Covid brain fog treatment8/6/2023 ![]() ![]() "Brain fog" has been used to describe some of these symptoms. Sometimes, symptoms of long COVID-19 can include cognitive difficulties. O’Connor sought treatment in the summer of 2021, between his second and third bout of COVID, after seeing an email from his son’s doctor listing some symptoms of long haul COVID.Long COVID-19, also known as post-COVID syndrome, involves a wide range of health problems that occur many weeks, months and years after recovering from COVID-19 infection. Yoney explains that functional scans might reveal more about how brain fog manifests in the brain. These are normal head CTs and brain MRIs, which is reassuring for the population, but I can’t speak to functional scans.” “The good news is when patients come in, depending on red flags and symptoms, we’ll sometimes order head imaging before they get to neurology,” Yoney says. Many patients also undergo an MRI, but so far Yoney says those with brain fog do not show signs of damage. From there, those with brain fog might undergo some cognitive tests to confirm deficiencies. Patients who complain of brain fog during this time period are first tested at the clinic for thyroid and B12 levels to confirm that feelings of fatigue, for example, are not part of another underlying issue. Instead, patients can self refer to the clinic for long haul COVID symptoms, which they define as symptoms lasting for more than two months after an initial bout of COVID. Yoney says the causes are still not clear. “So these are the underlying issues and if you address these people can get better-and they do-you just have to know what’s going on,” he says. Instead, many doctors opt to treat brain fog as inflammation, which can also affect the microbiome in the gut and lead to autoimmune disorders, Kellman says. ![]() Some tests look for interleukins and cytokines, small proteins in the blood produced by the immune system which causes inflammation. There are ways to test for certain, but many of these tests are costly and unnecessary, says Kellman. It’s unclear why some experience brain fog and others don’t, but many patients complaining of the symptoms are assumed to have inflammation. Some doctors agree brain fog is the result of inflammation of the brain, which happens when the body works in overdrive to fend off viruses such as COVID. Erik Won, president and chief medical officer at Wave Neuroscience in Newport Beach, California. “Sometimes people complain about processing speeds or being more forgetful, trouble with focus and attention and concentration-these are kind of the hallmark symptoms,” says Dr. He looks at it as a web of issues, and depending on what the patient knows about their own symptoms it may or may not be diagnosed as long COVID. In short, there’s a lot of overlap between long COVID and autoimmune disorders, Kellman says. “Sometimes they have an autoimmune disease and you don’t know if it developed from the COVID, but usually you can see the timeline.” “Some realize they developed this after COVID and some don’t make that connection,” he says. Simple tasks took longer, and colleagues noticed he was missing things here and there. Suddenly, all he could manage to do was put in a full day before coming home and heading to bed. O’Connor first noticed something wasn’t right when he returned to work. “Bottom line is we can’t even really speculate if it’s inflammation until we have enough data across the board.” Long COVID brain fog symptoms “We’re focusing on symptom management,” says Yoney. Those with brain fog are typically referred to speech therapists for cognitive rehab where patients go through a battery of brain exercises week after week to get things working smoothly again. “Brain fog is probably second most common as well as fatigue.” “Probably the most common complaints we see patients for are for decreased exercise tolerance, sometimes with a shortness of breath,” says Karla Yoney, a Senior Advanced Practice Provider for the UPMC Post-COVID-19 Recovery Clinic. Doctors have instead focused on treating the symptoms in more than 500 patients with long-haul COVID. They say the cause of brain fog in COVID patients has not been determined with conclusive evidence. ![]() “The immune system has just not shut off and it’s in a constant hyperinflammatory state.”ĭoctors at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center have taken a different approach with their Post-COVID-19 Recovery Clinic, launched in November of 2020. “Brain fog is a very prominent issue, recall, feeling out of it, and the number one issue is chronic inflammation,” Kellman says. ![]()
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