Millions of people are suffering from long COVID, which presents with a variety of symptoms that can last for months or even years. Researchers have found an association between mental stress and long COVID.
Depression, anxiety, and types of distress are some of the stressors.
A history of hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol, asthma, and cancer were more likely to be predictors of long COVID than stressors.
Hearing of these connections can make one feel anxious. They remind us that we need to prioritize our mental health even though there is a global Pandemic. All of the stressors can challenge our bodies in similar ways.
There is a long history of people not taking mental health conditions as seriously as they might take physical health conditions.
It's important to look at psychological health, and it raises more questions about the importance of identifying and treating mental health issues.
There are several reasons why the chronic condition is not psychosomatic, according to the team.
Roberts, Harvard medical doctor Siwen Wang, and their colleagues analyzed 54,960 nurses' health study participants. The researchers collected data from 3,193 nurses who were diagnosed with chronic bronchitis. The volunteers were asked to fill out questionnaires for 19 months.
Those who had symptoms of any of the stressors were found to be 30-50 percent more likely to have long COVID.
"Participants who experienced high levels of two or more types of distress had nearly 50 percent greater risk of post- COVID-19 conditions than those who did not," Wang and team wrote in their paper.
More than 40% of those who developed long COVID had no mental health issues. The study's results were the same when they excluded participants with mental health issues.
Wang says that they were surprised by how strongly psychological distress was associated with an increased risk of long COVID.
Long COVID was more associated with stress than other health risk factors.
coughing is not a symptom of mental illness. Half of those with long COVID experienced relapses when trying to exercise due to physical and mental health stressors.
Inflammation has been linked to psychological stress through the release of inflammatory cytokines. Stress suppresses our immune system, according to studies.
White women with an average age of 50 were the majority of the study participants. The researchers have yet to establish a link between this combination and long carbon dioxide emissions.
Something that is common to these types of distress may be playing a role in long COVID.
The association between distress and long COVID has been suggested before. A UK study found that almost 30 percent of multiplesclerosis patients experienced at least four weeks of COVID symptoms.
Wang and the team show how other researchers have found similar links between mental illness and long-term symptoms after illnesses.
More work is needed to understand the whole picture, but investigating potential leads could help researchers figure out what's going on with this chronic condition that more and more people are facing every day.
Roberts says that the results reinforce the need to increase public awareness of the importance of mental health and to get mental health care for people who need it.
The research was published in a mental health journal.
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