COVID: More Mischief Unraveled

With the COVID outbreak spreading and infecting more people across the world, doctors and scientists are getting to understand the widening spectrum of mischief this virus causes in the body, far beyond just lungs and respiratory passages.

1. Brain and Nerves

Several patients report loss of taste or smell during the phase of illness. These symptoms ascribed initially to involvement of receptors of the tongue and nose, have now been traced to the brain. MRI studies have revealed that regions that receive the taste and smell signals brought there by the cranial nerves show small spots of oedema and nerve degeneration.

Brain involvement has also been found in several patients complaining of headache, disturbed consciousness, loss of memory, tingling sensations and extreme body weakness due to a form of ‘encephalitis’ and neuronal degeneration. Fortunately, these changes regress in most who recover.

2. Muscle and Heart

Another notable feature in a third of patients has been severe muscle aches, pain in limbs and back, and stiffness of the body. Studies have shown the virus to cause damage and swelling of muscles. Severe body aches has been associated with a more severe form of COVID presentation, and higher fatality. The heart is composed of muscles; it is therefore not surprising that several deaths have occurred due to involvement of heart muscles called myocarditis, that occurs in 15% of patients.

3. Intestines and Liver

Up to 50% of patients of COVID report nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and loose stools. Their intestines show swelling and ulcerations, and also involvement of the liver.

Interestingly the virus has been detected in intestines and stools, where it tends to persist longer even when cleared from the throat. This has fuelled speculation whether the feco-oral route (water – food borne route) could also cause spread of COVID.

Doctors are also getting to learn about the new features of COVID infection with each passing day as this virus continue to show its increasing “footprint” on the human body.

Remain updated about the pandemic, but try your best to stay safe!

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Food Fads in Liver Disorders

In an attempt at trying to do well to those they love, spouses and parents often enforce diets on patients of liver diseases that often turn out to be detrimental. The commonest food fad is pale insipid boiled cabbage being doled out to nauseous patients suffering from hepatitis that makes them puke even more. The liver, in a way, is a buzzing manufacturing unit that requires lots of energy to keep its multiple functions going. And it derives all this from the food we eat. During disease, such as during an attack of jaundice, when many of the liver cells get killed, the liver attemptsdamage control by trying to regenerate quickly. For its cells to multiply however, it requires a generous supply of energy that comes from carbohydrates, and protein, the building block for its cells and tissues. Boiled green vegetables unfortunately have neither of these. Hence the situation often progresses to that of a starved liver unable to recuperate due to cut-off food supply.

Bad Dreams, Disturbed Sleep

A good night’s sleep, so essential to rest your body and mind, and restore ‘energy” and vitality, is becoming a casualty for many these days. Last week a 58 year old lady complained that she woke up with a startle in the middle of the night dreaming of “drugs”, something she had never been exposed to all her life. Another reported a nightmare in which he felt someone was “strangulating” him by tightening something around his neck, till he woke up feeling choked! Yet another reported dreaming that he was in an ICU of a hospital with PPE draped figures surrounding his bed while he was being prepared to be hooked to a ventilator. Bad dreams can be disturbing to say the least. One wakes up with a startle or in sweat, feeling disturbed and uneasy, and feeling drained. The mood in the morning is usually uneasy and snappy. Creative thinking has usually gone for a toss…postponed to yet another day when one feels more cheerful and positive. Several factors could be contributing to “

The Doctor’s Dress

The familiar white coat worn by physicians as their distinctive dress for over 100 years, has started generating murmurs of controversy. It is not uncommon to find the blood pressure to be higher when measured by a white-coat-wearing-doctor in the hospital or clinic than the readings obtained at home by relatives. This is due to the anxiety that the white coat and the hospital setting evokes in patients, and has been termed “White Coat Hypertension”. Mature clinicians often routinely subtract a few points from these measurements when entering records in case charts or calculating the dose of anti-hypertensive medications to be prescribed. The white coat scares children too. Kids often express their dislike for this dress by crying and screaming and by denying access to their bellies or chest for examination by paediatricians in this attire. Many pediatricians across the world have folded up their white coats and taken to informal colourful dressing to get closer to thei

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