Change in Taste & Smell

[EeFall]

I was wondering if anyone knows what is going on about this. The following paragraph is a quick history:

I have had RLS severely for almost 14 years and prior to that I had it too but it did not impact my life then. Recently I have gone through 17 days of getting off my RLS medicines per doctors orders and then 10 days of taking no medications at all. The doctor did this to reset my brain after having augmented from pramipexole (after having augmented several times over the years). The other 2 meds I stopped were methadone and Lyrica. Now I have slowly restarted methadone until it treats the RLS by itself at 10mg a day and I no longer need Lyrica and pramipexole (Mirapex). I have had 5 days of sleep in a row and it seems to be working well. Besides having severe RLS I also have severe Sleep Apnea so I have a VPAP machine.

My overall health besides this is good except I had prostate cancer last year and the last test showed zero cancer in my body after my prostate was removed.

As the subject title of this thread states I am having a change in taste and smell since going through these changes in the last month. Foods do not taste or smell as I remember them to taste or smell, it is not an improvement for sure. Some food tastes much different, as if a herb were mixed in with them, others have little taste. I will compare grapes with my wife and she will say they taste great while to me they are rather tasteless and towards being sour. Main meals like lasagna taste like a herb like marijuana has been added to them.

I know it might sound funny but it isn't. I don't know if it is related to the RLS or not. I don't know if it has to do with quitting the 2 meds, restarting methadone, or what? I don't know if I should be concerned about this or not, maybe temporary? Maybe it is unrelated to WED which makes me concerned because a change in taste and smell might mean a problem with how the brain interprets the information coming in from my nose and tongue. Maybe it has something to do with my physical nose and tongue. So I don't know what is causing it, maybe even a withdrawal symptom. Does anyone know what could be causing this? Thanks.

[rthom]

So it's not a dulling of sensation (like from the meds) it's a different taste all together, eh? Any chance it could be from a tooth or throat infection etc.? Maybe a sinus thing--like allergies acting up?

[EeFall]

So it's not a dulling of sensation (like from the meds) it's a different taste all together, eh? Any chance it could be from a tooth or throat infection etc.? Maybe a sinus thing--like allergies acting up?

I was having a tooth that hurt for a couple of weeks when I would bite down on it but it went away about a week ago. My throat is fine. My sinuses have always been a problem, I even had surgery that included cleaning them all out years ago. I take a Claritin (Costco brand) allergy pill everyday because I am allergic to many things including animals, molds, and grasses. I wouldn't last at your place more than an hour as I can't be around dogs or cats much longer than that, and a horse would stop me from breathing within an hour or so. The allergies have not changed recently though and I am not around anymore of the allergy causing things now than I usually am.

When I started to not take the meds (I'm on a diet anyways) I started losing weight like crazy. Much easier to not eat because food didn't taste good anymore. Now that I have been taking methadone for the past week I am actually gaining weight again but the food isn't really tasting any better. I would hate to think that what I am now tasting and smelling is correct and that what I was so used to taste and smell on medications altered my senses, that I find reality inferior now, I wonder if it might be possible? I would think that I would retain what, for example, a peach should taste like though.

[rthom]

You would think it would heighten it but not necessarily change the taste profiles, eh?

[EeFall]

You would think it would heighten it but not necessarily change the taste profiles, eh?

It happened when I stopped the 3 meds and later on I started taking methadone again so it must have something to do with withdrawal symptoms of Lyrica and/or pramipexole. I have never had this problem before so I doubt it is result of pramipexole (Mirapex) because I have stopped taking it several times over the years with no taste or smell problems. That leaves Lyrica and I don't know, can't remember, if I have ever actually successfully quit Lyrica before but know I tried at least once to quit it cold turkey and it was horrible, but I don't remember a problem like that. The RLS symptoms were so bad that I may not have noticed smell and taste though so I am leaning towards Lyrica somehow responsible for it. If so it probably will go away by itself when I am totally over the withdrawals for Lyrica.

Or it could be unrelated to RLS/WED which would not be a good thing. The brain misinterpreting the senses sounds like something like a chemical imbalance in the brain, or a brain tumor or something like that. I have no idea really, I'm just speculating but it is disconcerting. I'm not sure what, if anything, I should do about it.

[ViewsAskew]

Huh - no clue....

[EeFall]

Huh - no clue....

Actually I should have just said I haven't a clue either Heck, it could even be from all the times I have run into walls at night sleepwalking over the last month - have brain will scramble.

[Chipmunk]

If I were to guess, I would say it is just your nervous system resetting and once your body gets used to being off the meds, your sense of smell and taste will come back. I know when people are detoxing from heroin, etc., they often lose their sense of smell and/or hallucinate disgusting smells. It eventually goes away.

I picture it being like when your foot falls asleep and then you get up - you get all those pins and needles and you really can't feel stuff like you could before, but eventually it goes back to normal.

Oliver Sacks just wrote a new book, Hallucinations and olfactory hallucinations and loss of smell were mentioned in there. It was interesting.

[EeFall]

If I were to guess, I would say it is just your nervous system resetting and once your body gets used to being off the meds, your sense of smell and taste will come back. I know when people are detoxing from heroin, etc., they often lose their sense of smell and/or hallucinate disgusting smells. It eventually goes away.

I picture it being like when your foot falls asleep and then you get up - you get all those pins and needles and you really can't feel stuff like you could before, but eventually it goes back to normal.

Oliver Sacks just wrote a new book, Hallucinations and olfactory hallucinations and loss of smell were mentioned in there. It was interesting.

Cool. Thanks for letting me know about this. It makes sense and I am probably still not completely over the grip of Lyrica and Mirapex. My hallucinations were so real at the height of detoxing that I remember, for an example, standing in the hallway talking to 3 people and then I reached out to them for some reason, like to shake hands, and they disappeared. The illusion was not like a wispy dream or something like that but so real that I thought it was actually happening. Those types of things happened many times. My wife was bringing flowers in from the garden and I didn't have the heart to tell her that they were so pungent at the time that they were making me a little nauseous, now that you mention this I see that it was part of the hallucinations. It does seem to getting better now but not totally normal yet. I also have heightened tinnitus which might also be part of it.

[badnights]

Hey, do you have your smell and taste back yet? Something like that happened to someone close to me once, but I can't recall the circumstances. All I recall is that it was temporary, triggered by a sudden detox of some sort (maybe it was my ex, coming off the booze??).

[EeFall]

Hey, do you have your smell and taste back yet? Something like that happened to someone close to me once, but I can't recall the circumstances. All I recall is that it was temporary, triggered by a sudden detox of some sort (maybe it was my ex, coming off the booze??).

In the last couple of days it has been getting better. Nothing today has tasted different except my wife gave me some new grapes just to mess me up that are suppose to taste like cotton candy lol, they actually do taste different, very sweet and good but not like cotton candy much to me but it could be the taste problem. Some vineyard in California is breeding grapes to taste like kinds of different things, I think the cotton candy is first on the market.

[Chipmunk]

Hey, do you have your smell and taste back yet? Something like that happened to someone close to me once, but I can't recall the circumstances. All I recall is that it was temporary, triggered by a sudden detox of some sort (maybe it was my ex, coming off the booze??).

In the last couple of days it has been getting better. Nothing today has tasted different except my wife gave me some new grapes just to mess me up that are suppose to taste like cotton candy lol, they actually do taste different, very sweet and good but not like cotton candy much to me but it could be the taste problem. Some vineyard in California is breeding grapes to taste like kinds of different things, I think the cotton candy is first on the market.

Ok, that's just weird. I hope it's just a case of wanting to make the grapes sweeter, and that we won't have steak-flavored grapes coming out as well!

[EeFall]

Hey, do you have your smell and taste back yet? Something like that happened to someone close to me once, but I can't recall the circumstances. All I recall is that it was temporary, triggered by a sudden detox of some sort (maybe it was my ex, coming off the booze??).

In the last couple of days it has been getting better. Nothing today has tasted different except my wife gave me some new grapes just to mess me up that are suppose to taste like cotton candy lol, they actually do taste different, very sweet and good but not like cotton candy much to me but it could be the taste problem. Some vineyard in California is breeding grapes to taste like kinds of different things, I think the cotton candy is first on the market.

Ok, that's just weird. I hope it's just a case of wanting to make the grapes sweeter, and that we won't have steak-flavored grapes coming out as well!

Reality is stranger than fiction, see video below:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/fruit-b ... s-19860759

[EeFall]

This is really weird. In the last few months my taste (olfactory) has taken a change for the worse. I came on here to see if there was anything mentioning losing taste from RLS. I don't even remember writing about this 9 years ago.

Awhile back spices became really too hot for me. And now I can't even taste my favorite BBQ potato chips. I can taste sweet things but most other food is like eating nothing. I only take Suboxone now for RLS, this has been going on for many years now. I also just came from an article on the Internet that was a study of RLS in China and it showed that loss of taste was common for RLS. Yikes.

Hello by the way to all of you who have been around as long as I have been lol

[Polar Bear]

Hi EeFall, nice to hear from you again. As a similar issue resolved itself some years ago it is hopeful that this time it will get better soon. In the meantime, good luck. It's not fun.