How to Stop Your Sense of Taste

Your tongue is covered with small taste buds that are sensitive to the foods that you eat. Taste buds communicate with your brain what these foods taste like. Certain medical conditions, such as a brain tumor or damage to the tongue through burns, piercing or even removal can dull or completely remove the sense of taste.

Things You'll Need

• Cigarettes
• Hot drink

Instructions

1. If you want to dull your sense of taste, drink something that's very hot, like coffee or tea. When the taste buds are exposed to heat, they can become less effective. Burns and scarring can completely remove the sense of taste and it's important not to damage the tongue permanently.

2. Spending time in places that allow smoking can numb your sense of taste. Smoking is inherently unhealthy, and one of the effects that smoking has is to dampen your senses of taste and smell. Secondhand smoke can have similar effects on your sense of taste if you don't smoke yourself.

3. As you get older, your sense of taste will grow less and less acute. This is one reason that, as you get older, you can eat foods that might have been too spicy or too strong when you were younger.

References

• Think Quest: Taste