My left foot has started hurting this year. I wonder if it's the start of a disease, a normal result of aging, or a disease of the body. Even for people who have not caught coronaviruses, living through this period has had surprising health consequences. The Covid era has been a global hair-loss event because of the stress everyone has been under. What other times have been written on our bodies?
There is hair on the head.
Almost 80% of the members of the Institute of Trichologists said they had seen cases of hair loss in their clinics. Eva Proudman, consultant trichologist and chair of the Internet of Things, says that high temperatures and a loss of appetite are common with the virus. The hair will start to shed excessively after four to six weeks after the virus has started to resolve, and both of these factors reflect in the hair.
Mental stress can lead to hair loss. Richard Spencer, a trichologist working in central London, says that hair falling out can be caused by a number of factors, including the anxiety of having the virus and not knowing how badly one might suffer from it, as well as the stress of lockdowns. While Proudman has seen cases in men and women, it can be more obvious in women, as they tend to wear their hair longer than men, and you see a higher volume of hair coming out in the shower.
According to Proudman, telogen effluvium is a condition that causes hair to lose its hair in the growing and resting phases. Most or all of the hair is recovered if the loss is due to physical or emotional stress. The body will recover from this disruption on its own. We may need to help with hair supplements or treatments in other cases.
The eyes are open.
Dry eyes are a result of too much screen time. It is hard not to blame blue light for making them blurry and sore. There was a boom in childhood myopia that was shown in a Chinese study to coincide with increased screen use. This study is now held up around the world as a warning, triggering universal parental guilt and worry, while in practical terms being extremely hard to ignore.
Blue-light-blocking glasses are unlikely to be the solution. There is no evidence that screens are harmful to eyes. Children tend to do this more with screens than books, which is why they cause myopia. It is not screen glare that is drying out our eyes. It is our natural tendency to blink less frequently when doing screen work and less when reading books.
Is screens to blame for sore eyes? Jango Jim is an illustration for The Guardian.
There are teeth.
During the Covid crisis, my family didn't see a dentist for almost two years. More than 35 million appointments have been lost in England since Covid struck, according to the British Dental Association. The most common cause of hospitalisation in children is tooth decay.
The chair of the BDA's health and science committee has come out of retirement to help out in West Yorkshire. He says that he had to have root canal therapy for a tooth. It would have been better if he had seen it six months earlier. He says there was already a crisis in access to dental care, and that it was worsened by Covid.
Those whose teeth haven't quietly rotted beyond repair may have inadvertently ground them to smithereens. The American Dental Association surveyed its members in February and found that a majority of dentists reported seeing an increase in bruxism among their patients during the Pandemic. Temporomandibular disorder can be caused by this, with symptoms including jaw clicking and pain, and headaches around the temples. There was a rise in cracked and chipped teeth, which can be a result of tooth grinding.
There is a heart.
Sonya Babu-Narayan, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, says that there has been a rise in chronic heart conditions. It has become harder to access medical help for some people, who have suffered from diet and exercise. She says that each delay adds to a snowball effect and puts lives at risk. Cancelled procedures, missed appointments and growing waiting lists have likely already contributed to thousands more deaths from heart attacks and strokes during the Pandemic than we would expect to see otherwise.
The stomach.
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) flareups have grown more common, according to Philip Smith, consultant gastroenterologist at RoyalLiverpool hospital and Trustee of the charity Guts UK. He says that there has been an increase in disorders that can be linked to stress and anxiety. The brain and the gut are very close.
He says his job is to be embarrassing. There is a lot of stigma with the conditions that I look after. Lock Downs have made it more difficult for people with conditions such as Crohn's disease, to seek help, and by the time that they are actually diagnosed, and have their treatment, their disease is flaring a lot more severely than it would have done in ordinary circumstances. It might have been caught when it was moderate.
There is a person called the Liver.
The number of alcohol-related hospital admissions dropped in the years preceding the Pandemic, but have skyrocketed since. They may have diseases such as alcoholic hepatitis and jaundice. They can present with weight loss or withdrawal symptoms. They can present with gastrointestinal bleeding, because when you have a disease like cirrhosis of the liver, your blood vessels swell up in your gut. One-third of those surveyed by the charity Alcohol Change UK in 2020 said they had stopped or reduced their drinking. An estimated 8.6 million adults have been drinking more.
Maybe you ground your teeth into smithereens if they haven't rotted. Jango Jim is an illustration for The Guardian.
There is skin.
According to Emma Craythorne, consultant dermatologist at Guy's and St Thomas' hospital in London, inflammatory skin conditions such as rosacea, eczema and Psoriasis have been worsening because of stress. It can take its toll on anyone's skin. Doctors at the hospital have to wash their hands 100 times a day, and that is why a clinic was set up for them. The outer layer of the bricks-and-mortar protection starts to lose water when you cleanse your hands. If you don't use a hand sanitiser after, the constant drying will cause cracks in the skin. The inflammation can be caused by the pathogenicbacteria.
During the Pandemic, the term "maskne" has been used to refer to skin problems due to mask-wearing, but Craythorne doesn't see it as a big problem. She says that some people might develop perioral dermatitis, a condition where the barrier of the skin isn't working well, and you develop tiny bumps around the mouth that can be itchy. While wearing masks does change the environment in that area, which could cause the condition, Craythorne suspects that the problem might be related to the specialist skincare acids.
Feet.
Emma McConnachie is a spokeswoman for the Royal College of Podiatry, who practices in Stirling. She says that they have been seeing more strains of the tendon. While we are working from home, our feet may be deprived of their usual supportive footwear. She says that not all foot types can walk barefoot or in flimsy footwear. Some people are reporting that their feet have 888-405-7720 It could be argued that their shoes may not have fit properly before and that they are more aware after the time out of them. When you first put on your jeans after a long day of jogging.
She says that the arch of the ankle is getting more painful, as are the ankles and the achilles area at the back of the ankle. She says that the assumption is that many of the injuries are the result of changes in activity type or taking up new activities. If you have had pain in your feet for more than two weeks without improvement, she advises you to seek professional assessment, diagnosis and treatment.
Diet and fitness.
The survey on diet and exercise done by the Zoe Covid Symptom Study app showed that there was no change in the nation's weight or fitness. He says that a lot of people shifted their behavior behind these averages. They either got better or worse, but on average, they sort of balanced out. The data was published in the journal Nature Food.
The survey found that the average weight gain was just 0.8 kilogram (1lb 12oz), but a study by the National Health Service this year found that people seeking help with weight loss were on average 2.3 kilogram heavier than in the previous three years.
The survey showed that a small amount of people became more active after the Pandemic. About one-third rediscovered cooking and ate more healthily, while another third did the opposite, and the final third did not make any changes to their diet. What will they do when they come back? Will they miss the chicken?
