About 14 years ago, Chrissi Kelly lost her sense of smell. He had traveled to the Czech Republic to visit his family and contracted a virus. Months later, when she still couldn’t smell, she visited doctors, including her family doctor and an ear, nose and throat specialist, trying to find answers.
She was diagnosed with anosmia (loss of smell) and, like many patients with her condition, was told she would have to learn to live with it. But for her the loss was catastrophic. “After about six months of total loss, I was climbing the walls and didn’t feel like myself anymore,” she says.
The researchers estimate that Up to 22 percent of the population lives with smell problems.such as hyposmia (partial loss of smell) or anosmia (complete loss of smell). And many others live with smell disorders such as phantosmia, in which a person perceives phantom odors, or parosmia, in which typically pleasant smells, such as coffee or shampoo, begin to register as very unpleasant (think feces or vomit). However, doctors have misunderstood the diseases, underdiagnosed them, and often downplayed them.
The pandemic changed that. Covid brought unprecedented attention (and research interest) to sense of smell. there has been 780 million reported cases of Covid-19 since December 2019 (and many more unreported), according to the World Health Organization, and loss of smell is a well-known symptom. In a 2023 survey published in the journal Laryngoscope60 percent of people with Covid experienced loss of smell, most often temporarily, but some long-term.
Since Covid caused millions of noses to malfunction around the world at around the same time, the virus prompted a new appreciation and research into this critical sense. As scientists learn more about the way the sense of smell works, evidence is mounting that smell is deeply linked not only to quality of life but also to brain health.
