- Parosmia, a health condition that causes distorted smell, is one of COVID-19's lasting symptoms.
- Some people who have parosmia say it has made the smell of their partners repulsive.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
Loss of smell is a common COVID-19 symptom, but it's interfering with more than just cooking and eating. Some people say it has also affected their sex life.
Parosmia, a condition that distorts your sense of smell, can make an otherwise harmless scent smell foul.
The condition is reported in a large proportion of people with COVID-19.
It's leaving people repulsed by their partners, making sex less appealing – even when they are in the mood – or making them self-conscious about kissing their partner because they find the smell of their own breath to be foul.
"It is something affecting your relationship with yourself, with others, your social life, your intimate relationships," Dr. Duika Burges Watson, who leads the Altered Eating Research Network at Newcastle University in England, told the New York Times.
Parosmia can even make you think your own breath smells bad
35-year-old Samantha LaLiberte told the New York Times she can't tolerate her or her husband's scent. "There is not a whole lot of intimacy right now," she told the New York Times.
LaLiberte was infected with COVID-19 seven months prior to having parosmia, showing that symptoms can unexpectedly arise after a recovery.
Jessica Emmett, 36, told the New York Times she had COVID-19 twice - the last time being in October. But she still has parosmia and says her breath smells.
Emmett's warped sense of smell has affected her and her husband's relationship. "There is no really passionate, spontaneous kissing," she told the New York Times.
If you've lost your sense of smell because of COVID-19, try scent training
At first, anosmia, or loss of smell, was a mysterious COVID-19 symptom. But as more and more people got COVID-19 it became more common.
In a survey among 2,428 people who had anosmia, nearly half had parosmia.
People who have lost their sense of smell have tried restoring it by eating burnt oranges with brown sugar. Otolaryngologists said it's not perfectly effective, but also said modern medicine doesn't have tried and true treatments either. "There are millions of things like that out there, particularly for conditions like COVID-related anosmia, where traditional medicine doesn't really have an answer,"
Dr. Richard Doty, director of the Smell and Taste Center at the University of Pennsylvania, told the New York Times that people with anosmia regain their sense of smell within months.
But you can also try scent training, which requires you to sniff a strong scent and think of your memory of that smell. The practice may rewire neural connections that are linked to smell.
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