Description and Possible Medical Problems
Mrs. C, a regular patient, visited me for a checkup and complained that food just didn’t taste right to her anymore.
When I pressed her for details, she became visibly upset. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Ever since I turned 60, it’s as if all my senses have deteriorated. It just takes more of everything for me to smell anything lately.”
She described how, in particular, food tasted bland and even the flowers in her garden didn’t smell as sweet as they had the year before. Though, as a rule, women tend to retain their senses in later years better than men do, the sense of smell starts to fade when a person reaches his 50s and 60s. Since the sense of smell is closely connected with the ability to taste, sometimes the first sign that there’s a problem will arise when foods don’t taste the way they usually do. And sometimes certain diseases can hasten the loss.
If your loss of smell is sudden, it’s probably not due to aging. Illness or allergies—whether they’re seasonal or year round—can affect your sense of smell. So can the medication you’re taking for it. In fact, taking any kind of prescription or over-the-counter medication can result in a decreased sense of smell.
• Can I pinpoint exactly when my sense of smell or taste began to decline? Or was it more gradual?
• Have I started to take a new medication recently?
• Have I recently recovered from a lengthy respiratory illness?
• Have I had major dental work done recently?
• Do I tend to lose my sense of smell at the same time every year?
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