The strange way just 2 hours less sleep affects the emotions. As little as two hours less sleep than normal is enough to change people’s emotional experience during the day, a study finds. People feel fewer positive emotions after just one night of reduced sleep.

PSYD The strange way just 2 hours less sleep affects the emotions.

As little as two hours less sleep than normal is enough to change people’s emotional experience during the day, a study finds.

People feel fewer positive emotions after just one night of reduced sleep.

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Drinking a low-sodium vegetable juice can quadruple weight loss, research shows

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Why strange and debilitating coronavirus symptoms can last for months

From extreme fatigue to weight loss, numbness, breathing difficulties and chest pain, some people’s covid-19 symptoms are proving very hard to shLinda Geddes

WITHIN 24 hours of asking an online covid-19 support group if anyone had been experiencing prolonged or unusual symptoms, I had been messaged by 140 people. The list was mind-boggling and deeply upsetting. “I feel like I’m in the middle of a waking nightmare,” said Zoe Wall, who was previously fit and healthy. Two months after developing covid-19-like symptoms, she was still experiencing chest pains and “fatigue beyond description”.

Harry’s symptoms started with a terrible headache and itchy body, followed by shortness of breath. He was still experiencing breathing difficulties, chest pain, numbness in his arm and bloating 10 weeks later. Jenn had had no sense of smell or taste since testing positive for covid-19 on 31 March. Abbi had minimal respiratory symptoms, but very bad gastric ones and lost 19 kilograms in two months. Others reported fatigue, headaches, tingling fingertips and brain fog.

As the months tick by since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and we learn more about covid-19, it is becoming increasingly evident that even mild cases can have distressing and long-lasting effects. “There’s clearly something going on here. It is not their imagination or hypochondria. It doesn’t even seem to be linked to how severely they had the disease, as far as I can see,” says Danny Altmann, an immunologist at Imperial College London. All this means we need to rethink how we diagnose and treat covid-19. The long list of symptoms also seems to suggest there might even be several subtypes of the disease, which could help us predict which cases will become serious.

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Consciousness isn't just the brain: The body shapes your sense of self

Electrical signals coming from your heart and other organs influence how you perceive the world, the decisions you take, your sense of who you are and consciousness itself Laura Spinney

Patrick George

PARTS of Ann Arbor bring The Truman Show to mind, with their wood-frame houses and white picket fences. Home to the University of Michigan, the city oozes middle-class prosperity and security. So, while doing research there a decade ago, Sarah Garfinkel was shocked to discover that young veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan felt terrified even in Ann Arbor. “It broke my heart,” she says. And it changed the course of her career.

Garfinkel was in Michigan to study the brain circuitry involved in persistent fear. But working with traumatised veterans, she realised two things. First, a safe environment didn’t help them feel less fearful. And second, their fear was physical as well as mental: their hearts were constantly racing, their pupils dilated, their palms sweaty. “It seemed to me that what their bodies were doing was meaningful, but I was just scanning their brains,” she says. So she set out to understand the body-mind connection.

Garfinkel, now at the University of Sussex, UK, discovered that our bodies have more influence over our minds than you might imagine. “Our thoughts, feelings and behaviours are shaped in part by the internal signals that arise from our body,” she says. But it goes beyond that. It is leading her and others to a surprising conclusion: that the body helps to generate our sense of self and is a key part of consciousness. This idea has practical implications in assessing people who show little sign of consciousness. It may also force us to reconsider where we draw the line between life and death,

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The coronavirus can cause permanent lung damage

Lung inflammation and blood clots caused by covid-19 can lead to scarring and long-term breathlessness and coughing in some people, for which there is no treatment.

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JADED FADED FIGURE

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“If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place.” – Lao Tzu"

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