What if you had to continue to cook and bake for yourself and your family, but couldn't smell or taste what you made?
I recently learned that a friend of mine lost her senses of smell and taste after using an OTC zinc-based product intended to shorten the duration of the common cold. Because it has been more than six months since the onset of anosmia her physician can give little hope for recovery of her senses. My friend is a gourmet cook and had recently started her own baking business. As you can imagine, she is very sad that some of her greatest pleasures are now diminished or completely lost.
Coincidentally, in last Sunday's Pioneer Press Bonnie Blodgett revealed in her bi-weekly gardening column, The Blundering Gardener, that she too lost her sense of smell after using a homeopathic cold remedy. You can read the story here.
I don't mean to be sensational, but this is serious. Many of you, like me, take great pleasure from gardening and cooking and would be so unhappy to have these activities and others that are enhanced by our sense of taste and smell ruined forever.(or even for a little while) Please be careful. Nurse your cold with fluids, rest, blow your nose, whine like crazy, and be patient. Colds eventually do go away.
4 comments:
Thanks for sharing this Laura. It seems like such a small thing to use OTC stuff for a cold...but no more.
Ditto from me. A good reminder that letting nature take its course with a cold is the best medicine.
Do we get to know what the product that caused this is, or is it confidential?
The product was Zicam. Some of their products were recalled last summer due to side effects like loss of smell. So, perhaps my friend used product purchased before last June. I had not been aware of this problem until I heard her story but some people I talked to remembered reading about it last year. You can read more about the reason for the recall at this FDA site: http://www.fda.gov/Newsevents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm167065.htm
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