I lost my sense of taste a few years ago, from a combination of extreme stress and the flu. Lasted about a week, and it was utterly terrifying. I first noticed it when I tried to eat, iirc scrambled eggs, and couldn't stop gagging on the texture. Once I figured out what was going on, it took a couple days to figure out what I could eat without retching. I ended up being entirely vegetarian - meat without taste is a h…
I lost most of my sense of smell a few years ago. I've lost much of my ability to differentiate tastes as well. As a former supertaster, lover of bourbon (I used to be able to tell my bourbons apart by smell), serious cook, and total foodie this has been the most depressing experience in my life. Think about the experience that you have when you walk from one room to another, or into a field of flowers. I can't smell…
I've been interested in sensory prosthetics for a while now. Using alternate sensory routes for balance, or sight, is a thing. I wish I were hearing more about it in mainstream science news - it seems like giving blind people 3D lidar perception through a grid of skin cells would be a good thing. Scent would be orders of magnitude more complex, but maybe still a good goal for future R&D?