science

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

Makes you wonder about other viruses, no?

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.

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

"The COVID vaccine, more like!"

~ Morons

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.

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.