More Anosmia Stuff Sorry Not Sorry
Here’s another congenital anosmic giving his perspective on smell (or lack thereof).
I know nobody else cares, BUT I DO
MATCHA, MATCHA MAN (An Update)
Yo.
So further research on matcha revealed to me that I may have used water that was too hot, which may have messed with the flavor. So today I:
1) used water at the oft-recommended temperature of 175 degrees;
2) used the higher recommended amount of matcha powder (1 teaspoon)
Picture of result:
And the taste?
Yup. Still nothing.
I reiterate from yesterday: my chemical senses are so broken, man.
MATCHA, MATCHA MAN (I wanna be…a matcha man!)
In my “One of These Teas Must Taste Like Something, Dammit” quest, I bought some matcha powder when I was in the States. Y’know the stuff that apparently has a super strong taste.
“Matcha has a bright, vegetal, and slightly bitter taste, with notes of sweetness and umami” according to Artful Tea.
Pic of final product:
It looks like someone took the wet grass clippings from under a lawn mower and squeezed the liquid into a cup, huh?
Want to guess what it tastes like to me?
My chemical senses are so broken, man.
Anosmia Awareness Day!
It’s that time of the year: a time for the non-smellers! Have a vid:
I KNEW IT
Congenital anosmics breathe differently than smellers.
Turns out that people who smell take, as the article puts it, “exploratory sniffs.” The breathing rates between anosmics and smellers are the same, but smellers do like this little mini sniff-like inhale at the end of drawing a breath, and they do this several hundred times per hour.
During sleep or in a controlled odor-free room, the “extra inhalation” patterns even out between the two groups, but additional differences between the breathing patterns of the two groups were significant enough that researchers could tell if a person was a smeller or an anosmic with 85% accuracy just by looking at the breathing patterns.
It’d be interesting to expand upon this study by looking at acquired anosmics, too (this just compared congenital to smellers).
I guess I just can’t taste ANY OF THESE DAMN TEAS THEN
So remember back at the beginning of the month when I tried a new type of tea and couldn’t taste it?
Well, here is my tea collection now:
The only one I can taste is the green tea, and just barely. I think if I were blindfolded, I could tell that it was not just water but maybe water mixed with something else. But for all those other teas?
NOTHING.
They all taste like hot water and ONLY hot water.
Even when they’re room temperature or cold, they just taste like water.
HOW?
Does smell really contribute that much to the tea experience? Or is my sense of taste broken as well?
(Note that I’ll keep drinking these; I may not be able to taste them, but tea has some health benefits, so I might as well get ‘em.)
No One Nose
AYYYYYYYYYYY it’s Anosmia Awareness Day.
Go hug a non-smeller.
And watch this review of a really weird-ass water bottle.
This sounds absolutely horrible. Why are y’all with working noses so weird?
Taste Test
I agree with some of the comments that the test is “too easy” given that they can still differentiate the foods due to texture/feel, but it’s still interesting to hear their commentary about how diminished the tasting part is.
“I can’t taste the flavor. Oh, it’s just bitter.”
YES. EXACTLY.
I really think this is why I have such a limited number of foods that I like and why I’m SO picky about texture. I don’t have as much to experience as others, so what I can experience is very impactful.
Interesting stuff.
Visibility
Um…
In other words, “screw you, anosmics!”
Bro, milk tastes fine to me up until it actually has clumps in it. Like, that’s the only way I can tell if milk has gone bad: it has clumps in it. And I’m sure it reaches an actual unsafe level of badness before the clumps even appear.
So this is a really dumb idea. Like, I know there aren’t that many of us compared to people with other sensory issues, but we’re out there.
And we don’t like old milk.
Happy Anosmia Awareness Day!
As per tradition, here’s an anosmia-related video. She discusses the very important difference between smell and taste and how anosmics can taste things (the five basic tastes) but miss out on flavor (the mingling of taste and smell).
END!
Why am I dumb?
I just smelled my armpits to see if I put on deodorant.
I AM ANOSMIC
I HAVE BEEN ANOSMIC SINCE BIRTH
I hate myself even more now, but at the same time this is a really great demonstration of behavioral mimicry – maybe not in a one-on-one situation, but in a “I’ve seen people do this action before, so I’ll do it too!” sort of sense.
(I’m still an idiot, though.)
SNIFF SNIFF BITCHES
Hey, I wrote about something like this in a short story like six years ago, haha.
As you might expect, there has been a lot fewer studies and a lot less research done into smell and fixing smell issues than any of the other senses. That’s one issue why there really hasn’t been any development of this type of technology yet.
Another issue is that smelling is a lot more complicated, physically, than things like hearing or even seeing, just because it is a chemical sense and is a lot more “fine-tuned” in terms of its various components compared to vision or hearing.
But the idea that the concept is “on the radar” now, though, is pretty cool!
Maybe one day…
Who Nose?
Woah, Perrie Edwards has anosmia? Coolness. I like her.
I can relate to those *confused and lost* faces she makes when others are talking about scents.
Anosmia Awareness Day 2019
Hey nerds, it’s Anosmia Awareness Day, which means it’s time again for this fantastic vid:
I love how the comment section is full of anosmics. Music brings us together, yo.
Anosmia Adventures: Jelly Belly Edition
Heeeeeeeeeeey, Merry Christmas, people! Nate and I are down at his parents’ house in Crowsnest Pass. We did our present unwrapping earlier today, which afforded me yet another opportunity to see how weird anosmia can be sometimes.
Nate’s mom got a little package of Jelly Belly jellybeans. The package consisted of jellybeans in eight (I think?) different flavors. One of the flavors was “buttered popcorn,” so she tried that because it sounded weird.
And it apparently tasted freakishly like buttered popcorn.
Both Nate and his brother tried that flavor as well and confirmed a very distinct butter popcorn taste.
So I tried it, too.
It tasted like sugar.
I didn’t get any of that buttered popcorn flavor at all. In fact, all of the flavors (including coconut, blueberry, and green apple) tasted exactly the same to me: like sugar.
I don’t know what Jelly Belly uses to get their particular flavors, but it sure as hell ain’t something that a person’s taste buds alone can figure out.
Party time.
Anosmia: Cat Food Edition
Believe it or not, I don’t think my anosmia has ever caused me to give myself food poisoning or anything like that. I mean, I’ve had food poisoning before (most likely?), but it’s not because I didn’t smell that the milk had gone rotten or that item XYZ was past its expiration date.
So as surprising as it might seem, my anosmia has never caused me any food-related problems.
But it just caused a problem for Jazzy.
I went to give Jazzy her soft food this morning and she took about half a bite of it before walking away. This isn’t unusual; on the weekends she gets her favorite type of crunchies, so she usually will ignore her soft food in favor of the crunchies.
But then Nate came in the kitchen and was basically like, “why does it smell like death in here?” Turns out the soft food I’d just given Jazzy was super rotten. And I had absolutely no idea.
Awesome.
I cleaned out the bowl and gave her some new non-rotten (as checked by Nate) soft food, and she ate some of it, but then she threw up like two minutes later. I’m not sure if she threw up because of the bit of rotten food she had or because she inhaled the other soft food + crunchies (which happens sometimes), but I still feel bad. I don’t give a crap if I accidentally poison myself, but I don’t want to hurt my kitty.
Stupid nose.
The Nose Knows? No.
Heeeeeeeeeeeey, it’s Anosmia Awareness Day! Go hug a non-smeller and watch this video I posted awhile back because it’s fantastic.
(And get me this shirt, haha.)
This is FANTASTIC
I have a new theme song:
Everything in this is truth.
Anosmia Awareness Day
It’s Anosmia Awareness Day 2016!
I know anosmia isn’t the biggest deal in the world, but there’s a good number of us out there who have it, congenital or otherwise. Here’s a map of just those of us from the Anosmics of the World, Unite! Facebook page who’ve marked our locations for others to see.
Also there’s this, which seems pretty cool.
Anyway.
Who Nose?
I’m not sure if I’ve ever actually posted anything about the Monell Chemical Senses Center on this blog, but basically it’s a group of scientists who specialize in research on taste and smell.
Anyway, the reason I’m bringing them up is because I was checking their website (as I do on occasion) and clicked on the “Research” tab at the top. Apparently they’re currently looking for congenital anosmics!
From the “Participate in Research” page:
“The Monell Chemical Senses Center is looking for volunteers who suffer from congenital anosmia and their related family members in order to study the genetic causes of this disorder. Eligible to adults (men and women) over the age of 18. Compensation is $15, given after the study is completed. Subjects will be asked to donate their DNA via a saliva sample. If eligible, individuals can request testing materials be sent to them directly.”
I might have to do this. It’d be super cool to be able to contribute to smell research in a small way.
Scents and Scent-Ability
Want to know a weird thing I do every once and awhile? Every so often I catch myself making a mental comment about the smell of something. Even though I can’t smell.
Example: tonight (well, this morning) when I went to make dinner I opened my fridge. I’d just bought a bunch of broccoli and that (apart from a container of feta cheese) was the only thing in the fridge. I saw the broccoli and immediately thought, “man, this fridge smells like broccoli.”
Did it? No idea. But that was just my automatic reaction. Similar smell-related reactions happen every once and awhile.
So I have no idea if that means that I can kind of smell like on a subconscious level or I’m just accustomed to associating the idea of smell with things that people have told me have a distinctive odor (like broccoli or garbage or things like that) and thus automatically assume whatever contains such odorous things must be infused with the smell. I’d bet on the latter, but who knows.
Weird brain is weird.
Putting the “no” in “nose”
Not being able to smell usually doesn’t bother me (despite how much I bitch about it, haha). After all, since I’ve never been able to smell, I have no idea what I’m missing.
But every once and awhile, anosmia is incredibly inconvenient. For example, suppose I wear a shirt a few days ago and then end up wanting to wear it again for whatever reason. Apart from asking somebody else to smell said shirt, I literally have no way of knowing whether or not it’s stinky. There’s no way to check it. Same thing with, say the garbage. There is absolutely no way I can tell when it develops an odor without guesstimating how long it takes for the old broccoli stems in the trash can to start to rot and give off a foul smell. I just can’t ever know for sure (again, without asking some able-nosed person). Usually that’s not a problem, but sometimes it’s quite annoying.
Haha, sorry, just felt like mentioning that for whatever reason.
NO NOSE NO
Opus Oils announces the Official Release of the olfactory breakthrough, “Eau Pear Tingle” – A multi-sensory fragrance experience that was designed to be sensed by those with Anosmia.
“Eau Pear Tingle is as much about “sensation” as it is about the unique ability that perfume has to express periods of time. The fragrance starts out with a modern mouthwatering juicy twist that is redolent of green pear, pineapple and a hint of coconut. This is followed by the trigeminal effect of camphor, mint and black pepper that has a delightful side effect; it steadies the breath with a mild cooling sensation complemented by the essence of fir and wood shavings. The perfume dries down to an addictive classic base that is rich in sandalwood and musk. When you wear Eau Pear Tingle you journey from the present into the future and repose in the past. The fact that someone who has anosmia is able to sense this fragrance is truly an innovation in the art of perfumery. It is also cause for the industry to consider anosmia as a source of inspiration for scent creation targeting connoisseurs as well as the 65+ demographic that is regularly snubbed by the industry; whether they have age related smell loss or not…”
I WANT SOME.
The Cowardly Average-Sized Toaster Oven is the Brave Little Toaster’s Forgotten Half-Brother
Woah, Coldplay. Woah.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQGn33DzrmM
Crank this up and sit in a dark room.
This reminds me of Muse’s Madness in the “this is by one of my favorite groups but doesn’t sound at all like them but it’s even more magnificent because of that” sense.
Apparently there are a lot of mixed feelings about this song, but I really like it. Give it a listen and decide for yourself.
Also: it’s Anosmia Awareness Day today! Go hug a non-smeller and check out this blog run by someone who has anosmia.
Eigenblogger 