Parosmia, the sequel to COVID-19 that generates unpleasant odors and tastes

Recover from disease caused by COVID-19 It implies that some people take treatment for the sequelae left by the virus. Many have even taken months to feel the taste of food again.

Just as there are people who have completely lost the ability to perceive taste, there are those who are unable to recover their sense of smell in the short term; On the contrary, a sector of the world’s population is suffering from parosmiaa disorder that generates unpleasant odors and tastes even in highly aromatic substances.

“From one day to the next, everything tasted disgusting to me, everything smelled disgusting to me, but literally even the toothpaste, the shampoo, the deodorant, it was not just food”Ana Karen Weinberger told CNN.

After months of getting the coronavirus, the 24-year-old Mexican woman noticed a drastic change in tastes and smells. “I felt that from one day to the next I could no longer eat the same, everything smelled horrible to me”he recounted.

Living with unpleasant odors

For Dr. Pavel Loeza Magaña, a rehabilitation specialist at Hospital 20 de Noviembre in Mexico City, parosmia is an unpleasant alteration of odors.

“How frequent is it? Persisting anosmia, loss of smell, is more common than parosmiabut among people who already have a long evolution, it begins to change towards the parosmia”he pointed.

This alteration manages to affect young people and children, he says. A study published in May 2021 confirms what Loeza said: of 268 people who suffered parosmia for COVID-1970.1% were 30 years old or younger and in 73.5% of the cases they were women.

“I remember at that moment I panicked because I didn’t want everything to smell rotten for more than 6 months,” assured Lioska Pérez, a young Venezuelan woman who suffered from parosmia as a sequel to COVID-19.

“The first few days were a total nightmare, mainly because meat and chicken, which is what one usually consumes every day for protein, tasted very, very bad to me. I couldn’t eat, I really couldn’t eat because of how unpleasant the smell and taste was.”she pointed out in anguish.

Pérez indicated that the smells become so unpleasant that he loses his appetite, which is why he managed to lose weight.

“Pretend that a combination of stagnant water, with the smell of sewer and if you ever smelled smelled a dead animal, those three in one”, Weinberger explained, recalling the beginnings of the parosmia in her.

train the senses

Dr. Loeza pointed out that the parosmia causes nerve damage. “It’s not that you have something that alters your taste, smell, but the nerve that leads to it is damaged and then no, there hasn’t been a way, there haven’t been any medications that work,” he stressed.

His main recommendation is that as soon as you start to feel these unpleasant odors, you should see your doctor. As another option, he suggested aromatherapy treatment to retrain the sensory system, noting that, over time, the vast majority of sufferers parosmia they are recovering.

“Yes there are some who have not recovered, so as I tell you [pasa] more than a year and they still do not receive anything, but the majority, the vast majority, have recovered ”, Indian.

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