The Silent Crisis of Smell Loss

Fourteen years ago, Chrissi Kelly traveled to the Czech Republic to visit her family. During the trip, she contracted a virus. When she returned home, she expected to recover quickly. However, months passed, and she still could not smell anything. She visited many doctors, including her general practitioner and an ear, nose, and throat specialist. They could not find a clear answer.

Eventually, Kelly was diagnosed with anosmia, which is the complete loss of the sense of smell. Like many patients with this condition, doctors told her to simply learn to live with it. But for Kelly, the loss was devastating. "After about six months of complete loss, I was just climbing the walls, and I did not feel like myself anymore," she said. She felt isolated and disconnected from the world.

Researchers estimate that up to 22 percent of people live with some form of smell impairment. This includes hyposmia, which is partial loss, or anosmia, which is total loss. Many others suffer from smell disorders like phantosmia, where a person smells scents that are not there. Others have parosmia, where normal smells, like coffee or shampoo, smell terrible, similar to feces or vomit. For a long time, these conditions were poorly understood. Doctors often underestimated how much they affected patients’ lives.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed everything. The virus brought huge attention to the sense of smell. Since December 2019, there have been 780 million reported cases of COVID-19 globally. Smell loss became a well-known symptom of the disease. In a 2023 survey published in the journal Laryngoscope, 60 percent of people who had COVID reported losing their sense of smell. Most people got it back, but some lost it for a long time.

Because millions of people lost their smell at the same time, scientists began to study it more closely. They discovered that smell is not just about tasting food. It is deeply tied to brain health. As scientists learned more about how the nose works, evidence mounted that smell plays a critical role in our quality of life.