so all the other flavors of hot salsa (that I like and she doesn't) actually came through for her.
posted by fedward at 2:04 PM on December 27, 2022 [1 favorite]


I just drank a ton of water.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 2:33 PM on December 27, 2022


Response by poster: These are all great answers, but I marked the two that I actually had access to (old halloween candy - turns out we had a stash of jolly ranchers in there!) and some old Ricola cough drops. The Paxlovid Mouth is a million times better than covid - I actually felt like I had broken glass in my lungs before taking the Paxlovid, a first for me! So I'll keep taking it no matter what, but these tips are helping a lot, so thank you!
posted by Toddles at 5:00 PM on December 27, 2022 [1 favorite]


I had dysgeusia in pregnancy and I used a special mouthwash. I think it was called SmartMouth. It used to require a prescription but is now over the counter. It would give me hours of relief. Makes a big difference!
posted by rglass at 6:28 PM on December 27, 2022 [1 favorite]


a little late now, but for me: Jolly Ranchers and peanut butter filled pretzels. The salt helped and the peanut butter stuck to my tongue for longer lasting relief.
posted by jindc at 8:58 AM on December 28, 2022


For the future: Flamin' Hot Cheddar and Sour Cream chips obliterate the taste for several minutes. Of course, eat enough of those and you will die for non-COVID-related reasons.
posted by praemunire at 2:27 PM on December 29, 2022


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