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Your sense of taste is probably something you don’t think about very much. You eat things and you taste them and what you eat is probably determined by what tastes good to you and that’s about as much as you think about it. But your sense of taste may be much more important than that. It could be a good indication of your overall personal health risks, have a role in determining your appetite, and may even indicate specific health concerns. So if you want to expand your health tracking activities, then you need to consider the information that comes from this vital sense.

The Science of Taste

 

Your sense of taste allows you to enjoy your meals. It dictates what you eat, the types of food you buy in the shopping center and even what restaurants you enjoy. But it also has an evolutionary purpose. Researchers believe that our sense of taste keeps us safe by indicating which foods are toxic, and which don’t contain the nutrients we need to be healthy and happy.

 

There are two proteins in the body that are responsible for the ability to taste sweet, salty, savory, and bitter foods. These proteins, known as TRPM4 and TRPM5, create the chemical channels that transport taste information to the brain where it can be decoded and processed. If either protein is missing in the body, then your sense of taste will be greatly impaired. And if both proteins are lacking you won’t be able to taste anything.

 

How Your Taste Buds Might Cause Obesity

 

Researchers have suspected a connection between taste and obesity for a long time. Overweight subjects of obesity studies usually show a marked insensitivity to tastes that are meant to stimulate the appetite, such as sweetness. In fact, a recent study suggests that weight gain may actually be responsible for taste bud loss. During this study, a group of mice were fed a normal diet while a second group was given a high fat diet. At the end of the study, the high fat group had less taste buds than the subjects in the normal diet group. And when the taste buds were counted, the high fat group was found to have reduced their total number of taste buds by 25%.

 

A pro-inflammatory cell called TNF-alpha is probably responsible for the taste bud loss. TNF-alpha is strongly associated with the inflammation that usually accompanies obesity.  And when this cell is injected into the tongues of subjects who don’t have increased levels of TNF-alpha because they’re within a healthy weight range, they also suffer from taste bud loss. According to some sources, this loss could be responsible for a range of appetite problems.

The Search for Pleasure

 

When you eat delicious foods, your brain releases a hormone known as dopamine. This hormone encourages positive feelings and acts as a reward for behaviors that the body sees as positive. However, if you can’t taste foods properly, you may not experience this rewarding feeling as strongly as your body would like. In fact, some researchers suspect that this lack drives subjects to eat more in the search for the pleasure that taste is supposed to provide. This could result in obesity, or drive obese people to overeat and make the problem worse.

 

At the opposite end of the spectrum, seniors who suffer from depressed appetites also report a decrease in their ability to taste their food. This usually affects their enjoyment of their food and results in malnutrition or deficiency as well as other health issues.

 

The Implications

 

Your sense of taste may seem less important than some of your other senses, but this evidence shows that it’s an important measure of personal health. Losing your sense of taste may indicate certain health problems such as inflammation and it can also cause or worsen health concerns such as obesity or malnutrition. Which is why evaluating your sense of taste as part of your regular health assessment can create a broader and more accurate picture of your overall personal health.

The Measurement Problem

 

There is an obvious problem with the idea of using taste as a health tracking measurement. It’s almost impossible to measure how good or bad someone’s sense of taste is, and self-reporting can never be objectively accurate. However, measuring your ability to taste subjectively, perhaps by regularly sampling different tastes and evaluating how sharp or blunt they are, can be valuable. Recording small changes in your ability to taste over time as part of your health tracking activities could indicate potential problems and be reported to your doctor to help with making diagnoses.

 

If you want to start tracking your personal health and wellbeing try HomeLab to give you accurate data for your health assessments and track any changes you make.

 

Tags: Health risks, health assessment, personal health, health tracking