Live data from Hacker News

Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain

sciencenews.org

91–100 of 163 posts

Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain

#91
post #77

I was affected by this "brain fog" after getting Covid, but I didn't put two and two together. I called my doctor's office to schedule an appointment and when the receptionist asked what the appointment was for, I simply said "brain fog". I had no other way to describe it. It was intense and disturbing. I often couldn't put cohererent thoughts together, I was constantly forgetting what I was doing, forgetting where I…

I've been getting this since having kids and I called it brain fog too because I didn't know how else to describe it as well. Tests all came back negative. I now just attribute it to exhaustion and lack of sleep, but I find as I get older the symptoms come fast if I don't sleep enough or I get sick and my body isn't 100%.

Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain

#92
post #35

Recently 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.

> Most virus infections can cause long term problems.

This is very, very false. Your body is currently fighting off a very large number of virus and bacterial infections. Most are innocuous, and don't even raise the symptoms of a cold.

Now, going out on more of a limb and moving into speculation:

There is a tiny minority of diseases -- most very new and poorly-understood -- which do this.

There's some evidence that prior to around 10,000 BC -- the rise of civilization -- very few diseases like this existed. What appears to have changed was that with civilization -- and now with population density and travel -- diseases can co-evolve with humans, and integrate into our various chemical signalling pathways. Things like Covid or AIDS can explicitly target our immune system, for example, to try to avoid being caught.

* Prior to civilization, a successful disease had to work across a broad range of species.

* When the population was a fraction of what it is today, there was less opportunity for disease to evolve.

* Without travel, there was less opportunity for spread (and for crosstalk between viruses)

... and so on.

These relatively new diseases can cause long-term problems. There's a lot of them, and it's not always the same ones as cause acute symptoms!

Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain

#93
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Long covid is not a thing" plays into the "Covid is not a thing" conspiracy theory; it's probably a harmful trope, rather than meaningfully helpful for the people suffering symptoms. That something plays into a harmful trope doesn’t speak to its veracity though, and diminishing smaller inconvenient truths so as to not lead people astray in my opinion exacerbates rather than diminishes conspiracy theories. Could pr…

If the potential effect of a message is rather harmful, it's reasonable to hold the veracity of that message to a higher standard of scrutiny than if a message is benign. This wasn't a good study, scientifically. Scrutiny was not applied before reporting on it, and now we have a harm on our hands. The fact that we're discussing it attests to that, since its a sideshow leeching attention away from the main topic of lo…

Who decides on what is harmful vs what is benign?

Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain

#94
Long COVID is horrible. I have had it for three years. I follow the research quite closely and wrote a book about what we know about it, how it affects someone and their health, and some observations on how absurd of a condition it is from the lens of someone struggling with it.

Here’s a free digital copy if anyone wants to read it: https://jondouglas.dev/longhaul

Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain

#95

i will never understand our civilization *** up priorities. we should have spent 100+ billion dollars solving this instead of on twitter and VR.

Instead, we had some people in positions of power pushing theories that COVID was a hoax because it was inconvenient for their businesses.

Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain

#96

Perhaps 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.

There is no ongoing pandemic. There is now an en demic virus that's part of the regular rotation of pathogens that cause colds and flu, and covid doesn't seem particularly more dangerous than the rest (NB: influenza can be very nasty too! I'm not minimizing the harm of covid). The pandemic was a unique situation because the entire world population was immuno-naive to covid. This is no longer the case; we all get expo…

the distinction between pandemic and endemic is political and typically related to “we don’t care to contain it”. It’s not related to immunity levels. The interesting thing is that it used to be citizens of poorer countries who would be fodder, now it’s also the richer ones which I think says something about the state of those countries and progress in general

Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain

#97
post #77

I was affected by this "brain fog" after getting Covid, but I didn't put two and two together. I called my doctor's office to schedule an appointment and when the receptionist asked what the appointment was for, I simply said "brain fog". I had no other way to describe it. It was intense and disturbing. I often couldn't put cohererent thoughts together, I was constantly forgetting what I was doing, forgetting where I…

I've been getting this since having kids and I called it brain fog too because I didn't know how else to describe it as well. Tests all came back negative. I now just attribute it to exhaustion and lack of sleep, but I find as I get older the symptoms come fast if I don't sleep enough or I get sick and my body isn't 100%.

Did you get your Testosterone checked? There are studies showing men lower T levels when babies are born, if you were already low it could be a issue.

Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I am fascinated by people _not_ having inner monologues, as I do have a very active inner voice. For me having inner voice is like one part of me does the talking, the other does the listening. If other people could listen, they would probably say that I'm a crazy dude, doing all that talk. When I see people talking loud, I call them crazy, thank god I do not project my voice outwards! But sometimes, things come…

Of course, happy to discuss. You have me stumped though, I actually can't articulate how I work. If what I'm doing requires extreme care, such as pushing configuration updates to production, I will mentally say out loud what I'm planning to do (probably something similar to [0]), but calling that voice is a conscious effort. Normally I'll follow a vague "feeling" of what needs to happen. I think my mind works directl…

Wait, you have no "inner voice" at all?

I don't understand. Thought experiment:

You go to a wall and there is a picture hanging on the wall. You like the picture. Can you "say" in your head without using your voice/mouth "I like this picture"?

If you have to use your voice, can you mimic the tongue movement without moving your mouth and "hear" the words without making a sound?

Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain

#99
post #33

The 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…

I wonder if the opposite works, heavy weight lifting?

Pushing heavy weights is very taxing on the nervous system and kicks it into gear to start the process of growth.

Re: Long Covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain

#100

I’ll share an abridged long COVID story about myself since it dearly affected me. Just so other people can kind of know what the experience was like. I got sick in October 2020 before vaccines were available. After the initial 10 days which I would describe as moderate, borderline severe (6/10, where 7/10 is hospital and 9/10 is ICU) I had all manner of absolutely weird things happen to my body. I won’t go into the d…

Damn dude. What a ride. I did have those back stabbing pains and headaches like someone took a drill and pushed it agains the back of my head. Crazy outcome. These relatable stories hit very close. I can feel your pain. What made my brain fog go away was the timing and a session of adderall and mild exercise. 2020 was wild.
Post reply on HN