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Long Covid is associated with cognitive slowing

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51–60 of 71 posts

Re: Long Covid is associated with cognitive slowing

#51
post #47

I am somewhat skeptical about the long covid thing. Not that the disease doesn't exist of course, but of the relationship with covid specifically. To put it simply, we all got in contact with covid at some point. Some were asymptomatic, some mistook it for a cold, and some were confirmed cases. Plus there are vaccines, that are said not to be as effective at preventing long covid than they are at preventing severe (a…

You are skeptical that a condition named after the pathogen itself cannot be attributed to long term sequelae?

There are so many studies that help answer all the questions you have on this topic. Peer reviewed and from reputable journals. LitCovid is very helpful here.

Re: Long Covid is associated with cognitive slowing

#52
post #37
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, to chip in: try cardio, especially running. Men loose muscle mass with age, as you are already aware, resistance training is important, but cardio should be on top of your list. I was there with you in terms of brain fog, general mental slowdown, what is called cognitive decline, and mind you, I presume we are healthy, without cognitive degeneration or serius injuries or conditions. Running 3 times per week shou…

Agree. Also testosterone. I was lucky enough to have lab work before and after getting covid twice. My T numbers halved in less than a year. I was still within the “normal range” so it took some arguing with the doctors to get a prescription for a very low dose. Within 24 hours of starting, I felt like myself again. Brain fog was gone, energy was back, my mood rebounded. No negative side effects thus far. I had tried…

This piques my interest because when I first started noticing these symptoms that's actually the first thing I thought of. I'm in my mid 30s and I've heard that's around when T starts to drop off. Probably worth mentioning this to my doctor eh?

Re: Long Covid is associated with cognitive slowing

#53
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CDC statement does not back up your claim. Neither of the two diseases you mentioned are actually caused by anxiety or depression, and the CDC is not saying that anything you have after COVID is long COVID but rather that the real problems people are having do not have a single simple cause. This is true of many other things - consider how family history, diet, exercise, sleep, past infections, pollution, etc. al…

So if the real problems people are having "do not have a single simple cause", why are we calling it "Long Covid"? The name implies that there is a known cause, and the diagnosis IS Long Covid.

Because diseases are complicated and your body’s response involves a number of factors. We know that there is a large group of people who had no known health conditions prior to some number of COVID cases, at which point they did have a chronic condition, and tests have failed to link it to other known diseases. This again is similar to other things - for example, arthritis has some components like age or genetic predisposition but also risk slog goes up with things like obesity, smoking, exposure to certain chemicals, or bacterial / viral infections in and so there isn’t a simple cause or effect relationship because for any given trait you can find people who have it but did not develop the condition or vice versa. What researchers have done is find correlations in large groups to identify how the many factors increase your odds of developing the disease - even if most people don’t develop it, we have a large enough population that many people will.

Long COVID is similar in that they have identified risk factors like age or not being vaccinated and have some theories for the underlying mechanism and biomarkers which hopefully will make it easier for clinicians to identify patients or warn people with high risk factors.

https://erictopol.substack.com/p/lighting-up-long-covid

Re: Long Covid is associated with cognitive slowing

#54

Since 2019 I've been: - Vaccinated for COVID once - Infected with COVID 3 times - Infected with RSV once - Infected with unknown ?? upper respiratory, two times. I am absolutely less "sharp". It feels like both my cognitive and physical ability have taken a serious blow. I'm far less creative, less excited about work, less interested in challenging topics, and less capable of solving complex problems. I will sometime…

When I was suffering from this I tried to hack it and what I noticed was that when I got more blood to the brain (e.g. by being upside down), it improved (for a minute or two). So that led to the brain hypoperfusion theory and then I decided to ramp up the red blood cell count to give my brain the ability to do more with less, by taking liposomal iron, lactoferrin and liposomal sublingual B12. This led to a massive boost that I could work normally for 8 hours (but had to take rest afterwards).

Re: Long Covid is associated with cognitive slowing

#55
post #47

I am somewhat skeptical about the long covid thing. Not that the disease doesn't exist of course, but of the relationship with covid specifically. To put it simply, we all got in contact with covid at some point. Some were asymptomatic, some mistook it for a cold, and some were confirmed cases. Plus there are vaccines, that are said not to be as effective at preventing long covid than they are at preventing severe (a…

Quite a few studies have found the ME/CFS 50% of Long Covid tracks with ME/CFS from other sources, a condition caused by a number of different mostly infectious challenges to the body including quite often EBV. So in this regard you are right the symptoms and a lot of the biological changes track ME/CFS. In this case we know the causing infection so we may as well keep that information because it does help in studying it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10278546/

But about half of Long Covid is other things, like heart attacks, strokes and cancer all of which are significantly up since the pandemic started across most of the world and showing up in excess deaths.

Its also worth keeping in mind the post Polio diseases only impacted about 1% of people who contracted the disease. Just because it only impacts a small number of infections over the world it can be a very large number of people especially when people are catching Covid so often.

Re: Long Covid is associated with cognitive slowing

#56

Not sure if others have experienced this, but you tend to forget nouns (object names, names of people, places, etc) after getting hit with COVID. I googled about this and something called "anomic aphasia" came up. I often caught myself saying "that thing" many times because I couldn't recall the names of even basic objects or street names, etc after getting hit with Omicron. Just curious if others have experienced th…

Sounds like having children. My mum could never get our names right and I could never understand why. Had children, now I do exactly the same thing. Still don't really understand why though tbh.

Re: Long Covid is associated with cognitive slowing

#57
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if the real problems people are having "do not have a single simple cause", why are we calling it "Long Covid"? The name implies that there is a known cause, and the diagnosis IS Long Covid.

Because diseases are complicated and your body’s response involves a number of factors. We know that there is a large group of people who had no known health conditions prior to some number of COVID cases, at which point they did have a chronic condition, and tests have failed to link it to other known diseases. This again is similar to other things - for example, arthritis has some components like age or genetic pre…

Correlation isn't causation. The highest risk factor of Long Covid is probably frequency of hearing about it from social media. Much like Fibromyalgia.

Re: Long Covid is associated with cognitive slowing

#58
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because diseases are complicated and your body’s response involves a number of factors. We know that there is a large group of people who had no known health conditions prior to some number of COVID cases, at which point they did have a chronic condition, and tests have failed to link it to other known diseases. This again is similar to other things - for example, arthritis has some components like age or genetic pre…

Correlation isn't causation. The highest risk factor of Long Covid is probably frequency of hearing about it from social media. Much like Fibromyalgia.

I would strongly suggest reading the previous link and the Science paper it leads with (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg7942). When a large number of medical professionals say there’s something real and there are peer reviewed publications in top journals discussing options for treatment, it is highly unlikely that some rando with no relevant expertise is correct in arbitrarily dismissing it.

Re: Long Covid is associated with cognitive slowing

#59
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correlation isn't causation. The highest risk factor of Long Covid is probably frequency of hearing about it from social media. Much like Fibromyalgia.

I would strongly suggest reading the previous link and the Science paper it leads with ( https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg7942 ). When a large number of medical professionals say there’s something real and there are peer reviewed publications in top journals discussing options for treatment, it is highly unlikely that some rando with no relevant expertise is correct in arbitrarily dismissing it.

I would strongly suggest not blindly trusting "peer reviewed" and "top journals", especially on topics that are not easily provable.

"We conclude that despite widespread use of narcotic drugs in hospitals, the development of addiction is rare in medical patients with no history of addiction. "https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJM198001103020221 "Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

Re: Long Covid is associated with cognitive slowing

#60
post #47

I am somewhat skeptical about the long covid thing. Not that the disease doesn't exist of course, but of the relationship with covid specifically. To put it simply, we all got in contact with covid at some point. Some were asymptomatic, some mistook it for a cold, and some were confirmed cases. Plus there are vaccines, that are said not to be as effective at preventing long covid than they are at preventing severe (a…

My background: i have been vaccinated 3 times, but still caught Covid on May24, 2023. I’ve spent the following 8 months recovering.

I’ve been dealing with extreme fatigue, brain fog, headaches, migraines, dizziness, shaking, and more. It feels like I’ve had a concussion for 8 months.

But at no point did I have any issues with my lungs, heart, or anything below my neck.

Medically the condition is called PASC. Post SARS-Covid 19 sequelae. Sequelae is the key term. It is a term for “injury after an infection”. “Long Covid” isn’t a diagnosis, it is just the common name people are using.

And Long Covid SUCKS.

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