Brain - Health Rising

Bad Motor? Are ME/CFS, Fibromyalgia and Long COVID all Motor Cortex Diseases?

by Cort Johnson | Mar 14, 2024 | Brain, Fibromyalgia and Pain, long COVID, Motor Cortex, Muscles, Prefrontal Cortex, Transcranial magnetic stimulation, Treatment

THE GIST Main Takeaway – Increased excitability of a part of the brain that regulates movement, pain, and emotions, and may produce fatigue – the motor cortex – links together fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), and long COVID. In each...

The Nath Intramural ME/CFS Study Pt. II: Missed Opportunities, Misreadings and… Success (?)

by Cort Johnson | Feb 27, 2024 | Autonomic Nervous System, Brain, Cerebral Spinal Fluid, Cognition, Dopamine, Energy Production, Exercise, Homepage, Immune, Lipids, Metabolism, Motor Cortex, Muscles, Natural Killer Cells, Oxidative Stress, Research, Sleep, Small Fiber Neuropathy, T-cells, Tryptophan

The second part of a 3-part series of blogs on the “Deep phenotyping of post-infectious myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome” study looks at who was in the study and how they were selected, how severely the study was truncated by the pandemic (quite...

The Nath ME/CFS Intramural Study Pt. I: “It’s a Brain Disease…”

by Cort Johnson | Feb 22, 2024 | Autonomic Nervous System, Brain, Exercise, Homepage, Motor Cortex, Muscles, Orthostatic intolerance, Research, Small Fiber Neuropathy

“One takeaway is It’s a disease that comes from the brain” Nancy Klimas It was one of the most expensive ME/CFS studies ever done. The brainchild of former NIH Director Francis Collins, the unusual study was designed to give the NIH solid footing to...

Amantadine – A Fatigue Reducer for Long COVID and ME/CFS?

by Cort Johnson | Jan 28, 2024 | Brain, Dopamine, Homepage, Neuroinflammation, Treatment

It seems a bit odd that we haven’t heard much about amantadine (Gocovri, Symadine, and Symmetrel) in chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) or long COVID. They are, after all, the two big fatiguing diseases on the planet, and amantadine is the go-to drug for fatigue...

A Bad Blood Vessel – Neuroinflammation Connection Shows Up in Long COVID

by Cort Johnson | Dec 20, 2023 | Basal Ganglia, Brain, Cardiovascular, Clotting, Cognition, COVID-19, Endothelial Cells, Energy Production, Homepage, Limbic System, long COVID, Neuroinflammation

The brain and the blood vessels. So intimately intertwined but so rarely studied together. In retrospect, that’s kind of strange as blood vessels may have more to do with brain functioning than anything else. By weight, the brain is almost a non-entity –...