Ageusia is loss of the tongue's taste functions; the inability to detect specific taste like sweetness, sourness, bitterness, saltiness, and umami (the taste of monosodium glutamate). Humans detect taste with taste receptor cells. These are clustered in taste buds. We do not actually taste with our taste bud. The taste buds are chemoreceptors, meaning that they transduce, or translate, chemical signals in food into electrical signals in the body. These electrical signals, called action potentials, travel to the brain via the nervous system, allowing us to experience the sensation of taste. The sensation of taste, like all sensations, resides in the brain, so it is the activation of hard-wired neurons that determines the sensation of taste, not the molecules nor the receptors themselves.
Essentially taste buds send signals to the brain and the brain cross references its files with emotional issues related to the taste at hand as well as chemical balance levels. For example salt might taste good, but when the body has enough, it suddenly doesn't taste as good. Each taste bud has a pore that opens out to the surface of the tongue enabling molecules and ions taken into the mouth to reach the receptor cells inside (see photo). A single taste bud contains 50-100 taste cells representing all 5 taste sensations (so the classic textbook pictures showing separate taste areas on the tongue are wrong).
The tongue can only indicate texture and differentiate between sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami. Most of what is perceived as the sense of taste is actually derived from smell. Ageusia is sometimes confused for as anosmia, loss of the sense of smell. Hypogeusia is partial loss of taste while Dysgeusia is distortion or alteration of taste.
Causes include: Tobacco abuse, Otologic surgery, Drug side effects, Anxiety Disorder, Tissue damage to nerves in the tongue, Vitamin deficiency (Vit. B3 and Zinc) and Neurological disorders such as Multiple Sclerosis. If you have had surgery, there is very little we can do. If you have had heavy tobacco use, please add that remedy to your protocol. Also, go to your local health food store and get some Zinc lozenges. Suck on 2-6 of those each day for at least two months while doing the protocol on the right.
This Remedy includes Aldosterone, which is known to increase the salt receptors, as well as sodium and calcium as they are part of the salt receptors in taste. Leptin, as required for sweet receptors. Glutamic acid, required for umami taste receptors, and Vitamin B3 and Zinc. Health of the intestines, particularly large intestine govern the sense of taste (five element theory).
NOTE: You can purchase Kava-Kava in tea form. Drink at least 2 times a day. You can also mix 24 grams of the cassia pulp with 250 ml hot milk and use as a mouthwash to help reinitiate taste receptors.