|  | Conditions Treatments | Medical Conditions

Things That Affect Your Sensitivity to Taste

Your mouth contains taste buds that help you identify bitter, salty, sour and sweet foods. When you are born you have approximately 10,000 taste buds that slowly die as you age, leaving you with perhaps only 5,000 of them when you are old. The cells on taste buds send signals to the brain to identify each taste. Your sense of taste may be altered by many factors.

  1. Medications

    • Certain medications can affect your sense of taste. Tennessee Oncology notes that changes in taste are common during chemotherapy. This may be the result of damage to the cells in your mouth or by the drugs being dispersed into your mouth tissues. Sweet foods may not taste as sweet as they did previously. Sour and bitter foods can have a stronger taste. Greenwich Hospital says that some high-protein foods such as meats may taste metallic. For most people, normal taste returns within a couple of months after the chemotherapy treatments. Other medications that can affect your sense of taste include antidepressants, beta blockers, blood pressure medications and ACE inhibitors.

    Aging

    • Because of the decreased number of taste buds, senior citizens often don't feel like eating because foods just don't taste as good as they did in the past. According to Best Natural Cures Health Guide this loss of appetite can result in weight loss, depression and ultimately health issues. Food becomes unimportant when it is not enjoyable. Your sense of smell also plays a huge role in how food tastes. Health 101 notes that smell is responsible for approximately 80 percent of a food's flavor.

    Temperature

    • Temperature can also alter your sensitivity to taste. Cold drinks and cold foods can cause less sensitive taste buds, according to KidsHealth. For example, if you eat an ice pop that was made from juice, it doesn't seem as sweet as the juice. Sucking on an ice cube before eating something you don't care for helps minimize the bad taste.

    Health

    • Some health conditions can affect your taste sensitivity. Problems like the common cold, sinus infections, allergies and other nasal problems that disrupt the sense of smell can cause a loss of taste. The Mayo Clinic notes that diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's can also affect your sense of taste and smell. Diseases such as multiple sclerosis that affect your central nervous system can also be a problem for your taste buds. In addition, tooth decay, gum disease and smoking can all alter your sense of taste.

    Radiation

    • Radiation treatments can affect your sense of taste because they can damage your salivary glands and cause dry mouth. Saliva is essential to the ability to taste because it mixes with the food in your mouth and stimulates your taste buds.

Medical Conditions - Related Articles