Editor’s note: Julie Walsh-Messinger is a clinical psychologist who studies the long-term effects of loss of smell. Her research focused on the loss of smell in people with severe and persistent mental illnesses, but since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, she has also studied the loss of smell caused by COVID-19. In this interview, she talks about how COVID-19 can affect your sense of smell, the effects of long-term smell loss and resources that can help.
How does COVID-19 impair smell?
COVID-19 is not the only virus that affects our ability to smell, but it is unique in the way it does it. For example, the common cold causes an inflammatory response in the nose, and this forms mucus that reduces your ability to smell, making it a dumb sense.
What is unique about COVID-19 is that it is not actually the nasal congestion or the nasal inflammatory response that is causing the loss of smell. The virus actually crosses the blood-brain barrier and enters the nervous system. It affects the nervous system and the neural connections necessary to detect the odor and interpret it.
How is this affecting people in the long run?
COVID-19 affects the nervous system and sometimes results in profound loss or a complete inability to smell. Some people regain the ability to smell in a few days or weeks, but for others it lasts much longer. Scientists are still unsure how many people lose the ability to smell completely, a condition known as anosmia.
This is really affecting people who don’t have a sense of smell, sometimes for months, or even more than almost a year at this point. This can have real consequences. For example, if you cannot smell smoke, you are relying on a smoke detector to warn you that there is a fire. It is also affecting the quality of life. Food no longer tastes good because the way you perceive taste is actually a combination of smell, taste and even touch. Some people are reporting weight loss due to loss of appetite and are simply not able to enjoy things they once found pleasurable.
What are some functions of our sense of smell that we don’t always think about?
Our sense of smell is very important for daily functions. There is research that suggests that our sense of smell can influence our attraction to certain people unconsciously. It is one of the ways in which we select partners that are less genetically similar to us, which can be an advantage for reproduction. It can also help us to detect fear in others, which is important for survival.
It is a sense that subtly directs many of the decisions we make daily, but of which we are unaware.
What are some resources for people suffering from anosmia?
There are resources available for people who experience loss of smell and taste, although some of them are not just related to COVID-19. The Global Consortium for Research Chemosensory is a group of scientists that met very quickly in the spring of 2020 to study the effects of loss of smell and taste. You can participate in our survey so that we can learn more about what is causing it and how to deal with it. There are links to many other resources on the site.
There are also people and organizations doing odor training. Smell training essentially consists of smelling the same odors continuously, so that you can retrain your body’s ability to detect and identify that odor. We are optimistic that smell will return to some people who have lost their sense of smell for several months. One of the groups involved in the training of smell is Abscent, a non-profit organization. It was not specifically configured for COVID-19 patients, but it was a pioneer in smell training.
This article was republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Julie Walsh-Messinger, University of Dayton.
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Julie Walsh-Messinger does not work for, consult, own shares or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article and has not disclosed relevant affiliations other than her academic appointment.