As you know, a sudden loss of smell has been a big issue for a lot of people.

And it can take months for it to come back fully, even after you’ve recovered. But you can help things along with smell training!

Dr. Pamela Dalton is a research scientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center. And although there’s no cure that’s 100% effective, daily, repetitive sniffing of a few aromas can work as a kind of therapy for an injured nose and brain. It stimulates the turnover of the nerve cells, helping to restore smell function.

Dr. Dalton says a typical smell kit consists of four essential oils: clove, rose, lemon and eucalyptus. But you can use any aromas with emotional value to you. But the four smells used for training should be changed every 12 weeks.

You can even use bad smells – ones you hate! Because that’s actually what our sense of smell is for – to detect danger, like from rotting food or fire. So a negative smell can work just as well.

Just take some gentle sniffs for 20 seconds. Then, move on to the next fragrance, working through all four, twice a day. Repeated exposure to smells can increase smell sensitivity.

You can buy smell training kits at Abscent.org – and they also have a sniff app, to make sure you’re doing it right.