Science YouTuber physicsgirl (Dianna Cowern) stands for the first time in 2 yrs
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insane that it's still so common...
lol, I had a spinal cord injury.
I laugh when I think about it, but there has been a lot of anger to get here.
Same here, at least in regard to gluten. I was in my mid-forties, and I started experiencing painful bloating that often led to difficulty breathing, and after an hour or so of pain, vomiting. The involuntary 'protein spill' alleviated the pain of bloating, but I was left exhausted for the remainder of the day.
At first, these episodes occurred about once every 2 weeks, but they grew more and more common over a few months, until it was a nearly daily occurrence. I had become overweight (I'm still working on that), so my doctor concluded that I just needed to lose some body fat. It felt like there was something more serious more going on, but US health care.
Weeks later, I stumbled upon a science article describing how millions of people develop gluten sensitivity later in life. It described familiar symptoms and progression. As an experiment, I tried eliminating gluten from my diet (which is tricky, that stuff sneaks into surprising places), and I felt much better within a few days.
In the ~2 years since, I've had a few episodes, but I can almost always find a place where gluten snuck into my food (e.g., a taco place that added flour to its corn tortillas). On one occasion, I deliberately ate a bit of bread, and sure enough, 30 minutes later I was begging the porcelain gods for forgiveness.
I miss real bread, but for me, the blowback isn't worth it.
After maybe 8 months of this we somehow decided to do a low-Fodmap diet (I participated for support). That included cutting out gluten and dairy (except butter). She healed right up. When we were re-introducing foods, for whatever reason, mushrooms and garlic both had negative effects, and we ended up keeping both out of our diets for a couple years.
Anyway, that's all to say I'd recommend people seriously look at their diet and try to spend a month or two doing low-fodmap if they're chronically suffering from long Covid. Worst case it doesn't help.
I later found out that I'm a type II diabetic, and almost certainly was at the time I had COVID given the timing. I had fairly severe fatigue symptoms preceding that diagnosis, and the diet/exercise changes I made to bring that under control look a lot like what your wife did, and also seem to have alleviated the fatigue.
There was about a 12 month separation between recovering from COVID and my own fatigue symptoms. Had the timing been a bit different I likely would have assumed I was suffering from long COVID, and would probably have been less inclined to see a doctor as a result.
None of this is to suggest that any given person is suffering from diabetes, that long COVID should be treated the same way, or that any given person with long COVID is self diagnosing. For anyone that is though, definitely consider talking to a doctor. Coincidences happen and you could have something that is both unrelated and treatable going on.
Anti-inflammatory diets seem to help a lot of people with autoimmune disorders, because a flareup typically stems from stress or inflammation. Removing dairy and wheat didn't do anything for me, though.
I never got COVID, but I had a bad flu when I was a teen in the early 00s, and "new" research suggests that is when my body flipped a switch and now I develop a bunch of antibodies that attack a few systems, but good news is I'm basically NEVER sick anymore (might just be a coincidence, though).
I’m intrigued: Is your wife able to eat onions?
If you want another thing to try, I found that temporarily wearing a nicotine patch [1] helped a lot. But it seems like it doesn’t work for everyone.
And if you have the ability, please support research into ME/cfs, Long Covid, and other post infection illness.
My immediate thought back then was is that nicotine somehow plays the role of NAD (= B3 vitamin), thus fixing one of the core mechanisms of acquiring mitochondrial dysfunction after the covid (NAD deprivation).
I do wish Dianna the best recovery and future progress.
Anyway, I have no idea what's going on with me; it's not really severe enough to investigate further right now, and my case is only the tiniest part related to Dianna's.
It luckily fully came back in my case, but it took many months. But it was properly scary! So weird that a viral infection (that didn't even make me very sick) could have such long-lasting and potentially life-altering effects.
I had more or less constant inflammation growing up, two weeks of daily Neti solved that problem for good.
Also: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23305423/
It's possible that covid infection somehow disrupted zinc homeostasis. Taste receptor cells also express ACE2, which is what the virus tends to latch onto... I suppose a feasible mechanism -- or at least a hypothesis -- is that viral binding to ACE2 may have downregulated zinc-dependent signaling pathways (for e.g., those involving metallothioneins or zinc-finger transcription factors).
What has really helped me has been wearing a nicotine patch occasionally. I was never a smoker, but I came across this very small study [1] and thought it was worth a go because a) I was getting desperate and b) nicotine in such low doses is not that risky (7mg patch, worn for 2 weeks).
I know there’s counter-studies suggesting nicotine doesn’t help with resistance. My experience is anecdotal, but I saw rapid improvement in cognition and fatigue level (particularly post-exercise). My guess is that for some people the particular mechanism behind their long covid is one that this can help with, but not for everyone.
Given other people around me talking about treating their long covid with nicotine since it went through social media last year, I suppose you don't know about / didn't try the Natto (nattokinase) [1] / NAC route [2] (for which there were early studies showing they can dissolve the SARS-Cov2 spike protein)..? Or does the community consider that a dead end by now?
That there is a political echo chamber-driven division between those routes is a bit strange and dangerous, isn't it. With nicotine you will need to be careful about its effects on blood pressure, and it would be better to not even think about vaping (some of the flavoured products could be equally/more addictive to/than cigarettes [3]).
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9458005/
7mg was the weakest patch I could get at a pharmacy (in the UK), and as I understand it that’s the release over 24 hours; I wore them only during the day so it’s a lower dose. If it’s proportional it’s ~5mg, which is 2-3 cigarettes, but cigarettes deliver it much faster, I believe. I have since spoken to a doctor who suggested that if I relapse I should cut them in half to lower the dose. Did you do something like that?
The main reasons I think it had more than just a concentration-enhancing effect are a) the effect after 2 weeks of patches seems to be long-lasting (months, at least) and b) my post-exertional fatigue, which was fairly severe (going for a light jog would leave me partially bedridden for a couple of days) has also gone. But to be fair, if the fatigue is caused by nervous system dysregulation then perhaps that somehow accounts for it, and it’s equally possible both these effects will wear off in time.
I have not seen nattokinase mentioned before, thanks. Interesting that, aside from the effect on the spike protein, it’s also supposed to help prevent blood clots. A friend with long covid was enrolled in a study which treated micro blood clots and she saw significant improvement from that. But I was tested a couple of times for micro blood clots and it came back negative, so again I think the long covid mechanism is not consistent.
As for nattokinase, I'd recommend looking around for diverse real-life experiences (I believe actual studies on long-COVID patients are still lacking). I'm not up to date, but I remember many people went straight for (Amazon-sourced) nattokinase supplements, and for some, it was too much and it made them feel ill.
Otherwise (not sure whether this would deliver the therapeutic dose you might need) natto itself makes a good breakfast — traditionally on rice with a runny egg, but it works as beans on toast too. Good Asian markets carry it in their freezers, imported directly from Japan (buy the versions with soy sauce / mustard). I had it regularly while I was over there, and there’s no difference in taste or effect (comparable to a small dose of aspirin). To the best of my knowledge, deep freezing isn’t an issue with the ingredients.
That’s cool – I’ll definitely try adding some natto to my diet!
My former co-worker got COVID twice, as preventive measures didn't fit into his moral framework, and the second time resulted in a mild case of long COVID. I'm saying "mild" as he was not bedridden, but the cognitive decline was noticeable.
Long COVID is no joke and seriously affect one's work as well private life.
I've noticed some of that with family members that have gotten covid, but it's hard to say that it's definitely that as they are older and age related decline is hard to nail down too.
No false memories or loss of perception of time like in my older relatives going through age-related cognitive decline.
Lockdown here everyone and their Mum is screwing around at the park, UK does not really have an attitude of social good imo, outside of one's own family.
How does this compare to the base rate in a similar population? Two thirds sounds like a reasonable estimate for "ever had COVID" in Denmark in 2022, though maybe a smaller percentage would in fact be seropositive. It would be interesting if self-reported long COVID had little or no correlation with having had COVID at all.
A better term may be "Long Virus" since multiple viruses can trigger it, Covid just happens to be the most recent pandemic.
The results would potentially scale to some sunset of ME/CFS suffers neho never had Covid, but it makes sense to start with the group we at least have a common starting point on the cause.
Some long covid symptoms are nothing like ME/CFS such as a persistant loss of taste and smell. And there are people with ME/CFS who never had covid.
Anyways, I am sure that research goes both way, that is, studying the consequences of covid and the causes of ME/CFS. "meet in the middle" can be a good exploration strategy.
Modern understanding of autism / ADHD sees the two as part of a spectrum of neurodiverse conditions (think of an audio mixer of many different traits, more than a side-to-side slider), but I don't see the connection with ME/CFS, whether or not it's caused by a covid infection.
ME/CFS has been around for way longer - prior to Covid, the Epstein-Barr virus was strongly suspected to be a trigger for it. Unfortunately ME/CFS was (and in many cases still isn't) widely known among doctors, so diagnoses were hard to come by and treatment even harder.
At least now that there is money flowing into ME/CFS research and knowledge about it gets more widespread, "old time" ME/CFS sufferers have a perspective now...
It already had a name - post-viral fatigue syndrome. It's happened after other viruses before.
Keeping my fingers crossed for a quick recovery!
Most people who suffer a GoFundMe-type catastrophe don't attract new long-term financial backers over time.
American healthcare is a massive price fixing scam and a complete joke.
Internet people are weird. Not all of us though, obviously.
Glad she’s making progress and has a very supportive partner. Not sure what he does for a living but seems like he has been the primary care giver throughout this.
I don't disagree, but having some kind of medical situation isn't a prerequisite for gaming the Patreon system. I used to be a monthly patreon subscriber to someone years ago who put out weekly asmr videos. One day they just stopped cold turkey with no announcement, yet years later their Patreon is still up and still taking monthly donations.
if you're complaining about subscriptions that go into perpetuity your first target should be app stores that set up 10 year recurring payments in the biggest chunk possible for something you'll probably use for a couple of months before forgetting about.
Hopefully we will see more breakthrough in understanding and reading the signals of the body in the future
As /u/tunn3l said at the end of their comment: To all ME/CFS and LC sufferers: Don't give up!
Unfortunately I experienced a similar thing though much milder and shorter last summer.
Hope we can figure out viruses better soon!
His neuro symptoms included sz, confusion.
On routine testing by the dietitian he was noted to have a very low vitamin d level.
Although very anecdotal- I have always believed that autoimmune conditions post viral syndromes are exacerbated by low vitamin D levels.
Have any you with long covid been tested for vitamin D levels? For any of you did vitamin d supplements help?
yeap long covid
I am so glad Physics Girl is getting better with rest!
Even the explosion of cases after Covid hit somehow doesn’t lead to change. In Germany many doctors still don’t know it, a lot of them think it’s psychological.
There is some research, but it looks like the study of the promising compound „BC007“ got botched by bad study design, so even after some very promising results in some participants it is likely to get scrapped.
„Hidden disease“ fits it so well, because the people affected „just disappear“, too weak advocating for themselves and with potentially every activity leading to a crash.
no worse feeling in the world than hearing a doctor confidently tell you that it's all in your head and that you're wasting their time. Ask me how I know..
"No."
"It's probably stress, then."
(As a sidenote, why do doctors always assume stress is work related? Work is fine, but have you looked at the world...)
just to be clear, i knew it wasn't.
why do doctors always assume stress is work related? Work is fine, but have you looked at the world
oh absolutely so much. i hide in my work when i have stress at home. i can think of two factors. as far as the world is going, most people don't care enough about it to let that stress them, so they do't even see it. myself i avoid stress from world affairs by actively working on making things better (within my means, by showing my friends and neighbors that there is hope yet for the future). but there is also stress at home, and that seems to be also overlooked. i think the reason here is that the doctors are not trained to deal with that and also don't want you to come to them to handle your family problems. there are other trained professionals for that. though personally it would really be nice if we had a family doctor who not only deals with physical but also mental health.
RIP to the author of "The Sleepy Girl's Guide to SSDI", who died young to ME/CFS, attributed to neuroinflammation in her autopsy.
And the opposite is true of nocebos. So for instance one of the most common examples of nocebos is somebody will be given a terminal cancer diagnosis but then die long before the cancer could have been the cause of their death. They're so convinced that they're dying imminently that it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. I expect a similar phenomena is why elderly couples tend to follow each other into the grave in short order. Dying of heart break or loneliness is not necessarily just rhetorical.
Basically, the mind is extremely powerful.
I think there are no actual psychological diseases. All have underlying physical causes.
It's always the people involved. People are very resistant to change and prefer to hang on to the status quo.
There is some good research into anti-virals for treatment. And this has been known for at least a decade. A challenge js few doctors will prescribe the course.
Anecdotally in the late 00s early 10s my Aunt was losing mobility due to CFS causing neurodegeneration. It was at the point she would sometimes crawl rather than walk up a flight of stairs.
Her and I flew to a specialist to get prescribed a cocktail of anti virals (most used for AIDS) and the results were more than a placebo.
Within a year the degeneration didn’t just stop but reversed. Its not a cure for her but it allowed her to reverse enough to have a high quality of life and mobility. Over time she’s progressed back down but who's to say if thats age or condition.
Here’s a link that discusses it, but a search for cfs and antiviruals will return cfs community material and journals.
https://massmecfs.org/more-resources-for-me-cfs/247-antivira...
I have noticed that a lot of their job is playing insurance games to treat (get past preauthorizations) easily documented health issues, let alone things like ME/CFS or long COVID.
I think the issue is much simpler than that: if the doctor is out of ideas (and doesn’t know of a specialist to refer to) they just get frustrated and give up.
I will point out that I've never gotten so much unsolicited low-quality advice before, though; people who barely know me will make a very confident diagnosis on-the-spot once they hear I've got a long-term illness. E.g., “you're vitamin D deficient” (no, I'm not, and anyways, I've been taking vitamin D supplements for three months just in case, with no effect). I'm sure they mean well, but it becomes tiring really fast when everyone does it. (There's a select few people who seem to be much more careful about throwing our random crap like that, including, unsurprisingly, all the doctors I know.)
My wife is already on her 3rd year and I just could witness first hand how shallow is the knowledge of most doctors, how they have zero curiosity or enthusiasm to help and especially in Europe, how are they extremely averse to try anything with the "do not harm" in mind.
They think that doing nothing is better than trying a non-approved treatment and I'll put an example. My wife had a respiratory tract infection back in October which probably got while going to the GP by the way. With Long Covid her immune system seems very compromised, she never leaves home if it's not imperative because even with a wheelchair is too much effort. I don't attend almost any social event and I take a lot of precautions. Anyway, with the infection she was coughing blood for 3 days and then she was unable to breath properly, having drops of oxygen saturation down to 86% and waking up breathless in the middle of the night.
She documented her symptoms very well including her saturation measurements. The GP just told her to wait for a few weeks for full recovery and everything will be back to normal and he literally said he had no time to read her notes. She asked please to get an oxygen concentrator or at least be sent to a pulmonologist. This request was denied and of course the only option she had was to buy the concentrator on her own which helped a ton. Probably if she got it the 1st year she would be much better by now.
She is taking like 10 supplements and medications, she is using infrared light, oxygen concentrator, wheelchair, special pillows, asthma inhaler, etc... All this helps her to have a bearable existence but guess what, not a single thing was proposed and prescribed by the doctors. Almost everything she takes is based on small studies from internet and experiences from patients. Mostly from the USA where doctors are much more open minded and willing to take risks which is necessary when your default baseline is almost like being a tetraplegic with dementia and chronic pain.
She has to get pretty harmless drugs like Sulodexide (a blood thinner) from other countries in a shady way because the Doctors in the Netherlands won't even prescribe this.
There is some progress in diagnosis or biomarkers detection and some promising studies for cures like monoclonal antibodies, antivirals and others. But meanwhile it's a pure nightmare to live with Long Covid.
Since my father's death, I say In the Netherlands, doctors only start acting when you are dying.
My father's GP let him die of acute leukemia, guessing his severe tiredness had something to do with an onset of diabetes. It was not a single visit. Had no bloodwork done. GP claimed to be specialized in geriatrics. My father was 63.
About a day after his last visit my mom took him to the ER, which did bloodwork, and a couple of days later he died ( they tried an emergency chemo ).
this horrible situation is in no way restricted to the Netherlands.
And yeah the dying comment is 100% true for Denmark too. The doctors have no clue about what preventative treatment is and will just let it fester into something more serious they're forced to treat - diabetes is a huge example of this.
From personal experience, I was left waiting for a testicular cancer biopsy for over a year. After the operation I found out if I did have cancer there was a high chance the biopsy would've caused it to progress much more rapidly (as opposed to other methods of checking). So great you let the cancer grow in my nuts for a year, and then you make it more aggressive? wtf?? Thankfully I was diagnosed cancer free.
We pay a lot of taxes for healthcare insurance, and the primary level of healthcare is totally fscked. When the employer has to deduct the insurance from your paycheck, even goddamn cent is double checked by the government... when your primary care physician quits/dies/retires, well, "sorry, there are no doctors taking new patients in your area". Further away? Nope. Somewhere finally a new doctor starts and accepts new patients... this: https://images.24ur.com/media/images/1106xX/Sep2024/5916255a... (yes, this is the line of people without a primary doctor trying to get one).
So, fever, general unwell feeling... could be a flu.. could be bacterial.. probably just a flu.. or a cold... it's always just a cold.. but are you sure? You could go to a private doctor, pay for the checkup, pay for the blood work, but will you pay if it's probaby just a cold/flu?
Feeling really bad and also start vomiting + diarrhea? Go to the only place where you can get checked out fast... the emergency room... and then emergency protocols have to be implemented there, because there are too many people there, and they can't handle it.
I'm currently in a Dutch hospital, recovering from an (attmpted, they ended up leaving it inside me, can't fully explain why) appendectomy. From calling the after hours huisarts number with a stomach ache to being on the operating table was less than 24 hours for me. The hospital stay have been amazing and I doubt I would have had such prompt treatment back in Canada.
But I have also had to argue with the receptionist for over 10 minutes to be able to speak with my GP here for a consult after I paid for private bloodwork with two critical results and 6 out of normal range... So I feel like it's down to luck here when they decide to take things seriously.
https://www.facs.org/media-center/press-releases/2021/coda-s...
Anything not immediately fatal is indeed treated by just taking it easy and perhaps some paracetamol for the placebo effect.
I have a chronic illness in the same kind of category and it took me years to find out what it was and to get proper treatment. Which has improved my quality of life dramatically!
But even now I travel halfway across the country to a university hospital where a specialist takes me seriously, the GP is still a bit 'meh whatever'. I'm fairly sure he put a "psychosomatic/hypochondriac" flag on my file and never removed it when the specialists diagnosed me.
Our healthcare system has overcorrected on what they dismiss as 'aanstellerij' en 'Amerikaanse toestanden' and many in the field are actually quite proud of this.
I find specialists here have zero intellectual curiosity. Sure, they recognize the most common condition in their field when blatantly obvious.
When it comes to the second most common issue in their field or anything not blatantly obvious (significant test result and 10/10 excruciating pain), they will just offer no diagnosis and go no further.
Just getting them to do an exam or even order a test is a huge challenge…
Covid-19 tends to cause post-viral complications, which manifest themselves as chronic fatigue, body temperature dysregulation, air hunger / shortness of breath with SpO2 of 99%, various neurological symptoms: pain/tingling/numbing sensations in the extremities, parosmia (a distorted sense of smell), parageusia (a distorted sense of taste), difficulties swallowing, cognitive decline.
According to numerous trials and errors by different people, it was collectively concluded that the condition is caused by some kind of metabolic impairment that presumably affects the ability of mitochondria to produce the adequate levels of ATP. As a direct consequence of that insufficiency, the immune system gets activated and starts to attack body's own tissues. When this happens, the blood vessels start to develop micro-clotting, causing blood flow problems that exacerbate metabolic issues even further. Additional tell signs are increased HOMA-IR and/or triglycerides in the blood work, suggesting that cells of the body cannot utilize the nutrient substrates in full.
This represents a vicious cycle of a typical post-Covid pathology. The good news is that it can be treated and healed. The bad news is that it may take some time (months, years) and will power, while medical workers around the corner have no clue. The core of therapy consists of a light immunosuppression in conjunction with therapeutical doses of specific vitamins and vitamin-like substances, all being supported with minerals, vitamin-rich diet, good rest, good sleep, mild physical and mental activities every day.
For those people who still suffering from it, I am putting a link to a site [0] that aggregates some first-hand evidences and research information. A usual note of caution is that every situation is different and you should consult your doctor.
[0] https://hormonesmatter.com/?s=covid
Edit: "collectively concluded" is used in the sense that post-covid suffers were able to gain observable improvements in their condition being "a collective of people" suffering from post-covid.
Some retroviruses like HIV are able to modify DNA, and embed themselves into cells permanently. Perhaps COVID-19 is doing something similar! It would be nice to do DNA scan, for sequences that produce spike proteins, on people with long COVID symptoms!
Chicken and Egg dilemma. We have a lot to discover and formalize. I do not say that you are not right, your suggestion is plausible, we have to find out.
I would disagree with that. We are only a few years in, many people did not recover yet. And taking severe medication is not exactly "correction".
There is a research that suggest some unusual COVID-19 variants are able to penetrate cell nucleus. That is why we need DNA sequencing studies! And not just on patients, but their microbiome as well!
And I do not think it will take decades, but couple of years maybe months!
So, logically, COVID-19 viral components likely have coexisted inside our bodies with some quantity of reverse transcriptase, no?
I do know that we find viral DNA in human DNA, likely as a result of past retroviral activity. I wonder if we ever find sequences from non-retroviruses that have hitched a ride so to speak.
If this was actually what was happening then we'd expect to either see:
* (if it utilizes a present retroviral reverse transcriptase) only people with active retrovirus infections getting long COVID
* (if a variant picked up the gene from another retrovirus) evidence for reverse transcriptase being copied into a widely circulating variant that for some reason is only activated in some people
We don't see either of these things happening. It would be extremely obvious from the data and genetic samples that that happened. There's also generally very little evidence for viruses picking up features across long genetic distances. If this was common we'd see more of it.
SARS-CoV-2 also generally infects different types of cells than the ones that HIV does, so even if that was a possibility genetically, it's unlikely because they're not active in the same cells.
P.S. People are preparing for WW III with a far greater enthusiasm now, imho. Which is sad.
There is a clear problem of diagnosis and intersection of the symptoms. What we call ME/CFS today may be several distinct diseases with overlapping symptoms.
To give you a direct answer: it helps with chronic fatigue, but only if one of the causes of the illness has a metabolic impairment component in it. Otherwise, no improvements are observed.
I've struggled with fatigue, memory issues, and brain fog since having covid.
Biggest game changer for me has been supplementing NMN in the morning, NAD in the morning and afternoon. Both work to support ATP levels.
With this I've been able to get back to gym in the morning and still work through the day with no sleepiness.
In terms of outcomes and probabilities, having a vaccine is 10000x better than facing a virus directly. Note that in some rare cases, the burden of certain chronical health conditions may overweight the benefits of a vaccine, so it is always better to consult to a doctor who knows you well.
Personal anecdotes: I do not know anyone who developed a post-covid condition after being vaccinated, but I know plenty of people who developed a post-covid after covid. I knew people who died from covid not being vaccinated.
The vaccine certainly has occasionally caused immediate, acute issues with people, which is why you aren't supposed to leave the administration site for 15 minutes after you get it.
But there are not chronic adverse reactions to the vaccines.
Let's imagine for a moment that the antigen produced by the vaccine was the exact one that does cause all of these symptoms. Even in this hypothetical world, only the whole virus can cause long term symptoms, because only it can replicate itself and persist.
The vaccine expresses itself once, and is gone. All that's left after a few days is the immune system's memory, no different than any other antigen.
There is no mechanism for the body to chronically begin to create vaccine spike proteins after receiving the vaccine.
There is however a mechanism for the body to attribute any random real or imagined symptom to something they heard about and think sounds right.
The virus takes over your cells completely turning them into covid virus factories destroying them in the process the new viruses then continues until your immune system can stop this. During this time the amount of spike protein from the viruses are much higher by order of magnitude than with the mRNA vaccine along with the damage cause by the virus replicating itself.
The spike protein is thought to have some adverse effects around heart issues, it is not well understood. However the risk is thought to be much higher from the virus than the vaccine due to shear volume of spike protein and the data seems to confirm this.
Ask the people who never had the vaccine. There are not many in that category though.
If you have a concern, I would suggest get your batch numbers, and ask at relevant forums. There are databases.
While she is gaining her power back, there is still a considerable probability of acquiring dementia for her, she is in the grey zone now.
And note, we read only what meets the eye. Below that line, there were extreme panic attacks (crashes) with a sense of imminent death. I think that in many cases, the death by itself is more peaceful than 100x repetitions of the associated experiences.
Panic attacks are usually treated as a psychological phenomenon, but in case of post-covid they have metabolic nature. Tiny parts of body tissues literally die out of energy starvation. It applies to energy-hungry organs first, brain, nervous system, heart, liver, muscles. The heavy cases of post covid is like being a zombie who is still alive, but with tissue hypoxia and consequential tiny necrotic spots hidden inside under a healthy rosy skin.
We can clearly see and observe affected spots in tissues using direct material extraction (biopsy). However, not all parts of the body are easily reachable using that method without causing more harm to a living organism. The effect is also observable using CT scanning (way less conclusive).
So the last paragraph is quite real, unfortunately. I presume that a tiny part of the brain/nervous system dies when you have a metabolic panic attack, because there is a pronounced cognitive decline after each such attack.
[0] https://www.elsevier.es/en-revista-medicina-clinica-english-...
Potentially, for mild and heavy forms of post-covid, measuring blood lactate and bicarbonate levels may be helpful [0]. But nobody seems to care enough to follow up with organized evaluations to introduce it into general practice.
Why would the metabolic impairment cause the immune system to get activated? Also do tests show which immune cells get activated? Are there existing medications that can moderate those immune cells that might work?