Lost Sense of Smell After Heart Attack
After having a heart attack, my brother has been left with no sense of smell for hot foods. Doctors have come up with all sorts of suggestions to explain this, but no help. He is getting despondent and I hope you can help.
Your sense of smell comes from a nerve that sends tiny sensitive hairs into the top of your nose. These detect certain different odours, and convey the sensation back down the nerve to the part of the brain that can recognise them as particular smells.
During a heart attack, the heart stops working as an effective pump, and some parts of the body may be deprived of an adequate blood supply. When this happens, the more sensitive parts of the body (eg. the brain) may be permanently damaged.
It is also possible for a small stroke to accompany a heart attack.
In either case, it is probable that the part of your brother’s brain that is responsible for the sense of smell has been partly damaged, so that he can no longer smell as well as he could previously.
Unfortunately, brain damage is usually permanent, and although some recovery may occur by new nerves taking on old tasks, once a few months has passed, no further improvement can be expected. There is no effective treatment available.
Everything I eat and drink tastes of salt. Chocolate is the worst. The only thing that is not bad is milk. Have you ever heard of a case like this?
I must admit that I haven’t heard of a case like this, so I have been scouring my . medical texts and cross examining my colleagues to find some answers for you. A wide range of conditions have come to my attention, some very rare, some probably too simple to account for your symptoms, but I will list them all for you.
The most likely cause is the side effects from a medication, and this includes many herbal and ‘natural’ preparations. These medications, or their breakdown products, can be secreted as a salt in your saliva, and the more you salivate (eg. with something tasty like chocolate) the saltier the taste.
Tongue infections such as thrush can alter your taste sensations.
A chronic postnasal drip can affect taste as the phlegm slides down the throat past the back of the tongue.
Poisoning from heavy metals such as lead and mercury can cause abnormal tastes. If you have ever worked with these metals (eg. in a battery factory) you should have the levels of these metals in your blood checked.
There are a number of rare diseases that can affect taste including liver failure and the syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion (SIADH), which causes a build up of the salt levels in your body.
You will need to discuss these options with your own general practitioner to have them investigated, excluded or treated.