Measuring Brain Fog

[Transformation]

Hi Nande,

thanks a lot for chiming in. Yes, I really think the body chooses a hibernation pattern to survive. I am getting a bit better lately, so that is wonderful.

I started to meditate and do qi gong / tai chi around 15 years ago and even taught some. But when the body is cognitvely not able to remember a 4-digit-pin code, there is not much you can do to focus on meditation. So in that stage, I only listened to soothing very calm music, used vagus stimulation etc.
Now, as focus is getting better, my favourite is yoga nidra, but thanks to some medication i can do even standing qi gong on good days.
Also, nicotine patches really helped the overstimulation (a long covid hypothesis being tested out currently is that nicotine pushes the spike away from the anticholinergic receptors). There is some research about glutamine excitotoxicity as well as NMDR receptors being overstimulated in ME/CFS that is quite interesting. With the patches and after, I was able to tolerate heat and sound much better.

Wishing you the best in your journey, too!

[sleepyhobbit]

Yes, I think the body can go into hibernation mode when stress or trauma exceeds a specific threshold. I recently read the following comment on Instagram:

"The freeze response is more common for those that experience a large amount of fear in response to certain stressors. As children, the ability to protect or defend oneself is limited and mostly reliant upon the caregiver. Therefore if one felt routinely unsafe or unprotected by their parent or guardian, they could have a tendency toward this response as adults. When a child isn’t able to fight or run from perceived danger, it incites a panic response, making one numb or immobile in the face of the stressor.

Trauma as a child can be one of the most common causes of panic and fear. When a child is subjected to emotional or physical abuse by someone or something it cannot defend itself from, they are left feeling helpless, unable to tap into the biological systems designed to assist them in either fighting or fleeing. Anxiety and panic are indicated as two factors that contribute to the concept of tonic immobility, or a natural state of paralysis, something that is otherwise counter-intuitive for a human in the presence of danger. In other words, a child that suffered from constant anxiety and fear due to trauma may develop a tendency to freeze as a response to triggers as an adult.

Those who froze as a response often as children may develop a tendency towards disassociation, anxiety or panic disorders, and even post-traumatic stress disorder. As a response to triggering events that resemble childhood trauma, disassociation can be one of the most harmful ways one freezes."

[Transformation]

I do not necessarily agree with freeze being an anxiety response. Actually, for long covid there is evidence of viral persistence in the brain stem, leading to certain chemical reactions. Given that we are getting gaslighted so often into thinking ME/CFS is in our heads, I just wanted to mention it here. There is a response to a physical level of stress (neuroinflammation, cytokine storm etc.) that has nothing to do with childhood trauma.

[sleepyhobbit]

I completely agree. Sorry, I should have been more specific. I don't think ME/CFS and Long Covid are mental illnesses. I don't think they're a type of anxiety disorder. For years, I had doctors telling me that my ME/CFS was just "depression" or "burnout." That dismissive attitude (gaslighting) contributed to a worsening of my health. It's shameful that doctors downplay these conditions. I believe very strongly that ME/CFS and Long Covid are serious medical problems that are probably tied to immune dysfunction, mitochondrial dysfunction, autonomic dysfunction, viral load, and neuroinflammation. I don't think people can heal these problems through talk therapy. I don't believe in brain retraining programs that suggest "positive thinking" can lead to recovery. That being said, I think it's possible that people might respond better to prescription drugs -- like LDN and LDA -- if their sympathetic nervous system is in a "rest and digest" (or healing) mode, as opposed to a "fight or flight" (or agitated) mode. I don't believe that "calming the nervous system" will lead to recovery on its own, but perhaps it can improve the effectiveness of more powerful treatments (like LDN). Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, so my opinions and theories are not medical advice.

[Transformation]

Thank you for clarifying, yes, I share that last viewpoint. Our nervous system is under distress from very real physical changes in our bodies, and anything we can do to nudge it into a calmer mode should be beneficial. I am still not sure how this applies to the states when the nervous system shows too low stress values (e.g. in a heavy crash, Garmin body battery or Welltory app will show low stress values and Welltory mentions the body is too exhausted to even mount a stress response), but in those cases resting is for sure a good idea.