by Dr. Bill Rawls
Posted 10/27/22
Brain fog is becoming an increasingly common complaint from people dealing with Long COVID? But why is that? Here, Dr. Rawls explains some potential causes for this distressing symptom, including the reactivation of dormant viruses and reduced blood flow to the brain. Read more about long COVID here.
Video Transcript
Question: Why is brain fog a common symptom of long COVID?
Dr. Rawls: So when we look at long COVID very interestingly, this is occurring in about 30% of the people that experience COVID. And a lot of people are having symptoms that are very much like chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and chronic Lyme disease.
And brain fog is a really big symptom. So those folks, they’re starting to find that there is reactivation of these microbes like Epstein-Barr virus and cytomegalovirus (CMV) and some of these other things. So it’s not just the SARS virus at that point. It’s everything the person picked up becoming reactivated, shifting from an environment that favors cellular health toward one that favors microbe growth and microbe reactivation.
And that is what is going on. So when you look at that, especially in the brain, it causes cerebral hypoxia. Cells aren’t getting the oxygen because you got all this congestion around the cells and poor blood flow, and cells are being stressed.
So they run their mitochondria down. And then those stressed cells call in the immune system to get those garbage collectors moving. And so they put out inflammatory markers and then those cells come and infiltrate, and the inflammatory cells, the garbage collecting cells, are using acid and free radicals to clean up all that debris, and it makes it more toxic. So you have to get that stuff drained out.
Dr. Rawls is a physician who overcame Lyme disease through natural herbal therapy. You can learn more about Lyme disease in Dr. Rawls’ new best selling book, Unlocking Lyme.
You can also learn about Dr. Rawls’ personal journey in overcoming Lyme disease and fibromyalgia in his popular blog post, My Chronic Lyme Journey.
