The negative impact of Covid on working memory revealed using rapid online quiz | Hacker News Reader

The negative impact of Covid on working memory revealed using rapid online quiz

journals.plos.org

35 pointsrntn21 comments

Is there anything that talks about how to "recover" from this? This has been my chief complaint since I got covid back in 2020, my brain became "foggy" and I became increasingly forgetful about minor details. Leaving my keys behind often and forgetting what I walked into the room for. I'm relatively young (35) but I feel like after covid, my brain became different and IDK how to explain it, or what to do about it.

I found this Atlantic article helped me explain my brain fog to others.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/09/long-covi...

I share your feelings. I’ve had covid 3 times, and have increasingly noticed changes in how my mind works, as alarming as that sounds. Slow, forgetful and sensitive to stress and tiredness, I fear sometimes that my ability to do my work will completely unravel.

Breathing exercises help, but mainly in calming me down if I start becoming distressed when dwelling on it too much. I still work full time and feel like overal my long covid symptoms are subsiding but I can’t shake this nagging feeling that I’m less intelligent than 2 years ago.

My wife's and my B12 levels (shown by lab tests) were in the toilet after having a 2+ week covid infection. No energy, memory wasn't great. After getting a B12 injection, our energy levels are back to normal and memory is mostly recovered and I feel optimistic it will continue. Some of the memory function is probably just retraining myself to function how I was after having my body deprived of an essential vitamin.

May not be the case for everyone, but it can't hurt to run it by your doctor and ask what they think about checking the most usual suspects (B12, D levels, Thyroid, Iron [in women and vegans/vegetarians]), etc. B12 is important for many functions in your body, including immune response.

I still take high potency B12 (Methylcobalamin) sublingually every morning. It's water soluble, so you'll expel whatever you don't use.

There sure are talks about recovering from COVID brain fog[0] since it appears to be a common condition.

What you should do about it: fix it, obviously!

I'll tell you my personal story to inspire you.

I've had brain fog for the longest time. I'm 19, and my whole life is a huge weird fog. I don't think that I will ever find out why I am like this. Allergy, psychological trauma, complicated birth, lost electron causing a short-circuit... I don't know, and doctors don't seem to either.

However, over the course of the last year, I have found simple interventions that made my mind way clearer.

Those are the following:

- Modafinil (stimulant) - Semax (promotes neuron growth at the expense of loosing your hair) - occasional DMT (there might be no basis for this, but I've found that it's making me more mature) - good sleep (Zinc, Magnesium, Melatonin, basic good habits) - Beeminder for accountability and Complice for goal-setting - this made me way faster about gaining ground against my brain fog and other areas in my life.

My point is that while you may not be able to truly fix your condition yet, you can improve it by consistently trying out interventions. Of course, don't blindly copy mines; do your own research.

Researching interventions with brain fog is hard; I suggest that you make a list and pick something that fits your benefit-risk balance.

Getting a good sleep schedule is a no-brainer. Meds are more complicated. Personally, I've just copied them from other people and stuck with what worked. You can get a good idea of risks involved by taking notes on studies from PubMed and anecdotes from Reddit.

> Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/vrxr4k/the_sec...

If you are sufficiently self-aware of your previous baseline to detect subsequent cognitive changes, that's an encouraging signal.

There are low risk/cost protocols which work for some people. Initially published in mid-2020, with ongoing adjustments based on patient response and evolving variants. The doctors involved have been roundly criticized, but they have successfully treated many people, which is no guarantee that their protocols will work for any specific person. See the "Long Covid" protocol for brain fog.

https://covid19criticalcare.com/treatment-protocols/

In a less-polarized universe, there would be many funded clinical trials attempting to replicate their claims, if only to narrow down why a protocol may work better/worse for specific groups of people. Instead, we have lawsuits, https://archive.ph/rgssI

This group is still promoting ivermectin and vitamin D supplementation for prophylaxis. I'd prioritize testing hypotheses from other groups that follow the latest research.

This thread is about Long Covid treatments. State legislation was passed in Tennessee to make ivermectin available OTC.

Could you please recommend a link from any groups offering actionable protocols for Long Covid?

> This thread is about Long Covid treatments.

My point was why would you expect a group promoting a long-discredited COVID-19 prophylaxis to have a reasonable long COVID treatment? There are many clinical trials in progress testing treatments supported by better-grounded hypotheses. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?recrs=&cond=long+covi...

From the ongoing lawsuit, https://archive.ph/rgssI

> Belfer, the government lawyer ... noted that the FDA’s pages say people can use ivermectin if their health care provider prescribes it, argued the statements “did not bind the public or FDA, did not interpret any substantive rules, and did not set agency policy"

I am missing your point. Can you please state it clearly?

> vitamin D supplementation for prophylaxis

From this month:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-24053-4

> Among VA patients, vitamin D3 and vitamin D2 supplementation reduced the associated risk of COVID-19 infection by 20% and 28%, and COVID-19 infection ending in death within 30-days by 33% and 25%.

Why don't you use the word treatment?

The page above has a long list of _potential_ treatments within each protocol.

> The protocols on this page represent our recommended approaches based on the best and most recent literature. The information is provided as guidance to healthcare providers worldwide and should only be used by medical professionals in formulating their approach to COVID-19. Patients should always consult with their provider before starting any medical treatment.

I wonder if all these negative impacts of COVID-19 could also have been associated to seasonal flus in the past, had they been under the same level of scrutiny.

COVID-19 is not the Flu. Also, the Flu has been around for at least 1500 years, so humanity would have observed "Flu Brain" or "Long Flu" a long time ago.

To say that the Flu has not been under the same level of scrutiny as COVID-19 is ignoring 1500 years of human history.

We've always had marginal/debatable illness. The existence of Chronic Lime Disease is debated, similar to Fibromyalgia, or perhaps Chronic Fatigue. Havana Syndrome is a more recent example. It's possible that these are actualy manifestations of psychological conditions like depression/anxiety, but people have a hard time accepting that. Doctors debate this, and I'm not a doctor. Who knows, maybe these are lingering conditions brought on by flus or other viruses.

You never heard of post-viral chronic fatigue?

Long flu is a thing [0] [1]. People were talking about that for years after the 1918 flu.

There's some evidence that a prior flu outbreak, the Russian Flu around 1890, may have been an earlier coronavirus pandemic [2], but nobody could differentiate them at the time.

EDIT: The parent's question seems reasonable. Covid is not unique amongst viruses in the damage it causes. Besides long flu there's things like myocarditis [3] from the flu that may have been neglected in the past, also.

[0] https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/long-flu/

[1] https://time.com/5915616/long-flu-1918-pandemic/

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34254725/

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33437555/

Interesting. We should compare this to "chemo brain" and "anesthesia brain" also.

Is this test available to the public?

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