The 10 Best Yoga Poses for Brain Damage

It doesn’t seem to matter how bad it gets.

Some websites will always propose yoga.

They’ll tell you to chant aphorisms into a mirror or strike superhero poses to combat deep anxiety and depression over any number of global catastrophes or crimes against humanity. They’ll tell you the answer is to turn off your phone and ignore all the problems you see instead of trying to do anything about them. That attitude has led us straight to this point, and we see how ugly it gets and the deep moral and intellectual deficiencies it causes.

They respond to record heat waves or a new disease by telling you to build up your heat tolerance or eat healthier. A few years ago, one website even said that if we were struggling financially, we should develop a healthier relationship with money, as if that wasn’t another meaningless cliché.

But when all other advice fails, the wellness mafia always falls back on their failsafe. Just do a little yoga.

Here’s a recent example:

This is how it begins:

Brain fog always seems to strike worst possible moment. It creeps in when you’re trying to work on a project or give a presentation on Zoom, making it impossible to focus. It can also ruin your ability to stay organized or remember where you put your keys.

The article doesn’t say anything about what causes brain fog. That’s the point. The point is to make brain fog feel normal, something a little yoga can fix. The point is to circulate this article in Facebook groups and sell yoga pants. Meanwhile, another health blog is attributing the increase in brain fog to…

Menopause.

Like that article says: “Women easily forget things, get distracted and feel mentally sluggish during menopause, which can impact their daily functioning.” They even quote an expert who:

Some women find it difficult to remember recent conversations they had with a friend or family member, names of people or appointments they had, or they find it difficult to concentrate on tasks… some women can experience brain fog for months, others for years.

The article advises women with cognitive problems to eat better, sleep more, exercise more and do mental exercises.

It’s not condescending at all.

These articles never mention Covid infections as another likely cause of brain fog, and they say nothing about further testing or diagnosis to rule it out. By now, countless articles have made it abundantly clear that Covid, a disease that continues to circulate around the world year-round, causes significant amounts of brain inflammation and damage that can last for months, if not forever.

It is undeniable that we are dealing with a crisis of cognitive decline, caused by a virus that results in an IQ drop of 2-3 points per infection in mild cases, and up to 9 points in more severe cases. study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that these drops last for months to years. Study after study has focused on the damage Covid does to the brain, while outlining possible treatments. These studies have been discussed everywhere from The scientific American Unpleasant The guard.

And yet a treatment remains elusive.

It is a personal endeavor.

Brain fog is a euphemism for what Long Covid patients to describe as “the feeling that their brain is lost in a maze, and they can’t find their way back.” As Long Covid expert Ziyad Aly-Aly writesBy allowing Covid to spread unchecked around the world, there has already been “an increase of 2.8 million adults with a level of cognitive impairment requiring significant societal support.”

They need social support.

No yoga.

Research has shown that Covid increases your risk of memory problems by 77 percent, even in mild cases. They found that Covid destroy synapses in your brain, resulting in cognitive impairment similar to Alzheimer’s and dementia. Another recent study confirms that Covid can fuse brain cellswhich hinders their ability to function.

In March, Nature published a review of the research confirmation of encephalitis of Covid as a major cause of memory and concentration problems. Your immune system triggers the inflammation.

There is also evidence that direct infection can age your brain. Scientific American published an overview of studies documenting the cognitive impact of Covid. They have shown that Covid survivors routinely experience:

1. Cognitive deficits

2. Memory problems

3. Long-term encephalitis

4. Fused brain cells

5. Shrinkage of the brain

Covid does not spare children. More studies have shown that children and teens run the same risk from Long Covid as adults.

A recent study in Pediatrics found that Covid is causing a range of neurological problems in children, including sleep disturbance, lower academic performance, irritability, impulsive behavior, emotional instability, and even suicidal tendencies. As you can see, these problems are widespread in schools and getting worse. Neuroscientists are deeply concerned about how Covid is harming adolescent brain development.

As a recent article mentioned bluntly, “students of all ages and economic levels have shown weaker memory and flexible thinking skills.” Unfortunately, that article discusses the pandemic, but does not cite a single study or expert linking Covid infections to cognitive decline.

Imagine having brain damage and inflammation from a viral infection that gets dismissed as forgetfulness that I got during my menopause, or just a minor inconvenience that happens to everyone, something that will go away on its own in a few months or a few years, and in the meantime you just have to move more. Imagine telling millions of teenagers that it’s just their TikTok habit.

How irresponsible is that?

How treacherous is that?

Millions of Americans and millions more around the world can’t concentrate long enough to get through a day of work or school. They forget entire conversations, entire meetings, entire email threads. This is a crisis, but articles like this one try to make it sound cuteThe light-hearted, informal openings frame the problem as an inconvenience we already face, rather than a new emergency requiring immediate, urgent, collective action.

That’s just the point.

Today, almost every news outlet has a wellness section. The wellness section exists for one purpose: to transform public health from a collective enterprise into a handbag full of life hacks.

The wellness section routinely takes public health crises and spins them, trivializing them and offering individual solutions that place the entire responsibility on your shoulders. Never mind that you pay about a quarter of your income to support institutions like the CDC. Never mind that you’ve been promised affordable health care your entire life.

Just do some yoga.

Eat a carrot.

The wellness section tries to convince you that you don’t need health care and that you don’t need to protect yourself from threats, while at the same time accusing you of problems caused by greed.

If you want another example, look at almost every article about sleep that appears on most news sites these days. Even though they sometimes make a small gesture toward larger societal problems like light pollution and overwork, they always give the same advice that blames our personal habits, and says nothing about the larger forces that disrupt our rest. And of course, they never tell you that the entire financial basis of our economy depends on tens of millions of people spending too much time on their phones.

They want you to spend too much time on your phone.

They want you to believe it’s your fault.

They need you to keep doing it.

Earlier this year, even Hannah Singleton was there GQ had to admit That brain fog, a term she’s never used before, has “become part of my daily vocabulary.” Even when major news organizations and magazines make the Covid connection, they almost always stop short of demanding clean air and mask policies in schools and workplaces, even as more companies push back and demand that their employees return to the office, blaming their problems on remote work. At best, these articles recommend seeing a specialist, but they don’t mention the uncomfortable fact that as your cognitive problems spiral out of control, you could be waiting months for an appointment. In the meantime, you can learn those ten yoga poses and take a supplement.

These listicles have a few other things in common. They’re written by someone comfortably shielded from reality. Before they decided to tackle the biggest public health crisis in a generation, maybe a century, these writers had written about mattresses and mindfulness.

Forget the credentials. They haven’t had their minds on it. It’s only now that it occurs to them that something could be wrong.

There is no grand conspiracy. As a number of media analysts have explained, this is simply how journalism and media work now. They reward content that doesn’t make anyone think too much. They promote content that transfers collective responsibility to individuals.

This kind of content fuels the wellness industry, a multi-billion dollar market that profits from public health shortcomings.

That’s the silent agenda.

For years, many of us have tried to warn everyone about what would happen if we abandoned public health and accepted mass infections. GQ of all places are writing about brain fog, and even the most superficial publications are trying to dismiss the new rise in cognitive deficits as a cute little problem, as if adults in their 30s and 40s are always forgetting their friends’ names or having trouble remembering entire conversations.

They don’t want you to demand flexible work schedules. They don’t want you to demand clean air or safer schools. They don’t want you to wear masks. All of this is in direct conflict with the Western corporate profit motive. If people really understood how viruses spread and what they do to your brain, no one would want to eat in crowded restaurants or go to a club. If you want proof, look no further than the weekly obsession with employment figures and consumer spending reports that determine stock values.

It’s not that there’s some evil plan to rot your brain, it’s just so… difficult and expensive to take care of people.

It’s easier to have everyone do the corpse pose.

Now that’s cheap.