Speaker 1: It's Friday, October sixte. I'm Oscar Emiras from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: Scientists are looking into what's becoming known as COVID brain fog.
Speaker 1: These are lingering symptoms of memory loss, difficulty focusing, dizziness,
Speaker 1: and even grasping for everyday words. Some COVID survivors say
Speaker 1: that it's impacting their ability to work and function normally.
Speaker 1: Pam Bellic, health and science writer at The New York Times,
Speaker 1: joins us for what to know about COVID brain fog.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Pam, happy to be with you.
Speaker 1: You know, as we go through this coronavirus pandemic, we
Speaker 1: hear a lot about the symptoms and the after effects
Speaker 1: after somebody has healed from COVID nineteen. One of the
Speaker 1: things that's becoming more evident we're seeing a lot of
Speaker 1: people is called COVID brain fog. So these are cognitive
Speaker 1: symptoms that people are experiencing memory loss, confusion, difficulty focusing, dizziness,
Speaker 1: and even grasping for everyday words. I think there was
Speaker 1: a surveyors soon to be published Serve they where this
Speaker 1: was the fourth most common symptom that people were reporting
Speaker 1: after recovering from COVID nineteen, So Ham tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about COVID brain fog, and then the people
Speaker 1: that you spoke to, you know, how are they going
Speaker 1: through all this? Yeah? Well, I think that this is
Speaker 1: going to be a phenomenon that we are going to
Speaker 1: see a lot more of as people recover from the
Speaker 1: physical symptoms of COVID. And as many people as I
Speaker 1: found who were expressing this as a problem for them,
Speaker 1: I think they're sort of just the tip of the iceberg. Frankly,
Speaker 1: because many of the folks who are experiencing this right
Speaker 1: now are people who weren't necessarily all that physically sick,
Speaker 1: and they feel like, hey, no, I'm ready, I should
Speaker 1: be able to get back to work, and they find
Speaker 1: that they can't. These are people who are lawyers and
Speaker 1: managers and nurses who just find that they can't focus,
Speaker 1: they can't multitask, they have short term memory loss, all
Speaker 1: sorts of aspects of infusion and disorientation that is just
Speaker 1: kind of debilitating. And for just one example, a nurse
Speaker 1: who is featured in my article, she longtime nurse has
Speaker 1: been working for an urgent care clinic for a long time,
Speaker 1: clearly knows what she's doing, and yet she goes into
Speaker 1: an exam room for a patient and leaves the room
Speaker 1: and can't remember what the patient just told her and
Speaker 1: is forgetting to order routine lab tests or even sort
Speaker 1: of medical terminology. She told me that she sort of
Speaker 1: tries to kind of sidle up to colleagues and say, hey,
Speaker 1: what's your favorite treatment for that, even though she knows
Speaker 1: full well, like she should certainly know, like the back
Speaker 1: of her hand, exactly what the treatment was. Unfortunately, you know,
Speaker 1: to her great credit, she's been very honest with her
Speaker 1: clinic about this and has asked them to make sure
Speaker 1: that she isn't scheduled on a shift alone, and her
Speaker 1: colleagues have been helping her out, so she's being conscientious
Speaker 1: about it. But she doesn't have any more kind of
Speaker 1: medical leave to take because she used it up to
Speaker 1: deal with the physical symptoms, and so she's at work.
Speaker 1: And that's just one example. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting
Speaker 1: because we hear about some of these longer term effects
Speaker 1: after you recover from COVID nineteen, things like losing your
Speaker 1: taste and smell takes a little while. They come back.
Speaker 1: Being lethargic takes a little while to bounce back from.
Speaker 1: And now this is another one where you just can't
Speaker 1: operate the same way. And doctors scientists don't really know
Speaker 1: what causes this brain fog, but they suggest it might
Speaker 1: have something to do with how the overactive immune response
Speaker 1: affects the body, the inflammation and blood cells, lining of
Speaker 1: the blood vessels. This is kind of a thing where
Speaker 1: we that we kind of keep following about COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: that it's more than just a respiratory disease. I think
Speaker 1: that's a really key point that you've made here, which
Speaker 1: is basically sort of the lack of a good sense
Speaker 1: of what is causing this. And I think again that's
Speaker 1: going to end up being significant because with the respiratory symptoms,
Speaker 1: with some of the cardiac symptoms, some of the physical
Speaker 1: law logical effects, they can be very serious, of course,
Speaker 1: and people are going to be recovering from them on
Speaker 1: their own timeline, and and some people will have a
Speaker 1: harder time than others. But these are generally issues that
Speaker 1: doctors know how to deal with. Neurological issues are a
Speaker 1: little bit more nebulous, and especially when we don't know
Speaker 1: the exact cause. So there's virtually no evidence that the
Speaker 1: virus itself is penetrating the brain, and so there has
Speaker 1: been some i think misinformation out there about that, and
Speaker 1: that's really not happening, certainly on any kind of widespread scale.
Speaker 1: So it's not like your brain is being destroyed. The
Speaker 1: listeners should rest easy about that. What's this seems to be.
Speaker 1: The neurological effects seem to be basically a consequence of
Speaker 1: the way that your body is reacting to the virus.
Speaker 1: So when you get the virus, your body mounts of
Speaker 1: immune response, and as we've seen with some of the
Speaker 1: physical symptoms, the immune response itself, for some people can
Speaker 1: get so activated that it can cause more physical problems
Speaker 1: for you than just the virus itself. Well, they think
Speaker 1: that there may be some kind of corollary to that
Speaker 1: happening neurologically, and some people their immune response gets so
Speaker 1: activated to try to defeat this new, unknown viral enemy
Speaker 1: and then just has possibly some trouble shutting off. Or
Speaker 1: it could be that there are kind of little fragments
Speaker 1: of viral genome kind of still hanging around in some
Speaker 1: of yourselves, and so your immune system is not getting
Speaker 1: the shut off signal, and that could be something that's
Speaker 1: affecting what's going on with these neurological symptoms. It is
Speaker 1: all sort of tied up with fatigue, which is something
Speaker 1: that you mentioned. There's could be interplay with the body
Speaker 1: recovering from if you have, say, still have some kind
Speaker 1: of shortness of breath, that could be giving your body
Speaker 1: more stress and that could be making it harder for
Speaker 1: you cognitively as well. It's just a complicated in a
Speaker 1: play of things, and it's unlikely that there's gonna be
Speaker 1: kind of a pill you can take that you're going
Speaker 1: to be able to get your focus back just like that.
Speaker 1: And that's why I think it's going to end up
Speaker 1: being a really significant for people and for the economy too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I imagine it's just very frustrating for people who
Speaker 1: have gotten over this. You know, maybe they've got in
Speaker 1: their negative tests and he's just lingering effects. There's somebody
Speaker 1: you spoke to for the article that says, I've become
Speaker 1: angry when people talk to me because it hurts my
Speaker 1: brain to try and pay attention, and you know, frustration
Speaker 1: over forgetting things. There was somebody that forgot their twelve
Speaker 1: day vacation in Paris. You know, these things are probably
Speaker 1: contribute to the kind of just exasperation from all this,
Speaker 1: so definitely something more that they need to look into.
Speaker 1: COVID brain fog. Pam Bellic, health and science writer at
Speaker 1: The New York Times, thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you. I'm Astar Ramirez and this has been
Speaker 1: reopening America. Don't forget that. For today's big news stories,
Speaker 1: you can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast
Speaker 1: every monthy through Friday. So fall Alison, I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcast.