How Anosmia Affects Your Personality and Wellbeing

 The tang of cut grass, the aroma of a smoky bonfire, sunscreen on a hot day… According to a 2014 study by The Rockefeller University, the human nose is able to distinguish more than a trillion smells. But certain odours have transportive powers – one need only imagine them to conjure specific memories. It was a smoked salmon blini, of all things, that threw 35-year-old creative director Cossima Smith’s world into turmoil. In early March 2020, at a party, she noticed she couldn’t smell the food she was about to put in her mouth. She couldn’t taste it, either. “It was a strange realisation,” Cossima says. “I recognised the texture, I could see it was salmon. But aside from that, nothing.”

Eight months on, when we talk, Cossima has yet to regain her full sense of smell. At the time, anosmia (the term for losing your sense of smell) wasn’t commonly understood to be a symptom of Covid-19, but Cossima now knows that back in March, she was in the initial stages of the virus. According to a report in The BMJ, half of those infected may become anosmic; an international study by the Mayo Clinic determined the symptom to be a better early indicator of the disease than a fever.

Sensing and identifying smells is a complex yet under-appreciated process. In a 2011 survey of 7,000 young people, more than half of those aged 16 to 22 said they would rather lose their sense of smell than give up their technology. My husband, Lewis, 42, a photojournalist for CNN, would agree. Born anosmic, he has never smelt anything in his life. He has no “smell associations” to conjure: never smelt the head of a milk-drunk baby nor caught the notes of his mother’s perfume; and, incredibly, until we met 10 years ago, had never even told his family. “I used to say ‘mmm’ or ‘eurgh’, like others did,” he says. “I didn’t want to make it into a thing.” He cannot taste garlic, mint or anything aromatic, and says he eats as much for texture (melted chocolate is a favourite) as for flavour – although remarkably he’s not a terrible cook, and has been known to lift the lid off a bubbling pan and exclaim, “This looks like it smells great!” “What you’ve never had, you never miss,” he says.

“We don’t quite yet understand why so many people lose their sense of smell with Covid-19,” says Mr Gavin Morrison, a consultant otolaryngologist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ and on Harley Street. “One reason is nasal inflammation, which means the air carrying odours simply can’t get to [the brain]. That usually lasts three weeks. But about 10 per cent of Covid patients have longer term problems. This could be to do with damage to the nerves or in the olfactory bulb. Covid, we know, affects the brain.”

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