The "My Sense Of Smell Is In Need Of A Few Cookies" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Questioning my wife as to why I have lost some of my sense of smell.  She handed me the newspaper and said "I just happened to be reading a story about it in the morning paper.  May be good if you read it also!"  Story was the headline in the Dr. Mike Roizen - Medical Advice column.  He starts by telling all his readers that the act of smelling something, actually anything, is remarkably like the act of thinking which was discussed by Lewis Thomas who was a physician, poet and author of "Lives of the Cell."  Smells evoke layers of sensations, stimulate memory and lead to pleasure or repugnance.  If one loses his or her sense of smell, everything becomes less engaging.  The slight loss of smell in my case has not led in that direction yet...but, could perhaps sometime in the future lead in that direction.  Dr. Thomas goes on to say that without a sense of smell, everything from food and flowers to air, water, even other people, becomes far less engaging and could cause distortions in odor and taste and make what at one time was pleasurable become distasteful or repulsive.  As I continued to read he said that there are close to 1.6 million people in the world who may be having chronic difficulty detecting smells because of COVID-19.  Now...how did he come up with that number?  He also said that there are about 13.3 million adults, age 40 and older, just in the U.S. who have a non-COVID-19 related loss of ability to smell.  Seems it is caused by an olfactory dysfunction which can happen if you had head trauma, diabetes and some cancers, zinc deficiency, nasal polyps, viral infections or allergies.  If you have a loss of smell and don't treat it with medications or surgery it can lead to depression and possibly weight loss and nutritional deficiencies. So, if you notice a loss of smell or aren't hungry at all, it's probably best that you visit your doctor who can help you with olfactory training for perhaps a few months which will involve sniffing a set of odors for 20 seconds each, at least twice a day.  These odors could be things such as lemons, roses, cloves, eucalyptus and coffee.  This can set up new neutral pathways and retrain your brain!  Exactly what I am going to try if I lose any more weight or can't smell Christmas cookies in the near future has yet to be determined.  Perhaps trying to eat twice my allowance of Christmas cookies will help!  Hey, you never know if it can help until you try it...and I'm willing to try it!  I'll let you know if I'm feeling better after going through my extra amount of snickerdoodle cookies, sugar cookies with a raisin on top and chocolate chip cookies.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.