Noran Almomen
Living through a global pandemic came with many long-lasting effects in different areas of our lives. For many of us, the global COVID-19 pandemic brought about economic hardships, personal losses, and other difficult experiences that ultimately affected our mental health and overall sense of wellbeing.
A year into the pandemic, when many people had contracted COVID, experienced the symptoms and seemingly recovered, we began to hear of and discuss terms such as long COVID, or COVID brain, brain fog and so on.
What do terms such as long COVID mean?
These terms refer to a group of long-term effects resulting from symptoms of the COVID-19 infection on the brain, and more specifically on cognition. Cognition is our ability to think, reason, process and store information, as well as experience emotions.
What long-term effects have people experienced after being infected with COVID? When people talk about long COVID most of them are referring to the difficulties in cognition and that they have experienced in their day to day lives. These effects include:
· memory difficulties
· trouble with attention
· decreased reasoning and problem-solving
These effects can interfere with our day to day lives in many areas, including work, school, social life, and others. The issue of long COVID is extremely important because over 600 million people have been infected with COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.
To help us understand the effects of long COVID, researchers at Western University published a paper in September 2022. This study examined these long-term effects of COVID-19 on the brain, what contributed to the effects, what seemed to reduce the risk as well as who is more likely to experience them, and so on. This research was done to understand how we can decrease their effects on our daily lives.
What do we know about long COVID?
In the research, it was found that people with better-than-average physical health were the people who experienced the least of these effects after the infection. It was also found that people with worse-than-average physical health had the most long-term effects on cognition. This means that physical health is very important in terms of us fully recovering from COVID-19.
How can we protect ourselves against long COVID?
Better physical health does not only mean going to the gym more. Better physical health starts with small daily steps that everyone can do. Something as simple as a daily 30-minute walk can make a difference. Instead of driving to your local coffee shop, walk there. Instead of busing to school, bike there. Moving our bodies daily, even for just a few minutes, can benefit our physical health.
Also, keeping up with vaccinations and boosters is very important. COVID-19 vaccines, and the Flu vaccines are very effective. They reduce the severity of illness and make it less likely for us to have long-term effects. Wearing masks indoors is also a key factor in maintaining our health. Wearing masks and washing our hands as well as keeping our distance in crowds are important steps we could take to prevent many illnesses, not just COVID-19.
Why is it important to follow these steps?
By making sure we are washing our hands, social distancing, and wearing our masks we are helping to minimize spreading the disease. By stopping the spread, we are maintaining our physical health. Maintaining our physical health maintains our brain health. This makes long COVID less likely, meaning less cognitive trouble, and better mental wellbeing.
Links to references:
Disentangling the cognitive, physical, and mental health sequelae of COVID-19 (2022)
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