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Your son eat worse following passing the Covid-19? It might be parosmia, an alteration of smell by which the patient perceives a normal smell as unpleasant or repugnant. In this way, the smell of a lemon can be perceived as that of rotten cabbage or chocolate can smell like gasoline. And kids, in particular, can find it hard to eat foods they once loved, say smell experts at the
University of East Anglia (UEA) and Fifth Sense, the charity for people affected by taste and smell disorders.
Fifth Sense and leading odor expert Professor Carl Philpott of the UEA Norwich Medical School have launched a guide to help parents and healthcare professionals better recognize the disorder.
“Parosmy is thought to be the result of having fewer functioning odor receptors, leading to only some of the components of a mixture of odors being able to be picked up. It’s a bit like Eric Morecambe told Andre Previn: ‘it’s all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order,’” explains Professor Carl Philpott.
It is known that parosmia affects some adults following passing the Covid, but now that the incidence of infections is higher in minors, more cases of this alteration of smell are also being seen in children, according to the authors of the guide.
“In many cases, the condition causes children to stop eating and many may find it difficult to eat. It’s something that until now hasn’t really been recognized by medical professionals, who just think that children have difficulty eating without realizing the underlying problem,” says Professor Philpott, who is seeing adolescent patients with parosmia for the first time in his race.
“If children suffer from distortions of smell, and food smells and tastes disgusting, it will be very difficult for them to eat the foods they once loved. We are very interested in sharing more information on this topic with the medical profession so that they are aware that there is a broader problem here,” said Fifth Sense President and Founder Duncan Boak.
To regain their sense of smell, the researchers recommend that both children and adults consider “smell training.” “It involves smelling at least four different scents, for example eucalyptus, lemon, rose, cinnamon, chocolate, coffee or lavender, twice a day every day for several months. Children should use scents that are familiar to them and that are not triggers for parosmia. In younger children this might not be helpful, but in adolescents it might be something they can tolerate,” says Professor Philpott.
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