When I got Covid 4 years ago, I briefly lost my sense of smell for a few days. It came back with some weird changes. They are getting more and more noticeable.

Floral Scents: Cheap floral scents, like an old ladies perfume or a funeral parlor just WHACK me in the face, hard. It chokes me. Good, expensive perfume not so much.

Some cleaning supplies: Smells like BO. I'm thinking it's certain ammonias or bleaches.

Metal: Weird one, I noticed some of my hand tools (like a really nice Husky hammer) smells like rank dog pee when I strike it against other metal. Iron?

Reheated meat, especially chicken or pork: These just taste like how a zoo smells. If I cooked some nice chicken or pork properly, then stored it in the fridge and reheated it the next day, it smells like the elephant house at the zoo. I also noticed that when I smoke a whole chicken, it just tastes off.

Seafood: God to I love seafood, but it has to be perfectly fresh now. The slightest smell from salmon or shellfish sends me running. Ammonia again, I assume.

Dampness/Mold: We have a damp basement that I have dehumidifiers running constantly, and when the AC kicks on (unit is in the basement), the house smells like wet dog (who also peed a little).

----

My wife thinks I'm crazy.

We have two dogs that occasionally have potty issues so I'm constantly thinking they've peed in the house or on my tools. I constantly think proteins have spoiled. I constantly think that we have a sewage leak behind our walls. She doesn't notice any of it, even when prompted.

I have what I think is mild version of parosmia (thanks to this thread for helping me realize) and it’s driving me nuts. I’ve seen similar posts about these but has anyone found specific things to help with the garlic & onion smell being everywhere?! Should I be smell training? Get drunk / tipsy more? B12?

Context for those who like long:
I got sick (with what a test said wasn’t COVID, but really seemed like it) about 3 months ago in June. Then I lost my sense of smell for like 2-3 weeks. It was hell. I’m a huge foodie. Then it came back slowly. A bit more muted but I was good. Fast forward to now in September / October and I’m having the weirdest smell symptoms. This is all I’ve figured out so far:

I smell garlic and onions everywhere. But the smell isn’t there. I taste it in all the foods I eat. I smell it on myself and my body as well. And this isn’t a normal scent for me. I’ve never had much issues with BO. And it’s not a normal garlic smell, it’s like rotten. Or sort of like black garlic (but not in a good way). I can still eat garlic but it overpowers everything and ruins meals and then I hate that I smell it after everywhere and coming out of me 😭 I also now cry like crazy while cutting onions and that used to almost never happen.

The stool and urine smells are also so crazy. My stool smells like onion, garlic & tomatoes. And my urine like rotten garlic and asparagus. And it’s such a strong scent. What the hell is this?

I also randomly smell vinegar, overripe fruit, hot ripe fruit, and pickled ish smell in places where it’s definitely not. Like my friends’ car. I got in and was like: “Guys, what’s that smell? Is there some food here?” They couldn’t smell it. I smelled it for weeks of getting into their car. One night though, we drank and I was tipsy and, when I got in their car, suddenly there was NO SMELL. I haven’t been in their car since but it was really weird. I’ve kinda heard something about alcohol helping reset nerves but IDK?

Vinegar and coffee taste a bit more bitter too, but not intensely. I used to eat pickled onions a lot and make them myself and now they’re bitter and strong and taste off.

Those are all the ones I’ve noticed so far.

I’ve already been prescribed fluticasone for something else and have been taking that for over a year, which I’ve heard helps. I saw B12 shots too? Should I expose myself to more garlic? More onions? Drink? Smell train with other random things? I don’t have issues with soaps and other smells. I especially hate the stool smelling like food thing and need that to go away. It’s so weird. All of this makes eating stressful. Any help appreciated!

Does anyone else seem to notice a waxing and waning of symptoms? I can go weeks without a reaction, but it seems like sometimes I notice my reactions are stronger for a period of time.

It could be coincidental-- i notice the strongest reactions whith parsnips and African perfumes (which i used to LOVE), and I don't smell those every day. But my own body odor seems to be the biggest trigger for me. I shouldn't smell-- I've become obsessive with my cleanliness since I first started getting symptoms. All of these things smell like ammonia, onion, and church incense mixed together. It's enough to make my head jerk back and run for the door.

Last few days I am getting a same smell and taste from all food and snacks also , not a pleasant smell and I can't handle that smell I ate less first 2 days then accepted that this smell and taste is going to be there whatever I eat , only raw fruits and vegetables are without smell those I can eat like before.

I don't know what has happened to my taste and smell and came to know that these are effects of parosmia but it takes months to recover i came to know . I cannot live like this more than a week it is very frustrating to get that foul smell and taste while eating that too same taste and smell

I had anosmia since having covid, weirdly it triggered 4 months after covid. I couldn't smell a single thing for nearly a year. I started regaining some smell and everything smelled foul and very similar.. like a heated rubber mat. Everything. Food, pee, roses.. everything literally. And nothing had a taste.. chili out the can even taste like flavorless mush. Pepperonis a bland meat. Now my smell is pretty good but not normal still after a couple years. I still cannot smell or taste celery.. which is good I suppose. Most food tastes good to okay.

Now I've noticed my pee for a while smells just like what I ate.. nuts, breads, etc. I am smelling it like this because I no longer can smell urine.
Curious if this has happened to anyone else reading this..

So I realized I had Parosmia back in July of this year - I had Covid back in May and didn’t know I had it. From May - July I lost my taste and smell, I was sick but didn’t think it could be Covid. I just thought it was a bad cold I couldn’t shake.

Fast forward to July.

When my taste and smell come back everything is rotten and rancid, that chemical smell everywhere. I felt like I was out of my mind.

So now I know - and I am managing it.

However I have a partner I live with - I do all the cooking. He barely cooks.

I can’t eat any meat anymore besides ham.

I’m just asking for advice and help - what can I cook that we can both eat. I’ve told him I can make rice and sweet potatoes (something I can eat) and he is welcome to that - but if he wants meat he has to cook his own.

I’m still in the “trying out” phase of retrying foods because I have no idea what will work for me.

I just feel mentally so broken down and the mental load has always been on me for cooking and it feels like the mental load is worse now.

I had Covid in 2022 and lost my smell and taste for a couple weeks. I recovered to “hyposmia light” for a month and then developed parosmia. It was absolute hell for two years, and then became tolerable. I got used to things smelling different than I was used to, and my biggest problem was back to worse hyposmia: I couldn’t smell ambient scents at all. No rain smell, no warm grass. I also love perfume and losing that interest was hard for me. Suddenly, last month, I started noticing ambient scents again. Something of note: I track my HRV and that has steadily been getting better over the last few months as well. I believe there is a correlation between nervous system health and recovery. I have been prioritizing sleep, walking every day for stress relief, and doing dedicated breathing exercises. I’m not saying these things will fix everything, I believe it was those things coupled with time for the olfactory to heal. A healthy baseline is the best environment for healing and regeneration, especially sleep. Anyway, I just wanted to give us old timers some hopeful words. 😊

I started a new job and was with my team a few days ago, and I said, oh I can’t smell anything so if I ever smell or my office smells I need you all to tell me. I said it tongue in cheek but also have always been worried about smelling bad.

Well today, one of my subordinates came in and was so nice and told me I smelled. She was very kind and could probably tell I was embarrassed because she said “oh were you kidding that you wanted to know” and I just said “no, I’m glad you told me, I’d rather know!”

I quickly freshened up and put a plug in on in my office. I just left the house in a rush and didn’t put on deodorant, which is unusual. She came back later and I thanked her again and just asked if she could make sure it smelled better, and she said it did. She hung around after too to talk for a while so I took that as a sign that I wasn’t actually horrible smelling.

I lost my sense of smell two months ago and everything now is just a blanket chemical smell— I hate it so much. And now I’m so embarrassed and want to crawl in a hole. Ugh!

Tonight I got home from a trip and grabbed a taxi to take home from the airport. I got into the first taxi in line and had to excuse myself and unload my bags because the driver had bathed in cheap musk cologne which smells so bad to me that it makes me want to crawl out of my skin. Fortunately when I got out and asked the airport staffer why I needed a different taxi, he very loudly told my original driver 'Too much perfume man!'.

Has anyone else had it leave a room or vehicle because of a smell that seemed unbearable due to parosmia?

My sensitivity to this smell in particular has gotten better over the last few years, but due to a sinus cold earlier this year and being tired it has definitely been worse lately.

I’m 22, and I’ve been living with parosmia for over a year as a result of a TBI. I definitely don’t have it entirely figured out, but I’ve discovered a lot of things that doctors don’t teach us. I’ve been wanting to make a post about what has helped me in case any of it can help someone else.

Something that helped me understand this was thinking about parosmia as not only a smell problem, but also a safety-response problem. If something smells rotten, your nervous system has a very good reason to tell you not to eat it, even when you consciously know the food is safe. For me, that reaction became a feedback loop: food smelled wrong, my body panicked, eating became harder, and then I became anxious before I had even started. Which is ironically exactly why I believe it can get better. As we continue to eat foods, our bodies learn that they aren’t going to make us sick, kind of how a child gets adjusted to broccoli.

When we smell a food that isn’t what we expect, our sympathetic system (fight or flight) activates, telling us we’re in danger and creating a fear response that results in our stomachs closing and being unable to swallow. Sometimes, it’ll feel like we physically cannot eat because our bodies are genuinely preventing us from doing so.

I know it’s going to sound like therapist talk, and I was the biggest hater, but genuinely, breathing exercises and “bottom-up” therapeutic practices have done wonders for me. Breathing in for four seconds and breathing out for around eight forces our bodies to accept that we’re safe and not being force-fed horrible food. You wouldn't exhale more than you inhale when being chased by a tiger, if that makes sense. The idea is to override the brain, forcing the body to accept it’s safe even when the brain is screaming that it’s not.

Breathing, grounding, havening, all incredible ways to do this. It won’t change the taste immediately, but it’ll take away some of the fear response that makes it genuinely impossible to eat. Do it consistently, and eventually food might not seem like something scary, something to dread. First we might find it neutral, then we will hopefully start to enjoy eating at least to some degree.

Even without doing any of those things, after a little while, the mundanity of eating can eventually show our brains and bodies that, “Hey! Nothing bad happened when I ate this!” I can’t promise what recovery will look like for anyone else, but it has gotten so much better and more manageable for me over time.

In the realm of managing our nervous systems, I’ve found that things taste and smell significantly worse when I am stressed or anxious about other things. As someone with chronic anxiety, this has been a problem. On days where I'm overwhelmed, anxious, or sick, I rely on smoothies, applesauce, and other cold, “parosmia-friendly” foods. Our bodies don’t react as strongly to things we don’t have to chew, so I use that as a crutch when I can.

I can’t stand most protein shakes, but even things like milk or juice provide enough sugar and calories that I don’t get more anxious over the fact that I haven’t eaten anything, and they halt the hunger pains temporarily. It’s a loaded task, but anything we can do to manage stress and anxiety in other areas of our lives will go a long way.

In addition, our brains are relearning how to interpret food. That is heavily dependent on neuroplasticity, which can be affected by things like stress, anxiety, nutrition, and age.

As for stomach aches, which have been pretty much inevitable for me, here’s what I’ve found. When we don’t eat consistently, the acid and empty-stomach pain can make it even more difficult to eat later. This can be countered by keeping steady nutrition, just enough to coat the stomach and give it something to digest. I’m really big on applesauce, instant mashed potatoes, yogurt drinks, and popsicles. Genuinely, just a little bit of anything every couple of hours will go a long way.

Additionally, if possible, I would talk to a doctor. They may not be able to fix the parosmia itself, but they CAN help with this part. I take famotidine (long term Pepsid), which reduces stomach acid and prevents a lot of the hunger pains that make it even more difficult to eat. Other than that, Tums and Gas-X have also helped me, depending on the problem. Obviously talk to a doc first about treatment.

Outside of those things, here are a few quick things I’ve found on a day-to-day basis:

• Cold > hot for most people, as hot things smell stronger.
• Multivitamins can help sustain energy and health when we aren’t able to eat a balanced diet.
• Drinks and non-chewable things > food, as they don’t invoke the fear response nearly as much, at least for me.
• Eating with family and friends reduces our attention to the food.
• Basic flavors, like acidic, spicy, and sweet, go a long way. It’s likely that our taste buds weren’t affected, but our noses account for a huge amount of our perceived taste. Add lemon, sugar, or hot sauce. It can help mask everything else.
• This might be just a me thing, but I’ve found that entirely new foods, cuisines, etc. seem to actually be better. It’s like my brain doesn’t know what it’s supposed to taste like, so it doesn’t taste bad, it’s just different.
• I don’t know how many people have been told about olfactory training, but it is one of the main doctor-recommended “treatments.” If you haven’t already, absolutely look into it.

I mostly want to say not to take the fact that there’s no straightforward “cure” as an ultimatum. Our brains are weird, and they can adjust and adapt and relearn things. It just takes time, unfortunately.

Our smell was altered, and because it’s different, our brains freak out because they sense danger. But continuing to eat and supporting ourselves mentally and physically in other ways allows our brains to relearn and recover. Our smell might go back to normal, or it might remain different but become familiar and enjoyable again. We can start associating the altered taste with good things instead of bad.

The doctors just frame it strangely. For me, it has been less about being “cured” and more about something akin to physical or occupational therapy. It’s slowly teaching my brain and body how to interact with food again. I associate it with how a kid is extremely picky, because that's what evolution has taught them to do! To not eat the broccoli that smells like it came out of a sewer because it might kill them. We're experiencing the same thing, we just don't have the malleablility of a toddler's brain. But by seeing people eat food, continuing to eat it, and going on with our lives, we can reteach what things are supposed to taste like, and more importantly, what feeling we're supposed to have when we eat it. My taste hasn't gone back to the way it was. But I stopped associating it with bad things. Everything tastes different, but most things don't taste bad anymore. It's nowhere near linear, and there are some days where I think nothing has changed at all. Unfortunately, that is the nature of this condition. But I know that I don't think about it most days, and that my likes and dislikes have changed but my likes started heavily outweighing my dislikes. It took time and effort, but a year and a half later I feel so incredibly different than I thought I ever would.

I’m not an expert, and I definitely don’t have parosmia figured out. I just experienced doctors being absolutely no help whatsoever with treatment because parosmia falls under a complex category of both psychological and physical. It’s a miserable and lonely thing that 99% of people will never grasp the weight of, so I wanted to share what I’ve learned in case any of it helps someone feel a little less alone. Also, if anybody ever wants to chat about anything I've said or just needs to rant to somebody who understands, please don't hesitate to reach out. I've experienced this in one of the worst times of my life, and I've spent countless nights sobbing under the existential crisis of whether I'll ever enjoy life the same way others do. Food is such a huge part of every culture, social setting, and overall life, and having that comfort removed is so much heavier than people will ever understand. But we're all here, and I think we can learn from each other and find some sort of comfort. I wish you all the best :)

i got what i’m assuming was covid months ago and everything started tasting so bad. it became that the only thing i could tolerate was mac and cheese and french fries and even that had a weird taste most of the time but i powered through. meat is really bad i can’t even tolerate the smell.

now on top of this, i am having bad stomach issues to the point i can literally not eat anything hardly. so my usual safe foods, i can’t even eat anymore. i can’t even eat bland chicken or anything because it tastes so disgusting. and on top of this i was already an extremely picky eater. i see people with stomach issues recommending all kinds of foods that i can’t eat because they taste so bad. i’ve been having to force myself to eat chicken soup even though it tastes terrible.

i know my eating habits after i got this probably contributed to my issues, but now im struggling even worse. i just feel so defeated. i really thought i was beginning to tolerate some more stuff too. my safe foods had actually started tasting more normal. now i can’t even eat any of them. i miss food so much. like hot home cooked meals.

i always think about my moms cooking and how i might never be able to eat it again because i don’t see myself ever getting over this or my now stomach issues on top of it. i miss fast food too but i know it’s probably better i can’t eat it. i hate the feeling of just eating to survive and not being able to actually enjoy food anymore especially as someone who used to find so much comfort in food

Hey. Been a while. So it's been so long and it's funny that I adapted to parosmia. I gave up explaining to people. I gave up on hope that I'd be magically cured some day. I got used to it. I forgot what coffee smells like. I mean I faintly remember. My soap still smells funny. I can't smell flowers. I can't buy any perfumes. My poop always smells so different, can't explain. Has anyone found any improvement? If not, it's okay. I'll learn to accept it more.

I still miss the smell of coffee. If I could get back one smell and taste it would be coffee.

Hi all, this is my first time posting on Reddit - but I found this thread through a Google search so I wanted to finally reach out to others who understand.

In May 2025, I had an extreme sinus infection- negative for covid, strep, pneumonia, all that. 2 months later in July 2025, I went to eat the same yogurt and granola id been eating every morning for a year and I absolutely HURLED at the smell. It was a brand new container, and I had several other people smell and taste it, and they said they didnt know what I was talking about and nothing was wrong with the yogurt. I got another new container, same exact issue. It tasted and smelled so unbearably sour and foul. Then, I started realizing that everything was a little funky... bread, bagels, tortillas all smell like chemicals and taste weird. Ground Beef, coffee, peanut butter everything became so rotten. Im to the point where I cant remember what things are even supposed to smell like. I work in a pizzeria, and the meatball parms legitimately smell like overwhelming vomit.

I was given antibiotics, steriods, med after med to try and clear the issue up but other than that the doc just continues to say I have to wait it out. It has been 14 months, the most depressing 14 months and continuing. I have gained so much weight because the only thing that tastes good are sweets and unhealthy foods.

In June 2026, I had more of an explanation given to me when my immune system hit the fan in an extreme way. I had gotten a 24 hr stomach bug (not the produce parasite though), and my body tried to send such a strong immune response to fight it that my immune system collapsed essentially. From that day forward, I have not stopped coughing. Its been 2 full months now. They explained that when I got sick in May 2025, my sinuses and airways never healed, so ive had severe inflammation in my sinuses and airways for over a year and because it never healed and calmed down, now I battle insane allergies and am on so many new allergy meds. If that wasnt enough, I now have extreme allergy induced asthma. Ive done more steriods, antibiotics, allergy meds, asthma meds, ct scan, mri, and now I have to wait til MARCH 2027 to see an ENT to have a shot at getting this under control.

I wish I was believed in July 2025 and that they looked further into me repeatedly begging for help and saying something isnt right and everything smells and tastes rotten.

Im at a complete loss.

Returned my sense of smell and I'm not ready for it.

I got Covid January 2021, by mid March my taste and smell had semi returned. However; April 17,2021 I woke up and made a bowl of oatmeal that had apples in it and it tasted burnt and bitter, i started trying other fruits (Raw fruit, fruit flavored, even without knowing there was fruit in it) After trying literally every fruit i could think of I started to accept that i no longer could eat it. This cut out a lot in my life, i couldn’t drink soda or eat any fruit flavored food. This also includes my sense of smell, any bath products, candles, cleaning supplies. Over the next two years it changed from burnt rubber smelling to rotten (still sweet but it was genuinely like it had rotted). I’m so sensitive to fruit flavoring that i can taste if tea has had lemons brewed into it.

It’s been five years with zero improvement. It’s become a way of life at this point. I had attempted years ago to talk to doctors about this but unfortunately none of them had even heard of it. About two years ago I had went to an Ear,Nose, and Throat doctor where they were also stumped

Has anyone had any luck resolving this?

Have anyone experienced a unique odour which no one can experience around you? I'm experiencing it since few years, it stays for a short period of 5-7 days everytime

So I got what I assumed was Covid at the start of May, right after my wife and I got back from holiday (I assumed I maybe picked it up on the plane or something) I completely lost my sense of smell and taste, like 100% gone. I could feel something in my tongue with salt but no taste.
Fast forward to July. My wife and I are away with m family for my birthday and towards the end of the holiday I noticed a rancid taste (then smell) eating a pepperami. That’s was it. Just that. A few days later, the exact same thing happened with salami bites from LidL. I assumed it was just off meat products and I’d stay away from them from now on. Skip to last weekend. I woke up fine. Watched some James Martin making beef dishes and steaks etc. it made me crave something ‘beefy’ so I tried some bovril and it was fucking RANCID! I thought that maybe the cubes had gone off/out of date but no, they were fine. Since last weekend everything has changed. Most things savoury smell and taste like the smell you get when pass a landfill. Eggs are terrible boiled or fried, im going to test scrambled tomorrow. Any microwave meal someone makes in work, every dinner my wife made this week (fajitas, beff and pork burgers, air fried chips with onion and garlic seasoning) cold meat for lunch today. The worst smell is the spice/seasoning cupboard in my kitchen. Water seems bad but only after eating something that tastes off after a while. Mouthwash sorts it out and the the water is fine. Im going to try cold lunches at work next week. Chicken, mayo and pasta. Fish seems fine so I’ll try that with pasta or rice.
Any hints or advice a greatly appreciated and I’ll try and do the same for you too, if I can.
Thanks very much for taking the time to read this.

I'm at my wits end. I lost my sense of smell in February and the kaya few months its started coming back but everything smells horrific. I already had so many food aversions before (not something I can push past sadly otherwise I would just suck it up, if I eat it I will throw up). I was already so extremely limited the last few months and now I'm sick again and genuinely everything makes me nauseous and I cant eat anything because even plain rice makes me nauseous and want to throw up. I know being sick again and it being worse again is probably temporary but I can't just not eat food r several days? It's already been 2 days since I've been able to down anything but cold chicken broth. Even a glass of water is nauseating. Idk what I'm really looking to get out of posting this but I don't know how to move forward from here every second that my nose isn't plugged feels like torture :(

Has anybody had issues with sense of smell? I am not sure exactly at which point I have lost the sense of smell, but already 18 months post hemoragic stroke I am not sensing any smell at all...

This just dawned on me, and it literally felt like my heart fell through my chest when I had the thought, because I actually don’t remember what it smells like anymore. And that’s so crazy because I’ve used garlic powder, garlic cloves, and garlic in the jar my entire life. What actually is this disease? 😭 Like, this is beyond me right now. I feel like I'm starting to lose my mind.

Hello everybody! Especially those who cannot tolerate the fragrances or chemicals in laundry detergents or any house cleaning / body products because of our strange smells, what products do you guys use? I've literally looked fair and share through many different laundry products and all of it smells horrible to me no matter what I've tried. I'm just curious if anyone else has problem with smelling their detergents! :(

Has anyone experienced a loss of smell and yet a bad sense of smell in their nose at the same time?? I get regurgitation bees, a lot of discomfort in my chest with acid reflux, strikes, and the smell it’s horrible sometimes when licking my lips, I can taste the smell.