(Baker Institute, Australia) "Funding to advance understanding of the impacts of long Covid" plus POTS and ME/CFS

https://baker.edu.au/news/institute-news/long-covid-funding

Funding to advance understanding of the impacts of long Covid

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• Funding to advance understanding of the impacts of long Covid

13 June 2024

Institute news

Associate Professor Erin Howden is one of 12 researchers nationally to be awarded a Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) grant aimed at improving the lives of people with long Covid. The grants are the first investments from a $50 million commitment from the Federal Government to generate better evidence on the effective management of long COVID in the Australian community.

Fatigue, dizziness, tachycardia and brain fog are among the most commonly described symptoms of long Covid/post-acute sequalae of Covid-19 (PASC). These symptoms are also commonly experienced by individuals affected by postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).

There’s been considerable interest about the potential overlap between PASC, POTS and ME/CFS, but there’s been no detailed investigation of the shared pathophysiology of these conditions.

A/Prof Howden’s $800,000 grant will allow her to combine MRI scans with direct recordings of sympathetic nerve activity to understand how the brain is regulating blood pressure during stressors like orthostatic challenge and exercise in patients with long Covid, POTS and ME/CFS.

By understanding the mechanisms contributing to long COVID, she hopes to be able to direct treatment strategies that alleviate or resolve symptoms to restore the quality of life for people with long Covid.

TAGS: news institute-news

 

We are working with her lab on 2 separate projects on ME/CFS and POTS already. And yes both are looking at PEM so I assume she'd be assessing this.

Kegan Moneghetti is who we mainly collaborate in her group. https://baker.edu.au/research/staff/kegan-moneghetti

Kegan was initiated in to working on ME at Stanford, not with Ron Davis though.

 

Clearly starts off with too much bias, though, assumes that it's a given. I don't understand the fanatical obsession with making exercise medicine. It won't accomplish any of the things they think it will. The pattern we see in almost all the studies supporting this are all about recreation, about people taking time to do things they enjoy, but always with an absurd mindset that misunderstands human nature as if we could all just find one activity we like and do nothing but that several times per week, kind of like an exercise wheel for hamsters.

I really have no idea what they expect out of this. But all of the above is pure fantasy. It actually me reminds of a common joke in sports fandoms: why don't they just score more goals than their opponents, are they stupid? As if there is this simple answer, which everyone has already thought of, that will just unleash health and creativity if only people... weren't stupid?

Seriously what is it that they think people are missing here? If exercise were that great, that immediately good for health, and it is, why don't most people engage in it? Well, as we see, this is purely recreational activity. Lots of people work hard labor, somehow I have never once seen any study of this in the context of physical activity. Not a single one, in fact people who work physical labor tend to die younger. Even though it should count even more, since we'd be talking about 40h/week or so or physical labor. And yet, no, it's all recreational. All of it. Even down to finger painting and gazing out in a forest path. Which isn't exercise anymore, but it is recreational leisure time. Which most people don't have.

This obsession has existed for well over a century. And it's still pure fantasy. I don't get it. This isn't like pursuing nuclear fusion, it's more like trying to find magical elves who can produce power.

 

I only meant the overarching goals of basically transforming society, all but eliminating some diseases, saving huge amounts of money on health care and so on. This is basically the aim and promise of the modern biopsychosocial ideology, and it really can be summed as I put it above: people could easily be healthier and wealthier if they wanted to, what are they, stupid? I've seen so many actual MDs say out loud that in their opinion, most diseases are purely caused by lifestyles, which is no different at all from old superstitions about demons and evil spirits.

Exercise is good for health. But it is at best 1-10% as important as it's been made out to be, one of many things that can improve quality of life a bit, none that can guarantee it. It's not transformational, not some panacea or simple and cheap solution that will unleash health and wealth for all. If that were true, I guarantee you that most exercise would be free. Gyms? Free. Organized sports? Free. There would be exercise parks with equipment and coaches and all that everywhere and it would all be 100% free because it would genuinely be cheap in very observable, quantifiable ways.

But it's not because we don't live in a fantasy universe like Care bears or anything like that. The biggest constraints are financial, and even then the idle rich don't necessarily do that much of it, because it's just not that magically beneficial. For sure it's the solution to being in a poor physical condition when there is a stated goal that requires being fit. Other than that, it's probably a top 10 most overhyped thing in history.

And really, the whole difference is with physical labor. It's right there, plain as the noon sun, and never seriously researched because it would spoil the fantasy, that what all those claims really amount to is that people enjoying doing things they enjoy if they have the leisure to enjoy them, for a while, and not as an imposition, and the benefits are short-lived. The whole issue has been circled back and forth a thousand times already, nothing that any new research will change.