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[–] 103 points 3 months ago (8 children)

I feel like my brain never fully recovered after COVID, and now im just slightly dumber.

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  • [–] 50 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    I tell my wife that COVID rewired my brain. My memory is shot, I don't enjoy things the way I used to and while I have eventually gotten my anxiety to a manageable level, it's still way higher than precovid. I unfortunately suffered 4 COVID infections over a 2.5yr span, and yes, I was vaxxed. I think I got a little more scrambled than most.

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  • [–] 15 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Yo, same. Like, down to the number of infections, timespan, and being vaxxed. Anxiety spiked hard, memory is much worse, and my energy levels are just shot.

    Thankfully Spravato treatments have me pretty much anxiety free again, but its been six years of hell with panic attacks and being unwilling to do normal things due to the anxiety.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Being able to recognize my anxiety triggers, and realizing that if I don't address it immediately, I'll just go into panic mode has helped me a lot. I am off daily anxiety meds now, but I still need the occasional Xanax when it breaks through.

    I know long COVID has been described as typically a 1.5-2 year length, but I have permanently been affected. I've mentioned it in other posts before, but I have considered going to Portland to try a session of therapy through psychedelics since some testing shows that it tears down and renews neural pathways, almost like a reset switch.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago*

    I have deadass considered just taking like 10g of shrooms to see if it would rewire my brain and potentially fix some of the BS that COVID caused. I used to do heroic doses (+15 hits) of LSD in my youth, so it’s not like the trip would be unfamiliar.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago

    That's awesome progress without psychedelics. Like, huge. I'm finally reducing daily meds after doing weekly Spravato treatments for about six months. It definitely seems to have rewired a few things. The ketamine seems to do something similar to psychedelics in that regard. Once I got a few good sessions in with solid time dissociating everything seems to have gotten so much better in respect to anxiety.

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  • [–] 122 points 3 months ago (20 children)

    I guess I won the brain damage lottery because cilantro no longer tastes soapy to me

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  • [–] 14 points 3 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Idk if it was the Covid but when i made my homemade tacos with cilantro it was amazing but before that every time it tasted like soap

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago

    Cilantro tasted like soap to me before 2011, after that it was delicious. Not necessarily covid that caused your change, cant explain mine except that I was eating a lot of it in delicious meals so who knows

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (7 children)

    I have no idea whether I have that or not because I've never tasted soap for comparison. Cilantro has... A flavor for me, certainly, but I have no idea if it's the right one.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    You never cursed as a child and had to wash your mouth with soap?

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Oh, I've cursed all right. But do you mean to tell me your parents made you put soap in your mouth?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    I've never gotten a soapy taste from it either, but I definitely have the gene that makes it taste horrid.

    For me, the taste of cilantro is the exact same profile as the smell of stink bugs. So... Anything with even a tiny bit of cilantro in it tastes like it's filled with ground up beetles.

    But not soap. Tbh I think soap would be an improvement.

    ...I'm super jealous of folks who don't have the gene - what they describe it tasting like sounds fucking amazing.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    Damn, the first time I had it, it made chocolate taste like soap for months. Probably better for my diet.

    Unfortunately, ever since the second or third time, raw carrots all taste like soap. I used to eat carrots with half my lunches, and now I can't stomach them.

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  • [–] 51 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I think the most disturbing thing are the small details that only you really notice, and makes you wonder what else has changed that you don't notice because your brain adjusted to it? It's like the brain fog or memory, or even the classic loss of smell. You know something's off, but it's a vague feeling and the more time passes the more your current condition seems normal, even though you know you were different once.

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  • [–] 61 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    I have a running theory that symptoms like this have a lot to account for the complete decline of critical thinking and common sense. Like everything seems to have gone way downhill ever since COVID.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago

    We had a lot of weird all at once.

    Lots of death and isolation. Economy all screwed up with a flood of cash to try to keep things level. Trump's sore loser behavior validated just the worst behavior (it is always there, but usually leaders moderates it when it rears its ugly head, Trump fanned the flames instead). Putin continued his aggression against Ukraine, except this time Ukraine held its ground.

    Every big event didn't require COVID, just a bunch of long burning issues bubbling up at once.

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    [–] 22 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Lost my sense of smell for a while. It gradually returned and some things tasted funny for some time.

    Bigger problem was that I started dozing off if anything got boring. Half an hour drive to work became risky and on some days i needed ways to cause myself paint to stay focused. It lasted for 1,5 years.

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  • [–] 41 points 3 months ago

    As the article says, they lack pre covid data. I'd then question how they determine "abnormal behaviour"?

    I guess losing ability to smell is a sign of brain damage. And eventually things get rewired with redundant, less important or new connections if possible, resulting in different scan results.

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  • [–] 20 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I lost my name recall during the COVID years. I can hardly remember anybody's name anymore. Both people in real life and celebrities and such. I used to be able to name any face I've seen. Now it's just, "that guy".

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  • [–] 20 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    Makes you wonder about other viruses, no?

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  • [–] 14 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    This is seen with Lyme disease as well. Currently our doctors best medical advice is "don't overexert" and "deal with brain fog by exercise, and eating healthy"

    Thank you modern medicine.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago

    Exercise is the magic pill everyone has been waiting for. It’s just unbelievable how many things it improves. Actual pills, surgeries, and treatments still have their place, but they aren’t broad-spectrum solutions like exercise.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago

    There are plenty of “harmless” viruses that we figured out later had horrible long term effects. Epstein-Barr/mono is probably one of them. Evidence is leaning towards it being the cause of Multiple Sclerosis.

    It will be interesting to see what the results of future vaccinations for a lot of these turn out to solve.

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  • [–] 16 points 3 months ago

    This tissue loss could result from reduced oxygen supply or severe immune system inflammation during the infection. Conversely, a few studies reported localized increases in gray matter volume.

    Cystic fibrosis also shows an increase in gray matter in several areas of the brain, by a pretty considerable amount too. The hypothesis with CF is that it’s due to hypoxia, I wonder if this the same or similar phenomena.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 months ago

    I wish there was an active community for nootropics or something similar there's a lot of neuropharmacology papers I want to share

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  • [–] 19 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    I slightly wonder how hard it is to find individuals who have not contracted COVID even once. I think all the people I know got it at one point or another.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago

    As far as I know, my young kid and I have never caught it. My husband caught it at a birthday party the three of us all attended. We were in close proximity with my husband the three day before he finally tested positive andy kiddo and I tested multiple times and never tested positive.

    Part of me wants to believe my kiddo and I are just incredibly lucky and never caught it, but more likely we are just asymptomatic carriers.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago*

    I haven't ever got it. The one time I thought I did, because I had cold like symptoms and lost my sense of smell and taste, it wasn't even an illness; it was just my seasonal allergies acting hella weird.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago

    It’s wild how different the symptoms and effects of covid can be. I know people who have been asymptomatic, a few died, or have had major long-term health issues. Even the regular cases of it vary from a light cold to a bad flu.

    A virus that really highlights how different genetics and overall heath affect each person who gets infected.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    My sense of taste changed permanently and my sense of smell got way more sensitive to petroleum smells so cars burning oil, cars without catalytic converters, and most fuels smell way worse to me than they used to, to the point of making me feel sick pretty easily.

    I couldn't smell anything at all for around 18 months. Citrus fruit tasted like fuel for a year or so. I still can't eat eggs because they always taste like they have gone off.

    Possibly some other stuff got damaged but not as noticeably.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago

    It's interesting how it all works. After cancer meds and radiation I can no longer taste Cherries a decade later, they just taste like water. But other foods seem fine...or good enough that I don't notice.

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  • [–] 23 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    I got COVID pretty badly and for a month or two after I just felt like I had no gas in my tank - I'd try to vacuum the house, for example, and I couldn't get through it in one go. I thought "Oh, this is that fatigue they've been talking about." But then that sort of wore off and I no longer lacked the energy to do stuff like that, except I just couldn't bring myself to do those things. I'd be sitting there thinking "I really need to vacuum," but it was like an insurmountable hurdle to go to the closet and get the vacuum out. Once I did, I could do the house without issue.

    One of my employees had COVID about the same time as me, and we were talking about it when we were both back. Damned if she didn't start describing the same sort of psychological fatigue-like thing. I was dumbfounded.

    It lasted like another couple months and slowly went away, but man it was a bitch.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I had a little fatigue but no long term issues thankfully. I live life like the latter part of your post though. Sometimes just making a phone call or carrying something across the house to put away feels like the most difficult thing in the world. On days when I get a spark and jump that first hurdle, I have to ride that wave the rest of the day. I'd love if that went away, but I've just learned to cope some.

    My FiL has been suffering from long COVID for a long time now. Gets extremely fatigued easily and has some latent achiness. It's super sad to see, and nobody has been able to really help him.

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  • [–] 16 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    No matter how many times you’ve had COVID, it’s not too late to start wearing a mask indoors in public. N95s work really well, I’ve been attending college while masking and haven’t got sick with a single thing.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    "The COVID vaccine, more like!"

    ~ Morons

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    It's likely that this is true considering how vaccines work.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago

    Vaccines definitely can have side effects too. But the people who loudly argue against them instead of understanding what they are for are still morons.

    There are still so many conspiracy theories about the vaccines circulating. I saw one like a week saying that autopsies of vaccinated people showed that 95% of them had weird multiple-feet long blood clots. I don't know if that was AI generated, good old fashioned trolling, or people who actually believe it... but the fact that these sorts of things are still circulating years later is insane. They said we would all be dead within months, then they said we would all die within years. I've had like 5 vaccines, where's my promised death!?

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    Except the part where the infection is made physically incapable of entering body cells, recreating and destroying the cell in the process

    AFAIK, I was basically asleep in 10th grade biology

    This tissue loss could result from reduced oxygen supply or severe immune system inflammation during the infection.

    This basically says exactly that. Its a side effect of the infection being that, not something covid 19 itself does.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    Unfortunately, that is what was advertised in a lot of official channels but not remotely what was delivered.

    A 'perfect' vaccine does work like that, where the specific entry-point the pathogen uses gets patched and completely prevents infection. Very few vaccines work like that unfortunately.

    The vaccine that was delivered was instead a 'communication blitz and drill' to train the body 'if you see this guy kill him real good!' where it used mrna to directly put COVID onto the immune system's priority kill list and supplies some target practice.

    The problem with the second type is the immune system can't be everywhere all at once and so some amount of infection does occur which does result in those 'side effect of the infection' occuring. In addition that 'target practice' can and does cause similar side effects.

    All that said, imagine how much worse those side effects would be if the virus was allowed to infect more in addition to hangig around longer!

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    I never had taste change because of covid and had it at least 4 times now. I got it for the first time after the vaccinations though.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    i was vaxxed twice years ago, and got covid 3 times. each time it changed my sense of smell a little bit more, and it never returned to normal

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