Battled with your mom as a youngster over eating tomatoes or broccoli?But now you seem to love eating these healthy foods? Chances are, your taste buds changed.Humans are born with approximately 10,000 taste buds that help them in identifying tastes from different foods, such as sweet, salty, umami, sour, and bitter. However, you might not know that taste buds regenerate every two weeks! There are factors that can change our taste buds, such as illness, medication, and aging. Continue reading to learn more about these factors and discover many more amazing facts!If you enjoy this article, why not also read about why do men grow beards and what do turnips taste like here at Kidadl!When do taste buds change?Taste buds are present everywhere in the mouth and are not limited to the tongue. There are 50-100 cells present in a single taste bud that taste food before it is swallowed. Tips of these cells have receptors that get activated when food is mixed with the saliva present in the mouth. They can then tell which flavors are there, whether food is bitter, sour, salty, sweet, or umami. Taste buds contain microvilli, which are microscopic hairs that are very sensitive. These hairs sends signals to the brain about tastes of foods, whether salty, sweet, bitter, or sour. Tastes change frequently over periods of time. There are many factors that cause that to happen.Much of sensing flavor happens through taste buds and the nose. Foods can be tasteless without taste buds even if they are rich in flavors. If you have bacterial or viral infections, then symptoms such as a runny nose or nasal congestion can cause your sense of smell to be reduced and ultimately cause tastelessness. However, not to worry, your taste buds are still working. It is just that without the sense of smell, the sense of taste does not do much good. Diseases like Parkinson’s disease affect nerves present in the brain and the mouth and can cause taste perception changes. Nutrition deficiencies can also cause taste buds to not operate properly. Loss of taste can be caused by a deficiency of Vitamin A, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B6, copper, and zinc. Many vitamins and minerals are essential for taste buds to work properly. Taste buds can also stop working if nerves that are found connecting the mouth and the brain are damaged. These nerves allow the brain to receive signals that taste buds send about the food’s tastes. If these nerves are not working correctly, they won’t be able to continue delivering signals. Many medications can also cause an alteration in tasting foods. High blood pressure medicine is the most common medicine that alters the sense of taste. Aging is another reason for taste buds to reduce their function. As human beings reach an older age, taste buds reduce in number and regenerate at a slower rate. Remaining taste buds get smaller in size and their sensitivity diminishes, making it tough for them to sense taste. A loss of smell that also happens in older age causes a drop in the sense of taste as well. Smoking, along with having many other side effects, also affects the ability to sense taste properly. Alkaloids and carcinogens present in cigarettes cause taste buds to change negatively. It has been proven by researchers that there are positive changes in taste buds when a smoker quits smoking cigarettes. Researchers correlated lower taste sensitivity with high nicotine dependence. It was discovered that taste bud function can improve within two weeks after smoking has been quit. It is essential to get yourself checked by a physician if your sense of taste has gone away.How often do your taste buds renew?Taste buds are known to die (do not worry) and then regenerate in a few weeks. When a person bites his or her tongue with his or her own teeth (ouch!) or drinks something very hot and burns the tongue, it kills off some taste buds. However, these little things renew very soon luckily, and every taste can be determined again.Age also affects the pace of regeneration of taste buds. The body will regenerate smell receptors and taste buds slower if it is older, indicating that changes in taste can start at the age of 60 years. The size of taste buds reduces and so does the sensitivity. But at a younger age, taste buds keep renewing regularly, causing taste and preferences to change. If there was something you hated when you were a kid and haven’t eaten in a long time, you should try it again! Maybe the broccoli that you picked out of your salad will become your favorite thing now!What causes taste buds to change suddenly?Sudden changes in taste buds take place if the person is suffering from some health problem. The common cold, an ear infection or injury, a sinus infection, a throat infection, gum disease, a head injury, or an upper airway infection can cause changes in taste buds.The medication prescribed for blood pressure also causes a person to become less sensitive to tasting flavors. The medication may also leave a sweet or metallic taste in a person’s mouth. Health problems like the common cold and upper respiratory infections can be treated easily at home as they aren’t serious problems. But bacterial and viral diseases can take a toll on the body with their treatments causing taste buds to die.Do your taste buds change in early pregnancy?Yes, taste buds do shift during the early stage of pregnancy. The shift in the sense of taste is known as dysgeusia. It takes place due to the release of pregnancy hormones.During this shift, many types of food that you typically love might be hated by you, and foods you usually hate could end up being ones you’ll begun craving. Dysgeusia also causes a metallic or sour taste in the mouth even if a person is not eating.Did You Know…Taste buds can’t be seen by the naked eye. There are small-sized bumps present on your tongue, known as papillae, which have taste buds.If you try to hold your nose while you consume food, your brain will receive messages from your taste buds describing the flavor, whether it is sweet, salty, sour, or bitter, but it won’t be able to determine the subtle nuances of the flavor until you start breathing from your nose! Thus, thank your nose as well as your tongue next time you eat food as it is because of them you can enjoy flavors of life!Special cells present in the nose help the brain to determine flavors from the smell of the food. The smell triggers the nose’s olfactory receptors that work to determine flavors!Sense of smell is quite essential for a human being as it detects flavors from the smell of food. Sense of smell also alerts humans about possible dangers by recognizing the smell of smoke, indicating there is a fire nearby.Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly facts for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for how often do your tastebuds change then why not take a look at what do persimmons taste like, or what do parsnips taste like!
Battled with your mom as a youngster over eating tomatoes or broccoli?
