I can smell...just one thing...help me smell more..

November 1, 2024 5:12 AM

This was me.... I am two months post surgery. I can smell. Just one smell. I smell it most of the time in the air when I inhale. Sometimes I can sort of taste it. There are slightly different versions of it. I think I actually smell something. So I have some sense of smell. How do I get more?

So my initial thinking was that this was phantom smell kind of equivalent to phantom pain when a limb is amputated. Except the thing is, if I inhale deeply I smell it more strongly. If I'm congested, I smell it less. If I can taste it and I cover I drink a sweet drink, I cover up the taste. If I inhale from a bottle of vinegar (thus inhaling differnet smell particles, not the ones in random air) then I don't smell the smell. I don't smell anything).

I think some sort of chemical receptor has kicked back in and is working. But not all of them which is why I still can't smell most stuff? Is that a plausible theory? Like if I could only smell ONE kind of scent particle in the air obviously it would smell different than it used to smell, right? And I wouldn't smell it in vinegar. Or taste it in my mouth when it's covered by other tastes. That's my working theory? How can I test it? And if that theory is correct, is there a way I can encourage other chemical receptors to re-awaken?

posted by anonymous to Health & Fitness (7 answers total)

The following is of course purely anecdotal. I apparently had asymptomatic Covid about ten months ago. Never got sick, but lost almost all sense of smell and most sense of taste. As you may know, Covid does this by causing brain damage. Anyway, a week ago, for three days, I began to smell something everywhere I went, a smell somewhere between burning leaves and burning plastic. When I asked other people, no one else could smell it. I also realized I was beginning to be able to smell my morning coffee, although it smelled more like chemical residue than what I remembered. Over the next three days after that, my sense of smell returned! Coffee smelled great! But I could also smell…stinky toilets, other people at Walmart, a mildew smell on my old jacket. This is mind you after smelling mostly nothing for ten months. It's crazy how it all came back at once, but the precursor was the weird all-pervasive burning smell. So perhaps your neurons are doing their thing, restructuring? But it seems like any nerve damage/neural damage takes several months to heal.
posted by jabah at 6:36 AM on November 1 [2 favorites]

For what it's worth, my sense of smell really ramped up when I started taking the antidepressant Brintellix - maybe worth trying?

It's a known side effect.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:14 AM on November 1

I would continue to make a habit of exploring/trying lots of different scents.

Bake some bread, grind some coffee, roast some garlic, buy a few different perfumes or colognes, essential oils, scented soaps, etc.

The idea is to train on a more complex and varied set of scents than you might otherwise experience in a given day, to give your brain and sensors more input to work on.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:27 AM on November 1 [1 favorite]

I had similar smell effects post-COVID, where I seemed to become more sensitive to a whole variety of pungent smells (toilet, body odor, skunk, etc.), BUT they all registered as the One Particular Scent! Suddenly everything smelled like farts, and it took me a while to realize that it was my senses, not the environment. Then what I was smelling evolved into body odor, then dried milk, and each phase lasted several months. Possibly only radio / audio / communications engineers here will get this analogy, but it's like the wide frequency spectrum of smells collapsed to a single more powerful signal / carrier. I became more sensitive to smells, but they all registered as one thing.

I feel like I did eventually regain a normal sense of smell, although I could have also just gotten used to smelling less variety.
posted by intermod at 8:36 AM on November 1 [1 favorite]

I'm sorry that this is happening. In August 2023 I caught some kind of virus and lost my sense of smell. I went to the ENT for an exam and a nasal endoscopy (ick!). I was physically fine. The ENT recommended this smell retraining kit and it worked for me - within a few months my sense of smell returned and I am back to about 90%. If you try this I hope it works for you too.

https://www.neilmed.com/usa/neilmed-smell-restore-training-kit/
posted by mockjovial at 10:12 AM on November 1 [1 favorite]

I don't know where you are located, but there is the Monell Center in Philadelphia which is a research institute devoted to understanding and researching the senses of taste and smell. Maybe they would have suggestions or research which you could benefit from? On their website they highlight an initiative they call Smell for Life, which is focused on understanding and treating a loss of smell.

Good luck!
posted by citygirl at 10:19 AM on November 1

I wouldn't discount it being a phantom smell. I have MS-related neuropathy, and the neuropathic sensations can definitely be swamped by actual physical sensations.

I occasionally go through episodes where I smell smoke that isn't there, and taste it a little bit. I don't like this. I'v assumed its neuropathic, but I'm not really sure. In any case, rinsing my nose with saline nasal spray can sometimes help clear things out.

I know you are asking about getting more smells rather than losing the one you have, but I'd still recommend saline nasal spray. It's very low-tech, and it might help shake things loose.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 11:10 AM on November 1 [1 favorite]