The Pueblo Chieftain

These buds are for you

Let’s talk about taste, bud.

In fact, let’s talk about taste buds, the microscopic hairs that exist inside the circumvallate papillae — pink bumps — on your tongue. Their purpose appears simple. They transmit five tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami (savory).

Why do we have taste buds? They’re a survival mechanism. Babies are drawn to natural sweetness because that’s the taste of a mother’s milk. Long ago, bitter tastes meant only that something was harmful.

Today we have artificial and added sweeteners, not to mention manufactured bitterness that people actually want to ingest (hello, Sweet Tarts and Sour Patch Kids). Taste may not be quite as life-and-death as in early times, but it still warns us of things like spoiled milk and lets us know the soup needs more salt.

The nose is responsible for flavor, which comes from its own cells and is a combination of taste and smell.

Humans start out with about 10,000 taste buds, according to the National Institutes of Health. They regenerate about every two weeks and diminish as we age; it’s common for older people to have a weaker sense of taste (called hypogeusia) that happens gradually. The height of our ability to taste and smell comes between the ages of 30 and 60.

Doctors don’t treat taste buds, per se, but those little sensors can be the signal that alerts a doctor to medical issues. A sudden loss of taste can be a sign of many things: diabetes, malnutrition, head injury, medication interaction, hormone imbalance, dental problems and even diseases such as multiple sclerosis or Alzheimer’s. An otolaryngologist — or ear, nose and throat doctor — is the specialist who treats taste problems.

Treatment for cancers of the head and neck can affect taste. Some favorite foods may become unappealing or a patient may temporarily lose the sense of taste, which can cause them to lose interest in eating. One of the aspects of such treatment is creating a diet that will keep a patient healthy as they complete the program, said Julie Reiss, a registered dietitian and nutritionist with St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center.

“Taste change plays a significant role with a patient’s ability to maintain weight and recover from treatment,” said Reiss. “I listen to their needs and make adjustments. If they’re having a metallic taste . . . red meats can be a difficulty because of the iron. Chicken, turkey or fish can be more tolerated.”

Lack of taste is a common effect, she said. It’s important to drink plenty of liquids, or add citrus juice to foods, because saliva is what activates the taste buds.

“It’s more difficult to get them to eat because people don’t realize how much is connected to food that isn’t nutritionally based. If it doesn’t (provide a) pleasurable experience, if it’s like eating cardboard, it takes a lot of willpower to overcome that and treat (food) like daily medication.”

Once treatment is complete, it can take two or three months for a patient’s sense of taste to return to normal.

Taste buds can even help us get healthy. If those with strong cravings for sweet or salty foods can reduce the amount they consume (or, even better, eliminate it), the taste buds will adjust and the lower level, or absence, of those tastes will become normal.

Now isn’t that sweet?

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