“So these are the underlying issues and if you address these people can get better-and they do-you just have to know what’s going on,” he says. Instead, many doctors opt to treat brain fog as inflammation, which can also affect the microbiome in the gut and lead to autoimmune disorders, Kellman says. Some tests look for interleukins and cytokines, small proteins in the blood produced by the immune system which causes inflammation. There are ways to test for certain, but many of these tests are costly and unnecessary, says Kellman. It’s unclear why some experience brain fog and others don’t, but many patients complaining of the symptoms are assumed to have inflammation. Some doctors agree brain fog is the result of inflammation of the brain, which happens when the body works in overdrive to fend off viruses such as COVID. Erik Won, president and chief medical officer at Wave Neuroscience in Newport Beach, California. “Sometimes people complain about processing speeds or being more forgetful, trouble with focus and attention and concentration-these are kind of the hallmark symptoms,” says Dr. He looks at it as a web of issues, and depending on what the patient knows about their own symptoms it may or may not be diagnosed as long COVID. In short, there’s a lot of overlap between long COVID and autoimmune disorders, Kellman says. “Sometimes they have an autoimmune disease and you don’t know if it developed from the COVID, but usually you can see the timeline.” “Some realize they developed this after COVID and some don’t make that connection,” he says. When patients come to him they’ve often identified COVID as marking the start of their symptoms, but he believes there are many patients out there struggling without realizing what kicked off their symptoms. “Memory, name recall, confusion, trouble concentrating, etc,” Kellman says.
#Brain fog meaning covid driver
Like the name suggests, patients often feel as if they’re having to take more time and effort for the same tasks the way a driver might when navigating a heavy fog on the roads. He often plays with his son but after contracting COVID, he needed a handicap if he wanted a shot at winning a game.ĭoctors say brain fog is defined by short-term memory loss and trouble concentrating. Outside of work, he realized his chess game was suffering. “It was relatively simple things, like I’d leave somebody off of an email thread or someone would say ‘do you know forget to attach a document?” he says. Simple tasks took longer, and colleagues noticed he was missing things here and there.
#Brain fog meaning covid full
Suddenly, all he could manage to do was put in a full day before coming home and heading to bed.
O’Connor first noticed something wasn’t right when he returned to work. “Bottom line is we can’t even really speculate if it’s inflammation until we have enough data across the board.” Long COVID brain fog symptoms “We’re focusing on symptom management,” says Yoney. Those with brain fog are typically referred to speech therapists for cognitive rehab where patients go through a battery of brain exercises week after week to get things working smoothly again. “Brain fog is probably second most common as well as fatigue.” “Probably the most common complaints we see patients for are for decreased exercise tolerance, sometimes with a shortness of breath,” says Karla Yoney, a Senior Advanced Practice Provider for the UPMC Post-COVID-19 Recovery Clinic. Doctors have instead focused on treating the symptoms in more than 500 patients with long-haul COVID. They say the cause of brain fog in COVID patients has not been determined with conclusive evidence. “The immune system has just not shut off and it’s in a constant hyperinflammatory state.”ĭoctors at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center have taken a different approach with their Post-COVID-19 Recovery Clinic, launched in November of 2020. “Brain fog is a very prominent issue, recall, feeling out of it, and the number one issue is chronic inflammation,” Kellman says.
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