A question I’m sure most women ask when they first start seeing changes in their menopause is, “Why do I have a sweet taste in my mouth?” A man’s sense of taste is a lot more finicky than a women’s and it can even be hard for him to identify why. For years I wondered the exact same thing and one day it hit me like a ton of bricks. It all started when I was pregnant and during my second trimester I found myself craving sweets (and not just chocolate!) like a madman.
why do i have a sweet taste in my mouth
Was it hormonal or was it something else? When I finally got that whole belly pregnant, things were looking up and I found myself craving sweet tastes again like a crazed fanatic. The doctor had told me I had hypothyroidism but I couldn’t pinpoint the origin of the sweet taste in my mouth. There were other things going on but I was still coming to the realisation that something was obviously wrong.
At this point my husband took it upon himself to investigate the issue further. What he discovered was even more jaw dropping than the first question. He’d never actually asked the question before so when he asked I could tell he was getting closer to the answer. As it turns out, there is something called placental amnesia. The meaning of the question is that, in the past, I would not be able to recognise or taste anything sweet, mainly because my palate had not developed completely. In short, my mouth was not developed enough to be able to perceive the subtle sweet tastes I now have.
It’s a great question and one that will be answered in this article. So, why do I have a sweet taste in my mouth? It has happened to me on more than one occasion but it is mostly because I do not have the palate to stand up to the intensity of the taste. I am therefore able to tell when food is sweet to me by the intensity of the taste and not the texture.
The way it works is that there are neurons that get attached to each other. When you eat something sweet your brain tells your tongue that something sweet is around and this sends a message to your taste buds telling them to taste something sweet. My tongue is a very powerful taste bud and even if I didn’t have one, I would still be able to tell if something was sweet or not by the feel of it. It’s like a sophisticated little finger, able to detect all the different tastes in food. For most people this is enough but for those with damaged palate, or children who don’t develop their taste buds completely, a sweet taste can mean disaster.
Another answer to the question ‘Why do I have a sweet taste in my mouth?’ is because some foods actually have nerve endings, or taste buds. If a substance has taste buds, then it will also have a certain amount of sugar in it, which your taste buds detect. This sweetness is the substance that they identify as sweet. You will find foods that are naturally sweet such as honey, raisins, and jams, but there are other foods as well that will have a very intense sweet taste, this is why do I have a sweet taste in my mouth!
Not only do I have this sweet taste in my mouth, but I also tend to be hungry a lot. Have you ever noticed that after you eat something your mouth feels dry, this happens because your mouth is working at full capacity and working at full capacity means that it is extracting more water from your food to wet your teeth and saliva that help to clean it and stop it from drying out. Your body also secretes this liquid to help you process food and make it taste good. As you can see there are a lot of benefits to having this condition, but it does get frustrating because I can’t easily explain all of them to you.
If you are asking “why do I have a sweet taste in my mouth? “, then I am sorry to disappoint you, because there is no simple answer to this question. The reason you get a sweet taste in your mouth is due to several reasons, and these are: when we are hungry our bodies start to secrete extra saliva to moisten your mouth; our saliva is also used to clean your mouth by removing the bacteria that causes bad breath, and the sweet taste comes from the sugars in your saliva. So for me to answer your question “Why do I have a sweet taste in my mouth? “, I would say it’s due to all of those things, and I will try to explain each of them in the following paragraphs.
image credit freepik.com