Beat me to it....
Corona virus and pipe smoking
- Thread starter Kentos
- Start date
Prayers and best wishes for a speedy recovery my friend. I had it in October of 20 and aside from a wicked 11 day fever, my case was pretty much a joke. I never lost my sense of taste or smell, but I did have some anomalies. Gatorade tasted normal right out of the fridge, but tasted like seawater after 5 minutes at room temperature. Weird stuff like that. Everything went right back to normal as soon as the fever broke for good.
I had lost my sense of taste and smell for about 6 weeks after I was cleared to go back to work which made work, well, interesting. It took me some time to even want to smoke or drink. Once I did start smoking it was just hot air. Once my taste and smell came back I didn't notice anything involving flavors of smokes or food for that matter. Which is a good thing or else I may have considered a career change.
I came down with it on Thanksgiving morning. Couldn't taste or smell anything at all for a solid two weeks. But...it all came back.
There are actually a number of American and European studies that also suggest smokers were a lower percentage of covid patients than non-smokers, and these studies adjusted for percentage of smokers in the overall population. There are a good number of these studies as well. They largely have been ignored by the medical field as tobacco use is viewed as more harmful than covid. With a daily, addicted, heavy cigarette smoker... I would likely agree. All other forms of tobacco use are not nearly as bad as smoking 2 packs of cigs a day. Unless you fully inhale your pipe or cigars.
I’ve been following this and I think the emerging thought is that it’s the nicotine, not smoking itself that is causing a possible reduction in COVID infections among smokers. The thought is that nicotine binds to the ACE-2 receptors on cells as does the virus. If the receptors are already bound to nicotine, the virus has fewer places to latch onto the cells.
One of the emerging therapies for people with anosmia is to have them sniff things (essential oils, usually) and concentrate really hard on what they remember it smelling like. The idea being that it stimulates the affected nerves to make new connections. I haven't really dived into the literature but it sounds like it has had some measure of success with some patients.
I had covid over Thanksgiving and totally lost my sense of smell at the tail end of it, which was kind of alarming, because I like smelling things (and tasting them). I went around smelling darn near anything I could and trying to dredge up a scent memory to go with it. I think it was about 5 days before it came back, took a while for coffee especially to smell normal again. Did that exercise make any difference? Probably not, but it gave me something to do.
The first morning that it came back, I was in the kitchen making coffee and I stuck my nose in the filter basket with the previous day's grounds-- I was about 2 seconds in to "remembering" what old coffee grounds smell like when it hit me that I was actually smelling them. I let out a whoop that woke my wife up from across the house. And then I gagged because it smelled *awful*.
Best of luck yo you, sir.
I had covid over Thanksgiving and totally lost my sense of smell at the tail end of it, which was kind of alarming, because I like smelling things (and tasting them). I went around smelling darn near anything I could and trying to dredge up a scent memory to go with it. I think it was about 5 days before it came back, took a while for coffee especially to smell normal again. Did that exercise make any difference? Probably not, but it gave me something to do.
The first morning that it came back, I was in the kitchen making coffee and I stuck my nose in the filter basket with the previous day's grounds-- I was about 2 seconds in to "remembering" what old coffee grounds smell like when it hit me that I was actually smelling them. I let out a whoop that woke my wife up from across the house. And then I gagged because it smelled *awful*.
Best of luck yo you, sir.
- Thread starter
- #28
Smell is slowly coming back, thank god.
How about now?
- Thread starter
- #30
How about now?
It’s but a fleeting memory lol. It came back pretty quickly after my low grade fever went away. The cough and lethargy lasts a couple weeks longer though.
