First Republic Bank. This article is about the bank based in San Francisco. For the defunct bank based in Dallas, see First Republic Bank Corporation. First Republic Bank is a bank and wealth management company offering personal banking, business banking, trust and wealth management services.
You are born with 9,000 taste buds, which work in tandem with your sense of smell as your sense of taste relies primarily on odors. Your sense of smell and taste change as you age. Between the ages of 40 and 50, the number of taste buds decreases, and the rest begin to shrink, losing mass vital to their operation. After age 60, you may begin to lose the ability to distinguish the taste of sweet, salty, sour, and bitter foods. The sense of smell does not begin to fade until after the age of 70; its decrease exacerbates the loss of taste for those affected. The exact cause of these changes is up for debate.
The loss of smell is much more common than the loss of taste, and many people mistakenly believe they have a problem with taste, when they are really experiencing a problem with their sense of smell. A loss in taste or smell is diagnosed by your doctor using special taste and smell tests. The sense of smell gradually declines in older people. This is normal. Many older people are not even aware that they have a problem with their sense of smell because the changes occur gradually over several years.