Most of the time, a person’s senses of taste and smell will come back on their own soon after recovering from a COVID infection. When they don’t, there’s no guaranteed way to treat this condition. Here’s what we know so far.
Medical Treatments and Therapies
Research is still in the early stages, but the following therapies are being investigated:
- Medications: These include steroid nasal drops, sprays, and large-volume irrigation.
- Stellate ganglion block: In this procedure, anesthesia is injected into nerves in the neck.
- Neuromodulation: This treatment uses either magnetic pulses or electrical currents to stimulate specific nerves or areas of the brain.
- Platelet-rich plasma: In this treatment, a concentrated solution of your own blood cells is injected around the olfactory nerves.
There is not enough evidence yet to show how effective these treatments are or who might benefit.
Olfactory Training
While taste and smell are two distinct senses, they work together to give flavor to what you eat and drink. So, restoring your sense of taste may start with your nose.
Anthony Del Signore, MD, director of rhinology and skull base surgery at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in New York City, has seen promising results in patients using olfactory training, or “smell therapy.”
“We’ve been using essential oils, basically as smelling rehab,” Dr. Del Signore says. “We typically use lemon, cloves, and around three or four different oils.” Rose and eucalyptus are common scents to try. “We tell patients to breathe it in and out and try to remember what it smelled like. It can help to get neural pathways reestablished. It does take a little bit of time, around three to six months, but we’ve seen a good response with that,” he says.
Even though smell therapy has not been rigorously studied in COVID-19 patients, Del Signore says, “We recommend patients at least try it. It’s not going to hurt anything.”
- Choose four distinct scents.
- Sniff each scent gently for about 20 seconds, concentrating on what you’re trying to smell.
- Repeat this process twice a day.
- Continue for at least 12 weeks or until you notice improvement.
Home Remedies
While you can find all kinds of purported home remedies on social media — like eating foods with a particularly strong flavor — nothing has been found to be as effective as olfactory training, says Dr. Dalton. “Many people do begin to enjoy spicy food because that sensation is often preserved when smell or taste is lost. So, there’s no harm in [eating] spicy food, but there have been no randomized controlled trials to show that it’s effective.”
