Chewing gum restores dad's taste and smell years after Covid

Multimodal Chewing Gum Flavour Training to Aid Flavour Perception Recovery - a Pilot Study

https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT07498062

looks like it uses flavorings from these folks https://www.tastetech.com/

> The dad-of-two, from Litchfield, Staffordshire, could eat the spiciest curries with no effect

I know this is probably just a bit of "editorial spice" because it's an obvious example for "what would you do if you could eat anything" I guess, but I thought capsaicin/spicyness was NOT a taste-perception thing. Isn't more of a pain feeling? I would've assumed you would retain that, while losing the olfactory perception you need for flavours.

I am no expert in this sort of thing, so if anyone knows I'd be genuinely curious about why COVID would affect both of those senses.

I had my fourth Covid infection just a month ago. Fully vaccinated, and having had it three times before, it still hit me like a brick.

It took 10 days to get rid of the flu like symptoms, two weeks to get to semi normal, but my taste hasn't been the same since. Not entirely gone, but very muted.

If these gums were available off the shelf I would buy them in a heartbeat!

I lost my sense of smell from a minor virus I caught a couple years ago. It probably wasn't COVID (I tested negative at least).

It came back very slowly, and unevenly. My coffee/chocolate taste is still quite dim.

Of all the possible smells to lose, why did it have to be those?

Where can somebody with regular taste senses buy these specially formulated chewing gum to try and develop super senses?

I wonder if it dulls other senses the opposite of blind people who develop more sensitive hearing.

How it feels to chew 5 gum

> “The chewing gums were specially formulated to keep their flavour for longer, and actually change flavour as you chew.

Sounds like an amazing product that I would want to buy. I probably chew 20 sticks of gum a day.

Does it work for people who aren't dad's?