Anosmia

THIS BLOG IS ABOUT LIFE AS AN ANOSMIC - SOMEONE WITHOUT A SENSE OF SMELL. I AM A 22 YEAR OLD MA STUDENT IN LONDON AND HAVEN'T HAD A WHIFF OF ANYTHING IN ABOUT 15 YEARS. I AM WRITING THIS TO RAISE AWARENESS OF THIS INVISIBLE DISABILITY AND WILL UPDATE EVERY TIME THERE'S SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT.

What Is Anosmia?

What is anosmia?


Simply put, anosmia is a lack of sense of smell.

When I first published this blog I was absolutely amazed by the amount of people that responded by saying that they had never heard of anosmia. From that, I suppose I can already call this a success, as all I want is to try and raise awareness of the disability and what it's like to live with it.  It's difficult to try and explain, but it basically means you're much more likely to die from a fire or gas leak, food is boring and you have difficulty forming emotional relationships to people and places. A better description can be found in my first blog entry here.

People with anosmia tend to fall into three groups - congenital (being born with it), viral (caused by a virus etc) or 'headbangers' (lost it after a heavy blow to the head). All three are united by the fact that we seem to know more about it than many medical professionals as has been proven by the many support groups to be found online.


Anosmia in the UK



It is estimated that 200,000 Britons are ansomic, with another 5,000 being born with the disability. This may sound like a lot to you, until you realise that there are only two doctors in the whole of Europe who are able to treat it; one here in the UK and one in Germany. This treatment has also only occured in the last year and already the only hospital in the UK is turning away patients. Going privately will cost £500 for the first consultation and even that has a 3 month waiting list.


Smell/Taste


80% of the flavours of our food come from being able to smell them. Anosmics can taste sweet, sour, salt, bitter and savoury as our tastebuds on our tongue still work, but we can't actually distinguish any flavours beyond that. This lack of taste is believed to be the cause of why over 50% of people with anosmia are also diagnosed with depression. Our desire to eat also mostly comes from smelling food; as an anosmic I know it's time to eat generally when it's too late to do anything about it and  my stomach starts to rumble. I got into this in a bit more detail here.


Smell/Emotion


Smell is the strongest link to memory, so without a sense of smell, it's hard to form emotional relationships with places and people. All you have in your head is an image and going through your memories is exactly like watching a film; you can't really emotionally interact with it. 


Read more!


I appreciate that this has been an extremely quick and brief description of what anosmia is and the main side effects of not having a sense of smell. In my actual blog posts I'll go into more detail about all of these things, in a (hopefully) witty and anecdotal way, so please keep coming back!

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