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Comment by dyauspitr | Hacker News Reader

My dad lost his sense of smell after having surgery for his meningioma. According to him he doesn’t even notice a reduction in the quality of his life. I asked if food tastes worse and he said he hadn’t really thought about it and no it doesn’t. It really is the least of the senses.

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Having lost my sense of taste during a bout of covid I would say he’s absolutely the anomaly - or he only partially lost it. A complete loss of smell and taste is impossible to ignore. Imagine standing in the direct path of a bonfire and not noticing at all until your lungs start to hurt. You can’t not notice it.

I think people are different (also he only lost his sense of smell, not taste). It’s all about perspective. If you didn’t know that a lack of smell affects flavor you might not notice. It probably also helps that he is Asian and Asian food is significantly more flavorful.

When I had covid I noticed a difference in how food tasted but it was kinda irrelevant. Food still tasted very good. It might be genetic or something as well. For instance, I can have a double shot of expresso and go to sleep 30 minutes later.

Smell is a huge part of perceived taste.

In lost some smell with Covid and it sucked. Food was bland.

Brain surgery can leave you without the ability to detect something is missing.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Anosognosia

  Anosognosia is relatively common following different causes of brain injury

 The condition does not seem to be directly related to sensory loss but is thought to be caused by damage to higher level neurocognitive processes

Also Meningioma explained: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meningioma

This was 15 years ago, but he seemed to have all his faculties in order. The major change we saw was for about 3 to 6 months after the surgery he would lose his temper at the slightest thing. He was basically impossible to live with and then all of that just went away and he went back to being very normal.

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