A new study in the Journal of Medical Virology suggests Long COVID associates with specific indicators of the original infection. It may the outcome of neurological brain damage, over and above the trauma of hospitalization. If brain fog is a mental and a biological event combined, then this may help physicians counter its worst effects.
What We Now Know About This Lingering Trauma
We are swept up in our own identities and dreams. Each day is a new opportunity to advance them. Every morning is an invitation to continue on our journey. Unless, that is a dose of influenza strikes us down, and makes us want to bid farewell to today.
But descent into Long COVID can be magnitudes worse as our productivity crumbles. We are unable to even begin our daily dreams. We sink into depression. The quality of our life disappears, but hopefully not forever. While society keeps telling us it is ‘all in our mind’ and we should ‘snap out of it’.
Will Knowing Brain Fog Is Both a Mental and a Biological Event Help?
The researchers interviewed approximately 2,700 COVID patients with an average age of 42 years. A fifth of them displayed neurological symptoms, including disorientation, headache, and anosmia being forgetfulness.
However, these are also typical symptoms of encephalitis, being inflammation of the active tissues of the brain, and damage from strokes. And also more subtle injuries, that affect attention span and ability to carry out tasks that require thinking.
The researchers conclude ‘even mild COVID-19 can be followed by brain fog and other neurological symptoms’. Further confirmation brain fog is both a mental and a biological event, will hopefully lead to new measures to control its development. And better treatments to help suffering patients recover more fully.
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Preview Image: Neural Signaling in the Brain
