Tastebuds

[raymiles]

It’s now gone more than five weeks since I had a triple heart bypass and my tastebuds are still messed up. From what I’ve read this happens in a minority of cases and is usually caused by anaesthetic rather than post op medication.

It’s getting me down slightly, since I’m finding fruit and wine, especially white wine, particularly unpleasant I therefore suspect that it’s anything with acidity that I am reacting to.

I have seen other threads on this topic, but thought I’d start a new one, to see if anyone else has experienced similar issues with acidity . I am normally a great fruit eater, so it’s annoying not to enjoy, but I’m trying to cut down on wine. I am finding non-alcoholic beers pleasant, so it’s not everything that’s affected.

I’m just hoping it will go away of its own accord and of course would like to be sure that none of the medications I am currently taking might be causing it. The heart team at Barts told me that it would go away in two weeks, but that’s not been the case!

[Hidden]

Dear raymiles

A warm welcome to the forum and your first post of many we hope.

No one minds if you repeat something that has already been discussed on here as that keeps it fresh to both old and new members.

You know what I’m going to say and without sounding like your aged uncle here goes,

“five weeks is still a short time after something so major” there i have said it and it really is true, slowly your taste will return, but it may never return fully to what you class as normal and no-one really seems { on my team } to know why.

My heart op is this side of ten months and still I need a little more flavour added to my cooking, still hate odd things, anything creamy and tomatoey.

Without a doubt my taste buds have change and to be honest after all I have gone through, so have I, we just need to meet in the middle.

Take care and please keep us informed

[Hidden]

Hello

I always remember after my op and getting out of ICU I could not wait for a nice cup of tea and when I finally got one after loving tea it tasted so bad and then I started to realise so many things were tasting so bad and I panicked until I was told it was the anesthetic as we do get given quite a lot

I actually started trying things I had never liked before and they seemed to be the ones I could taste and actually liked which I thought was strange but I went with it because at least I was tasting something

It did take weeks even maybe a month or two before my cup of tea started to taste like I remembered it use to and I was quite happy

So don't worry and maybe try different things to what you normally liked missing out on white wine is not going to harm you try different fruits if nothing like that works just wait your taste buds will come back again x

[diddygop]

Hi Ray. I am going through exactly the same as you re: taste buds. I had a quad bypass 6 weeks ago, and tastebuds still not right. Foods do not taste as ‘strong’ as before if that makes sense, ie I have to have more sugar in my tea than before to have it taste the same sweetness. A friend of mine who had bypass a few years ago did have the same taste issue. They went to their GP and the GP said they had ‘oral thrush’ and had it cleared up with antibiotics. I plan to visit GP next week.

[raymiles]

Oral thrush eh? I’ll have to look into that. I’m returning to my home in Mexico today and plan to have an appointment with a cardiologist within a matter of weeks.

In my case, almost everything tasted unpleasant immediately after surgery. I can’t exactly put my finger on what the taste was/is, but it’s definitely a taste of some kind rather than no taste at all. Now, six weeks on, it’s almost exclusively fruit that I can’t really abide. Along with white wine: red wine is slightly better but not great. I am OK with non alcoholic beer , but haven’t tried alcoholic ones yet; and I’ll be testing out the champagne on the plane later today ha ha!

It seems to affect different people in different ways and, from what I’ve read online, only a minority of us experience it at all.

Thanks to all those have replied so far.