Post-Covid 19 Chronic Anxiety syndrome

-“Doctor….I’m not feeling well. Losing my temper. Can’t sleep…So much anxiety- what’s going on?”

Celia X. is a proficient and dedicated nurse of a major Fort Lauderdale hospital who had consulted us for resilient Migraine Headaches many years ago but then chose another practitioner, closer to her residence in Broward County. As she has been a loyal reader and fan of this web page, she called us a few days ago to congratulate us for the publication of our new book. From the start she started “spilling he beans’ and confessed to us that, even though she has been spared the worst ravages of this terrible pandemic at the personal. labor, financial and social levels, she was still not feeling right. Her live-in migraines and depression worsened with the arrival of a new boarding buddy: Anxiety.

We told her that, in a major or minor degree, it is a common situation for almost all of us and that she should not despair. Slowly but surely we will al come out of this protracted, insufferable, cruel Social Isolation that has wrecked the Mental Health of millions of humans across the World. We counseled her to deal with one little problem at a time and not overburden her daytime with too many objectives at work and home, like she had finely done before the pandemic struck us. We also encouraged her to continue chatting about these issues with family, friends, counsellors, etc., because the mere act of “bringing it out into the open” will bring her some balsamic relief and give her new perspectives by analyzing their input. She told us that after just chatting with us for a few minutes, she was already feeling a little bit better. As the French psychologist Jacques Lacan said:

“Dans tout acte manqué, il y a un discours réussi.”

(In every failed act, there is a successful address)

Note. This reproduction of Claude Monet’s Camille Monet on a park bench was taken from Wikimedia Commons.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WLA_metmuseum_Camille_Monet_on_a_Garden_Bench_by_Claude_Monet.jpg

Here is an excerpt of our book Emotional Frustration – the Hushed Plague where we discuss it:

“Once the lockdown is levied, many of the once thriving small businesses that used to predominantly employ women will be gone. And there will be hardly any credit for entrepreneurial initiatives as the banks will be reluctant to lend. Not only did women hold most of the jobs of Education and Health Care —the hardest hit economic sectors—but they were also furloughed in greater numbers than men…

A large proportion of them are single parents of the Latino and Black Minority groups. These disadvantaged single women, lacking adequate social/family support, rely on their children’s school services for their care, instruction, and meals. If they cannot take their kids to school, they will not be able to resume their former duties.

The same chronic anxieties pervading the workplaces may foster a creeping loss of libido and eroticism in many blue collars’ bedrooms. On the other hand, women with a “hot” privileged spot in the upcoming New World Order will be less amenable to passivity, demanding equal rights inside and outside the bedroom. Moreover, after months of this pandemic and its Social Isolation, our nerves are so frayed that we are seeing in our offices a rising number of patients sick with a depression associated with high anxiety—the Post Covid 19 Chronic Anxiety syndrome.

Has my world become dangerous? Will I keep my job? Will I find a partner?

Can I safely touch this person? Did I clean my groceries carefully enough?”

We will address specific issues of this critical clinical condition for different age, ethnic and socio-economic groups in our upcoming Wellness articles and Podcasting . Stay tuned for much more.

Stay distant. Stay safe. Stay beautiful.

What do you think? Please tell us.

Don’t leave me alone.

Longer lasting Immunity against Covid-19 from mRNA vaccines

A successful humoral response to any modern vaccination entails the creation of a high affinity and durable antibody response that will protect individuals for many years. For all those of us who have received the mRNA-platform vaccines—the Pfizer BioNtech or the Moderna brands—the question is: “How long will our protection really last?”

In an accelerated article preview—mechanism through which a paper of high public interest gets prioritized —of the prestigious journal Nature, Jackson S. Turner et al., from the Washington University School of Medicine, addressed this issue. They studied the induction of Antibody Secreting Plasmablasts (PBs) and Germinal Centre (GC) B cells by the two available messenger RNA-based vaccines at present.

They said: “we conducted an observational study of 41 healthy adults (8 with history of confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection) who received the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine…Blood samples were collected at baseline and at weeks 3 (pre-boost), 4,5,7 and 15 after the first immunization. FNAs of the draining axillary lymph nodes were collected form 14 participants (none with history of SARS-CoV-9 infection) at weeks 3 (pre-boost), 4, 5, 7 and 15 after the first immunization.” Do the mRNA-based vaccines induce significant antigen-specific PB and GC B cell responses?

They found that one week after the booster immunization, this vaccine induced a strong IgG-dominated antibody response in blood and that there were strong binding GC-B cell responses and PB responses in the lymph nodes’ aspirates from the 14 participants. These responses were initially detected after the first immunization, and they rose significantly after the second dosage. Compared to the humoral response to the seasonal flu-virus vaccination, these responses were higher in magnitude.

The authors said: “the persistence of S-binding Gc B cells and PBs in draining lymph nodes is a positive indicator of induction of long-lived plasma cell responses. Future studies will be needed to examine whether mRNA-vaccination induces a robust-S-specific long-lived plasma cell compartment in the bone marrow.” The authors admit that these are just preliminary studies that need much stronger scientific follow-ups. If the mRNA-based vaccines induce strong GC reactions, they will become critical tools in the fight against a pandemic that is still producing dangerous virus variants. Moreover, the rise of vaccine hesitancy in the USA and other nations, has to be remedied by increased delivery of good information to the public by the often “isolated, haughty scientists.”

Stay distant. Stay safe. Stay beautiful.

What do you think? Please tell us.

Don’t leave me alone.

Noble defender against the SARS-CoV-2

Dear readers and fellow bloggers:

Good morning. The very best food for your first meal of the day (be it breakfast, late breakfast or lunch) is half an orange or grapefruit squeezed in fresh water; the other half should be treated like we did when we were kids and our dear mothers or grandmothers gave us one. Just suck it and eat the pulp. splashing you face with its powerful vitamins.

Jugo de pomelo

There is empirical data about the healthy effects of the citrus fruits – lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruits – to fight the SARS-CoV-2 producing the horrible world pandemic.  Why not follow the wise counsel of so many physicians and dietitians that observed it? Take the first step by picking some lemons and oranges next time you visit the market. Thanks to the wise recommendations of our “personal physician” (our son Gian Luca) this is how we have been starting our days at home ever since the middle of March.

Salute!

Stay distant. Stay safe. Stay beautiful.

What do you think? Please tell us.

Don’t leave me alone.

Are Singles better prepared for Social Isolation?

The quasi-centennial woman had been living in the same humble shack with a loyal dog and a dozen chickens in a small clearing of one of the most forbidding sub-tropical forests of South America—El Impenetrable, a large expanse bordering the Bermejo River in the northwestern part of Chaco province and the southwestern part of Formosa provinces of Argentina. One of her many grandchildren, and sometimes even a great grandchild, would come to check on her and bring supplies almost daily but they all preferred to live in a nearby small urban settlement.

She claimed that her social isolation in such natural habitat suited her just fine. She woke up early every day to do her homely errands with enthusiasm, preparing her own meals based on a largely vegetarian diet with some poultry or freshwater fish. She continued to smoke moderately, and she sometimes drank a little alcohol too. When the reporter asked her what the secret of her unusual longevity was, she said:

“Because I don’t have a man that heats up my head every day.”

The forced social distancing and isolation brought by the Coronavirus pandemic has forcibly obliged millions of people to stop working in public/ private institutions or attending educational institutions with a resulting estrangement from other persons. Individuals with stable sex partnerships have been traditionally considered as more apt to withstand the Mental Health consequences of this kind of social situation. However, the previous existence of millions of men and women who had expressly chosen a single lifestyle in modern societies has gravely questioned that assumption.

In an article of the Health section of The Washington Post, Joan DelFattore reviewed the responses from several singles contacted by e-mail or found in the social media. “This is the moment I’ve been training for all my life!’ an unnamed introvert asserts in a Facebook post…Edie Jarolim, a freelance writer and editor in Arizona, can relate to that sentiment—that adults who have chosen to live alone may be better adapted than many to the stay-at-home restrictions in place in large parts of the USA.” Most of the respondents were nonetheless concerned that they could be discriminated against if rationing of the scarce health care resources—lifesaving ventilators for example—were eventually instituted in a dramatic junction of this terrible pandemic.

A longstanding complaint of the singlehood-by-choice surfaced again: the lack of respect for their lifestyle choice from the mainstream citizenry. Many persons confound the fact of “being alone” with the sentiment of “being lonely.” Especially because they disregard that many of these singles do have a strong social support. Moreover, the lack of sentimental strings prods them to seek a varied company.

Since Biblical times, humans have been strongly encouraged to socialize and live in partnership with the opposite sex for healthier social outcomes. There has been a large pool of scientific literature to buttress the need for a stable sexual partner to avoid anxiety/depression, insomnia, obesity, cardiovascular disturbances, etc. But how about those individuals that expressly chose the singlehood to be more creative?

Julie C. Bowker, Miriam T. Stotsky and Rebecca G. Ekin published a seminal paper in 2017 where they examined the links between the withdrawal subtypes and some psycho-behavioral variables, finding challenging results for the avoidance models of withdrawal; they found that unsociability is associated positively with creativity. Julie Bowker said: “they are not antisocial…they don’t initiate interaction, but also don’t appear to turn down invitations from peers. Therefore they may get just enough peer interaction so that when they are alone, they are able to enjoy that solitude.” In order to study these unsociable-by-choice from the truly shy individuals or those who exhibit abnormal anti-social attitudes, they recruited 295 college students and subjected them to a battery of psychological testing. They found that those who were in fact shy or antisocial scored lower than average on the creativity indicators; the participants who were “unsociable” scored higher on those same indicators.

These authors proposed that unsociable persons “may be able to spend their time in solitude constructively, unlike shy and avoidant individuals who may be too distracted and/or preoccupied by their negative cognitions and distress.”

A question that has lingered in our mind for many years might merit to come into the open on this occasion. Like most human beings, we have commiserated with the miserable and lonely life that Vincent Van Gogh endured until the very last instant of his tortured life. However, would he have been able to produce so many beautiful tableaux of so many simple situations if he had been a most happily married man?

Stay distant. Stay safe. Stay beautiful.

(This article is based on our upcoming new book Emotional Frustration – the hushed palgue)

What do you think? Please tell us.

Don’t leave me alone.