Lots of people who have caught COVID-19 are complaining about brain fog, trouble focusing, and memory loss. In fact, between 10 and 30% of the general population has had at least one of these conditions after an infection. Now, scientists have not only found a protein that may be responsible for it, but they have also found that immunizations may lessen its effects, especially on memory loss.

A rodent model was used to help the researchers learn more about how COVID-19 affects cognitive impairment.

In a statement, study author and Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry professor Dr. Robyn Klein said, “We looked carefully at their brains during acute infection and then later after recovery to find out what was wrong with the different immune cells moving into the brain and how they affected neural cells.”

Reports from early on in the COVID-19 pandemic made it clear that some people who got the virus had some kind of cognitive impairment. A lot of researchers were worried about this and wanted to know if the virus got into the brain and spinal cord.

But Klein’s earlier work showed that the virus couldn’t be found in the brains of humans or rodents, and this new study confirmed that. There is something else going on that does not involve the brain or the spinal cord.

One thing they did find, though, was that the COVID-19 infection raised levels of IL-1β in the brain. That’s a type of cytokine protein. These are very important for controlling the growth and function of other blood and immune system cells.

Klein and his colleagues saw that the rodent models that had higher levels of IL-1β lost neurogenesis, which is the process of making new neurons in the brain, and started to lose their memories.

According to this study, IL-1β may be a possible way that COVID causes cognitive impairment. But could vaccination lessen or even stop this effect?

More experiments with rodents that used vaccinations showed good results. The people who had been vaccinated before getting COVID-19 had less brain inflammation, and IL-1β levels were lower. This meant that the models who were vaccinated had less memory loss and worse brain function in general.

This is a good sign, but there are still some problems that need to be fixed. One thing is that it’s not clear how vaccinations seem to protect against cognitive decline. Second, the results need to be turned into models of people.

“We know from anecdotal evidence that people who have been vaccinated are much less likely to get this long-lasting COVID brain fog,” Klein said.

The study used a vaccine that isn’t available for humans, so more research needs to be done to find out how getting vaccinated can help lessen the effects of COVID-19.

Klein said, “We do know that getting a vaccine makes inflammation a lot less.”

People often think that vaccines can completely stop infections from happening, but this is not true and hurts trust in their effectiveness. Vaccines make it less likely that an infection will hurt you. So, a vaccine made to protect against severe pneumonia won’t stop you from getting pneumonia; it will just make it easier for your body to handle it. It’s likely the same thing is true for COVID-19 and cognitive impairment.

“People need to know that about shots,” Klein said. “They should know what vaccines can and can’t do.”

Nature Immunology has written about the study.

People say that you should do something scary every day, but maybe you shouldn’t hold in a sneeze. For some people, holding in a sneeze can be dangerous because it can damage their windpipe or make their face swell up.

At the time this was written, the story about your eyes popping out of your head was still just an urban legend.

Not being able to sneeze: torn windpipe
If you have hay fever, the season is a bad time for you. Your eyes are wet, your throat hurts, and you can’t stop sneezing. One man was driving when these symptoms started to bother him. He decided it would be better to hold it in, so instead of sneezing, he pinched his nose and closed his mouth. It makes sense that you would want to keep your eyes open while driving, but your choice had a very bad side effect.

A short time after holding in his sneeze, the driver’s neck started to swell and hurt very badly. When he got to the emergency room, he could hear a crackling sound in his neck. An X-ray showed that he had surgical emphysema, which is an injury from trauma that lets air leak under the skin. What caused it? A tear in his windpipe. This is most likely the first instance of holding back a sneeze causing a tear like this.

Stopping to sneeze: Hamman’s sign
In a second case of crepitus post-holding in a sneeze, a 34-year-old man held his nose and mouth together to stop himself from sneezing and felt his neck “pop.” As soon as that happened, swallowing hurt and his voice changed, so he went to the doctor. Doctors could hear Hamman’s sign, which is a crackling sound that can happen when the heart beats on tissue that is full of air. After that, they got scans that showed the man had broken the back of his neck.

“Blocking your nose and mouth to stop sneezing is a dangerous move that you should avoid,” the case study authors wrote. “It may lead to numerous complications such as pneumomediastinum, perforation of the tympanic membrane, and even rupture of cerebral aneurysm.”

Holding in a sneeze: broken cheek
Holding in a sneeze can also make injuries worse. For example, a 38-year-old tried to hold in a sneeze and their right cheek swelled up. It turned out that they had been living with a fractured right maxillary sinus that hadn’t been diagnosed, which was causing subcutaneous emphysema of the face.

When people hold in their sneezes, these rare outcomes happen. They show that holding it in can hurt you. As The Conversation points out, holding in a sneeze can be dangerous because they can push air out of your body at speeds of up to 35 miles per hour (56 kilometers per hour).

Trying to hide a sneeze? Yes. Not letting one out? Stay away from that place.

In the spirit of strange neck injuries, have you ever noticed that some brass musicians have necks that bulge out like a bullfrog’s?

One of the most important things in the office is a simple mug. It’s there to hold your coffee in the morning when you need a pick-me-up, to show off your style with a cool pattern or funny joke, or to keep you warm when someone else is running the air conditioning. Though it cares about you, are you giving it the love and attention it needs? To put it another way, do you wash it often?

People on Reddit clean their coffee mugs in a lot of different ways. Some wash them every day, some just rinse them out between uses, and some like to let the flavors of all the drinks they’ve ever had mix.

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The results of a poll of more than 2,000 British adults were the same. A majority of people (those who were telling the truth) cleaned their office mugs after every use. However, many people went between uses without giving it a good scrub, and 3% admitted to never washing it at all. It’s even worse for Brits when it comes to washing towels.

That might be a problem if some nice, fluffy mold starts to grow, but the bacteria that live in a dirty mug aren’t always a problem.

An infectious disease expert, Dr. Jeffrey Starke, told the Wall Street Journal, “If I went and cultured the average dirty coffee cup, of course I’m going to find germs.” “Remember, though, that most of them came from the person who used the cup.”

What about the germs that don’t come from the person who owns the mug? The University of Arizona’s Dr. Charles Gerba is a professor of microbiology, environmental sciences, and public health. He told LifeHacker that “about 90% of most office coffee mugs harbor dangerous germs, and 20% of those carry fecal bacteria.”

If no one else in the office is getting ideas from Andy Samberg’s character’s antics in the “Like a Boss” music video, Starke and Gerba both say that any germs that might be in your mug might have come from… cleaning it.

“The sponge in the break room probably has the most bacteria of anything in the office,” Starke told the Wall Street Journal. That makes a lot of sense. It touches a lot of things, stays wet, and probably doesn’t get replaced very often. Starke came to the right conclusion when he said, “Most people would call that gross.”

That being said, it might seem better to not wash it at all, but a lot of people would find that idea gross. Soap, hot water, and paper towels are what experts say you should use to clean and dry your office mug. Even better, if you have a dishwasher, take it home and wash it there.

Some people say you should do it after every use, but we won’t tell if you don’t.