Is time running out on your tastebuds?

OUR sense of taste is an important part of our overall quality of life but unfortunately for many of us, it isn’t built to last.

Like hearing loss and the gradual deterioration of eyesight, the loss of our ability to distinguish various tastes is a natural effect of ageing that creeps up over the years without us noticing. One day you’re enjoying a normal meal, the next you find yourself pouring salt all over it just to get some flavour.

The risk of oversalting is just a hint of the possible health repercussions associated with losing this precious sensation. After time, any dysfunction of the diet can have serious bodily consequences. While they haven’t yet invented a taste-equivalent to spectacles or the hearing aid, being aware of what’s going on with your sense of taste can help improve your overall wellness and enjoyment of life.

Although some scientific journals may hesitate to officially declare a causal relationship between ageing and taste loss, all research and anecdotal evidence seems to confirm the obvious. In fact, many studies have revealed a reduced detection of sweet, salty, sour and bitter among older people and even a reduced sensitivity to a low electrical current on the tongue.

Normally, we have about 9000-10,000 tastebuds, most of them on the tongue but a few still present on the roof of the mouth (a hangover from infancy). In our 40s and 50s – slightly later for men – they start to diminish in numbers. The surviving chemical receptors are further susceptible to withering away, a process usually noticeable by our 60s.  

Since the tastebuds governing sweet and salty are concentrated at the tip of the tongue, they are usually the first to go. It’s a cruel twist of evolutionary fate that as our favourite flavours disappear, bitterness remains safely hidden on the back of the tongue, the last taste to erode from our palates.

Obviously the sense of smell is closely intertwined with taste. The data carried by odour molecules in our food is much more easily processed by the brain. Indeed, our sense of smell is said to be about 10,000-times more acute than our sense of taste. Needless to say, loss of taste is strongly influenced by the slipping of our sniffers, which starts as early as our 30s.

It may surprise you that the exact mechanisms driving our sense of smell are still not fully understood by science. However, general consensus says age-related loss of smell is likely related to the degradation of nerve endings in the nose. A University of Pennsylvania smell identification study suggests the sense begins waning most seriously in our 60s and becomes especially disrupted by the age of 70. 

Studies have also shown age-related loss of smell covers a rather broad range of odour stimuli. It is therefore unlikely you will lose your ability to smell certain odours but retain detection of others. When it comes to smell, it seems to be all or nothing. 

Age-related taste and smell loss are not reversible conditions. But some controllable factors such as smoking, poor dental hygiene and allergies may contribute to their impairment. Efforts to minimise these aggravators may prove useful in staving off decline in sensitivity. 

Saliva production slows with age and has also been shown to be linked to a reduced sense of taste. A Japanese study suggested increasing salivation through prescribed drugs could increase taste sensitivity by boosting the flow of stimulating tastant chemicals to the tastebuds.

The American Journal of Dental Research reported that supplementing zinc in your diet improved an impaired sense of taste as well. The treatment had been found effective on sufferers of zinc-deficiency taste disorders but might also apply to age-related taste loss. This is because zinc is an important agent in the primary enzyme of tastebud membranes and has been connected to the maintenance and development of the receptors. 

As always, SuperLiving urges you to consult your doctor before embarking on a new dietary regimen as even relatively harmless nutrients, such as zinc, may impact different people in different ways. If you are experiencing any signs of taste loss, be sure to speak to your doctor to confirm it is not symptomatic of another illness.