April 22, 2020adminBlog

3 ways to protect and boost your mental health in coronavirus

(#Best Neurosurgeon in Bhopal)

As the coronavirus pandemic rapidly sweeps across the world, it is inducing a considerable degree of fear, worry and concern in the population at large and among certain groups in particular, such as older adults, care providers and people with underlying health situations.

In public mental health terms, the main psychological impact to date is elevated rates of stress or anxiety.

• Understanding how the COVID-19 pandemic and measures to prevent the virus’ transmission affect our mental health can help us adapt;
• From focusing on everyday boosts to mental health to empowering our communities, these expert recommendations can help.
• Improving our mental health hygiene now could help us create a “new normal” for mental well-being in the future.

Our traditional media and social media feeds are filled with urgent and often conflicting imperatives to change our routines and be constantly vigilant.

The online onslaught of rapidly updating media stories reporting worst-case scenarios can fuel fear and panic. Uncritical overconsumption of such messages can erode one of our most precious and essential human resources for weathering the COVID-19 storm: our mental health.

Even before the virus outbreak, depression and anxiety have been noted as defining features of our times. Isolation and uncertainty are not going to help us deal with the new realities of our newly virtual lives – virtual work, virtual schools and virtual family care – under the incredible stress of unfamiliar circumstances.

Firstly, there are five facts about stress, the brain and mental health that can help. There is virtually no disease, illness or injury that is not aided by good mental health. Why?

1. Our brains and our immune system are deeply linked to each other. The immune system is the prime mediator of environmental agents such as microbes, chemicals and the infamous COVID-19.
2. Stress is normal and can be healthy (and spur healthy behaviours: think of a zebra trying to escape a rapidly approaching lion), but too much sustained stress is not. High and unregulated levels of stress have a number of negative consequences on the brain, immunity and the vascular system, leading to blood sugar imbalances, high blood pressure and impaired immunity and inflammatory responses – the very precise opposite of what we need to fight the potential impact from COVID-19 exposure.
3. Physical exercise is an essential component of improving both physical and mental health and regular exercise has been linked to changes in brain connectivity, and increases in brain growth factors (e.g. brain-derived neurotrophic factor) and reductions in oxidative stress which damages cells and tissue.

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April 8, 2020adminBlog

What Does Coronavirus Do to the Brain?

(#Best Neurosurgeon in Bhopal)

Neurologists around the world say that a small subset of patients with COVID-19 are developing serious impairments of the brain.

Although fever, cough and difficulty breathing are the typical hallmarks of infection with the new coronavirus, some patient’s exhibit altered mental status, or encephalopathy, a catchall term for brain disease or dysfunction that can have many underlying reasons, as well as other serious conditions. These neurological syndromes join other unusual symptoms, such as diminished sense of smell and taste as well as heart ailments.

Why do younger people with a healthy immune system sometimes succumb to novel coronavirus? Insights from studies of novel coronavirus point to the possibility that the virus may shut down breathing by infecting the brain.

The vast majority of people infected with novel coronavirus, or SARS‐CoV‐2, experience only mild to moderate symptoms or no symptoms at all. Reported mild to moderate symptoms of COVID-19—the illness caused by the virus—include fever, dry cough, loss of smell and taste, sore throat, leg pain, headache, stomach ache, diarrhea, and fatigue. In more severe cases, patients present with pneumonia and severe difficulties breathing (dyspnea). A small fraction of people become so gravely affected that they require a ventilator to help them breathe.

While the elderly and people with an underlying medical condition are at a higher risk of developing serious symptoms and dying from novel coronavirus, younger people without any known pre-existing situation have also succumbed to severe forms of the viral disease. This raises the question: What—besides a compromised immune system—can cause infected individuals to develop severe symptoms?

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