Key Takeaways
- Anosmia, hyposmia, parosmia, and phantosmia are four different smell problems, from total loss to distorted or phantom odors.
- The recovery figures here are about smell loss after COVID. Sinus disease, head injury, medications, and neurological disease can behave very differently.
- A 2022 BMJ analysis of 3,699 COVID patients put the median recovery time at about 15 days. It estimated that 5.6 percent could develop persistent self-reported smell loss.
- Smell training uses four odors twice a day for months. The evidence is mixed, but clinical reviews still recommend considering it.
In 2020, I got COVID and lost my sense of smell. For about ten days, I couldn't smell anything. I missed smelling coffee in the morning, the flavor of spices in my food, and trying new foods. My collection was very small then, and I couldn't smell my favorite at the time, Bleu de Chanel.
It came back gradually, over a few months. At first everything smelled like cardboard. Then notes returned one at a time, and musk was the last. Perfumes smelled different the whole way through.
I held off buying anything. I even thought I should sell my small collection.
I was always interested in smells like the inside of a new shoe, a new car, fruits, veggies, a leather belt. But it was only after 2020 that I started building a collection.
I'm not a doctor. I'm a collector who went looking for answers, and a lot of research has come out since 2020 on how long it lasts and what helps.
Losing your sense of smell can mean four different things. Anosmia is a complete loss of smell. Hyposmia is the reduced ability to detect odors. Parosmia distorts a familiar smell, so something pleasant can smell foul. Phantosmia is smelling something that is not there.
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