Ask HN: What helped you with long Covid? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What helped you with long Covid?

5 pointsnegative_zero9 comments

Hello HN community.

This is my second time with long covid and it is much much worse than the first time, especially with my mental faculties. I've been unable to work for five months at this point.

I have brain fog and low mental energy. My working memory and short term memory are almost non-existent (I'll forget I'm making tea even while holding a kettle and cup in my hands). I struggle to comprehend my work notes from just a few months ago. I am constantly forgetting simple words and get "jammed" trying to recall them. It took me a whole day to setup a ZFS pool (something which I used to do in minutes). It's easy to zone out and "loose lock" on people speaking to me to the point where I don't understand them unless I really force my brain to "relock on" their speech.

I am getting better but it's so damn slow. It just sucks. I've finally managed to secure a spot in a long covid clinic, but there just seems to be still so much we don't know and the approach is scatter-shot and hope something works. In addition to meds, currently I'm being encouraged to do puzzles that involve using my hands like physical puzzles and lego and such.

I'm doing Worldes, crosswords, meditation and exercise when I can.

What's also bizarre is that I can still drive perfectly well so there's that at least.

I was wondering about any HN readers out there that have had struggles like this and if you have any anecdotes on what helped you reboot/rebuild your brain?

Thank you in advance.

i struggled with concentration issues, too, after my 4th infection for a few weeks. What i didn't do the last time is to take ACC/NAC (Acetylcysteine) against the cough and slime during the ongoing infection. Its just an expectorant (? I googled the translation. Does this word even exist??).

So, just in a reason of prophylaxis and getting rid of the last coughing, i took acc/nac for a week and I felt an relieve with my concentration issues. Then, just because I'm interested in human body & illness & medicine in general, i saw a few (german) studies that concluded, that ACC/NAC does somehow help with post-covid symptoms.

here is a start for this topic:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7649937/

its an early study, but its just for the start :)

wish you a fast getting-better!

Thank you!

Futher

My colleagues and I used to have an ongoing joke about mental illness and those that claimed to have such mental illnesses. Its a psychotherapists gallows humour.

If we decided to make up a name for a new mental illness, or in fact any illness.

lets call it "Gnomes disease", using the gnome desktop too much

Opened a new clinic called "The therapeutic gnome disease clinic". A website proclaiming how fantastic our new therapy was in curing this new illness.

It would not be long before the general public would come flocking to our door and our books would be full. All convinced they had this new made up illness.

By creating any illness human beings will find a way to convince themselves that they have that condition and go seek help.

Its an insight into how vulnerable and easily manipulated human beings really are.

This scenario also applies to the tech world and all their claims.

the power of suggestion. Thats psychology, your part of expertise. The others are experts on other fields :)

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