this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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Most of what you perceive as "taste" is just using your sense of smell on food within the mouth, where it is very close to smell receptors.
To isolate taste informally, pinch your nose, stick your tongue out, and put food directly on the tongue when it's outside your mouth. You'll find that by itself your tongue can't distinguish many flavors, that's why everything tastes terrible when you have Covid or a bad cold.
Iirc you are right about taste with a cold, but with covid the receptors themselves are affected. Loss of smell and taste with covid can linger for months, after the initial infection has cleared up and the airways are open again.
The cells that encase the nerves (receptors) get infected, and become inflamed. This then means the nerve cells cannot transport nutrients along them, and can't send a signal. Eventually that can lead to death of the nerves as well. This is also the way they found COVID to spread through the brain, not through the nerves themselves but the supporting epithelial (I think is the right name) cells.
Source: my professor at the time who was working on the research it told me
I believe it's the nerve pathway between the receptors and the brain that are suspected to be affected. There was a trial where they did a nerve block and it brought the lost taste/smell back, which implies the receptors were unaffected.
There are probably some bitter etc. compounds that are just super strong. Like lemon smells nice but it alone might be a bit too much.
Additionally some compounds don't become aromatic until they are dissolved in spit or digested by enzymes in your mouth. There's also bitterness, which detects stuff associated strongly with poison.
I mean, idk if there's any truth to this. My sense of smell is permanently disabled due to PCD and my sense of taste is still pretty accurate.