"In the early days of the pandemic we were known as the clinically vulnerable: now we are rarely spoken about at all. I cannot remember the last time I saw the mainstream media address our existence – it is as though we disappeared in 2022 when the final restrictions were lifted and society returned to normal. In reality, we are still here."
I'm copying a public post below from an interesting Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Data Science at UNCC (not a medical doctor or psychologist).
Everything he is discussing is TENTATIVE but very interesting. I'm sending this out now because there is so little in the popular press about what can actually be done to help people with brain fog and other Long COVID symptoms. The research is still very early, and of course medical professionals should be consulted.
The article link from Nature Magazine describes brain damage caused by SARS-CoV-2 related to cell death and especially to synapse loss, leading to cognitive impairment.
The study in Bioelectric Medicine is extremely small, yet shows the potential of nicotine patches in the treatment of Long COVID symptoms including brain fog. (Another paper from the same publication also goes into why nicotine might help with Long COVID: https://bioelecmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s42234-023-00104-7 )
He then points to a study on the NIH PubMed site reporting the encouragement of synapse growth from psilocybin.
A comment in the discussion thread also links to a British Medical Journal article on Metformin improving Long COVID symptoms ( https://www.bmj.com/content/381/bmj.p1306 )
There's further speculation in the discussion thread that other psychoactive substances might be helpful. There are perhaps AI bots in the discussion thread discussing psilocybin microdosing, so be aware of that and maybe not get excited that so many "people" are discussing it.
From: <https://ourislandgeorgia.net/@Wolven/111412769611401616>
Dr. Damien P. Williams
@Wolven
…HUH. Long-COVID destroys synapses, and is a major contributor to the brainfog. <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01786-2>
This goes some way to shining a light on the promising results they've been seeing in testing nicotine patches as treatment for long covid: nicotine effects synapse formation and receptivity (tests using patches because they don't habit-form and aren't, y'know, SMOKE [<https://bioelecmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s42234-023-00104-7>]).
But what's super interesting to me is that another thing that's also been shown to encourage synapse growth? Is psilocybin.
<https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34228959/>
From: <https://ourislandgeorgia.net/@Wolven/111412769611401616>
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