How to recover my taste and smell

Most people who had Covid-19 experienced loss of taste and smell. Some got it back after recovering but there are a few people who are still struggling with these two senses. In fact, some people report that their sense of taste and smell hasn’t returned to normal even after months of having recovered from the disease.

The good news is that you can take the help of some home remedies to get your smell and taste back on track!

Here are six home remedies to ensure that your sense of taste and smell return to normal after Covid-19

1. Castor oil

“Put one drop of warm castor oil in each nostril. It is necessary to do it twice a day for the best results. This practice is beneficial in eliminating inflammation,” says Dr Ankita Gupta, Ayurvedic expert from Birla Ayurveda.

2. Garlic

Add 2 to 3 chopped garlic pods to a cup of water. Boil the ingredients in a saucepan. Once the mixture cools down, strain it completely and drink it. The anti-inflammatory properties of garlic compounds can help treat a stuffy nose.

3. Lemon

Add lemon and honey to a glass of water. You can drink this mixture immediately. This beverage has a strong citrusy smell. The properties of these two ingredients can help with the return of taste and smell.

4. Ginger

“Take a piece of peeled ginger and chew it slowly. Start chewing the ginger piece at regular intervals. If you can’t chew the ginger piece directly, consume ginger tea. Do this every day. The aroma of ginger is strong and can enhance your sense of smell and taste,” recommends Dr Gupta.

5. Peppermint

Take ten peppermint leaves and add them to a cup of water. Boil the ingredients in a saucepan. Strain the solution once it cools down and add some honey to it. Drink it immediately. The main constituent of peppermint leaves is menthol. It is anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial in nature which can alter your sense of smell and taste.

6. Drink enough water

Drinking plenty of water helps in clearing unwanted cough. Water keeps the body hydrated. This can help avoid problems of smell and taste.

“With the help of hot steam, nasal congestion and nose blockage will be cured. That will give your nose an open gate to breathe,” suggests Dr Gupta.

The last words

“You can choose any of these home remedies to get your taste and smell back, but make sure you practice it every day. The best time to put these home remedies to practise is in the morning,” suggests Dr Gupta. 

Naturally, regaining the sense of smell and taste is essential. While there is no demonstrated solution to do so after recovering from Coronavirus, you can always rely on diet changes and home remedies which may assist you to recuperate quicker.

Leo Newhouse, LICSW, is a Senior Social Worker in Neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). In this capacity, he works with patients and families coping with life-limiting illness, aging, and loss. In his spare … See Full Bio

We’re told that SARS-CoV-2, like its cousin the common cold virus, will be with us for a long time (forever?) How odd that it remains the “new” coronavirus, two years on.

And that means that, for certain persons, its symptoms will occur for a long time, too. For the cook, the most telling symptom is the way COVID-19 sometimes wipes out a person’s sense of taste or smell, sometimes both.

This came home to me because, over the past two years, both my son, Colin, and one of his closest friends, Dan Murray, a Denver small business owner, both suffered total losses to their senses of smell and taste. In both cases, they also attempted to “retrain” those senses by using strongly-flavored and -scented food.

“After about two weeks,” said Murray, “I got back around 25 percent. In probably six weeks, 80 percent. At first, all I could feel on my tongue was texture—no taste. It was like wearing a surgical glove on my tongue.”

Read other great articles and recipes by Bill St. John.

“I did two things,” said Murray. “I ate (the candy) Hot Tamales and, every morning for weeks, I went to an organic juice shop near work and got a shot of their ginger-apple cider vinegar juice. It was daily training.” He used it as a test, he said, “until I made a ‘bitter beer face,’ a kind of ‘squinty tart face.’”

For his part, Colin, who quarantined in a hotel room in Philadelphia for more than a week, just happened to purchase “a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter at a nearby CVS,” he said. “I stuck my nose in the jar all the time to see if I could smell something. In time, it got faint, like someone eating peanuts 10 rows behind you at a ballgame.”

Colin’s taste wasn’t merely gone “for a good ten days”; it also was skewed when it crawled back. “A Miller Lite at the airport tasted really bad,” he said, “acrid, just bitterness and alcohol; no malt, no floral notes. It wasn’t beer.”

Is it possible to ‘retrain’ your nose and get back your sense of taste and smell after COVID-19?

Dr. Jennifer Reavis Decker at the UCHealth Ear, Nose and Throat Clinic, has helped her patients, some of whom are children, to retrain their sense of smell by using strongly-scented essential oils (especially the four of citrus, floral, fruit and spice). It is called “olfactory retraining.”

“The sense of smell is closely linked to memory,” she says, “especially pleasant memories.” That’s why using peanut butter or peppermint candy with children makes more sense than something like the odor of clove or jasmine, of which they typically have little memory or, surely, pleasant ones.

Decker also reminds that many smells are perceived via “the rear nasal pharynx, after a swallow” when the tongue “lifts” air into that passage and onto the olfactory globe where we smell smells. So, attend to the memories that that may evoke for you if you retrain your sense of smell (and the sense of taste that goes with it) after losing it.

Decker also points out two important considerations: first, that “your best shot at improving your sense of smell is during the first 6 weeks after losing it,” and that, second, “the best way to avoid losing your sense of smell (to COVID-19) is to get vaccinated.”

The cookie recipe here is peanut buttery but not overly sweet, so not to distract the palate from tasting sweetness over the nut butter’s aroma. The ginger-based “shot” is powerfully aromatic and flavorful. When swallowing, be sure to push some air up through the rear nasal cavity so that you get a strong smell of it, too.

Healthy Peanut Butter Cookies

From thefirstyearblog.com. Makes 8-12 depending on size. Although the recipe states that “the cookies won’t spread much,” they do.

Ingredients

1 cup quick-cooking oats

3/4 cup peanut butter

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup honey

1 egg

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place the oats in a blender or food processor and pulverize for 30 seconds to make oat flour. In a large mixing bowl, combine the oat flour, peanut butter, baking soda, salt, vanilla, honey and egg. Use a hand mixer (or heavy wooden spoon) to combine; the mixture will be thick.

Scoop dough balls of about 1 1/2 tablespoons in volume and place on a silicone- or parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Press the dough balls down using the palm of your hand. Create a crisscross pattern on the top of each cookie by pressing a fork into the dough. If the fork sticks to the dough, wipe the fork on a paper towel sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. Because the cookies won’t spread much, you can place them closer together and probably fit all the dough on one baking sheet.

Place the baking sheet in the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes. The cookies will be soft and tender when they come out of the oven; allow them to cool and firm up on the baking sheet for 10 minutes before moving them to a cooling rack.

Store the cookies in an airtight container on the counter for up to 3 days. These cookies can also be frozen. Wrap them in bundles of 3-4 cookies in plastic wrap then place inside a zippered plastic bag and place in the freezer.

Ginger-Lemon-Apple Cider Vinegar Shots

A very healthy tonic, but not for the faint of heart. Makes about 12 ounces (1 1/2 cups).

Ingredients

8 ounces fresh ginger root

1 large lemon, zested and juiced

2/3 cup apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon honey

1/8 teaspoon fine sea or kosher salt

Directions

Peel the ginger: Using a dull-edged spoon or knife, scrape and rub away the skin on the ginger, getting into the nooks and crannies as best you can. Chop the ginger into 10-12 pieces and pulse, then pulverize, them in a food processor, scraping down the bowl from time to time, until the ginger is nearly a paste.

Add the zest and juice from the lemon, the vinegar, honey and salt and process until the mixture is a thick slurry. Spoon the amount you desire into a small glass and drink down in one “shot.” Stores in the refrigerator for up to 10 days.

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