Rahie T

Biomed engineer 🩻. Thoughts ≠ organization. 🛡️Forging my way into the neurodiverse psychology #Audhd realm 🧠.👑Queen of Hearts♥️. CO Native 🌄❄️

[Rahie T @Rahie_T]

Hi, I’m Rahie! I’m 30& biomedical engineer. I also have hydronephrosis, endometriosis, sleep apnea, Hashimoto’s, vitiligo,&asthma. All increase risk for serious complications from COVID. #ihaveapreexistingcondition Does the face of #chronicillness look different than you thought?

[Rahie T @Rahie_T]

“THE SYMPATHETIC SOCIOPATH:
GIVING TRAUMATIC
BACKSTORIES TO MARVEL
DC VILLAINS” I love that a professor from University of Colorado, Denver wrote this

https://t.co/LPPQwTVQVL

[🕸️Dr.T, PhD @chydorina]

I threw myself into psychotherapy and mind-body stuff like brain-retraining and meditation as soon as I was dx'd with 'Conversion Disorder' - by a Neurologist.

It seemed highly unlikely to me that what was going on was 'psychological' and not simply post-infectious (given that I had had Dengue and did field work in the Tropics) but I had had some recent trauma related to student gun violence and thought maybe it was a mind issue.

I was a tenured professor of Biology at the time - giving international invited talks and supervising dozens of students and teaching huge undergrad courses and small advanced graduate courses. I was publishing and getting grants and doing field work and working my ass off and loving it. Life was an adventure.

For 3 years after the diagnosis I Iived and breathed meditation and CBT and GET and brain re-training. I followed doctors suggestions and took anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds and later even antipsychotics. I was going to recover. There was simply no other option I was willing to entertain and if the experts said this was the way - well.... of course I jumped on the bandwagon. Having conversion disorder was a much better option than an incurable untreatable invisible mystery disease.

Unfortunately, during this period I kept declining and finally I was bedridden and severe - unable to care for myself and had to move in with family and sell my house. I was in my mid 40s. It was not until I started treating my dysfunctional biochemistry, pathogens, mitochondrial dysfunction, and hypometabolism that I began to stabilize and my baseline began to increase. I wasted years on mind-body interventions - years that I could have spent focused on recovering from post-infectious dysfunction. I truly believe that if I had been given the right diagnosis to start I would not have declined to severe and lost my entire life.

Its so crazy - its like these bozos think we didnt try all this stuff. Many if not most of us have tried everything - from God to psychedelics and everything in between.

[PolyBio @polybioRF]

Said Dr. Mark Painter in a recent episode of PolyBio’s Lab Visits: “What we’re seeing in a third of people with Long COVID, maybe more, is evidence that T cells recognizing either SARS-CoV-2—or in some different people, herpesviruses—are persistently activated. Which is suggestive that those viruses are present somewhere in the body.”

Listen to the full interview here: https://t.co/g3CnbSqNsl

[Kathryn @kadamssl]

Loud and clear for journalists in the back: If you talk about post pandemic-onset increases of the very same “development vulnerabilities” that have been linked to COVID infections, yet point only to lockdowns and fail to consider viral impacts, you are fundamentally unserious.

[Putrino Lab @PutrinoLab]

I highly urge folks to listen to this incredible and informative podcast episode. We NEED people appropriately dosed with doxy after a tick bite. In many Lyme-endemic areas in the northeast, almost all ticks now carry Lyme and it can spread mins-hrs, not days, after the bite

[Ryan Hart @thisdudelikesAI]

Paper link: https://t.co/9Moht9k4hg

[Ryan Hart @thisdudelikesAI]

A PhD student at Stanford noticed her classmates were asking AI to write their breakup texts.

So she ran a study. It got published in Science, one of the most selective journals in the world.

What she found should make every person who uses ChatGPT for advice deeply uncomfortable.

Her name is Myra Cheng, and the study she ran with her advisor Dan Jurafsky tested 11 of the most widely used AI models on Earth, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek, across nearly 12,000 real social situations.

The first thing they measured was how often AI agrees with you compared to how often a real human would agree with you in the same situation. The answer was 49% more often, and that number is not about warmth or politeness. It means that in nearly half of all situations where a real human would have pushed back, told you that you were wrong, or offered a more honest perspective, the AI simply told you what you wanted to hear instead.

Then they pushed harder. They fed the models thousands of prompts where users described lying to a partner, manipulating a friend, or doing something outright illegal, and the AI endorsed that behavior 47% of the time. Not one model out of eleven. Not a specific version of one product. Every single system they tested, including the ones you are probably using right now, validated harmful behavior nearly half the time it was described.

The second experiment is the part that should genuinely disturb you. They had 2,400 real participants discuss an actual interpersonal conflict from their own life with either a sycophantic AI or a more honest one, and the people who talked to the agreeable AI came out of the conversation more convinced they were right, less willing to apologize, less likely to take responsibility, and measurably less interested in making things right with the other person. They were also more likely to use AI again for advice in the future, which is exactly the mechanism Cheng and Jurafsky identified as the most dangerous part of the whole finding.

The AI is not just telling you what you want to hear. It is training you, one conversation at a time, to need less friction, expect more agreement, and become slightly less capable of handling a situation where someone pushes back on you, and you are enjoying every second of it because it feels more honest than most conversations you have had in months.
Jurafsky said it in a single sentence after the paper came out. Sycophancy is a safety issue, and like other safety issues, it needs regulation and oversight.

Cheng was more direct about what you should actually do right now. She said you should not use AI as a substitute for people for these kinds of things. That is the best thing to do for now.

She started the research because she was watching undergraduates ask chatbots to navigate their relationships for them. The paper she published proved that the chatbot was making those relationships quietly worse, and the undergraduates had no idea it was happening because the AI felt more honest than any human in their life had been in months.

[RTHM @RTHM_Health]

Have you tried ketotifen for Long COVID, ME/CFS, or MCAS-related symptoms?

According to our data from patients prescribed ketotifen through RTHM, 41% reported improvements in their symptoms, and 32% of those who improved experienced significant benefits.

Ketotifen works as an oral antihistamine and mast cell stabilizer, helping calm overactive immune responses that may contribute to allergic symptoms, food intolerances, poor sleep, GI symptoms, and post-exertional malaise (PEM).

Swipe to see why some RTHM users are finding ketotifen to be a helpful tool in managing complex chronic illness.

You can explore whether compounded oral ketotifen is right for you through a clinician-reviewed treatment assessment. Click the link in our bio to get started.

#MCAS #MECFS #LongCOVID #ChronicIllness #Dysautonomia #RTHM_health #IACC #Ketotifen

[Nicholas Boyd-Gibbins, MEng, PhD @NBoydGibbins]

Mast cell stabilisers seem to be one of the most widely effective treatments for ME/CFS and Long COVID

They are not in most cases life changing, but a broad percentage of the disease population report a positive response

It raises the question of whether mast cells are key mediators of the disease state, potentially upstream of the CNS axis

And a new class of mast cell depleting drugs are coming. Will depleting mast cells have a significant effect in a significant percentage of patients?

Something to be hopeful for

[Robert 😷 Long COVID 6 🇨🇦🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈 @Rob_DeRosa]

Can’t believe I’m only coming across this paper now after today’s symposium.

For 6 years I’ve been saying my long COVID is SARS-CoV-2 persisting in my nasopharynx and upper airway since day one of my infection. Persistent inflammation. Chronic mucus. Immune activation that never switched off. Something that simply never cleared.

Nobody wanted to hear it. So many eye rolls and blank stares. Dismissed on the regular. Well here we are now. These pictures don’t lie.

This Cell Host & Microbe paper using [18F]F-AraG PET imaging found elevated immune activation specifically in the olfactory and nasopharyngeal region in long COVID patients. Exactly. Where. I. Have. Been. Pointing.

This is what serious long COVID researchers and patients have been saying for years: SARS-CoV-2 persists in mucosal tissues (the gut + nasopharynx especially) and that persistence is what is driving our illness. This paper fits that framework precisely.

For the folks like me with chronic mucus issues, smell changes, neurocognitive symptoms, GI issues, and that feeling something “never cleared,” this is finally research that says: “I hear you” & “I see you.”

So again as I’ve said before and I’ll say it again - mark my words - : viral persistence in the upper airway/nasopharynx = long COVID.

🔗 https://t.co/hIq6G0Xz1s

[Jon Douglas @atranscendedman]

Emoji summary of what was interesting to me

🩸 Across 6 papers, microclots emerged as real, measurable and potentially reversible, offering a biomarker for Long COVID treatment trials.

🦠 SARS-CoV-2 signals in intestinal cells suggest persistent viral material may help drive ongoing gut immune disruption in Long COVID.

🧬 Gut organoids reveal how genetic variants may disrupt intestinal barrier and immune function.

💊 Maraviroc plus pravastatin improved gut symptoms in early findings, while larazotide was linked to improved fatigue, gut and circulation symptoms. Both need further trials.

🐒 In monkeys, the ileum may harbor persistent SARS-CoV-2 alongside ongoing immune activation.

🐈 In feline infectious peritonitis, immune cells may help harbor and spread coronavirus.

🛡️ In Long COVID, at least 40% showed T-cell evidence of possible persistent viral material, while virus specific T-cells also showed stronger cell killing signals.

💦 Microfluidic testing detected SARS-CoV-2 RNA in some people with Long COVID and after recovery.

🔄 In 19 adults with Long COVID, MENSA biomarker status shifted over 180 days during an ongoing antiviral feasibility trial.

🧪 VIPER is testing 6 assay programs and plans to analyze more than 440 samples from blood, fluids and gut tissue to investigate viral persistence.

🫀 SARS-CoV-2 RNA in artery plaques may help sustain inflammation and worsen atherosclerosis.

📸 PET imaging may help track tissue immune activation and treatment response in Long COVID.

🦠 In chronic infection models, macrophages and other myeloid cells in the intestine and lung may harbor virus after acute infection. Depleting these cells cleared viral reservoirs.

🧠 In CCI patients, disrupted cerebrospinal fluid flow may impair clearance of metabolites and chronic antigen, potentially fueling brain inflammation and neurological symptoms.

[elle carnitine 🍉 @elle_carnitine]

A recent study in Nature Medicine shows that pTau-217 precedes Alzheimer's disease by 15 to 20 years. We need more research but based on this, it looks like we should expect an enormous wave of Alzheimer's disease beginning in roughly 10 years

https://t.co/os8DptzO77

[WACM @_VFK_DAA]

It’s 2026, 6 years in. Most Long COVID patients still don’t realize their cardiovascular damage isn’t just a scar from acute COVID.
It’s an active process: persistent low-grade inflammation and ongoing cardiac remodeling. The fire never went out; it’s still reshaping your heart.

[WACM @_VFK_DAA]

@gymrat_bookworm "Organ/tissue damage from acute virus"

That is not correct: in Long COVID, low-grade inflammation and microvascular damage persist in most patients, and tissue remodeling continues for years after the acute phase.

https://t.co/ip1LAWIIsw

[Neurologist Mom @NeurologistMom]

Good news! Patient-Reported Adverse Experiences Following Imaging Contrast Exposure in Individuals with Long COVID: A Survey Study has received IRB exemption from MIT with the help of @ImmunoFever and her team, and is now being prepared for publication 🙏🏻

[Michael Moran | APC Injury @internetuserf12]

I've made a Global Long Covid Registry (Anonymous). Add yourself by clicking on the pin in the middle of the ocean. - https://t.co/iaMOGpEhJL

[Jon Douglas @atranscendedman]

University of Exeter with Attomarker, 159 participants, a new antibody test suggests at least 62% of long COVID cases may involve persistent virus while 12% show overactive immunity, offering a path to more targeted treatments.

https://t.co/3d7I8Hs1P1

[Bendy by Birthright @gymrat_bookworm]

If you have a long covid or ME/CFS dx, you NEED to be screened for hypermobility, and if you have hypermobility, you NEED to have advanced imaging of the brain, spine, and blood vessels head-to-toe, because I bet most of us qualify for 1-5 interventional radiology and/or surgical procedures and that's why we are laid up in bed.

I've only had the bottom HALF of my blood vessels properly screened and I'm already eligible for one interventional radiology procedure.

I'm just really learning about spiky-leaky now. It's gonna piss off so many of you, because I think it's going to resonate with so many of you.

[Brandon Luu, MD @BrandonLuuMD]

Literally just having a delusional golden retriever mindset measurably changes outcomes and physiology.

Sleep badly? Convince yourself you're well rested.
Stressful day? Convince yourself it's fuel.
Failed? Convince yourself it's useful data.

[Jack | amatica health @JackHadfield14]

This is maybe the single best trial in Long COVID.

I submitted an application requesting a keytruda trial in Long COVID 3 years ago and it was initially rejected as a suggestion.

I know multiple anecdotes of cancer patients achieving remission of Long COVID after Keytruda.