How to Get Your Smell and Taste Back After a Cold

Most smell and taste loss from a cold resolves on its own within one to three weeks, as swelling subsides and damaged sensory cells regenerate. For cases that linger beyond that window, olfactory training — a structured daily sniffing routine using strong, familiar scents — is the best-supported active strategy for speeding recovery, though a handful of other approaches show varying degrees of promise.

Why a Cold Takes Your Smell Away

The most obvious culprit is congestion. Swollen nasal passages physically block odor molecules from reaching the olfactory receptors high in your nasal cavity. But the problem can run deeper than a stuffy nose. Viral infections, from common rhinoviruses to influenza to SARS-CoV-2, can damage the delicate olfactory nerve cells lining the upper nasal passages. COVID-19 drew particular attention to this because many infected people lost their sense of smell suddenly without any nasal congestion at all, suggesting the virus was harming the olfactory tissue directly rather than just blocking airflow.¹

What most people call “taste loss” during a cold is usually smell loss in disguise. Much of what you experience as flavor comes from aromas traveling up the back of your throat to your olfactory receptors while you chew and swallow. Your tongue still picks up sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami just fine, but without that smell component, food tastes flat and one-dimensional. Research on patients with smell loss found that they scored significantly better on tests delivered through the mouth (roughly 55% correct) than on standard sniff-through-the-nose tests (about 36% correct), confirming that the back-of-throat smell pathway is often partially spared even when normal sniffing fails.²

How Long Recovery Usually Takes

For a garden-variety cold, smell and taste typically bounce back within a week or two once the congestion clears. COVID-19 brought unprecedented attention to the issue because the virus can damage olfactory tissue more aggressively, stretching recovery timelines considerably. In a large study of over 1,300 COVID-19 patients, about a quarter still hadn’t recovered their smell two months after losing it, and the average duration of self-reported loss was roughly three weeks. By six months, though, under 5% of those tested still had measurably impaired smell.³ A separate systematic review placed the typical duration of COVID-related smell and taste loss at one to two weeks for most people, though findings varied widely across studies.⁴

The reassuring bottom line: even after a nasty viral infection, the vast majority of people do eventually get their sense of smell back. The olfactory system is one of the few parts of the nervous system that regenerates throughout life. Old sensory neurons die and new ones grow in to replace them, a process that typically takes several weeks. Your job is to give that process the best chance of succeeding.

Olfactory Training, the Best-Supported Active Strategy

If your smell hasn’t returned after a couple of weeks, olfactory training is the intervention with the most consistent evidence behind it. A systematic review of treatments for post-infectious smell loss identified olfactory training as one of the two approaches with the most robust data (alongside nasal steroids, which have a more complicated track record, discussed below).⁵

The basic idea is simple. You deliberately sniff a set of distinct, strong-smelling substances twice a day, concentrating on each one for about 15 to 20 seconds. The classic protocol uses four scent categories: something floral (rose), something fruity (lemon), something aromatic (clove), and something resinous (eucalyptus). You do this morning and evening, every day, for at least 12 weeks. Some practitioners use a more expansive set. One published protocol employed ten essential oils — peppermint, lavender, lemon, red spruce, frankincense, hyssop, cinnamon, cloves, savory, and eucalyptus — with patients sniffing through different patterns of deep inhalation and rapid sniffing twice daily for 30 days. Participants showed meaningful improvement in olfactory function scores.⁶

Does a more intensive protocol work better than the classic one? A study comparing the two for post-COVID smell loss found both approaches improved subjective smell ratings, with no significant advantage for the intensive version.⁷ Consistency matters more than intensity. Showing up every day matters more than cramming.

The mechanism behind this involves neuroplasticity. Repeatedly stimulating the smell pathways encourages the brain to reorganize and strengthen the neural connections involved in odor processing. Brain imaging research has shown that olfactory training leads to increased cortical thickness in regions that process smell.⁸ A systematic review confirmed that these positive neuroplastic brain changes occurred across various populations, not just people recovering from viral infections.⁹

You don’t need anything fancy to get started. Essential oils work well, but so do everyday kitchen items: ground coffee, cinnamon sticks, fresh lemon peel, vanilla extract. Choose scents that are distinct from one another and that you can remember from before you lost your smell. Sniff each one slowly and deliberately, trying to recall what it should smell like. Even if you detect nothing at first, the focused sniffing still stimulates the olfactory pathways.

Do Nasal Steroids or Steroid Pills Help?

Steroid nasal sprays are commonly prescribed for smell loss, but the evidence is genuinely mixed, and the picture is worth walking through honestly.

On the positive side, one trial found that fluticasone nasal spray combined with triamcinolone paste in the mouth led to significant improvement in recognizing odors and tastes within five days, while a control group showed no improvement or worsened.¹⁰ Another trial found that mometasone nasal spray produced significantly higher olfactory scores than placebo, with roughly a 23% reduction in complete smell loss in the treatment group.¹¹ But a separate randomized trial found that mometasone offered no superiority over olfactory training alone, with similar recovery rates and durations between groups.¹²

A meta-analysis tried to make sense of these conflicting results. It found no significant difference between steroid and control groups in how quickly smell returned or in self-rated smell scores. However, objective smell test scores were somewhat higher in steroid-treated patients, and the overall odds of recovering from complete smell loss were modestly better in the steroid group.¹³ The practical read: nasal steroid sprays might help some people, and the risk of short-term topical use is low, but they’re not a reliable fix on their own.

Oral steroids are a different story. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial found that prednisolone taken by mouth did not improve olfactory function after COVID-19 compared to placebo at 12 weeks. Both groups improved at similar rates, and the researchers explicitly recommended against prescribing prednisolone for persistent post-COVID smell disorders.¹⁴ A separate study did find that about a quarter of patients experienced clinically significant improvement after a short course of oral prednisolone, compared to 10% in the control group, but most patients didn’t respond.¹⁵ Given that oral steroids carry real side effects, most guidelines don’t recommend them for routine post-viral smell loss.

Supplements That Might Help

Zinc gets a lot of attention for taste loss, and there’s reasonable evidence behind it, with an important caveat. A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials found that zinc supplementation is effective for taste disorders in people who are actually zinc deficient, people with unexplained taste disorders, and patients with taste problems from chronic kidney disease when given in higher doses for up to six months.¹⁶ If your zinc levels are normal, there’s no strong evidence that extra zinc will speed up taste recovery from a cold. Getting tested for zinc deficiency before supplementing high doses is worth the effort.

Omega-3 fatty acids have shown some promise for smell recovery, though the evidence comes from specific populations. A randomized trial in patients who lost smell after nasal surgery found that omega-3 supplements led to significantly less persistent smell loss at three and six months compared to no supplementation.¹⁷ A systematic review concluded that omega-3s appear to have neuroprotective and anti-inflammatory effects that could benefit the olfactory system, though more research is needed to confirm the benefit for post-viral smell loss specifically.¹⁸ Omega-3s are low risk for most people, which makes them a reasonable addition even without definitive proof.

Intranasal vitamin A has been studied based on its known role in olfactory neuron regeneration. An older study found that post-infectious patients treated with vitamin A nasal drops combined with olfactory training improved at significantly higher rates than those doing training alone (37% versus 23%).¹⁹ However, a more recent proof-of-concept trial focused specifically on COVID-related smell loss found no significant effect.²⁰ The conflicting results may reflect differences in the type of viral damage or the populations studied, and intranasal vitamin A isn’t widely available outside research settings.

Saline Rinses and Basic Nasal Care

Saline nasal rinses won’t directly regenerate damaged olfactory neurons, but they help clear mucus and reduce inflammation, removing one barrier to smell recovery. A Cochrane review of saline irrigation during upper respiratory infections found significant reductions in nasal congestion and breathing obstruction scores in children, along with decreased need for decongestant medication. Side effects were limited to mild nasal discomfort in some participants.²¹

A neti pot, squeeze bottle, or simple saline spray can be used once or twice daily. Use distilled, sterile, or previously boiled water — never unboiled tap water, which can carry rare but serious infections. Steam inhalation works on a similar principle: warm, moist air loosens mucus and may help odor molecules reach olfactory receptors more easily. Neither approach is a cure, but both are safe, cheap, and can complement olfactory training.

When Smells Come Back Wrong

Some people recovering from smell loss hit an unsettling phase where familiar scents smell distorted or disgusting. Coffee might smell like sewage. Cooking meat might smell rotten. This phenomenon, called parosmia, tends to appear roughly 45 to 60 days after the initial viral infection. Researchers believe it happens because regenerating olfactory neurons “miswire” as they grow back — neurons that would normally respond to pleasant odors get triggered by completely different molecules instead.²²

Parosmia is actually a sign that recovery is underway, even though it doesn’t feel like progress. New nerve cells are growing; they just haven’t finished finding their correct connections. For most people the distortions gradually fade as the neurons complete regeneration, though this can take months. There’s no specific drug for parosmia. Continued olfactory training may help guide the rewiring process, and in the meantime, many people find relief by avoiding their worst trigger foods and leaning into flavors that still taste acceptable.

Staying Safe While Your Smell Is Impaired

Losing your sense of smell is more than an inconvenience — it’s a genuine safety issue. A cross-sectional study found that over 85% of patients with olfactory disorders reported safety concerns. Over five years, roughly a third experienced at least one food-related incident, about 15% had at least one gas leak incident, over a third had a gas-related scare, and nearly one in five reported a workplace safety incident.²³ Separate research confirmed that cooking incidents were the most common danger, accounting for about 45% of reported hazardous events, followed by ingestion of spoiled food and inability to detect gas leaks.²⁴

While you’re waiting for your smell to return, practical precautions can make a real difference:

• Install detectors: Make sure you have working smoke detectors and, if you use natural gas, a plug-in gas leak detector.
• Check dates visually: Rely on expiration labels and visual inspection for food freshness rather than the sniff test.
• Use timers when cooking: Don’t rely on smell to notice burning food on the stove or in the oven.
• Recruit a household member: If you live with someone, ask them to check whether leftovers or opened containers smell off before you eat them.

Platelet-Rich Plasma and Emerging Treatments

For people with persistent smell loss that hasn’t responded to training or other approaches after six months or more, platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection is generating interest. PRP is made from your own blood — a sample is drawn, spun down to concentrate the growth-factor-rich platelets, and then injected into the olfactory cleft high in the nose. The idea is that concentrated growth factors may encourage olfactory nerve regeneration.

A prospective study found significant improvement after PRP treatment, with 16 patients improving after a single injection and 19 after a double injection at three months.²⁵ Longer-term data from a separate cohort study found that improvements in both subjective and objectively measured smell at one year were significantly higher in patients who received PRP injections than in those who did not.²⁶ A third preliminary study confirmed that the procedure is safe and associated with favorable patient-reported outcomes, but cautioned that randomized controlled trials are needed before firm conclusions can be drawn.²⁷ PRP for smell loss is not widely available and remains largely experimental, offered at a handful of specialized smell clinics and academic medical centers.

Why Spicy Food Still “Works” and How to Eat Better in the Meantime

Even when your olfactory system is completely offline, you can still feel the burn of hot peppers, the cool tingle of menthol, or the sharp bite of raw onion. These sensations come from the trigeminal nerve, a separate sensory system in your nose and mouth that detects chemical irritation rather than odor. Receptors on trigeminal nerve endings respond to capsaicin and other chemical irritants through an entirely different pathway than the one used for smell.²⁸

This is why many people with smell loss naturally gravitate toward spicy, vinegary, or intensely flavored foods. Those sensations bypass the damaged olfactory system entirely and still give the brain something interesting to work with. Leaning into trigeminal stimulation can make meals more satisfying during the recovery period: hot sauce, fresh ginger, wasabi, citrus juice, and strong vinegars all activate these receptors. Texture contrasts help too — crunchy, chewy, and varying temperatures add interest to food when aroma is absent.

Research on people living with smell loss paints a clear picture of how eating habits shift. Some lose interest in food entirely and drop weight. Others compensate by eating more sugary and fatty products to chase whatever flavor sensations they can still perceive.²⁹ Being aware of these tendencies can help you steer your eating habits deliberately rather than drifting toward either extreme. Planning meals around strong textures, trigeminal kick, and visual appeal (bright colors and varied presentation) can keep nutrition on track while you wait for your smell to come back.