Extreme fatigue, shortness of breath, difficulty concentrating, dizziness, pain, anxiety and depressive thoughts are but some of the symptoms of increased sensitivity of the nervous system. More than seven in ten patients with lung covid reported this in a survey by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the UZ Brussel.
Those symptoms are so severe that more than three-fifths of patients with lung covid have difficulties performing normal daily activities, such as work, hobbies or household chores, the survey found. One fifth of them are not even capable of doing so at all. People who had little trouble with the corona infection also report the complaints.
Chronic Pain Syndromes
What exactly does this increased sensitivity mean? “Central sensitization accumulates pain stimuli that enter the brain, while healthy people first feel one stimulus and then the other. In addition, the pain-reducing effect from the brain to the rest of the body fails. This way you experience banal stimuli as extreme,” explains professor Maarten Moens, neurosurgeon at UZ Brussel.
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Its strong resemblance to fibromyalgia and other chronic pain syndromes worries him. “Long covid is not a banal disease. As everyone knows by now, it is certainly not an imagined disease, nor is it a psychological one.” However, according to the professor, the problem must also be tackled with a psychological component.
“Physiotherapy alone is not the right approach. All rehabilitation programs for lung covid will also have to offer pain education and cognitive behavioral therapy,” said Moens. “Sensitization does not recover on its own, or very rarely. There are no medicines for it.”
The professor cannot say how long this combined therapy will work. ”That depends on the individual, and I don’t have any data. In general, the longer someone has it around, the more difficult it becomes to heal,” says Moens.
According to the professor, it is very important to treat the group of lung covid patients as optimally as possible, not only for the patient himself, but also for society. “Just because you regain lung capacity through physiotherapy, that doesn’t mean you no longer have depressive symptoms. If the rehabilitation programs are inadequate and that 20 percent of the lung covid patients can no longer work permanently, this has a huge social impact.”
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