What Happens to Your Body If You Don’t Have the Sense of Smell?

Can you imagine a life without being able to smell anything? It’s not just being unable to smell food and perfume that can result from it, but also so many different problems in life.

Many of us take our sense of smell for granted. Usually, we realize the sheer importance of this sense of ours only when it’s no longer around.

There are many different things that can make us lose our sense of smell. Having the common cold, flu, sinus infections or allergies are those that can temporarily make our sense of smell go away.

Doctors say that exposure to certain chemicals, undergoing chemotherapy or radiation therapy, diabetes, brain injuries, Alzheimer’s disease, aging and the presence of nasal polyps can also affect our sense of smell.

The following are some of the things that can happen if you lose your smelling ability:

Loss of Appetite

Are you aware that your nose and tongue work together in allowing you to taste your foods and drinks? Try pinching your nose and put something in your mouth. It has no taste, right?

It’s for this reason why you may lose your appetite if you lose your sense of smell, and it’s something that can cause other problems, such as the next few ones.

Malnutrition

Without your appetite, you may not have the urge to eat — eating is no longer pleasurable if you cannot taste anything, especially something that you really love like ice cream or pizza.

As a result, your body will fail to get the various nutrients it needs for its proper functioning, ranging from protein, carbohydrates, fat, vitamins, minerals to dietary fiber.

Excessive Weight Loss

Since you have no appetite, it’s not unlikely for you to lose a lot of weight. Being very skinny comes with a lot of problems, from weakness to hormonal imbalance.

According to doctors, losing a tremendous amount of weight very quickly, which can happen if you have no appetite all the time, can cause the vital organs like the heart and liver to stop working.

Excessive Weight Gain

Other than losing a lot of weight, it’s also possible for you to gain a lot of weight if you lose your sense of smell. That’s because you might end up eating more than usual just for you to find pleasure in eating.

We all know that being obese is not a good idea because it is associated with all sorts of health problems, ranging from osteoarthritis, diabetes to heart disease.

Poisoning

The nose also serves as our protection against anything that can harm our health or endanger our lives, like something that can be poisonous.

For instance, you may end up consuming something that’s already rotten — your tongue cannot tell that it’s rotten since your sense of taste also depends on your sense of smell to work properly.

Body Odor

Your sense of smell may also cause you to lose some of your friends. That’s because not having the ability to smell can keep you from knowing when it’s time to take a shower.

Of course you may always spray perfume. But without your sense of smell, you won’t be able to tell which perfume smells good — some perfumes are simply repulsive to some people!

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