Can't taste, can't smell: Eleven months on, Flic's COVID-19 symptoms continue to linger

Research suggests millions of people worldwide are experiencing long-term loss of smell and taste after having COVID-19.

Flic Manning says the change in her taste and smell since she contracted COVID-19 in January has had a surprising impact on her emotions and mental health. Source: Supplied

KEY POINTS

• Eleven months after having COVID-19, Flic Manning still has not recovered her sense of taste and smell.
• One of the first big signs was not being able to smell the ocean as a beachside resident.
• Treatment options exist for those who do not regain their sense of smell and taste within four weeks.

Flic Manning lives by the coast in Melbourne and is used to being able to smell the ocean from her home.

But after the 38-year-old author contracted COVID-19 in January, she noticed she could no longer smell the sea and realised just how much the virus was affecting her senses.

Eleven months on, Ms Manning is looking forward to Christmas with family members visiting from interstate and hopes she will be able to enjoy the familiar taste of the roast meat and veggies that will be served up.

The 38-year-old is one of the millions of people worldwide experiencing long-term smell and taste deficiencies post-COVID.

A study published in international research journal BMJ found there could be at least 15 million cases of long-term smell problems, and at least 12 million cases of long-lasting taste problems due to COVID-19 infections. The research was based on the number of COVID-19 cases recorded so far.

Lingering COVID-19 symptoms

Ms Manning, who also lives with a number of autoimmune conditions, said while she was lucky not to have been hospitalised when she had COVID-19, her experience of the virus had been "quite nasty".

The loss of taste and smell were initially accompanied by fever, "crushing" headaches, a cough, shortness of breath, body pain, vertigo, nausea and eight weeks of insomnia.

Ms Manning’s GP found COVID-19 had caused long-term damage to her lungs and diagnosed her with long COVID.

She said the ongoing change to her senses had caused her to feel frustration and dips in her mood.

Eleven months after contracting COVID-19, Flic Manning is still living with symptoms from the virus. Source: Supplied

Ms Manning said her ability to taste and smell differed from day to day, and worsened when her asthma flared up. And the foods that she was used to eating no longer tasted quite the same, and she no longer trusted her sense of smell.

She said fruit was one of the things that had the most obvious change in flavour.

"My brain definitely processes them a little bit differently now, so it's almost like I either get an extreme acidic taste and I can't pick up on the sweetness at all, or it's so sugary that it's almost like as if the fruit's turned bad," Ms Manning said.

"I'm getting really off-putting smells, a smell like blood, like that metallic kind of smell, as if food is off. I'm pretty sure I've thrown out a significant bit of meat, because I'm not 100 per cent sure about it."

"When you lose your smell and your taste alters, it also alters the way that your brain processes a lot of things in terms of emotion and memory, a lot of that stuff is all tied together.

"It does make my mental health condition a little bit harder to deal with because I am a little bit more unclear of where I'm at emotionally.

"It sort of places a bit of a mental strain in the process of recovery, and that can be quite confusing," Ms Manning said.

"We all initially thought well, your taste and smell goes away completely for maybe a couple of weeks and then it just bounces back, but for a lot of people the reality is that it seems to be permanently altering their taste and smell in a different way."

The science of smell and taste

Professor Richard Harvey is a doctor with a specialty in dealing with nasal and sinus issues - what is called a rhinologist.

He said the majority of people who lose their sense of smell or taste would gain them back within four weeks of getting the virus.

He said the loss of smell and taste were symptoms associated with viruses as a whole - and that the prevalence of long-term loss after COVID-19 was actually lower than in patients who have had other viruses.

Professor Harvey said that the body's inflammatory response to the virus likely produced a temporary loss of neuronal function during a COVID-19 infection.

He said longer-term loss of smell arises from neuronal cell damage or cell death.

The good news for those suffering after a longer period is there is still a chance their senses may be restored - at least partially.

"There is a plasticity that exists to the central nervous system," Professor Harvey said.

"The one treatment that's been associated with making that better is a thing called smell retraining therapy.”

Such therapy involves a process of smelling certain aromatic oils on a regular basis.

"Similar to the way that some people get rehabilitation to help them walk again after a stroke or use their arms," Professor Harvey said.

He said such therapies especially benefited those in a similar situation to Ms Manning, whose taste and smell had not been lost altogether, but distorted.

"Because this means that these sorts of neural networks are still working," he said.

While anti-inflammatory steroids and omega-3 can be used in the early stages of a COVID-19 infection to address the inflammation that causes the loss of the olfactory senses, Professor Harvey said folic acid - which can support neuro-regeneration - may be helpful.

He said despite zinc being touted by some as useful in this area, there was little evidence to support its effectiveness.