Between MS and having had COVID 4+ times, first one giving me long for 6 months, it's a miracle my brain keeps ticking. The human body is an insane piece of machinery.
Hang in there
Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain
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Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain
#32Perhaps then we should stop ignoring the potential effects of the ongoing airborne pandemic. But no, keep f*king around with COVID, and we keep finding out.
Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain
#33The last para suggests that this is not reversible. But does anyone have any treatment options or supplements/nootropics to recommend?
This is a bit out there but I read some books on polyvagal theory that suggested I could induce the "rest & digest" state by leaning into and completing the "fight or flight" and "shutdown" states. There are many nervous system calming techniques that help e.g. rubbing my coat hanger area (if you draw a coat hanger between your neck and shoulders on the front & back), chanting om or making sighing noises, and taking long hot showers to name a few
Yoga nidra (sleep meditation) has been quite helpful.
What really helped is also performing nervous system calming techniques not only at rest, but slowly when I walk around as well when I was able. Got the idea from Becca Kennedy who just posted this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfZFtWx1YvM
The downside is that a lot of people are out to take your money when you read about this. I'm skeptical of brain retaining courses. I trust Deb Dana's books
Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain
#34Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain
#35Recently read an article suggesting that we should drop the term Long Covid, as it implies that there is something unique about it, when the research seems to show that the impairment post-Covid is very similar to that from Influenza: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/15/long-covid-s...
When you look at the Epstein-Barr virus we call the result of the infection all kinds of syndromes.
Personally I had Long Epstein-Barr for almost a year. So I know it's no joke.
Most virus infections can cause long term problems.
Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Minimizing the impact of COVID has a long and ugly history for such a young virus. One paper contradicting every other source so far certainly shouldn’t be accepted as gospel.
I think the point here is that we don't know either way, so maybe we shouldn't attribute it all specifically to COVID. When we were told to act like hypochondriacs for a year or 2, it shifted behavior. COVID was the devil virus and people were attributing many things to it. And since there is no diagnostic test for "long COVID", we are sorta just guessing everywhere here.
You may not know either way but the scientific community absolutely does. Over 350,000 papers published here referencing long covid specifically and growing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/research/coronavirus/
Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Several of these (Reynauds, food/digestion issues) sound like things that my family member dealt with after long-something-else. He was bedridden for nearly 2 years, diagnosed with CFS, and then (many years later) Lupus.
This comment just reinforces my belief that it’s autoimmune related. I have never had Reynauds (or ANY of these symptoms) before or after this. It was the first and only time I have ever seen any of the things I mentioned happen to my body. They just… went away and I was normal again eventually, luckily for me. Many aren’t so lucky
My wife got POTS for the first time in 2022, but we tested and tested and tested, we both never got Covid - but I have been suspecting that the tests were just junk. No other time in our life did her autoimmune issues that basically went away 8 years ago, came back 10x harder. Same thing with almost all of your symptoms. She's finally slowly getting better, but she still can't eat gluten right now.
Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
This comment just reinforces my belief that it’s autoimmune related. I have never had Reynauds (or ANY of these symptoms) before or after this. It was the first and only time I have ever seen any of the things I mentioned happen to my body. They just… went away and I was normal again eventually, luckily for me. Many aren’t so lucky
My wife got POTS for the first time in 2022, but we tested and tested and tested, we both never got Covid - but I have been suspecting that the tests were just junk. No other time in our life did her autoimmune issues that basically went away 8 years ago, came back 10x harder. Same thing with almost all of your symptoms. She's finally slowly getting better, but she still can't eat gluten right now.
Sorry to hear about your wife. As grandparent comment implies, it’s likely not just COVID that causes these autoimmune problems, but COVID is the thing that most people in recent times got that caused this, so it gets the most press. From my research I discovered that ME/CFS/Lupus and a lot of other autoimmune related illnesses have been documented in medicine for decades but until COVID the medical field largely considered these illnesses as mostly just a fringe medical phenomena for interested researchers that was blown off by modern medical practitioners because the science to understand it is incomplete. Now that enough people like myself and you on behalf of your wife are out talking about it, the hope is that science will eventually catch up and figure out why this kind of thing happens
Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain
#39Leaky blood brain barrier does not bode well for the future, especially with mass and repeated infections. This is associated with Alzheimer’s, dementia, and other neurodegenerstive disorders: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrneurol.2017.188
Wow that's terrible. Well.. science has major incentive to find cures now. How many have long covid? Or maybe even subclinical long covid that may silently boost Alzheimer's risk?
On a more positive note, they recently found that there is some sort of frequency that may enhance / trigger the natural junk clearance mechanisms that go on during sleep.
Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain
#40Recently read an article suggesting that we should drop the term Long Covid, as it implies that there is something unique about it, when the research seems to show that the impairment post-Covid is very similar to that from Influenza: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/15/long-covid-s...
Flu like or not, long convid is a collection of many different syndrome. It need to be more specific to be useful.
Alternatively, you could view ( flu, colds, covid etc.) it to be the same syndrome with several facets and diversities.