All five of our senses are used when we eat: taste, sight, sound, feel and of course, smell. It’s the sensory experience that can make eating so pleasurable. If you’re missing smell or taste, make an effort to focus on the other senses to compensate for the gap. Think of the five points of a Sensory Star to guide your eating experience.
Taste: different from smell, these are the areas of the tongue that tell us whether food is sweet, sour, salty, bitter or umami. What can you really taste? Sweetness? Salt?
Sight: it’s true, we eat with our eyes so make your meal a special occasion. Think about the table setting, the lighting, the plate you use. Choose foods in different colours to create a feast for your eyes.
Sound: crunch, chew, fizz. All these sounds are a very important part of the experience. Research has demonstrated that the sound of bubbles make drinks seem more fizzy, and the sound of the sea made seafood taste more intense.
Feel: An important part of part of our eating experience is the trigeminal nerve, the part of the mouth that is stimulated by food. Things like the tingle of mustard will stimulate the trigeminal nerve. Research reveals five ways to get this experience of feel: texture, temperature, tingle or burning sensation, astringency from foods like rhubarb, and carbonation.
In Chinese culture, the feel of food is highly appreciated - think of the different sensations involved in eating chicken’s feet. They even have a word that roughly translates as ‘bouncing teeth’ to describe the feel of food like pasta.
Smell: Well, if only... but focus on what you have rather than what you are missing.
And a word on pleasure.
Eating out or eating with others can be really off putting for some people with smell disorders. To see people enjoying what you cannot really rubs it in sometimes. In these situations it can help to focus on enjoying the company rather than the food. Try asking people to describe what they are tasting and share in their pleasure. Just relax into being in the food space and think about different ways to participate.
Researchers also suggest looking for the things outside of food that give you pleasure. Laughing at your favourite TV show, walking in open countryside, curling up with a good book. Consciously do things you enjoy to keep your pleasure levels topped up and it may make eating seem less important.
Click through to find out more about the Altered Eating Network.
See also:
Five ways to overcome altered eating
The full webinar recording
Nerves take time to heal. Depending on the damage, this could be two months or it could be two years, or even longer. No one can predict how long recovery will take or how completely you will recover. But we do have evidence that smell training helps.
Doctors recommend that you commit to smell training for a minimum of four months, but training longer, with variation in the scents used, will bring greater benefit.
Olfactory nerves are the wiring between the nose and the brain. They can get damaged by something as ordinary as a cold, or as traumatic as a knock to the head. The good news is that olfactory nerves repair themselves.
With any injury, recovery can take time but smell training can help speed up the process. Just like a broken leg needs physiotherapy to build up strength, so does your nose. Smell training is physiotherapy for your nose.
Everyday, take the four fragrances and sniff each in turn. Just lots of short, light, little sniffs - we call them bunny sniffs - just taking air into your nose. Spend about 20 seconds on each smell.
You may not see an improvement for many weeks, so it’s helpful to keep a note of how you get on so you can see the progress, however small.
Progress might also be the way you feel about your sense of smell. Smell and emotions are closely linked and people living without a sense of smell are more likely to experience low mood or depression.
No, you can assemble your own kit and any fragrance will do. AbScent’s Original Smell Training Kit has been formulated to replicate the aromas used in the original scientific studies into the effectiveness of smell training. Lemon, Rose, Eucalyptus and Clove were the fragrances selected for the trial and we have blended those four fragrances in a way that will remain stable over time.
All proceeds from AbScent’s Original Smell Training Kit go straight back to the charity to help people living with smell disorders.
No, any fragrance will do. There is no evidence that essential oils are more effective than other fragrances. Even herbs or spices from your kitchen can be used for smell training. Remember, we don’t use the scents because there is something special about them. We use them to stimulate your sense of smell.
It’s helpful to have a smell that you know you can rely on to remain stable over several months. That way you know the changes are in what you can smell, rather than changes in the fragrance.
If your olfactory nerves have been damaged, it’s possible that you won’t go back to smelling things as you did before. Thinking about the leg injury again, imagine having a scar where you’ve hurt yourself. . Smell training can help you heal, even if your sense of smell does not recover 100%.
The earlier you start training the better. You may be concerned that you can’t smell anything at all when you go to sniff your jars of scent. Remember that smell training is not only about the sniff. It’s the thinking about the smell that is also part of the exercise. You’ll be engaging everything about your sense of smell from the tip of your nose up into the part of the brain that stores your memories and emotions.
If you constantly experience an unpleasant smell, or your favourite food suddenly smells like burnt rubber, you could be experiencing parosmia. This is a natural part of the recovery process as the nerves regenerate, but can last several weeks or be more persistent. Smell training will not help parosmia specifically, but it helps the regeneration process and could help you get back to smelling things normally more quickly. You can find out more about parosmia here.
Yes, Covid-19 is a viral infection and it’s common for people to lose their sense of smell following a virus. Studies on patients before Covid-19 have shown that smell training helps recovery. Watch our short video for more information.
In some cases, yes. If your head injury is less severe then it may help you. Starting as soon as possible after your injury gives you the best chance of recovery, but people who have not started smell training until some years later have also benefited. Smell training won’t hurt and your time investment is low, so everyone should be encouraged to give it a chance.
Studies have shown that 30 percent of people above the age of 75 have little or no sense of smell. Like all our physical abilities, what we don’t use, we lose. Smell training in older people has been shown to improve other abilities such as processing information and mental agility. A study also showed that smell training in a group of older people improved mood.
Nerves take time to heal. Depending on the damage, this could be two months or it could be two years, or even longer. No one can predict how long recovery will take or how completely you will recover. But we do have evidence that smell training helps.
Doctors recommend that you commit to smell training for a minimum of four months, but training longer, with variation in the scents used, will bring greater benefit.
Olfactory nerves are the wiring between the nose and the brain. They can get damaged by something as ordinary as a cold, or as traumatic as a knock to the head. The good news is that olfactory nerves repair themselves.
With any injury, recovery can take time but smell training can help speed up the process. Just like a broken leg needs physiotherapy to build up strength, so does your nose. Smell training is physiotherapy for your nose.
Everyday, take the four fragrances and sniff each in turn. Just lots of short, light, little sniffs - we call them bunny sniffs - just taking air into your nose. Spend about 20 seconds on each smell.
You may not see an improvement for many weeks, so it’s helpful to keep a note of how you get on so you can see the progress, however small.
Progress might also be the way you feel about your sense of smell. Smell and emotions are closely linked and people living without a sense of smell are more likely to experience low mood or depression.
No, you can assemble your own kit and any fragrance will do. AbScent’s Original Smell Training Kit has been formulated to replicate the aromas used in the original scientific studies into the effectiveness of smell training. Lemon, Rose, Eucalyptus and Clove were the fragrances selected for the trial and we have blended those four fragrances in a way that will remain stable over time.
All proceeds from AbScent’s Original Smell Training Kit go straight back to the charity to help people living with smell disorders.
No, any fragrance will do. There is no evidence that essential oils are more effective than other fragrances. Even herbs or spices from your kitchen can be used for smell training. Remember, we don’t use the scents because there is something special about them. We use them to stimulate your sense of smell.
It’s helpful to have a smell that you know you can rely on to remain stable over several months. That way you know the changes are in what you can smell, rather than changes in the fragrance.
If your olfactory nerves have been damaged, it’s possible that you won’t go back to smelling things as you did before. Thinking about the leg injury again, imagine having a scar where you’ve hurt yourself. . Smell training can help you heal, even if your sense of smell does not recover 100%.
The earlier you start training the better. You may be concerned that you can’t smell anything at all when you go to sniff your jars of scent. Remember that smell training is not only about the sniff. It’s the thinking about the smell that is also part of the exercise. You’ll be engaging everything about your sense of smell from the tip of your nose up into the part of the brain that stores your memories and emotions.
If you constantly experience an unpleasant smell, or your favourite food suddenly smells like burnt rubber, you could be experiencing parosmia. This is a natural part of the recovery process as the nerves regenerate, but can last several weeks or be more persistent. Smell training will not help parosmia specifically, but it helps the regeneration process and could help you get back to smelling things normally more quickly. You can find out more about parosmia here.
Yes, Covid-19 is a viral infection and it’s common for people to lose their sense of smell following a virus. Studies on patients before Covid-19 have shown that smell training helps recovery. Watch our short video for more information.
In some cases, yes. If your head injury is less severe then it may help you. Starting as soon as possible after your injury gives you the best chance of recovery, but people who have not started smell training until some years later have also benefited. Smell training won’t hurt and your time investment is low, so everyone should be encouraged to give it a chance.
Studies have shown that 30 percent of people above the age of 75 have little or no sense of smell. Like all our physical abilities, what we don’t use, we lose. Smell training in older people has been shown to improve other abilities such as processing information and mental agility. A study also showed that smell training in a group of older people improved mood.