Steve K's Vaping World

There comes a time for every vaper when something goes horribly wrong in the flavor department.  You load your e-cigarette up with your favorite e-liquid flavor, take a deep puff and… Nothing.  The vapor is there, but you can’t taste your vapor.  You’re experiencing “vaper’s tongue.”

First of all, Don’t Panic!

Vaper’s tongue is sort of the lingo for times when your taste buds decide to betray you and run right out the door.  It’s not really a medical condition.  And more importantly, it’s not permanent.

The inability to taste the flavors in vapor happens fairly frequently in new vapers.  It can also happen in more veteran e-cigarette users.  I get it frequently, it’s one of the reasons I don’t write e-liquid reviews.

There are a few different causes or scenario for flavor loss.  I’m not a scientist or anything, so you’ll have to give my particularly lay-person descriptions.

Quitting Smoking

If you’re a new vaper recently coming from traditional cigarettes, you’re a prime candidate.  As you may know, smoking ruins your sense of taste. When you give up the coffin nails, your sense of taste starts to return.

The ability to taste things essentially gets released from the dark corner where it was stuffed. Your sense of taste at some point becomes over stimulated with all the new tastes. At some point it becomes a little too much and things shut down for a while.

This may happen several times as your body adjusts to life as a non-smoker.  Usually these bouts will clear up on their own within a few hours to a few days.  At some point you’ll just notice you can taste things again.

Dehydration

One of the side effects of vaping is dehydration.  The ingredients in e-liquid that make vapor are humectants.  This means that they absorb moisture, like the moisture found in your mouth.

The vapor acts like a sponge and soaks up your saliva, giving you a dry mouth.  This can also leave a sort of film that coats your mouth and tongue.  This coating stands between your vapor and your taste buds.

The solution in this case is pretty simple.  Drink plenty of water while you vape.  If there’s a lot of build up, you could try taking your toothbrush to your tongue.  It sort of tickles, but it helps take that nasty build up out.

Repetition

Do you have an e-liquid flavor you’re in love with?  Do you find yourself vaping it constantly?

That could be your problem too.  If you’re constantly exposing your taste buds to the same flavor on a very frequent basis you may build up a sort of immunity. Overexposure causes your body to sort of tune out the flavor, kind of how your brain tunes out background noise and you never really notice it.

The solution here is pretty simple.  Just mix things up a little.  Try swapping between a few different flavors to keep things fresh.

Illness

Usually people are able to make this connection, but having a cold or the flu is a good way to lose your sense of taste.  When you have the sniffles, your sinuses are generally plugged up pretty good.

Your nose plays a pretty important part in forming your ability to taste things.  When it stops working, it has a tendency to diminish your palette.

Not much in the way of solutions here.  Chicken soup, plenty of rest and just wait it out.

Just Because

And sometimes there’s no explanation at all.   Your sense of taste just decides to randomly get up and walk out the door.  Perhaps its mad at you for all those years of abuse, who knows?

This is perhaps the most frustrating of all the reasons.  Nothing seems to be amiss, flavors just don’t seem to be doing it for you.

Some people have had some success in trying a particularly strong menthol or cinnamon flavor to sort of shock and awe the taste buds back into duty.  Perhaps something like Vape Dude’s Fire and Ice e-liquid might do the trick since it has both cinnamon and menthol. Or as I call it, the nuclear option.

I’ll also mention that you can save up to 40% if you check the coupon code section for my Vape Dudes coupons.

Some Suggestions

There will come a point when all the cinnamon in wherever it is cinnamon comes from won’t wake up your sleepy sense of taste.  Here’s a couple of ideas to make the most of it while you’re waiting for your taste to come back from its walkabout.

You know that bottle of e-liquid you hate (hey, cranberry bacon sounded awesome at the time!), why not get it out of the drawer?  Since you can’t taste anything anyway, why let perfectly nasty e-liquid go to waste?  Who knows, maybe a slightly dull sense of taste may help the stuff taste a little better.

Being prepared isn’t just for Boy Scouts.  Why not keep a small supply of really inexpensive e-liquid handy for such an occasion.  Why burn through your good stuff if you can’t enjoy it? MadVapes has a pretty decent selection of inexpensive e-liquids for such occasions.  Actually, some of it tastes pretty good anyway.

Your Experiences?

It seems like there will simply just be some point (or several) where you can’t taste your e-cigarette’s vapor.  This is normal and might be caused by a few different thing.  I think we all go through it at some point.

With that said, I’d like to know.  Has this happened to you?  Have you learned any tricks to cope?

Image(s): FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Disclosure: I feature affiliate links for Vape Dudes and MadVapes