loss of taste and smell of flavour and aroma

[Chip (OP)]

very interesting - I am in that age bracket and average 1.5 litres of milk a day.

I will cut out the dairy in the interim.

thanks HEAPS for those facts ... let me explore your advice, Wildcat.

[Reezy]

Awww damn. I'm sorry @chipper

I didn't even realize I was unknowingly taunting you! My bad! Hope it gets worked out soon. Yall don't have the "free" healthcare over there?

[Chip (OP)]

we have both private and free, public healthcare here in Aus.

[Normus42]

You getting anything back chip? I feel for ya I really do..

The same thing has been happening to me bad, since November 2014 so over a year. I first noticed after getting really sick. After getting better I remember going out to dinner at a steak house. I knew something was wrong when I walked in and couldn't smell a damn thing (a place I could smell from the parking lot before), the steak had zero taste and had to go on memory and texture to know what I was eating.

It got worse before getting any better over the last year.  The weird phantom smells drove me crazy at first, at one point everything smelling like burnt rubber. But mostly just phantom chemcally type smells that didnt exist. It really has driven me crazy but seems to have let up a bit recently. It has not come back but my taste and smell has gotten more natural if you will. still all the while being very dulled down.

I have seen a doctor since but he told me if not better soon to come back and he would recommend me to a ENT doc. Being the pro procrastinator I am I have not been back, although I do plan on it sooner than later. I dearly miss my keen sense of smell and taste for good food and drink.

[Opi-ette]

To @chipper and all the others afflicted, I feel so bad for you all. I'm hoping you get your senses back like some others have. A trip to the doc never hurts. (Well sometimes it does when they schedule a test for you and it turns out to be an EMG test and you feel like you are in the electric chair and the doc never gave a heads up that its excruciating) sorry for the derail.

Chipper my eyes are completely shot too. I have to have a specialized test once a year because of one of the medications I'm on can cause irrverersible blindness and unless I have the test, he won't refill my meds.
My eyes are so bad that when I asked the eye doc about contacts, he said even if I wore contacts, I'd still have to wear glasses :p Oh, so my point is, the worse my eyes got the sharper everything else got. Strange.

So have you gone to the doc yet? Have you regained anything? I saw you mention sense of touch. Can that be compromised by drugs too? Because the tip of my index and tip of my thumb has been numb for a few months. Just wondering if you know anything about that?

I have so much sympathy for you, sense of smell and taste ugh. I really hope if you stop (not sure if you are still using) that it returns full on.

[Chip (OP)]

@Normus42 and @Opi-ette , oh yeah, i have an odd story about this ... SOME of my sense of taste and smell returned after a dirty hit (or cotten fever, as you know it) and after the massive sweat that comes along with it ! weird, right ?

If i walk into a room and i can't smell a thing BUT those around me can (they comment by saying "smell that!") but at least i can taste a little bit.

it doesn't sound like a big deal but you guys who have experienced this know just how important taste buds and a keen sense of smell can be ... even more important than sexual desire etc.

I went to get some scans of my brain and sinuses - the reports said that my brain shrinkage was normal for a person my age (brain shrinkage?, wtf ? *groans*) and that it was basically normal ... so i am still confused. This doesn't exclude the olfactory nerve though.

Those with poor vision like me rely on other senses (touch is fine) and when they crap out too then you do get upset.

At least i am not alone. Let's keep each other posted in this thread, in case one of you guys finds an improvement.