嗅觉缺失是危险的吗?

面试官: 感染COVID-19后, 有些人可能会失去嗅觉，或者患上一种叫做嗅觉缺失的疾病, 哪一种气味会使曾经令人愉快的气味变得令人不快. 不能闻或不能准确地闻可能是一种不便和不愉快, 尤其是水果之类的东西, 咖啡, 鸡, 你周围环境中的其他食物和东西闻起来像垃圾或像氨这样的化学物质. 但它会影响一个人的身体或精神健康吗?

Dr. Kristine Smith is a rhinologist, which is a nose and sinus expert, at University of Utah Health. Dr. 史密斯说，嗅觉能力下降或嗅觉改变是危险的吗?

Dr. 史密斯: 你知道, 最短的, simple answer is that losing your sense of smell or having a change in your sense of smell is not going to directly cause you harm by not having it, 但它确实会增加你患其他潜在有害疾病的风险. The ones that I try to really emphasize for patients is when your sense of smell comes back wrong, 或者长期减少, this does actually put you at an increased risk for experiencing food poisoning over time because you might not be able to tell when something has gone bad in your fridge. And so a really careful attention to the expiry dates on food in your fridge and labeling your leftovers so 你知道 how long they've been there for, or having someone in your home who has a normal sense of smell check them before you eat them is actually really important.

然后类似地, you might not be able to detect smoke or natural gas in your home with your altered sense of smell, and so ensuring that you have up-to-date smoke detectors and natural gas detectors is really important. 即使你有一个天然气炉, potentially getting a handheld natural gas detector can be really important because it might be that you went to light your stove, 打火机坏了, 然后气体从炉子里喷出来, 你试着重新点燃它, 而且你家里一直在积聚那种气体, 有可能引起小爆炸. And so it's something I'm very careful to talk to patients about so that they're aware of that potential risk. 烧烤是另一个真正有问题的地方.

类似的, 大发娱乐可以在患有失语症的病人身上看到职业中断, 尤其是在食品行业工作的人, 就像厨师, 或者可能在其他领域，如花店或消防员, 谁是靠嗅觉来做好工作的, 这对病人来说影响很大.

除了大发娱乐讨论过的生活方式风险之外, changes in your sense of smell actually has the potential to significantly impact your mental health. 所以你的嗅觉能力, your ability to enjoy food from the flavor that comes from your sense of smell is really important for our well-being long term, and these types of alterations have a really significant impact in the quality of life of our patients.

他们确实对这些症状感到非常困扰, 它们确实会影响他们每天的生活享受. 这就是持续性的失语症, having persistent hyposmia can increase your risk potentially for things like anxiety or depression. And I think making sure that our patients are aware of this is really important so that if they start to experience those symptoms, 如果他们开始认为他们可能受到了影响, 大发娱乐可以大发娱乐治疗这些相关问题, 这些都与焦虑和抑郁有关, 这样大发娱乐就能尽可能地减轻这种影响.

面试官: 我可以看到精神上的影响是多么的真实, especially with I've heard patients reporting that other people in their lives have a hard time understanding what they're going through. 你对你的病人有过这样的经历吗?

Dr. 史密斯: 是的. 我想说这是绝对正确的. Parosmia, phantosmia, hyposmia are extremely difficult to understand unless you've lived them. And I think most people have had a cold or an upper respiratory tract infection where they've had a weird sense of smell or taste for a short period of time, 他们说, 你知道, “没什么好吃的。. 我不舒服的时候不想吃东西.“现在想象一下，如果这就是你每天的生活，直到永远. And it can potentially cause real distress when patients can't enjoy things that they normally would enjoy.

So, 你知道, 我个人在4月份感染了COVID-19, 当我恢复的时候, 我在康复过程中确实有一些失忆, 我不再喜欢喝咖啡了. 我很喜欢喝咖啡. 我喜欢早上喝杯咖啡. And it got to the point where I could not drink my 咖啡 and keep it down because the smell that was associated with it was so terrible. 它让我很恶心，我再也喝不下去了. We had to take all the 咖啡 beans out of our espresso machine and put them away for a while because I just couldn't tolerate them being in the home, 我真的很难过. 我真的很困扰，我想，你知道，“这将永远持续下去. 我再也不能喝上一杯好咖啡了.”,, 你知道, 我很幸运, 随着时间的推移，情况逐渐好转, 现在我又可以喝早上的咖啡了.

但对于一些病人来说，它并不局限于一种食物或一种饮料. 这对他们来说很麻烦. I think it's important that we acknowledge how severely this can impact their life and their day-to-day living because it is a real problem.

面试官: And as far as not getting the nutrients that somebody needs because of parosmia, is that a threat? 是不是应该找个营养师看看?

Dr. 史密斯: 我认为这是个好主意. So if you find that your trigger foods are leading you to eliminate an entire food group from your diet, 喜欢肉, 这真的会显著影响你的蛋白质摄入量, 维生素和矿物质, 当你开始使用这些避免措施来限制你的饮食时, 你要确保你的饮食仍然是全面的.

这在老年患者中尤其具有破坏性. 当你变老或变聪明的时候, one of the things that happens is that your sense of smell starts to diminish naturally over time, and this can be particularly bothersome to patients when it comes to their enjoyment of food. 所以如果你对COVID-19有额外的破坏, 这会让这个过程逐步恶化.

And so one of the reasons that we see folks eating less as they get older and wiser is because their enjoyment of food has decreased in addition to their appetite, and it can be really hard to motivate someone to eat when everything tastes really bland or when it tastes bad. 随后, you can have potentially an increased risk of anxiety and depression associated with those things. And so this is something that I think it's important to be mindful of in our older generation so that we can keep an eye out for it and help to manage it as it's becoming a problem.

面试官: 你会对正在听这首歌的人说些什么? 你能给他们的最重要的信息是什么?

Dr. 史密斯: 老实说，我觉得有两件事. 首先也是最重要的一点是，你绝对不是一个人. 还有很多其他的病人也有同样的经历. There is a whole growing community of people like you that can help you to kind of get through this stage of your life. 不幸的是，这很常见. 大发娱乐看到了很多. 你并不孤单.

第二件事是，情况似乎在好转. 绝大多数人, 你知道, 90% +, within two years of having their COVID-19 infection report that these alterations in their sense of smell go away despite doing nothing about it. 因此，对于绝大多数人来说，随着时间的推移，情况会越来越好. 它非常慢. 大发娱乐过去认为神经愈合是在受伤一年后发生的, 或COVID-19发作一年后, 你会被长期困住吗, 现在大发娱乐知道这不是真的. 这两年来一直在改善, 在你感染三年后, 随着时间的推移，情况似乎会慢慢好转. 所以不要失去希望. 它非常慢. 我知道这很难，而且会造成混乱, 但随着时间的推移，绝大多数人的情况似乎会慢慢好转.