A few years into my life with multiple sclerosis, I started noticing that food and beverages tasted … off.

Coffee was bitter. Wine was acidic. Sweet food was bland. And, worst of all, I couldn’t taste salt very well.

The folks at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s Momentum Magazine interviewed me for a story about taste dysfunction called, “Does this taste weird to you?”

The article starts by featuring yours truly:

As a salt-lover, Meredith O’Brien used to eat Ritz crackers upside down to savor the salt crystals dissolving on her tongue. But one day, two years into her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, those same crackers tasted like plain paste. The next morning, her coffee tasted burnt. Red wine at dinner tasted sour. When O’Brien, who is based in the Boston area, brought up the issue to her neurologist, he said he’d never heard of such a thing.

“Taste alterations are a primary MS symptom that has flown largely under the radar,” confirms Mona Bostick, a dietitian-nutritionist in Greensboro, North Carolina, who also lives with MS. A 2016 study in the Journal of Neurology suggested that 15% to 32% of people with MS may experience taste deficits. A 2019 study in the Journal of Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology puts that number closer to 40%. The latter study also found that 68.4% of survey respondents complained of dry mouth, which further dampens flavor, as saliva helps taste buds do their job.

Read the rest of the article — which also quotes fellow MS patient and author Trevis Gleason, a chef who shares his “umami bomb” tips — here.