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Christine's avatar

Note to myself. This is a comment I made on someone else's post to clarify my research into the vagus nerve and its relationship to covid and long covid.

"I have a problem with how the vagus nerve is addressed medically. It seems that malfunction is viewed as being caused by psychology and fixed by psychology. What I am exploring is how it can be damaged physically and what can be done to repair it physically. This is not to dispute the importance of psychology, and its compounding effect, but to question which is the chicken and which is the egg.

I have started to watch the long covid groups to see how much of what is happening to them can be attributed to vagus nerve malfunction, and it is a lot.

However, there is very little information on the web about the physical nature of the vagus nerve and there is nothing to explain how or why covid is doing so much apparent damage to vagus nerve functioning.

There is a lot on how to stimulate it, and for the time we are focusing on stimulating it, maybe we are not pumping stress hormones, but the minute we stop stimulating it, we start pumping stress hormones again. And this is appallingly common amongst long covid sufferers who cannot get out of fight and flight mode. They regularly wake up with panic attacks that trigger all their symptoms, and although my case is not as severe, I can clearly recognise that I am trapped in fight or flight. I struggle to control my reactivity even though I am aware of it.

The result of this perpetual fight or flight state is that too many other body systems are shut down. The vagus nerve along with the stress hormones, is carrying the wrong messages to the heart, lungs, liver, pancreas - telling them to all go away until the danger is over, or step up their functioning until the danger is over, but the danger is never over. Doctors are looking for failures in the various organs or systems, instead of looking at the idea of faulty messaging to and from those organs/systems. Most in the long covid groups have been bombarded with batteries of tests for the organs or systems that seem to be malfunctioning, but which are shown to be functioning perfectly. They are not taking the next step and looking at the possibility that these perfectly functioning systems are obeying faulty orders - from the autonomic nervous system. And they are not asking how we re-set that system to start giving the correct orders. So I am left with the question, if everything is functioning perfectly but obeying bad orders, how do we get good orders? It's like the vagus nerve is a telephone line with a scrambler on it, so the recipient of the message is not hearing all of the message as intended. We are doing our best to obey those faulty messages.

I have seen one research paper that claims that the covid spike protein can attach to ACE2 receptors on the vagus nerve and hitch hike around the body that way. But it does not go anywhere near suggesting how to either protect the vagus nerve or cure it of its spike protein "infestation".

I have seen a couple of passing references to "feeding" the vagus nerve, and the two elements I have seen mentioned are vitamin B12 and Choline, but again, just passing references, when listing the benefits of those elements, rather than a focus on how those elements can help the vagus nerve in particular, or how and what doses we should administer, or how we can test for results.

Meanwhile, in the absence of anything I can do physically other than take B12 and Choline on faith, I am doing all sorts of stuff recommended for stimulating the vagus nerve. So are lots of other people, but one fear is that some of what we are doing to stimulate the vagus nerve is ALSO stimulating stress hormone production. Could it be? Who knows? Many are going onto psychiatric drugs to dull their stress hormone responses, but few are getting good results in terms of overall quality of life.

So what next? For many, this is a 2+ year journey where their health is getting worse, not better. Milder cases, such as my own, seem to show some minimal level of improvement. So, either way, we need to fix this.

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Su Zip's avatar

I wonder if it's a numbing effect from too much collective stress. Drought, fires, floods, politics and poisoning propaganda.

My last and final PCR in May 2021. From that day I lost my sense of smell. Not completely but enough to loose enjoyment of food.

The after effects of intense stress over the last 2 years, job loss and an imposed midlife crisis leaves us exhausted after a normal days' effort.

Are we depressed? Probably. Was it the PCR that damaged my sinus or covid? I think the EO. I've not met one person who has a diagnosed long covid ("I don't know") by Drs who hasn't been vaxxed. You're the first I've heard. I suspect it's different from what we've personally seen - vax damaged immunity.

Whether it's chemical, waves of some sort or a virus, I agree with you on our approach and focus must be intentional. I have made myself so ill over the years from stress. If we can make ourselves sick we can also heal. Gratitude, wonder of beauty and personal connection. With me I'll put a connection with God first. It's hard at first, then becomes a daily fix. The healthiest one ever.

Thanks for your article

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