What Are Parosmia and Anosmia and How to Deal With Them?
Parosmia is a general term that describes a certain health condition that distorts the sense of smell. The people who have parosmia can smell the scent but in a very light way. They often fail to smell the intensity. Sometimes they can detect the smell but they detect it wrong.
On the other hand, Anosmia is known as a condition where a person completely loses the sense of smell. In most cases, it is permanent.
Common Symptoms
Parosmia mainly appears when you recover from any kind of infectious disease. The noticeable symptoms are getting foul odour while food is around, failing to detect the familiar scent of the environment and loss of intensity while smelling something.
For Anosmia, the symptoms are mild such as feeling irritation in nose lines, allergies and cold. Anosmia often leads you towards ageusia which will create a great hamper on your health.
Connection with Coronavirus
Olfaction is termed as one of the most well-established signs of ongoing Coronavirus infection. Almost half of the patients of Covid 19 are diagnosed with this symptom. According to the research, 89% of patients get their sense of smell back very quickly after the recovery. But the problem lies with the other 11% who are claimed to develop parosmia or anosmia after even the recovery.
Prevention
Parosmia is not permanent for most cases and over time the brain can heal the damage and the sense of smell can be back in old form. The treatment available for parosmia is:
- Vitamin
- Zinc Medication
- Antibiotics
- Nose clip That prevents Smell
Anosmia is comparatively more difficult to deal with. It is the complete loss of smell that sometimes is complicated to measure. The common treatment includes:
- Nasal spray
- Antihistamines
- decongestants
- Antibiotic which reduces nasal irritations
