964 words
Jan 20 2007
The Sydney Morning Herald (Saturday Spectrum)
IMAGINE, IF YOU can, being rendered incapable of different-iating between caviar canapes and Vegemite on toast. Imagine being impotent to the simplest culinary pleasures, such as the barbecue in Barbecue Shapes, or to be oblivious to the flavour and character in a glass of fine wine. Forget smell, too, for aromas such as freshly baked bread and coffee impart no bouquet.
Once, I could not drive past a winery or walk past a tasting station without sampling the wares on offer. I considered myself something of a card-carrying epicurean but am now an outsider in the club. There is no reason to splurge on the palate any more, since the palate no longer pontificates upon the morsels that pass its way. Appetite remains, but without taste. The pleasure of eating has elapsed, which means fancy food makes as much splash as a tin of baked beans.
The term given for this particular malfunction of the olfactory system is anosmia, which comes from the Greek; an(no)-osmia(smell). Although there are variants to this affliction, anosmia is defined as a complete rather than a partial loss of smell (hyposmia). A further variant of rotten-egg proportions is phantosmia where everything smells foul.
It is commonly held that 70 per cent to 90 per cent of what we call taste emanates from our sense of smell or the olfactory nerve. As taste is largely determined by smell, so a loss of smell in this case also bequeaths a loss of taste. Try eating with your nostrils pinched and you get the picture.
"We underestimate the importance of smell to our wellbeing," says Professor Tim Jacob from the school of biosciences at Cardiff University. "There are suggestions that it can influence mood, memory, emotions, mate choice and the immune and endocrine systems. Anosmia can affect people socially, psychologically and physiologically. It can lead to a loss of libido - because a lot of human interaction is down to smell - and weight loss or gain, because people with no sense of taste can forget to eat or eat too much."
The frustrating thing is that I do not know how I came to acquire this particular disorder that now plagues me. It was just after I had finished my wine appreciation class and was out celebrating with the rest of the group that I became afflicted. One day I was the consummate connoisseur and the next I could not smell or taste a thing.
I initially put it down to a minor cold and the previous night's revelry but grew concerned a few days later when my senses were not restored. The most common form of smell loss is a blockage caused by nasal polyps, although damage to the olfactory nerves via a heavy cold, head injury or trauma has the same effect.
My only prior knowledge of anosmia came from a British backpacker I had worked with years earlier. He was incapable of taste, yet stoically accepted his situation and consumed whatever his girlfriend served up.
He indicated, however, that for one week each year his senses would randomly revisit him and they would splurge at a few fancy restaurants. Still, the rest of the year was devoid of the culinary pleasures many of us take as a given. With that bit of dreaded knowledge in the back of my mind I sought a remedy for my condition.
I consulted a local doctor, who diagnosed me to be suffering from sinusitis and prescribed a treatment involving an array of nasal sprays. After a few weeks, and with scant improvement, I sought more specified advice and arranged to see an allergy investigator.
Allergy investigators endeavour to pinpoint the particular cause of an ailment and are considered helpful if a patient fails to respond to conventional medicine. He undertook a skin prick test on me, in which I was exposed to an assortment of moulds, pollens and susceptible foods.
He presented me with a list of products that should be taken out of my diet, which included milk, chilli, mushrooms and yeast products. I drank no alcohol, assuming that the yeast in beer was a likely culprit, and even reached a new personal best of 10 consecutive days without a drink.
It was suggested that my condition may have something to do with the environment I lived in, too. Unable to pinpoint a culprit, he suggested shifting house as an option, a suggestion I thought more befitting the predicament of someone living in a haunted house.
After a year without taste and smell I resign myself to life on Bland Street, which is not unlike a prison sentence; the chow is the same gruel each day and the booze may as well be fermented from potato peelings. I live in hope that my taste buds will be free again some day but, for now, mine is a flavourless feast.
Losing your sense of smell at the age of 35 is daunting and, although there are reported instances in which taste and smell actually returns to sufferers, I am for the most part forlorn.
There are, however, a couple of positives that need to be noted, although they hardly counter the negatives. The first is that I am spared all those putrid smells omitted by the world and its inhabitants. The second is that I no longer need abide by the draconian rules related to food and wine matching. I can quaff a plum cabernet sauvignon with a dozen oysters if I should so choose. I am in poor taste after all.
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