Can nasal steroid spray have an adverse effect on fragrance?

OK, first off i just want to quickly say this is going to be a nasal spray prescribed by my doctor as i have had very bad tinnitus (ringing in the ear) to the point of complete and utter depression. Yeah it's really bad. Recently i was given antibiotics and it helped for a week. So my Doctor wants to give me another weeks worth of antibiotics and a nasal steroid spray to help as i had covid last year and we believe that may have been the cause.

It got me thinking though, i wonder what this will do to my ability to smell certain notes and if this is something that people who work in the fragrance business have to do also to be able to smell things well because surely creating fragrances and having to smell stuff daily will have an affect on your ability to smell after years of it right?

So i am wondering do professionals do this OR what worries me more is do they avoid it due to bad reactions?

I have spent a lot of money in the last year, i mean a lot, i was raging when i got covid as it had a really bad affects on me being able to smell certain notes, thankfully i can again. (If anyone wants to know how to get your ability to smell back i can answer questions if anyone has any)

The thing is the ringing in my ear is destroying my ability to live a normal life and i want to know if i am about to have to sell all my collection or if nasal steroids are actually a good thing. You would think it would be positive right? If i have to chose i am going to have to pick my health obviously. People have done crazy things due to ringing in the ears and i feel like i am going crazy at times.

So, i thought i would ask if anyone knows anything about this? On a personal and scientific level i find this thought interesting.

EDIT: the Steroid is called Monetasone and if you read my reply 2 down you will see this is actually a very good thing for people with loss of smell. I don't have a loss of smell remember this is for my ringing in the ears but if i were to have problems with my sense of smell or anyone else reading this wondering the same, don't worry, this is a good drug for helping those who have lost their sense of smell to regain it with olfactory training. I am so glad to see this. Here is a link to an article about the effect this can have for people using it Click Here

Hi Mitchcraft,

I am really sorry to hear that you have this condition.  I can understand it can make you mad. Did you search for psychological support also ?  I am sure it could help somehow.

As for the sprays, I can also understand your fear. Losing or damaging my smell  is actually the thing I fear most in the covid (which I didn't seem to have yet). Or just to inherit the weak sense of smell of my father... But you did recover your ability to smell after the covid, so maybe after this spray session too?

One thing i know is that the olfactory bulb is one of the few place that regenerate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Hope you will have more specialised advice here.  Hold on!

Thanks, that's interesting to know it can regenerate like that. 

Yeah i am going to be seeing a few specialists about this as i actually have ringing in both ears which seems to be caused by 2 different things. The antibiotics helped with the loudness of the ear that has it the worst though, but we still need to look at the reasons for the other ear ringing.

Yeah i totally understand that fear of losing the sense of smell. Especially when we are collectors of something that requires our sense of smell to be strong.

Thanks for replying. I will have a deeper read in to that wiki page. Have a great day.

OK So here is an update on what i have found. I went and picked up my prescription this evening and googled the name, "Monetasone" and olfactory effects and this was the top result..

"Compared to olfactory training, mometasone furoate nasal spray combination with olfactory training showed a higher improvement in severe chronic anosmia by COVID-19.12 Jun 2021"

Here is where they got that result from. From what i have read this is actually a good thing for people who are in to fragrances 😊National Institute of Health Articles

Looks like i will not have to sell my collection afterall.

Training is pretty easy, just use fragrances you know very well and have good memories tide to them and when you spray do so on to paper so you can reuse it later and not waste juice. When smelling it think hard of how you remember it smelling when you are thinking of the memories you have tide to it. The older the memories the better i found.

OK thanks for the update! I hope you are relieved, and hopefully it will alleviate your tinnitus.

Thanks also for the tips to mitigate the effects of COVID on the smell. I hope not to need it, but I for sure have fragrance associated with good memories (which would be a nice forum topic).

My ex wife, a musician, had once a ringing hear, and a treatment helped. But I believe her case was luckily quite mild (sufficient to disturb her sleep though).

Take care and enjoy your collection.

(Loved your review of The Dreamer Eau de Toilette by the way. )

Yeah it really is awful when it is so loud to the point you can't sleep and it is the first thing you hear the next morning and continues for days on end.

Thanks for the comment about my review. The Dreamer is great for those kind of nights actually lol.

How did you manage to add it to the comment btw? Did you just copy and paste the link? For me it seems to not work when i try that for some reason. I am sure when i joined the site there was an option after making the comment to add the perfume that i don't have the option to do anymore. Or i am thinking of photos.

Hey Mitchcraft,

I had to read your post 4 times... it took me a moment... I´m sorry to hear about your health issues. Please don't despair, you still have some treatment options to handle this. It's good news that the prescribed nasal spray is not going to have any negative side effects on your sense of smell, as you point out in your update, so let's hope it also helps getting rid of the ringing. I have close relatives with tinnitus and in them it was triggered by intense stress and lack of sleep. LouBe comment also points to this aspect and I think it's worth considering it.   I wish you a full recovery.

Yeah I often think I try too hard to write things in a way I know it’s going to be translated as I know this is more a Dutch oriented site and I often overthink things when trying to anticipate how it is going to translate into Dutch and end up writing it in a more complex manner than I would have if I had just wrote it without thinking about it in that way in the first place. I sometimes read back things I wrote to myself in my own language and think hmm did any of that make any sense lol. 

I was enjoying our conversation earlier and didn’t want to change it to this discussion as I was enjoying the topic of fragrances we were having  . I knew you would see this topic at some point and make a comment if you wanted to. 

I am looking forward to next week as I will be looking after my Uncle’s dog which means lots of exercise and fresh air. I always enjoy when I have him here so that will help with things like stress also. 

Thanks for the well wishes:-)

I am not an English native speaker and your posts translate quite clear to me.Enjoy your weekend!

Ah i think i misunderstood what you meant when you said you had to read the post 4 times. I thought you meant it was hard to understand but now i am thinking you meant in a impactful way instead. My bad lol.

Hope you have a good weekend also.  The Sun is finally shining in Scotland, just as my parents are about to go to Spain the sun finally shows its face after months of cloud and rain. This always happens when they go on holiday then they come back and it rains again lol

I'm currently using corticoid spray for allergy. Don't notice an impact on smell.

Hello, this is a very interesting topic.

One thing you have to consider always when talking about a pharmacogical treatment and its potential deleterious effects is the time of use.
While it is true that topical nasal corticosteroids can improve loss of smell associated with various diseases such as allergic rhinitis, the effects of longterm use are not so clear.
Our olfactory epithelium contains olfactory neurons, These are a very curious neuronal population in that, compared to most other neurons in our nervous system, we still have the capacity of neurogenesis in the olfactory epithelium. This means the olfactory neurons that die due to cellular aging can be replaced. Usually there is a homeostasis, a balance, between neuronal death and neuronal regeneration. Among other things, disease can disturbe this balance.
For instance, recently there have been reports that long term intranasal administration of corticosteroids could negatively influence olfaction. For example, chronic nasal steroids can reduce neuronal turnover in animals, so more olfactory neurons die than new neurons being formed. Due to ethical regulations, the human research on this topic is not yet so clear.

Regardless, I too use a nasal spray probably about 8 months of the year, whether this negatively impacts on my olfaction? I don't know. I still smell, but maybe I would smell better without the spray? But then I would have allergic rhinitis ...

Just my two cents on this topic.

Best wishes,
Kristof

Very interesting to know. Thanks.