The COVID pandemic has been going for three years now, and it keeps on giving – this time to my husband and me in the form of our first COVID infection. Given that we’re both in our 60’s, I’m grateful that we got a milder variant that’s now making the rounds in Colorado and beyond. I’ve recently learned some new information about COVID and its impact on the body that readers of this blog may appreciate.

I have been doing Neurotherapy for the last 7 months to help calm down my mast cells (a detailed blog post is forthcoming on this once I have completed my sessions). I had been advancing with each session and seeing some great improvements in my sleep and ability to focus when I came down with COVID.

What was explained to me was that in their Neurotherapy clinic, they have seen that COVID attacks a person’s weak spot. What I mainly felt during the acute stage of the infection was stomach discomfort (a common refrain for me with any type of illness since my mast cells congregate in my gut), and a lot of nasal mucous (and thereby a cough). I guess I’m lucky – I have two weak spots!

For some people their weak spot may be their gut, for others their lungs. And people may not even realize that the body part most affected by COVID is or was a weak spot. Suddenly, they are having issues with their sinuses, which they seemingly never had an issue with before. Or an old back injury that was healed becomes flared after having COVID.

This was fascinating to me that COVID looks for a weak spot to move into and exploit. I haven’t yet seen research on this, but we are just beginning to get an understanding of what the COVID virus does to our bodies.

The other thing I learned at Neurotherapy was how much COVID affects the brain. I had been doing 2 sessions a week of Neurotherapy for 5 months when I got sick. Each session is recorded to show on a computer screen how my brain is creating new neural pathways and decreasing inflammation. Having specific data of where my brain was functioning pre-COVID gave me a view of how much COVID affects the brain once I went back for more therapy sessions.

I didn’t really realize how much my brain had gone into a fog during the illness, and was still slogging along at about half speed once the acute illness had moved on.

I stayed away from Neurotherapy for two weeks to recover and went back to therapy with a seemingly congested brain, unbeknownst to me at the time. The amount of inflammation in my brain was visible on the computer screen from the probes placed along my occipital lobe and temporal lobe. What was easy for me to perform previously in Neurotherapy sessions was suddenly impossible! My brain was completely unable to focus on the task at hand, and I felt like I had mud in my neural pathways. It was shocking for me, and fascinating for my Neurotherapist to compare my therapy results pre-COVID to post-COVID.

It took weeks for my brain to recharge and get back to focusing and being able to hit the markers that previously I had achieved during Neurofeedback.

As of this writing, I still have the lingering cough, but my brain is back functioning and even doing better than its pre-COVID state according to my Neurotherapy results. From all of the news articles about people feeling brain fog, even labeling themselves as having “COVID brain,” it may be that all of us have a brain weak spot that COVID exploits!