Is anyone taking amantadine for brain fog?

Posted by justbarbara @justbarbara, May 13, 2023

I have been taking it for 2 months and am gradually getting a little better. My RX is for 3 months. I saw a side effect is melanoma and am concerned.

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I started with long Covid in May 2022. I enrolled in the NIH RECOVER long Covid study through University of Chicago. I also enrolled at Northwestern University long Covid program. I’ve had countless tests done on me.

Around July 2022 I was really bad. I had to take a bunch of photos of my walk from a parking garage to an office so I can find my way back to the car. I couldn’t remember anything. One for the many neurologists I see prescribed amantadine. Within a couple weeks, people were spontaneously coming up to me saying I’m like a whole new person, even my appearance and speech.. I got lots of comments at work.

Come October, I found myself slipping, and my dose was increased, which seemed to help stop the decline. I’m on a couple of other drugs recently to help with focus and depression. I had a bad brain fog week recently. I changed my diet, stopped doing office work on weekends and weeknights, and started using deep breathing exercises. That all helped beyond the meds.

My clinical visits and tests are booked for the next six months and will continue. It builds a large amount of reports on me that I share with the doctors and help them learn more about to treat me and others.

In the next couple of weeks I will see a speech pathologist to work on my cognitive processing.

There’s lots of research on how amantadine works and what conditions it’s prescribed for. In my personal experience, I feel like it stabilized me at a closer position to “normal.” I don’t know if I will ultimately improve, maintain, or decline. Long Covid researchers are working on it, so that’s good.

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@ericy210

I started with long Covid in May 2022. I enrolled in the NIH RECOVER long Covid study through University of Chicago. I also enrolled at Northwestern University long Covid program. I’ve had countless tests done on me.

Around July 2022 I was really bad. I had to take a bunch of photos of my walk from a parking garage to an office so I can find my way back to the car. I couldn’t remember anything. One for the many neurologists I see prescribed amantadine. Within a couple weeks, people were spontaneously coming up to me saying I’m like a whole new person, even my appearance and speech.. I got lots of comments at work.

Come October, I found myself slipping, and my dose was increased, which seemed to help stop the decline. I’m on a couple of other drugs recently to help with focus and depression. I had a bad brain fog week recently. I changed my diet, stopped doing office work on weekends and weeknights, and started using deep breathing exercises. That all helped beyond the meds.

My clinical visits and tests are booked for the next six months and will continue. It builds a large amount of reports on me that I share with the doctors and help them learn more about to treat me and others.

In the next couple of weeks I will see a speech pathologist to work on my cognitive processing.

There’s lots of research on how amantadine works and what conditions it’s prescribed for. In my personal experience, I feel like it stabilized me at a closer position to “normal.” I don’t know if I will ultimately improve, maintain, or decline. Long Covid researchers are working on it, so that’s good.

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The Doctors at the UNC Long Covid Clinic recommended a nightly dose (1mg) of guanfacine and 600mg of N-acetylcysteine, both before bedtime. They said they've seen it help a number of patients and I would add that I believe it has helped me. To the best of my knowledge, neither of those drugs have as significant a side effect as melanoma. There was no mention of amantadine

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@awa63

The Doctors at the UNC Long Covid Clinic recommended a nightly dose (1mg) of guanfacine and 600mg of N-acetylcysteine, both before bedtime. They said they've seen it help a number of patients and I would add that I believe it has helped me. To the best of my knowledge, neither of those drugs have as significant a side effect as melanoma. There was no mention of amantadine

Jump to this post

Thank you. I went to their website and it has lots of really good long Covid info. I learned new things about brain fog and how to manage my energy levels. https://www.med.unc.edu/phyrehab/patient-services/services-and-specialties/covid-recovery-clinic/

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I'm glad that my comments were helpful to each of you. We are each going thru so much and it is so life disruptive that knowing others understand and can empathize is always comforting. More importantly, so little is known about cause and treatment, anything that we can share with each other is a real value in this crazy, complicated chronic illness/post-viral syndrome!

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