Long Covid looking more and more like TMS

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-anxiety-may-escalate-chances-of-long-covid-says-study/ (Depression, anxiety may escalate chances of long COVID, says study)

 

There is actually an interesting physical element that starts the psychological aspect.

In response to the virus the immune system creates cytokines which are small proteins. These cytokines get the immune system doing what it needs to do -- great. But they also have other side effects for example they can create breathing issues or IBS type things. And then eventually they clear from the system. But the interesting part is that cytokines are also are known via academic research to create anxiety and/or depression, depending on the person.

What may be happening with long COVID is that anxiety is ramped up due to the immune response process while physical symptoms are still present and then each feed off of each other.

My story. And please feel free to stop reading here if you've heard it before or aren't interested.

I was acutely sick starting around December 5, 2019 for about 3 weeks. This was before COVID based on the timeline but was a very bad virus like I've never had before. After 3 weeks, the initial sickness started turning the corner and I thought I was on my way to feeling better like any other "cold." But instead symptoms lingered, I got intense fatigue, I had bizarre forms of anxiety and depression which I have never had before. I didn't even know what depression felt like because I've literally NEVER been depressed. It's likely all of that originally were from the cytokines and was normal "post viral fatigue" which is a known thing. But then I got stuck in that mode. And I think that is what is happening to people. I lost my appetite completely in mid-January and had to force myself to eat about 300 calories a day. Not eating obviously made me have zero energy. It was awful. I was focusing like a maniac and fearing every little thing my body was feeling, doing, showing. The moldy weather conditions didn't help.

I started getting better late January after a kind ENT doctor said that everything looked OK and that I "felt, worse than I was."
Took about 6 months before I was feeling back to baseline...and really it was about 85% - 90%. And about a year to 100%.

Incidentally, my Dad used to get colds that wouldn't go away. They would always turn into coughs that would linger and linger. Eventually a doctor identified and described it as "you are allergic to having a cold." They would give him steroids and it would all clear up.

So in my opinion, what we have here is an initial bodily physical response that then turns into a TMS situation.
Maybe like that Markowitz guy's theory that someone here recently posted about how the brain gets into a certain groove/pattern.