Lately, I've noticed that pretty much everything I drink tastes bad. This has been going on for the past few weeks. Be it water, chocolate milk, hot cocoa, snapple juice, one of many sodas, iced tea...it all tastes bad. Food still tastes normal to me, it's just fluids. What can cause that? It can't be a coincidence, can it?
Only drinks, at least from what I can tell. I really haven't noticed my food tasting bad or not. And it's not just stuff from our fridge, it's any drinks, bought from a store, prepared at a restaurant, poured from the tap, anything. As far as Dysgeusia, I certainly hope not! ; ;
You're on medication right? Have you changed any lately? Although I can't figure out why it would only affect how liquids taste to you.
I'm on Fluoxetine and Carbamazepine, and haven't changed in a few months. I really can't think of any change that's happened recently that could have caused this.
Hey there did some research-- A very rare side effect of carbamazepine is temporary loss of blood cells or platelets or serum. If you read the wikipedia article that Kimi posted you learned that dysgeusia is associated with zinc deficiency. I doubt you have dysgeusia (but hey, I am not a doctor yet, just a pre-med student, so ask your doctor, of course!) but perhaps just not enough zinc in your diet. A decrease in serum may have caused this (the metals that we need in our body are carried in our serum). If you are on carbamazepine, your doctor should be monitoring your blood levels for at least the first few months you take it. Has he/she been doing this, and if so, have all your counts been in the normal range?
Good call Kat. Likely you may have a deficiency of some sort, likely a mineral. The problem with meds today the information for their use comes from the Pharmacy Rep and not clear cut studies as to overall side effects and because of the press of patient loads, most docs don't bother to cover all material on a given med, so are not aware of the total unintended consequences, but most rely on what the drug rep has told them. An example: Statin drugs are intended to lower cholesterol in people, to prevent heart attacks, either initially or having a second one after the first. They don't bother to tell you that taking the statin drug also lowers CoQ10 levels in your body (your body makes it) and that CoQ10 is necessary for production and conversion of energy, especially in the heart plus it is a powerful antioxidant. What do the medicos say about it? Nothing as they don't know what the significance of it means or what a deficiency would do to someone, so it is ok to have millions of people out there with this condition caused by medication and see eventually what harm it actually does. Could it lead to further heart damage in a progressive way, can't say as nobody is studying it, just making the money off a certain approved product. Oh, yeah, and statin drugs are pretty rough on the liver too. So what sort of deficiency do you have, hard to say as nobody is studying it likely. I would suggest you see if there are any deficiencies of known blood values, but also in the mean time, find a good vitamin source and take them every 3-4 days and also find a good mineral source and take them too, but more on a daily basis.
