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Anosmia
I am in a Facebook group with 45 000 people suffering with anosmia and parosmia. Often post mild flu symptoms, we lost our sense of smell; with it our taste diminished or worse some smell and taste hellish odours of rotten meat, sewer, feces , burned rubber, cigarette smoke, etc. The most common factor seems to be inability to eat meat, onion, garlic and coffee and great difficulty with everything else. There is a mix of vaxxed and unvaxxed amongst us.
Many have tried zinc, ascorbic acid, B complex vitamins, vagus nerve stimulation, vanilla, lion’s mane mushroom extract (Amyloban) essential oils, ganglion block with minimal or no success.
I myself have been left with anosmia post very mild flu last September and am just about loosing my hope.
If anyone here has any ideas, suggestions or advice - please let me know. Life without smell and sooo … odourless.
Beata I’m so sorry to hear about your issues. I can’t be of much help because I’ve only heard about zinc and B12 and it sounds like you’ve tried those. So it was flu rather than covid that caused this issue?
@jaj, Jenny, thank you. I never tested when I had the symptoms of flu: headache, body aches, productive cough for about a week and fatigue that lasted about a month. In the past I had much more severe cases of flu but always recovered fully. This time my nose is deaf! 🙁
I know you've questioned the reality of Covid, but that sure sounds like Covid. I share a skepticism with you about the Covid vaccines and all the media and government messaging behind this pandemic, but I can assure you that SARS-COV-2 is a real virus that causes real illness just like the influenza virus.
Unfortunately, I don't have any great suggestions for your anosmia, aside from my now hackneyed advice to stop eating plant foods... I hope something changes for the better!
@wavygravygadzooks I agree with your opinions on covid. I have lots of skepticism about it all, but I do think it’s a real infectious virus causing nasty illness. I’ve had it twice. Both times I caught it from an ill person. Obviously vulnerability to catching the virus depends on the immune system of the person. The first time I caught it (first strain, Jan 2020) I was very stressed (anniversary of my Mum’s death). Other friends in the group who caught it were similarly under stress, whereas others didn’t. I was very ill. The second time (Dec 2021) I had greater exposure to virus (my husband had it this time) but I was much less ill, suggesting some immunity or a weaker strain, or both. So I think germ theory and terrain theory come into play for covid.
I do believe Anthony Mawson’s theory for covid, that it causes a large retinoid dump from the liver. I’ve also read that covid can reactivate EBV which can apparently (from Twitter!?!) increase formation of retinoic acid. I’ve had a return of several vA toxicity symptoms since having covid at Christmas and therefore I do believe that something vA related is going on. I also think the upregulated kynurenine pathway (tryptophan to NAD, de novo NAD) theory of long covid makes a lot of sense. A huge splurge of retnyl esters exiting liver could put pressure on ALDH enzyme (NAD cofactor) and trigger the kynurenine pathway imo, that’s just my theory. Anyway, I do think that having covid has left me with increased levels of inflammation in the body. I have no idea if inflammation and anosmia are connected.
It sounds really horrible @beata-2. I do think that covid is unusually nasty and has some weird long term effects that need to be understood. I will keep my eye out for any information from the long covid work I’ve looked at and share here if I think it might be useful. I’m sure it can be helped 🤞
@wavygravygadzooks, thanks. I have been a crazy person for 30 years in that I tried and tested many nutritional protocols. It became my hobby to follow programs that were meant to fix all ills. Most of them were pretty enjoyable but didn’t shift anything in my health. (I was trying them mostly for my thyroid issues). Carnivore diet destroyed me. Due to severe constipation while eating meat only my bowels are irreparably damaged due to a degree of prolapse. I still have traces of xanthelasma that is visible and unsightly. My liver enzymes were all in a mess, my cholesterol the highest that my doctor ever saw. My ferritin insanely high and still remain too high to this day even though I started the carnivore at a normal healthy level.
I know that you will say it is all because I did the carnivore wrong. It may be but with these sort of memories and effects - thinking about the carnivore makes me ill.
Adding beans and rice and even bread lately fixed most of the issues acquired on carnivore. My digestion has never in my life been better and this is saying something as I had always struggled with poor digestion. My elimination is amazing and regular (all things considered). So, as attractive as eating meat only appears, I will not do it.
The bleeding anosmia is an enigma as no one really knows the mechanism. There are some ongoing research studiestrying various drugs (ivermectin, steroids) but so far no revelation.
As far as covid, I am strongly influenced by Tom Cowan, Andrew Kaufman, Stephan Lanka, etc. But I accept that they too might be wrong. I know that nothing is what it seems and when science and big money are in cahoots, nothing good comes out of it.
@jaj, Jenny I have no strong arguments for or against “covid et al”. A lot of what we think we know is based on our gut feelings and puzzles we put together that to us make sense. For me the blind people and the elephant picture comes to mind…If we only could see the whole picture! But that seems to be covered in layers of lies and manipulation by those who are supposedly protecting us.
15 years ago I had a patient who was getting treatments for anosmia he acquired while travelling to India. So, this is not a new condition but it does seem to be much more prevalent of late. Covid or EMFs or cosmic rays or…something else - who knows?!
Quietly, I am asking what I need to know / do in order to help myself because every calamity carries an opportunity to new learning and change. The thing is, I run out of ideas. ☹️
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@jaj, forgot to mention…while I was coughing and sneezing and feeling intensely weak, my partner didn’t even get a sniffle! So right here the narrative of extremely contagious covid didn’t check for us.
I don’t deny that there is something that gravely affects people. My first question in my practice has always been: “what changed right before you got sick”. When we find the answer to this question on a global scale, we will know everything.
I fully believe in terrain theory. It was so apparent in my friendship group as to who caught covid. I also believe in germ theory. I’m also totally open to other theories. There is much to understand.
My experience of covid suggests it’s an infectious virus that infects people if their immune system can’t fight it off. Germ AND terrain theories. I don’t see them as mutually exclusive. Many other factors could be involved in why their immune system is weaker.