Although I am most confident in the safety and effectiveness of treatments accepted by the medical community, I am willing to try some alternative treatments for my anosmia. Keep in mind that my anosmia appears to stem from the presence of polyps in my sinuses and an inflammatory condition.

   One of my correspondents has reported that extract of chili peppers has helped him. See the page at Intranasal Chili Peppers.

   Another of my correspondents recommended Quercetin, 1 to 1.5 grams a day. Quercetin is a bioflavonoid derived from blue-green algae, eucalyptus, and other plant sources. This substance is reputed to have anti-inflammatory properties, possibly produced by inhibiting the biosynthesis of proinflammatory arachidonic acid metabolites (see Arachidonic Acid, Leukotrienes, and Salicylates). My correspondent told me that he regained his sense of smell after taking it for a month or so. He also took large doses of vitamin C with citrus bioflavonoids and Bromelain every day. During one of my periods of anosmia, from August, 2001, to October, 2001, I took one gram of citrus bioflavonoids every day. Regretfully this did not relieve my anosmia, so I got another Kenalog injection and my sense of smell returned.

   More recently my correspondent reported that the beneficial effect of Quercetin seemed to "wear off" for him after about 3 months of relief, but that when he stopped taking it for a month or two and then resumed taking it, it once again provided relief. He also warned me to expect a lot more urination when taking Quercetin. I noticed no such effect when I took Quercetin, but I did notice that it made my urine very yellow -- perhaps the increased frequency of urination reported by my correspondent was due to another of the ingredients in the preparation he took.

    By mid-July, 2002, nine months after a Kenalog injection, my sense of smell was extinguished. One night my son gave me some schnaps to taste. I could not tell it was Williams (pear schnaps), it just tasted like potato schnaps to me. The next morning I failed the peanut-butter test (if I cannot smell peanut butter, my sense of smell is gone or nearly so). I mowed a corner of a mint patch later that morning and got a very subdued scent of mint -- it should have been very strong. Accordingly, I decided to give Quercetin a try. I obtained 500 mg capsules at a reasonable cost from an Internet vendor. Using a link at QualityCounts.com, I traveled to iHerb Quercetin Products and selected the Jarrow Formulas product. Discount code "qc" provided a 5% discount. The product was delivered promptly.

    I took one 500mg capsule with each meal eaten at home (two capsules a day on work days, three capsules a day on weekends. About a week after I started taking Quercetin, I started getting my sense of smell back. I thought it must just be my imagination, since my correspondent said it took over a month for the Quercetin to restore his sense of smell -- but he had been anosmic for six months when he started taking Quercetin -- maybe his inflammation was much worse than mine -- I started taking the Quercetin shortly after returning to a state of anosmia. Also, I respond favorably to very small doses of prednisone -- maybe both prednisone and Quercetin work better/faster for me than for most people. In any case, after two weeks there was no doubt, my sense of smell was back.

   About five weeks after I started taking Quercetin, I started having gastric problems (indigestion, reflux, gas, constricted esophagus). While it occurred to me that the Quercetin might be responsible for this, it seems more likely that other factors were involved -- such my eating many more hot peppers than usual in the preceding several weeks. When these problems did not abate after a couple of weeks, I started taking ranitidine (an acid-reducing drug). A week later (11. Sept. 02) I had such a bad episode of GI distress that I stopped taking Quercetin, vitamins, and food supplements, I stopped having my usual Scotch in the evening, I became very careful what I ate, and I started drinking peppermint and chamomile tea. I have continued to have GI distress since then, but not as intense as earlier.

    Skeptic that I am, I am still not convinced that the Quercetin is responsible for having restored my sense of smell, and I am even less certain that it had anything to do with my GI distress. There are countless possible alternative explanations. Perhaps my recovery was spontaneous, my anosmia having been caused by inflammation caused by a transient allergen or virus or whatever. A placebo effect is not out of the question, even for a skeptic like me. Perhaps some other unknown event was coincident with my starting to take Quercetin. My GI distress may be related to an infection or other process. One way to rule out such confounds would be randomly to assign patients to take Quercetin or a placebo and then evaluate their response to such treatments across time -- but I have only one patient -- and if I were offered participation in research like this, I would probably decline, not wanting to risk being in the placebo group if the Quercetin treatment really works.

    When I became anosmic in April of 2004, I started the Quercetin therapy. This time my sense of smell did not come back after using Quercetin, making be even more skeptical about the usefulness of Quercetin.

   Digestive Enzymes found in Papaya and Pineapple are being hawked on the net and in mail order allergy catalogs. The basic idea is that they can digest away the mucus that is causing you problems. While skeptical, I am trying this therapy. I feel I have little to risk, and the tablets taste fine. Not willing to pay the steep price for this product asked by the vendors who are recommending it for sinus problems, I have obtained my tablets at a much more reasonable price from my usual supplier of food supplements. While these tablets may have thinned my mucus, they did not provide relief from my anosmia. I must confess, however, that I did not take them as frequently as recommended.

   Another of my correspondents recommended Tee Tree Oil, 12 drops added to the cup of warm saline with which he irrigates his nasal passages every day. I have been irrigating for years, twice a day, with isotonic saline. My correspondent hit on the idea of using Tee Tree Oil because it is reputed to be an anti-fungal agent, and recent research at the Mayo Clinic has implicated fungi in the etiology of sinusitis: See Fungal Sinusitis. Other reports from the Mayo Clinic have indicated that fungi frequently play a role in sinusitis even when the individual is not "allergic" to fungi in the usual definition of "allergic." Although I was somewhat concerned about putting Tee tree oil into my nose, I gave it a try from August of 2001 until October of 2001. When I started treatment I was anosmic most of the day, but got some sense of smell back in the evening. The tea tree oil, used in the evening, did not smell as bad as my correspondent had suggested it would, possibly due to my weak sense of smell. It did burn somewhat, similar to menthol. During the period of treatment with tea tree oil my anosmia went from bad to total. Clearly this treatment was of little, if any, benefit to me. I have suspended use of tea tree oil.

    I once tried Zinc supplements too, but I could detect no effect of them, so I no longer take Zinc.

    What about homeopathic treatments? The basic premise of homeopathy is so absurd that such "magical waters" cannot possibly, IMHO, have anything other than a placebo effect. The basic premise of homeopathy is that you dissolve in water a substance that produces the same symptoms that you are trying to remove. Then you greatly dilute that water over and over again, until the final product has absolutely none of the substance placed in the first water. Then you take that water. By some mystical means, the water is supposedly changed by all this, picking up the spirit of the substance which is no longer there. BS. For more details, check out Homeopathy: The Ultimate Fake and HomeoWatch.

Intranasal Zinc Products. Not all products labeled as "homeopathic" are homeopathic in the traditional sense, as defined above. Some just have an active ingredient, natural or not, that may or may not be recognized as effective by the medical community. It is always possible that such an ingredient will produce undesirable side effects for you. For example, Intranasal Zinc Products have been marketed as "homeopathic," even though they contain a substantial amount of an active product, a zinc salt.

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Dr. Karl L. Wuensch

This page most recently revised on 12. July 2004.