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Comment by deminature | Hacker News Reader

My experience with covid is that severe post-disease inflammation can cause wild neurological symptoms including anxiety and depression. I had a 'mild' case and still suffered significant, long-lasting inflammation. I see very few people talking about this outside special-interest covid discussion boards. Surprisingly, my doctor was already aware of the destructive potential of inflammation for mental health.

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Sometime early during the pandemic I believe I got Covid as my breathing got really messed up in a way my medications couldn't help and I never have asthma issues during that time of the year (no typical symptoms though). I noticed not long after that occurrence that any caffeine consumption would give me massive anxiety attacks and a heart beat out of rhythm. I've never had issues with either before. Heart stress test found nothing. I stopped caffeine for over a year. Funny thing was I found out that this wasn't a super rare occurrence either. I met other people randomly (I didn't bring it up) that quit caffeine after Covid due to a sudden intolerance for it.

Covid is absolutely wild.

I've had the same thing with caffeine causing significant anxiety that didn't occur beforehand. One of my medications also stopped working for a month afterwards. I'm surprised there's not more concern in broader society about the multi-systemic health issues this infection can cause before barreling into shoving people into crowded public spaces again, where they can catch it repeatedly.

it appears that other infections can cause similar if not identical problem, it's just that with COVID a tenth of the planet or so caught it in the span of a few months and it's (slightly) clearer what the effects are.

I feel we are shoving people into crowded public spaces because we currently have no practical alternative

Have you ever worn an EKG monitor for a few days?

I had PVCs, but only at rest. Completely disappeared with the slightest walk on the treadmill test.

Either Omnicron or a minor cold kicked all this off, plus 2 months of painful heart inflammation that couldn’t be positively diagnosed. During the inflammation, caffeine caused delayed discomfort.

The PVCs caused a lot of discomfort while resting/sleeping and were somehow worse long after exercise.

Cardiac ablation got rid of them.

Depression disorders as treatable, “non-commitable” (i.e. won’t be thrown into the loony bin for it) condition are a fairly recent concept. I would not be surprised if it’s determined that “depression” has various etiologies.

That is, you wouldn’t tell someone that suffered complex trauma over a long period of time that they have “chronic inflammation” and tell them to take Vitamin D. However, an explanation of chronic inflammation may be more applicable to someone that doesn’t have that history.

To add to this, silos of medical specialties and their associated distinct ways of thinking will impede novel treatments. Any well-paid specialized professional will have a hard time breaking out of their ways of thinking.

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