Feeling sick or overly exhausted after physical activity, also known as post-exertional malaise.
“This is a tool that can be used to identify people with long COVID for the purpose of doing more research,” said Andrea Foulkes, the principal investigator of the RECOVER Data Resource Core, as well as the director of biostatistics at Massachusetts General Hospital. “I think people will be underwhelmed by a ‘landmark’ paper that is describing the presence of symptoms that people have long known are a problem,” said Jim Jackson, the director of Behavioral Health, ICU Recovery Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, and author of “Clearing the Fog: From Surviving to Thriving With Long COVID—A Practical Guide.”
“What exactly does brain fog mean? If we call it a brain injury, then there’s a treatment path. We know how to treat brain injuries,” Jackson said. “We do cognitive rehab. If we call it brain fog, what on earth do you do with that?”Brain fog, in these cases, includes having to read something several times to understand it, having trouble keeping appointments that aren’t part of a weekly routine, and difficulty following complex directions.