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By Simon Williams | Cronkite News
Experts describe “brain fog” as a cognitive dysfunction when your brain isn’t performing in top shape.
Although everyone is susceptible to occasional brain fog, experts say some of the worst cases have been identified in the group known as COVID-19 long-haulers – patients who had the disease and recovered but still can’t “get going” as they did before falling ill.
In February, the National Institutes of Health opened a multifaceted study into “long COVID” and its effects in the United States. Researchers hope to answer such questions as why symptoms are worse and last longer for some patients than others, and does the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 trigger other disorders of the brain and heart.
Two studies in England and Italy showed long-haulers did experience brain fog more commonly than non-COVID-19 patients during the pandemic. Long-haulers coping with brain fog improved over the course of the study.
Dr. Carmine Pariante, a professor of biological psychiatry at King’s College London, told The Guardian brain fog is the “cognitive equivalent of feeling emotionally distressed; it’s almost the way the brain expresses sadness, beyond the emotion” as a response to stress.
