I TRAINED MY NOSE TO SMELL AGAIN
ONE patient who credits smell training for bringing his senses back to life is 29-year-old
David Soffer. He caught Covid in April 2020 and began to notice an absence of smell and taste almost instantly.
‘I’m a big coffee snob so I always take a nice sniff when I grind my beans in the morning,’ he says. ‘And one morning, suddenly, there was nothing.’
Six months went by, with no improvement. ‘You don’t realise how much you take it for granted until you lose it,’ he says. ‘It was miserable.’
While researching the problem online, David, a marketing executive from Hampstead, North London, stumbled across the anosmia charity AbScent, which recommend smell training. He bought a kit from its website, which included four strong-smelling essential oils including eucalyptus, coffee and different floral notes.
Within two months of smelling them for a few minutes twice a day, he noticed a difference.
‘At first things smelt odd. The eucalyptus was like sniffing nappies. But slowly I started to pick up smells I recognised.’
Today, David says his sense of smell and taste is ‘95 per cent back to normal’. He adds: ‘Simple flavours like bananas I still find take a while for me to taste. But I can enjoy pretty much all the foods I love again.’