If you’re among the 19% of Americans who report changes in their sense of taste as they get older, it might be some cause for alarm.
New research suggests that losing your sense of taste, especially for salty and sour foods, could be linked to early death in older adults.
And the results were different for men and women.
The study, published today in JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery, looked at 7,340 adults aged 40 and over.
They found that those whose sense of taste declined since their younger years had a 47% higher risk of dying in the six-year follow-up period.
Self-reported decline in the ability to taste bitterness was associated with early death only in female participants, whereas decline in the ability to taste sourness was associated with increased mortality only in male participants.
While our sense of smell and taste are often associated with one another — for example, when you have a stuffy nose, foods don’t always taste as good — this study found that an increased risk of death in people who lost their sense of taste but were still fully able to smell.
So could losing your sense of taste be an early warning sign of something more dangerous? Maybe.
Researchers believe the findings indicate loss of taste could be signals of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, as well as cardiovascular ones like heart failure and stroke.
Taste dysfunction could also negatively impact one’s eating habits — losing your taste in salt, for example, could lead to excessive salt intake and elevated blood pressure — leading to nutritional deficiencies and chronic diseases.
The study may have far-reaching implications, encouraging doctors to screen their patients for changes in their sense of taste to identify high-risk individuals.
However, Dr. David Henry Hiltzik, chair of the Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery at Staten Island University Hospital, is reluctant to draw such an extreme conclusion.
“I think the study is very generalized and non-specific,” he told the Post. “They’re giving one symptom that’s affiliated with mortality, but there’s a lot of conjecture about why that is.”
After all, correlation is not causation, and there could be many mitigating factors that contributed to the death of some of the participants.
“It’s interesting to note, but it’s not like we have a real causal understanding between the two,” he said. “There’s a lot of conjecture in the study as to specific tastes that could lead to this or that, but it’s a very generalized conclusion.”
That being said, he acknowledged that the study did yield a few possible connections, the most compelling one being neurodegenerative disorders.
“Because if you have decrease in your senses, you likely have decrease in your neurological function,” he said. “Decrease in smell is linked to neurodegenerative disorders, so it could be that taste is a similar correlation.”
The main benefit of the study is that it “highlights the importance of taste and health” and shows that “taste is important,” given that “it’s not something most people pay attention to,” according to Hiltzik.
“It can also be an indication of health, so it’s yet another value to self monitor,” he noted. “It’s also worth paying attention to the different types of taste: salt, bitter, sweet, sour, umami. To notice that each of these senses can be an indicator of something going on in the body.”
And, of course, it’s always a good idea to talk to your doctor about any differences in sensory function you’ve recently experienced.
“You should obviously report changes in smell and taste to your doctor,” he said. “Anything from headaches to vision changes to severe nasal congestion. Memory issues. All of those different things can correlate to neurological conditions. From an ENT standpoint, those are things we become concerned with.”
