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We choose cosmetics that match our genetically-determined odour preferences. [Agnieszka] Sorokowska and her colleagues have shown that it is possible to make assessments of someone's personality based on their choice of fragrances. It suggests that guests of Louis XIV might have been able to pick up a thing or two about the king by sniffing the air upon arrival.
— Sorokowska is a psychologist at the University of Wroclaw, Poland. Read more in Why single people smell different at BBC.
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For Janet Marple, 54, of Edina, Minn., coffee, peanut butter and feces all smell vaguely like burning rubber or give off a sickly sweetness. It’s like nothing she has ever smelled in her lifetime.
“I literally hold my breath when shampooing my hair, and laundry is a terrible experience. Even fresh-cut grass is terrible,” said Ms. Marple, a former corporate banker.
— Read more about post-Covid parosmia in Distorted, Bizarre Food Smells Haunt Covid Survivors at The New York Times.
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Oddly, this suggests that, among those who did not regularly drink caffeinated drinks, caffeine improved their sensitivity to smell but reduced their ability to identify odors. The authors say that caffeine’s stimulant effects may have had a more pronounced impact on performance during the odor sensitivity test given that it was a longer, more tedious task than the identification test.
— Read more in Caffeine enhances odor sensitivity among people who don’t typically consume caffeine, but not among regular consumers at PsyPost.
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The prevailing wisdom is (that post-Covid) parosmia is a good thing – a sign of the neurons regenerating but failing to make their connection, like leads in the wrong port. But, [Barry Smith of the Global Consortium of Chemosensory Research] tells me, it’s not a simple “miswiring”. There appear to be certain volatile molecules, such as those found in coffee and roasted meat – which in high concentration would be quite toxic – that set it off, perhaps triggering a kind of warning alarm.
“It’s a bit like tinnitus in the ears,” Smith suggests, in that the brain is struggling to modulate the signals it receives; my nose is whining, always at the same high pitch.
— Read more in Searching for sense: what we lose when smell deserts us at New Statesman.
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[Charles Wysocki of Monell Chemical Senses Center] found 20 volunteers who also could not initially detect androstenone, and after six weeks of sniffing the pheromone for three minutes, three times a day, half of them became sensitive to the molecule. This finding is in some ways intuitive; the olfactory senses of perfumers and sommeliers, after all, become more attuned to perfumes and wine with time.
— Read more about the development of post-Covid-19 smell training in You Recovered From COVID-19. Now Your Coffee Smells Like Sewage. at The Atlantic.