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You had Covid and now you have a hangover of symptoms. I am so sorry to hear that it didn’t clear up quickly. This is general advice, and may not be perfect for every individual.
Neurological Post-Covid symptoms I am seeing in my office:
Low mood
Low energy and fatigue
Continuing loss of taste and smell
Headaches
Muscle pain
A cold portion of the face
Hair loss
Possible cause of the post-Covid problems:
In people with Covid infections the immune system often over reacts, over producing a chemical called bradykinen. This is also known as a cytokine storm. The excess of bradykinen is thought to be responsible for many Covid symptoms, including the thickening of the blood brain barrier.
A thickening of the wall between the blood to the brain and the actual nervous system (aka blood brain barrier) tissue has been observed in many post-covid autopsies. When the barrier thickens the brain gets less oxygen and sugar, and the metabolic wastes buildup more than they should. It’s just harder for nutrients or waste to drift or diffuse over a larger distance. The same changes are seen elsewhere in the body, thickening of the walls of the lungs or thickening of blood vessels, both being an impediment to diffusion.
My advice to you is based on the assumption that too much bradykinen has thickened your blood brain barrier. Health care based on assumption, even when educated is less than ideal. Continuing to look for other explanations and treating them based on them may make sense.
This decreased diffusion in people who had Covid can cause brain metabolic activity to decrease. Specific treatment, exercises and stimulation can increase the metabolism.
Treatment and stimulation suggestions:
Get adjusted
Move explosively
Facial stimulation
Light electrical stimulation
Get your hormone levels tested
Cinnamon topical under your nose
I am a chiropractor! I would be remiss if I didn't mention how incredibly stimulating to the brain, spinal adjusting and proper spinal movement is. In about 1980 an MD won the Nobel prize in medicine for his work on brain metabolism. He found about 80% of brain metabolism/energy is for processing balance and motion. Further, he found that spinal distortions increase the amount of brain energy needed for these tasks. Post-Covid brain problems sound like your brain doesn't have enough energy! Decreasing the inappropriately high demands on the brain due to your spinal distortions would free up energy for other brain functions, like thought, smell, taste.
Get some explosive exercise. Jump up stairs, 30 metre sprints, rapid heavy lifting are good examples. This type of movement causes massive stimulation to the area of the brain most commonly affected by Covid.
Stimulate your face with many sensations; massage, hot, cold, vibration, pressure, movement. Make-out sessions are how one patient is handling facial sensation stimulation. Short bursts of higher intensity (but not painful stimulation) are better.
Light electrical stimulation of the tongue with a pons device or tens machine with tongue loops. You can use a tens machine elsewhere on your face as well. Both a pons device or tens machine should be low intensity, not painful.
The hypothalamus and pituitary glands may be affected. Blood tests to confirm your hormones are in good balance would be prudent.
Using a cinnamon topical cream under your nose would stimulate both the skin’s sensory nerves and the olfactory (smell) sensory nerves. Avoid cooling chemicals like menthol and eucalyptus.
Possible causes of other symptoms:
The front and underside of your brain is involved with taste and smell, sensation to the face, some nerves to the scalp, and your most important endocrine glands namely the hypothalamus and pituitary. An altered blood brain barrier here explains most symptoms.
Hair loss can be neurological. Nerves control the muscles in the arteries to the scalp. If the muscles are too tight, there is decreased blood flow, then the hair doesn't grow properly. The prescription drug Rograine is based on relaxing these muscles, improving blood flow to the scalp to reverse baldness. Treatments aimed at restoring proper neurological control should also improve the blood flow and thus hair growth.
Fatigue; decreased brain nutrition from thickening of the blood brain barrier may be the cause, or possibly these alterations combined with too many other demands taking energy away from wakefulness. I’m seeing people who are having difficulty multitasking, which fits with this theory.
In closing:
If you are suffering with ongoing symptoms, we would be happy to try and help you improve your health. Unfortunately our general medical system is poor at dealing with nuanced decreases in function. The doctors do care, they just don’t focus on these nuances of decreased neurological function. Small changes in neurological function are not things most MD’s are trained to look for. If it can't be seen on an x-ray or MRI image or measured on a lab test the problem doesn't exist. Finding a doctor who goes beyond the simplistic care model of ‘this test says this so I'm prescribing that type of medicine’ is hard. Chiropractors who focus on the nervous system try to fill this void by caring for people the allopathic system is ill equipped to handle.
Let’s try to get you better, together!