…I mean I smell BADLY, I mean I HAVE NO SENSE OF SMELL!! Never had one. At all. Never had an injury to the head which could damage the olfactory stuff. I smoke, but dont tell me THAT is the cause because I didnt have a sense of smell when I was five, and I didnt smoke THEN! I get a painful sensation when I stick my nose in a bottle of rubbing alcohol (or gasoline or perfume or ammonia), but I gather it is just the nasal passages reacting to the fumes, not an odor. I have never had any concept of the sensation of smelling an odor or fragrance. The only possible conclusion I have come to is that this is a plain and simple birth defect. Any ideas anyone?
Have you ever asked a physician about this?
No, no, no … You smell badly.
I believe the term is anosmia, or something like that, and it is more widespread than you would think.
I believe King Philip II of Spain suffered from this. I have a friend who suffers from this but it is due to an accident and a heavy blow to the head. He says food without the smell tastes like nothing. No taste.
I have a friend who lost his since of smell via a trauma to the head (.50 cal. through the brain) whose hobby is gourmet cooking. Taste can be present without smell.
Taste can undoubtedly be present, but not the subtler ones.
Without a sense of smell, the only things you will taste are sweet, salty, bitter, sour and umami.
I don’t doubt you can be a gourmet chef without a sense of smell, just as Beethoven was a composing genius even after loosing his hearing. But I bet that no matter what culinary masterpieces you create, the ones that taste best to a person with no sense of smell are probably things like salt and vinegar chips.
Reminds me of the book All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot. He is a vet and can’t find a home for a dog that constantly farts. He finally finds a man who will take the dog, and later visits to see how the dog is doing. He goes into the house and immediately smells the farting dog and asks the guy how he can stand it. The guy replies he lost his sense of smell when he was young, so the farting dog doesn’t bother him at all!
There was a similar article in Scientic America a while back. A guy with no sense of smell who studies mephitis mephitis. It makes trapping and tagging those little guys a lot easier, but apparently it’s a bit hard on his wife who’s become an expert at cleaning skunk drenched clothes (apparently he keeps a couple as pets too).
Seriously Deacons Trucked, I imagine that gives you a leg up in a bunch of fields. Sanitation engineer, biologist like the one above,professional maid services…
…the taste thing, although it has nothing to do with my question. People I talk to seem to believe that smell has SO much to do with taste, and that since I cant smell, I must not have any taste. Uhhh…I mean I must not be able to taste things as well. But I tell you, I feel like my sense of taste is pretty damn good. Like Kyberneticist said, I cant taste the more subtle things like the different flavors of jellybeans, flavored coffees (they all taste like COFFEE to me), subtle spices like rosemary, oregano, and basil. But things I eat are FAR from bland. And yes Kyberneticist, I have wondered if I could make a killing shovelling manure or working in the sewers. Boscibo, I WANT that dog!! But if I raised skunks, I wouldnt have any friends at all! Oh wait, I have no friends anyway…
Among the bizaare jobs I’ve done as a kid, one was shoveling manure. Maybe I’m just strange, but it actually wasn’t that unpleasant. The cow and horse manure was fairly dry and smelled sort of like grass.
As for the skunks, aside from scaring off friends, they would also probably make a great security system. 
I had a physics professor who lost most of his sense of smell in chemistry lab when he was an undergrad. I won’t swear to it, but I think he said it was from inhaling ammonia.
This is strictly anecdotal, but for what it’s worth …
I have a friend who also has no sense of smell.
When she was an infant, she was exposed to carbon monoxide (a faulty heater? I don’t know the details). The mother quickly discovered the children … the baby had lost consciousness although the older brother, a toddler at the time, had not. Since the older child was still awake, I take it the exposure had been fairly minimal. The baby regained consciousness on her own, en route to the hospital, and seemingly suffered no harm as a result of the incident.
Years later, their family doctor speculated that perhaps this incident was enough of an injury to the brain to cause the loss of the sense of smell. No one had put these two things together before.
My point, after all of this, is perhaps sometimes a minor episode in infancy can be the cause. You said you never had a head injury, but what about a minor head injury in infancy, that you wouldn’t remember, and of which your parents might not even be aware?
Heh heh, I’m thinking about the time I dropped my baby brother on his head, and didn’t tell my mom. Oh well, he seems fine now.
For no particular reason, this fragment of video comes to mind:
Hitler: My dog has no nose!
Hitler Youth: How does he smell?
Hitler: Terrible!
hmm… I once got a stiff blast of pure nitric acid vapor right up my nose. Nobody told me you’re not supposed to use pipettes on pure acids, you’re supposed to use a little rubber bulb to suck it up the pipette, not use your lips. Ooops! I immediately went to the sink and inhaled as much water up my nose as possible. Anyway, it doesn’t seem to have affected my sense of smell in any permanent way.
But to get to the point, there is a nerve bundle that contains all the nerves connected to the face, including the muscle controls for the face, the nerves connected to the tongue, and those connected to the ears. There are several reasons why these nerves might not carry the sensory data, but in every case I know of, I’d definitely seek the advice of a neurologist, as the lack of a sense of smell can be a sign of serious, deadly condition.
Oh, and if someone tells you that inhaling latex enamel can be harmful to your nose, believe them!