A woman suffering from ‘long Covid’ says that she has trouble brushing her teeth or even showering due to her ongoing symptoms.
Long Covid is a mysterious condition in which a person still feels the effects of the virus months after recovery, and is affecting a growing number of COVID-19 survivors.
Among them is Katrina Haydon, 24, of Washington D.C. who told Fox News that her Covid infection in June 2021 has ruined her sense of taste and smell.
First she experienced anosmia, the loss of her sense of the two senses, and later developed parosmia, where the senses become abnormal.
Haydon still suffers from parosmia months later, and reports that some foods taste and smell terrible for her – and even some basic daily tasks such as showering and brushing her teeth can be a problem.
Katrina Haydon (pictured), 24, from Washington D.C., says she has trouble performing simple tasks like brushing her teeth and showering due to the parosmia she has suffered as a result of long Covid
Haydon (pictured) said that she struggles with the smell of heat, and that the taste of toothpaste causes a ‘physical reaction’ in her. She also has trouble eating dairy products or sweets due to how they taste
‘I used to take a shower more than twice a day regularly, but at least twice a day, and it has been really, really hard for me to make myself shower once a day. It’s so difficult,’ she told Fox News.
Haydon said she has trouble dealing with the smell of heat, making showers – and other hot things – hard to deal with.
‘And same thing with brushing my teeth,’ she said.
‘It’s really, really hard because even non-mint toothpastes cause a physical reaction because they just taste and smell so bad.’
Some foods also have an unbearable smell for the woman.
‘Savory foods smell like rotting sewage. Hot water smells like rotting meat,’ Haydon told Fox News.
She also said that some sweets or daily products taste as if she sprayed perfume into her mouth.
These types of issues are associated with a mysterious, yet surprisingly common, condition called long Covid.
The condition can manifest multiple symptoms in sufferers, from anosmia to potentially severe psychiatric ailments to cognitive issues like brain fog.
Why exactly the condition develops can not be determined, though.
Anosmia and parosmia are common symptoms of long Covid. It is a mysterious condition that experts have not yet figured out. One expert tells DailyMail.com that it could occur in up to two-thirds of Covid survivors in some shape or form (file photo)
Some believe it is a continued immune response to the virus, and a person’s immune system may still be reacting to a virus that is no longer there – causing these symptoms.
A research team from California published findings last month that found the Covid could infect a person’s neurons – cells the immune system will not attack – and the lingering effects of that could cause many of the symptoms associated with the cognitive issues.
Dr Sam Pleasure, a neurology professor at the University of California, San Francisco, told DailyMail.com in October that he believes these symptoms could be tied to brain inflammation caused by Covid.
Pleasure’s team has investigated more serious psychiatric cases of long Covid, like teens suffering from delusions, severe anxiety and attention issues so severe it affected their ability to complete school work.
Covid can cause inflammation all across the body, and certain parts of the brain becoming inflamed can cause neurological issues like anosmia, brain fog and more.
Dr Andrew Lane, Director of the Sinus Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, told Fox News that symptoms like Anosmia can often occur after viral infection.
‘COVID has this ability to infect the olfactory tissue and the olfactory epithelium … and you lose a lot of neurons, sort of all at once,’ he said, though saying he is not clear how it happens.
‘And if you lose a lot of it, you know, maybe all of it, then you’re going to be anosmic.’
Dr Noah Greenspan, a pulmonary care expert who operates a long Covid clinic in New York City, told DailyMail.com that anywhere from one-third to two-thirds of Covid survivors will develop the condition.
