Bare Truth by Rose de la Cruz
Bare Truth

Should we expect less population after COVID-19?

Mar 31, 2021, 2:38 AM
Rose De La Cruz

Rose De La Cruz

Writer/Columnist

NUMEROUS studies from prestigious learning institutions abroad have revealed that COVID-19 has distorted and made repulsive the sense of smell among couples and eventually their taste for sex.

A story at the Insider said the loss of smell is common COVID-19 symptom but interferes with more than just cooking and eating. It also affects a couple’s sex life.

Parosmia, a condition that distorts your sense of smell, can make an otherwise harmless scent smell foul.The condition is reported in a large proportion of people with COVID-19.

It's leaving people repulsed by their partners and having sex less appealing — even when they are in the mood — or they become self-conscious about kissing their partner because they find the smell of their own breath to be foul.

"It is something affecting your relationship with yourself, with others, your social life, your intimate relationships," Dr. Duika Burges Watson, who leads the Altered Eating Research Network at Newcastle University in England, told the New York Times.

Parosmia can even make you think your own breath smells bad. Samantha Laliberte, 35, who has been married to her husband for 8 years,told the New York Times that she cannot tolerate her or her husband's scent.

"There is not a whole lot of intimacy right now.”

LaLiberte was infected with COVID-19 seven months prior to having parosmia, showing that symptoms can unexpectedly arise after a recovery.

Jessica Emmett, 36, said she had COVID-19 twice — the last time being in October. But she still has parosmia and says her breath smells. Emmett's warped sense of smell has affected her and her husband's relationship. "There is no really passionate, spontaneous kissing," she added.

Loss of smell

At first, anosmia, or loss of smell, was a mysterious COVID-19 symptom. But as more and more people got COVID-19 it became more common.

In a survey among 2,428 people who had anosmia, nearly half had parosmia (an odor distortion).

People who have lost their sense of smell have tried restoring it by eating burnt oranges with brown sugar. Otolaryngologists said it's not perfectly effective, but also said modern medicine doesn't have tried and true treatments either. "There are millions of things like that out there, particularly for conditions like COVID-related anosmia, where traditional medicine doesn't really have an answer," Dr. Richard Doty, director of the Smell and Taste Center at the University of Pennsylvania, told the New York Times that people with anosmia regain their sense of smell within months.

But you can also try scent training, which requires you to sniff a strong scent and think of your memory of that smell. The practice may rewire neural connections that are linked to smell.

A loss of taste and smell, known as anosmia is one of the key symptoms to look out for when it comes to Covid-19, In May 2020, the National Health Science added it to its official list of symptoms after patients with the virus said they had experienced the condition.

A high temperature and a new persistent cough are also key signs and if you have any of these symptoms then you need to get a test and isolate to prevent the virus spreading.

Now patients who have overcome the virus are complaining that while they can smell things - they are not as appealing as they used to be.

Samantha explained that she has stopped going to her mother's house as some of the smells are "intolerable."

It is not yet clear the amount of people who are suffering from the condition due to Covid-19 but a recent study found that around 47 per cent of people who contracted Covid-19 had an altered sense of taste or smell.

Rancid taste

Jessica Emmett, 36, said she has a "rancid" taste in her mouth all of the time and she can’t shake the feeling that she stinks. As a result she is struggling with intimacy.

Jessica, who is married to her husband for 20 years, added: "There is no really passionate, spontaneous kissing."

The paranosmia movement is gaining traction across the world and one Facebook group, started by a NHS nurse, now has over 16,000 members after it started in January.

One expert said that it's a "bigger issue than people give it credit for."

Dr. Duika Burges Watson, who leads the Altered Eating Research Network at Newcastle University said that the condition is something that can affect your relationship with others as well as the way you view yourself.

Dr Burges previously wrote a research paper discussing how those with long Covid had been impacted by conditions such as paranosmia.

The experts found that around 10 per cent of people who recovered from Covid-19 went on to experience persistent issues with their sense of taste and smell.

The paper concludes: "Our findings suggest altered taste and smell with Covid-19 lead to a severe disruption to daily living that impacts on psychological well-being and health.

"Moreover, this impact is broad, spanning flavor perception; desire and ability to eat and prepare food; weight gain, loss and nutritional sufficiency; emotional wellbeing; professional practice; intimacy; social bonding and erosion of people’s very sense of reality.

"Our findings should inform the training, assessment and treatment practices of health care professionals working with long Covid."

Harvard study

A medical/scientific study of Harvard Medical School found that “the novel coronavirus changes the sense of smell in patients not by directly infecting neurons but by affecting the function of supporting cells,” said senior study author Sandeep Robert Datta, associate professor of neurobiology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS.

This implies that in most cases, SARS-CoV-2 infection is unlikely to permanently damage olfactory neural circuits and lead to persistent anosmia, Datta added, a condition that is associated with a variety of mental and social health issues, particularly depression and anxiety.

“I think it’s good news, because once the infection clears, olfactory neurons don’t appear to need to be replaced or rebuilt from scratch,” he said. “But we need more data and a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms to confirm this conclusion.”

A majority of COVID-19 patients experience some level of anosmia, most often temporary. Analyses of electronic health records indicate that COVID-19 patients are 27 times more likely to have smell loss but are only around 2.2 to 2.6 times more likely to have fever, cough or respiratory difficulty, compared to patients without COVID-19.

Some studies have hinted that anosmia in COVID-19 differs from anosmia caused by other viral infections, including by other coronaviruses.

For example, COVID-19 patients typically recover their sense of smell over the course of weeks—much faster than the months it can take to recover from anosmia caused by a subset of viral infections known to directly damage olfactory sensory neurons. In addition, many viruses cause temporary loss of smell by triggering upper respiratory issues such as stuffy nose. Some COVID-19 patients, however, experience anosmia without any nasal obstruction.

Data suggest that COVID-19-related anosmia may arise from a temporary loss of function of supporting cells in the olfactory epithelium, which indirectly causes changes to olfactory sensory neurons, the authors said.

“We don’t fully understand what those changes are yet, however,” Datta said.

“Sustentacular cells have largely been ignored, and it looks like we need to pay attention to them, similar to how we have a growing appreciation of the critical role that glial cells play in the brain.”

How quickly do the impaired senses return

For most people, smell, taste and chemesthesis recover within weeks. In a study published last July8, 72 percent of people with COVID-19 who had olfactory dysfunction reported that they recovered their sense of smell after a month, as did 84 percent of people with taste dysfunction. Claire Hopkins, an ear, nose and throat consultant at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital in London, and her colleagues similarly observed9 a speedy return of the senses: they followed 202 patients for a month, and found that 49percent reported complete recovery over that time, and a further 41percent reported an improvement.

Although the condition is not as well studied as the loss of other senses such as vision and hearing, researchers know that the consequences can be severe.

One effect is that it leaves people vulnerable to dangers such as food poisoning and fire. For instance, people with anosmia are less able to detect spoilt foods and smoke. A 2014 study found that people with anosmia were more than twice as likely to experience a hazardous event, such as eating spoilt food, as people without smell loss,

Available drugs are even more limited, says Hopkins. But for people in the early stages of COVID-19 infection, when smell loss might be largely due to inflammation of nose cells, steroids might be helpful, according to a preliminary trial carried out by Hopkins’s team.


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