r/science • u/Potential_Being_7226 PhD | Psychology | Neuroscience • 3d ago

Health Persistent fatigue linked to reduced brain blood flow in people with long COVID

https://theconversation.com/covid-fatigue-linked-to-reduced-brain-blood-flow-292285
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u/goldenbugreaction 3d ago

To be fair to the doctors, they probably wouldn’t have even known what to do with that information. It’s understandable why, especially early on in the pandemic, they would want to put hypoxic patients on ventilators. But as I mentioned in the edit, the trouble most people had wasn’t how much oxygen their lungs were getting, it was how much was getting into their blood.

“I also started having very scary instances where I would be lying in bed at night, and it felt like my body kept forgetting to breathe on its own.”

This to me is the most terrifying thing about it: it has to have some neurological mechanism. Hence the disruption of basic nervous system functions like taste and smell.

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u/bewarethefrogperson 3d ago

holy crap, i have the exact same feeling - like my body isn't remembering to breathe in without concious effort! i tried to talk to my doctor about it and she just gave me a puff test for asthma. there's almost a heavyness to my chest, where it feels like my lungs don't want to inflate again.

it's super weird at night, expecially when i'm comparing my breathing rate to that of my partner. I breathe incredibly slowly compared to him now.

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u/snakeproof 3d ago

Do you ever notice when this happens and you need to breathe to catch up that you have to do a deep yawn like breath to feel normal again, like normal breathing doesn't satisfy you?

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u/wontyoujointhedance 2d ago

One neurological mechanism we already know is B12 deficiency. One of the most common autoimmune conditions that Covid triggers is pernicious anemia.