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Comment by ceedan | Hacker News Reader

Years ago, I also lost my sense of taste for a few days (toothpaste burned my tongue)... I would also describe it as terrifying and immediately depressing. The next day I had pizza and cake with tons of frosting, but everything tasted like soap. I was really concerned that the damage to my taste was permanent. I was in disbelief for a few days. As I ate my regular meals, I just reminded myself that they were things I enjoyed. I can still vividly remember the pink frosting and the texture of the cake, and the burning sensation on my tongue that I thought was just a really effective oral hygiene move

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"perfect sense" is a movie about a virus attack, where people starts to loose all 6 senses gradually. Must watch!! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1439572/

I remembered this movie because, when people losses their sense of taste, the hotels re-invent it's business model by serving food with different textures!!

Wow, that's a movie right for the current situation. I know this isn't actually related, but a virus causing loss of smell and irresistible anger, with scenes of rioting...

PS: don't get me wrong, this is just in the film. I know that the anger in US is caused by police's wrongdoings.

How does toothpaste burn your tongue

One of the active ingredients in some mouthwashes is known to cause taste loss: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dentistry/comments/21vddm/i_lost_my...

I discovered this after starting to use Crest Gum Care mouthwash and it was pretty annoying.

Luckily the loss of taste was not permanent and returned a few days after stopping use.

Yes, ceedan says that somewhere in the world there is a toothpaste that if you use it, it will burn up your tongue and you will loose your sense of taste... yet doesn't provide the name of the toothpaste. WHY?

I actually read it not as:

Toothpaste burned my tongue, therefore I lost my sense of taste.

but as:

I lost my sense of taste, therefore toothpaste burned my tongue.

which might not make so much sense as an affect of the losing taste, but does explain why they don't name the toothpaste.

Chemical burn. Probably less common nowadays. My experience was in 2007. The name for this seems to be "burning mouth syndrome"

> toothpaste burned my tongue

What does this mean? Like, you covered your tongue in toothpaste? I'm very curious about what led you to try this — a moment of desperation?

It was a chemical burn from brushing my tongue with toothpaste and not rinsing soon after. It was probably some kind of Crest or Colgate toothpaste. This was like 15 years ago so I hope the ingredients have changed.

This is actually a good anecdote, which makes me wonder: Did we evolve our taste mechanism to make meat and everything nourishing to taste good, so we can actively seek and put effort into acquiring next meal that tastes better?

Yes. That is what taste and smell are for. Unfortunately people have figured out how to grow/make/prepare food that tastes good but is not good for us.

Most of our sense of taste comes from smell.

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