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Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

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Re: Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

#81

Post by maaaaattttt »

The symptoms of tingling in the extremities resemble what my wife experienced after her chemo when the treatment damaged her neurons' myelin sheath. This causes 'noisy' neuron signals to be transmitted (tingles, lack of sensation, etc.). If the same thing happened in the brain, I bet the noisy signals would lead to brain fogginess, forgetfulness, etc. Back then, she was taking omega-3 supplements and received shots of vitamin B12. After a year, it removed almost all the tingling, but some sensations never fully came back.

This is not medical advice (and check with your doctor beforehand), but it feels like taking vitamin B12 and omega-3 supplements should be a pretty low-risk bet to try to improve your situation if you're experiencing the long COVID symptoms described in the article.

Re: Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

#83

Post by yyyfb »

sneak wrote: post #48
skrebbel wrote: post #18

My wife has postcovid and this is a profound effect. Yesterday she tried to add up a series of numbers by heart, and she simply couldn’t. For context, she’s pretty mathy and used to mock me for taking out a calculator or a spreadsheet for stuff like that. She also forgets everything, which is another thing she used to be great at. It’s pretty confronting, especially now that the idea that maybe this isn’t temporary i…

I have a very math-heavy competitive hobby which I found myself suddenly very bad at (relative to my previous performance) for 6-8 weeks after all my other covid symptoms were gone. I appear to have recovered within 90 days, but I don’t know if I was left with permanent damage or not. I had no way to objectively test.

Your competitive performance level seems like a pretty objective way to test

Re: Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

#84

Post by madballster »

2015 observational study suggests these results are not unique to Covid: ""Our research shows a correlation between hospitalisation due to infection and impaired cognition corresponding to an IQ score of 1.76 lower than the average. People with five or more hospital contacts with infections had an IQ score of 9.44 lower than the average. The study thus shows a clear dose-response relationship between the number of infections, and the effect on cognitive ability increased with the temporal proximity of the last infection and with the severity of the infection." Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150521095016.h...

Re: Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

#85

Post by p0w3n3d »

jl6 wrote: post #35

The title is misleading, at least on the IQ claim. The underlying study was observational and did not claim causation. Medical journals and their associated media summaries are awash with low-certainty studies that get de-nuanced and overhyped. These studies are relatively easy to do - not to denigrate the work put in by the original study authors (it’s not their fault the press sensationalize their work). But for st…

I experienced some limitations of cognitive abilities but not sure was it due to COVID or some sort of depression

Re: Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

#86

Post by pjerem »

skrebbel wrote: post #58
underdeserver wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long ago was she sick? For me it's gotten better. I got sick in August 2021, the major effects (fatigue and brain fog) were most pronounced between September and February, and I've been steadily improving since. I think I'm somewhere around 80% pre-Covid capacity most days.

Woa this is a great thing to hear actually. She got sick January 2022 so a bit over 2 years now. Our current fear is that this is the kind of thing where either you recover within ~2 years or it’s forever. Appreciate your story and will share with her. Her other symptoms, particularly the fatigue, do seem to improve (though the weather and being about to be outside impacts it a lot, so she had a huge setback 2 winter…

Weather impact on mood and energy is unbelievable, at least in myself.

Also, if that can help, contrary to my previous beliefs, light therapy is no bullshit. I thought it was another pseudo science but studies are in fact proving that it’s incredibly effective (but it’s pretty inconvenient to incorporate in your habits).

Re: Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

#87

Post by DoreenMichele »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #76
croes wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Milllions of people worldwide suddenly have Zinc deficiency in the same year and now it's gone?

And yet the zinc conspiracy is not the craziest thing that users has posted regarding COVID.

[flagged]

Re: Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

#88

Post by throwing_away »

I feel like this is a messaging roll out?

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/faustfiles/109672 -- an interview from 2 days ago where the NIH leader says covid is persistent for months or years in people and the MD interviewer did a double take.

Not sure why there's a shift happening, maybe some new publication? This has been shaping up for years now.

Re: Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

#89

Post by zer00eyz »

resolutebat wrote: post #5
decremental wrote: post #2

[flagged]

I'm genuinely curious about what mechanism would make this possible.

To bring in some actual research:

https://www.cureus.com/articles/196275-increased-age-adjuste...

A study of more than 50,000 employees at a medical institution in the United States observed the incidence of the Omicron variant epidemic based on the number of vaccine doses received (0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 or more doses) over a period of 26 weeks and showed that the number of vaccines received was positively correlated with the cumulative incidence rate of COVID-19 [46]. Susceptibility to COVID-19 infection after multiple vaccinations may be enhanced by antibody-dependent enhancement [47], immune imprinting [39,48], and immunosuppression [25-27]. This can result in a risk of exposure to viral S-protein in addition to vaccine S-protein for the multiple-vaccinated.

That whole paper is... interesting. I will be curios to see if any one else finds corroborating data or if it gets toss to the side and forgotten.

Re: Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

#90

Post by skrebbel »

cjk2 wrote: post #65
skrebbel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it. It’s not like you ever stop practicing remembering things or doing everyday math tasks. Look, this is anecdata. I’m not making a claim about this article. I just know that my wife got substantially stupider overnight 2 years ago (plus lots of other symptoms). Via a postcovid support group organized by a semi government club here in NL she knows a bunch more people with long-term postcovid and this is the…

I would be careful with some of the self-help groups. They can reinforce symptoms rather than improve them. A case in point is a friend of mine who thought she had post-covid symptoms and cognitive decline. She went to a similar group and found a lot of very miserable people with depression. When talking to them they had similar stories of lost relatives, lost jobs and general social decline. But all had a common thi…

Yeah, well aware. Fortunately her group is an impressively can-do-attitude bunch, and she’s getting very concrete ideas from it. I think it helps that it was organized by a government-y instance who did some checking, and isn’t some facebook group turned physical or sth.

(Also, no drinking. That would be madness. Nobody in that group drinks at all anymore, it would set back their recovery by a lot)

For example, she had a cold last march which totally knocked her remaining bits of physical energy out of her, and she worried that she wouldn’t be able to come on a planned family trip to the zoo, because of the lengthy walking involved. She shared that worry in the group and another woman said “but then just rent a wheelchair at the entrance and get yourself rolled around most of the time! That’s kinda confronting, “I’m now a person who sometimes needs a wheelchair”, but it’s also very constructive and awesome if you get over that and it helps you get out of the house. We did that trip, it was super awkward (esp when she stood up from the wheelchair and everybody could see that well actually, her legs work fine), and we had a great time and for the first time after a big outing she wasn’t sick in bed for 3 days after.

Btw, a sidenote, “just go sporting” is terrible advice for people with heavy postcovid. Look up “post exertional malaise”. You gotta build it up very carefully, never push yourself too hard. It’s very hard but it appears to work (given enough patience).

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