Lost your sense of smell? It might be something a little grosser than a stuffy nose caused by a cold or flu.

A man who complained to doctors that his olfactory system wasn’t working properly was stunned to be told that the culprit was a tooth growing inside his nostril.

The wayward chopper was only found when specialists poked a tiny camera up his nose to explore what was going on.

Detailed in the BMJ Case Reports Journal, the bizarre case involved the patient visiting the ear, nose and throat department at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark after using steroids to treat his blocked nose.

There, a CT scan revealed a mucus-covered mass of enamel on the floor of the man’s nasal cavity.

Fortunately, the tooth was able to be extracted with a pair of forceps.

Physicians are baffled why it happened and, although rare, the phenomenon of teeth in noses is not entirely unheard of.

Trauma or infections have been blamed in the past along with a cleft lip or cleft palate. In their reports, the doctors wrote: “In our case there was no obvious explanation,”

While the man had fractured his jaw and nose in his youth, the injury probably didn’t cause the tooth to grow in the nostril.

Instead, it’s likely that the man had the tooth in his nose for most of his life and only experienced symptoms when the area became inflamed.

The good news is that, after the tooth was removed, the patient recovered and no longer experienced symptoms.