It’s been three years since the COVID-19 pandemic started, and the medical community is still learning new things about the disease to this day. One of the symptoms currently making buzz online is insomnia.
Surprisingly, the novel coronavirus also robs one of a restful night’s sleep. It is even one of the most crippling symptoms, not frequently talked about.
In an article for the online news outlet Axios, Priya Matthew shared her experience with mild COVID-19 that eventually led to long COVID with debilitating symptoms.
Matthew said, at one point, she had 23 symptoms, including persistent shortness of breath, heart palpitations and insomnia. Thankfully, her doctors did not find major organ damage. But she admitted that long COVID prompted her to make big changes in her life.
“Before getting hit with this life-changing illness, I frankly hadn’t taken great care of myself. I let stress and anxiety get to me. I ate poorly, drank too much coffee and rarely made time for exercise,” Matthew wrote.
She continued, “Very soon I realized: If I’m going to get better, I need to completely change my life. I’d never be able to go back to those bad habits.”
Speaking specifically about insomnia, Matthew told CBS News how difficult it was for her to fall asleep.
“Nothing worked. I would just lie awake in agony all night. It felt like electric shocks going through my body from my head down to my toes,” she shared.
Explaining Matthew’s experience, Dr. Emmanuel During, a psychiatrist and neurologist, told CBS News that the insomnia of long COVID patients involves pain that is resistant to treatment. He said he saw the same phenomenon in sleep patients at Mount Sinai Hospital.
“Pain, which can occur at night as well, and a lot of autonomic imbalance, autonomic impairment, which is the ability of our body to control heart rate and blood pressures — that can lead to episodes of palpitation, night sweats,” During said.
A 2022 survey by the American…
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