Mental fog, consequence of covid-19 according to study 1:56
(CNN Spanish) --
"From one day to the next, everything tasted disgusting to me, everything smelled disgusting to me, but literally even toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant, it wasn't just food," Ana Karen Weinberger told CNN.
Three months after contracting covid-19, Weinberger noticed that the tastes and smells had changed, "I felt that from one day to the next I could no longer eat the same, everything smelled horrible to me."
The 24-year-old Mexican looked for information on the internet and, after reading an experience similar to hers, managed to name her symptoms: parosmia, a disorder that is part of the long covid.
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According to Dr. Pavel Loeza Magaña, a rehabilitation physician at Hospital 20 de Noviembre in Mexico City, parosmia is an altered and normally unpleasant perception of odors.
“How frequent is it?
Anosmia — loss of smell — persists more often than parosmia, but among people who are already long-standing, it starts to shift toward parosmia,” he said in an interview with CNN.
Loeza Magaña indicated that the answer to why sensory perception continues to be altered when the virus is no longer in the body lies within the things that we still do not know about SARS-CoV-2.
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Who does it affect?
According to the rehabilitation doctor, parosmia has been linked more to young people and children, and a study published in May 2021 found that of 268 people who suffered from covid-19 parosmia, 70.1% were 30 years old or younger and in 73.5% of the cases they were women.
However, there are currently few studies related to parosmia and covid-19.
Although the perception of unpleasant odors and tastes is a generalized symptom of parosmia, the intensity, duration and the odors and foods that trigger it usually vary from person to person.
Like Weinberger, Lioska Pérez, an 18-year-old Venezuelan, said that at first she did not understand what was happening to her, since she knew nothing about parosmia.
"I remember at that moment I panicked because I didn't want everything to smell rotten for more than 6 months," she said in an interview with CNN.
Both Pérez and Weinberger had a mild covid-19 infection, both completely lost their sense of smell and said they felt lonely and desperate not knowing what was happening to them.
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living with parosmia
Pérez remembers the first days of parosmia as a nightmare.
“I remember that 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," he told CNN.
“After having lived with parosmia for a month, my memories regarding tastes and smells, other things have been forgotten,” said Pérez, who feels that since he started with parosmia until now, he has been “discovering new flavors” .
Today, the Venezuelan describes her experience as a nuisance.
"Mainly because one of the main things of the human being is to eat, consume, and in the first weeks I felt that I could not do it."
The Venezuelan said that sometimes the smells are usually so unpleasant that she loses her appetite, which is why she has lost weight.
On Twitter, Pérez shared his experience, as well as a list of foods and products that are unpleasant for him because of parosmia.
Here are some examples of things that smell/taste bad to me:
Citrus juices, Meat, Chicken, Rice, Bread, Stewed vegetables, Dark soft drinks (Pepsi, coke), Chocolate, Pepito.
Disinfectants, Detergent, Perfumes, body creams, Soap, Toothpaste, among many more
– liiooskaa🤍 (@LioskaPerez) January 18, 2022
For his part, Weinberger recalls that at first the odors were so unpleasant that they made him want to vomit.
He described these smells and tastes as something totally new, "pretend it's a combination of stagnant water, with the smell of sewage and if you've ever smelled a dead animal, those three in one."
However, Weinberger, who has suffered from parosmia for almost a year, said that little by little he has been unlocking flavors and that, although to date there are things that still smell bad to him, he has recovered 90% or 85% of the smells.
An online community
People on TikTok share their personal story about parosmia, as does Instagram user @gabyzurian.
"When it hit me, imagine my desperation, that almost every night I cried with frustration because it was like I don't even know what I have, I don't know when it's going to take away from me and I don't even know if it's going to take away from me," says Weinberger.
However, the Mexican found a support and information group where she least expected it: TikTok.
"It was literally a support group for people who were just like having this, who didn't know what was happening, who didn't know what it was and literally like 'Hello, I'm Ana, I've been with parosmia for two weeks, I'm very happy,'" she told CNN.
It was through TikTok that Weinberger discovered a support group for people with parosmia from South America.
"What was very cool is, one, that you no longer felt alone. That was the most important thing and what I was most grateful for, that they understood you. And two, apart from that, we give each other tips," Weinberger said. In this community, people share what foods they find more or less unpleasant, the progress of their parosmia and even memes to "laugh at the tragedy".
Like Weinberger, Pérez also searched for more information about parosmia on social media, specifically Twitter, and said she was glad to realize she wasn't the only one.
“It gave me hope,” Pérez said.
With more than 6.7 million followers on TikTok, a video by Natalia Cano about her experience living with parosmia is one of the most viewed on the platform with more than 8 million views.
In the video, Cano shares information and resources to help those who are going through the same thing.
train the senses
Leah Holzel, 60, who lost her sense of smell between 2016 and 2019, is now helping people who have lost their sense of smell due to covid-19.
(Photo by Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)
Loeza Magaña explained to CNN that parosmia causes nerve damage, which is why some classic therapies to recover the perception of aroma have not worked because "it is not that you have something that alters the taste, the smell, but rather that the nerve that drives is damaged and then no, there has been no way, there have been no medications that result".
The initial recommendation for people suffering from parosmia is to go to a general practitioner or family doctor to get the right help, as some of the online recommendations could be harmful to health.
The rehabilitation specialist also said that people can turn to aromatherapy, as this treatment can work to retrain the sensory system and indicated that over time, the vast majority of people who suffer from parosmia recover.
"Yes, there are some who have not recovered, so as I say [it goes by] more than a year and they continue without receiving anything, but the majority, the great majority, have recovered," he indicated.
Loeza Magaña said that unlike other symptoms of long covid, such as fatigue, muscle pain or memory loss, sensory alterations are the ones that take the longest to recover.
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