I've read anecdotal reports that certain serotonergic psychedelics were useful in recovery of sense of smell following COVID-related parosmia. I wonder if this is the mechanism at play in those cases.
Low serotonin levels might explain some Long Covid symptoms, study proposes
141–150 of 155 posts
Re: Low serotonin levels might explain some Long Covid symptoms, study proposes
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Desperate person here, has anything worked for you? NAC + Aspirin is the only thing that helps me but it also makes me feel detached and not hyper as my previous brain state.
Been dealing with LC since 2020. I started nicotine after reading through the (probably shoddy) studies on the topic and reading through the anecdotal reports of others experiencing relief with it. (I was desperate, have tried everything I can get my hands on + every kind of dietary intervention.) The experiences seem to be pretty mixed but at least for my form of LC it has made a substantial positive difference. Out…
Did you ever feel you got back to your previous brain state?
I do but with each reinfection it takes at least 6 months for me to get better again.
Re: Low serotonin levels might explain some Long Covid symptoms, study proposes
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
I highly doubt you read through the relevant bits and instead jumped to argue further: > One particular instance is the long-term symptoms experienced by a significant percentage of COVID-19 survivors, a condition named long COVID by the patients affected (4). Some survivors of acute COVID-19 began reporting symptoms lasting much longer than the amount of time then reported for clinical recovery. Long COVID has cause…
> I highly doubt you read through the relevant bits and instead jumped to argue further: What do the relevant bits you cited have to do with you providing evidence that the research on long covid is high-quality or conclusive? I guess I should define conclusive while I'm here: 1) conclusively defines and scopes long COVID symptoms and disambiguates those symptoms from symptoms of other conditions. 2) conclusively det…
Early on in the AIDS epidemic, what did we know from your 1) 2) 3)?
We had no effective treatments. 3) is gone.
We didn't know about HIV yet, or the link to AIDS. 2) is gone.
AIDS makes you susceptible to a ton of infections that healthy people normally don't get, so the list of possible symptoms was large - and we couldn't disambiguate those symptoms from other conditions - they were those other conditions. Isn't that 1) gone?
Thank goodness we kept researching. And concerns about long-term health impact of AIDS were well-founded, weren't they?
I also think you're forgetting that we can measure things about populations, and correlate conditions with people who have had a known COVID diagnosis. Then, when symptoms are more common, even years later, in the people who have had COVID, if you want us to say "people who have had a known COVID diagnosis" all of the time, we could... Or maybe it's okay to just say "Long COVID."
Clinical practice is not epidemiology is not actuarial science.
I think you're (rightly?) disappointed that we don't have the Long COVID Manual for clinical practitioners. But people who study epidemics are for sure seeing a thing, and it's measurable. And it has long-term impacts on human health.
Re: Low serotonin levels might explain some Long Covid symptoms, study proposes
#144My gut reaction (pun intended) or guess on what causes Long Covid is a viral reservoir, possibly in the gut, that the immune system cannot fully clear. Low serotonin is then a downstream effect from the chronic stress on the body. Approx. 90% of serotonin found in the human body is located in the (GI) tract. So people and doctors will throw SSRIs at the problem, and maybe that will relieve some symptoms, but will not…
That was exactly my take on this study, and I wasn't happy about seeing the jump to "WE NEED MORE SSRIS, LOOK IT'S SEROTONIN" - it's already been proven that serotinin disruptions in depression are a symptom so this is the same but doctors/pharma continue to cling to the outdated "low serotonin"
The other side effect this may have is delegitimatizing the condition, much like SSRIs are thrown at chronic pain, menstrual issues and more. Since the medical institution doesn't really take these conditions seriously this is going to become another half recognized condition that doctors can say "Maybe it's Long Covid HAVE YOU TRIED SSRIS" vs working with the patient or doing research into the true causes.
Re: Low serotonin levels might explain some Long Covid symptoms, study proposes
#145I still think about the HN commentor who told me confidently, "there is no theoretical basis for long-term consequences of COVID-19." [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23875391
Thanks for pointing me to that comment so I could upvote it. His comment is not accurate in that there are plenty of theories, but the general idea behind the claim is far more accurate than what probably many that frequent HN believe about long COVID. Long COVID is poorly understood and the research around it has overall been inconclusive, and much of it very low-quality: https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/long…
Also, do you think that, in July 2020, that "most people [were] dramatically overestimating COVID-19 risk"? (As the comment I linked to stated.)
On July 12 and 13th, 2020, my uncle emailed me, "For what it’s worth, I predict the COVID-19 death toll in the next 30 months will be 2.5-3 million Americans." I emailed him "I don't know what to predict.... By 2023, I'll go with 300,000."
I'm pretty certain that my 300,000 Americans by 2023 was dramatically higher than what most people were estimating. And I was low.
And at that point, July 2020, I was just barely beginning to be concerned about long-term health impacts of those who survive COVID.
Re: Low serotonin levels might explain some Long Covid symptoms, study proposes
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having most of the population holed up inside is bad for long-term economic growth too. Ineffectual internet-schooling replacing normal in-person schooling for more than a short time period would be particularly devastating to long-term economic growth.
That's conjecture and based on intermediate metrics such as report cards / SAT scores
There's quite a lot of data that points to a decline in many places... literacy scores are lower, math scores are lower, etc.
The effects appear to be quite bad, and haven't yet recovered in many places (especially among lower income groups). This will take some more time to distill with more accuracy, but lockdowns and remote schooling almost certainly had a negative impact.
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/01/1120510251/reading-math-test-...
Re: Low serotonin levels might explain some Long Covid symptoms, study proposes
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's conjecture and based on intermediate metrics such as report cards / SAT scores
Well, mental illnesses skyrocketed. That messes up economy bad, long term in hard-to-calculate ways since people are not simply dropping dead and disappearing from economy. No they are still around, more or less successfully trying to integrate back, but requiring a lot of support resources that would be otherwise used in other cases, ramping up the medical costs, maybe even losing jobs, failed mortgages and so on. T…
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Re: Low serotonin levels might explain some Long Covid symptoms, study proposes
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's conjecture and based on intermediate metrics such as report cards / SAT scores
Well, mental illnesses skyrocketed. That messes up economy bad, long term in hard-to-calculate ways since people are not simply dropping dead and disappearing from economy. No they are still around, more or less successfully trying to integrate back, but requiring a lot of support resources that would be otherwise used in other cases, ramping up the medical costs, maybe even losing jobs, failed mortgages and so on. T…
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Re: Low serotonin levels might explain some Long Covid symptoms, study proposes
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's conjecture and based on intermediate metrics such as report cards / SAT scores
Well, mental illnesses skyrocketed. That messes up economy bad, long term in hard-to-calculate ways since people are not simply dropping dead and disappearing from economy. No they are still around, more or less successfully trying to integrate back, but requiring a lot of support resources that would be otherwise used in other cases, ramping up the medical costs, maybe even losing jobs, failed mortgages and so on. T…
I don't think a rise in mental illness is entirely attributable to lockdowns. There are several ways this pandemic can affect mental state, such as:
- COVID infection, virus messing with your brain
- Disappointment from believing COVID is man made (regardless of whether true or not)
- Death of someone close, remember that 1.1 million people have died from COVID in the United States alone
- Disappointment that the lack of care for the vulnerable exposed a survival of the fittest nonchalance where some of the most able among us couldn't be bothered to breathe through an n95 to avoid a however negligible chance of someone dying
Re: Low serotonin levels might explain some Long Covid symptoms, study proposes
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's conjecture and based on intermediate metrics such as report cards / SAT scores
There's quite a lot of data that points to a decline in many places... literacy scores are lower, math scores are lower, etc. The effects appear to be quite bad, and haven't yet recovered in many places (especially among lower income groups). This will take some more time to distill with more accuracy, but lockdowns and remote schooling almost certainly had a negative impact. https://www.npr.org/2022/09/01/1120510251…
Interesting. Wonder how kids in China are doing.