Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
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angryhacademic.bsky.social
Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
@angryhacademic.bsky.social
#LongCovid Scientific Consultant
PhD Nutrition & Metabolism
Hon Research Fellow, Lund Uni
Posts: nutrition ▪ health ▪ all-things-science ▪ activism ▪ fun facts ▪ #PostVac

Donations: https://ko-fi.com/drsmash

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LongCovidSC
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Want help navigating the #longCOVID #postvac and related #chronicillness space? Want evidence, rather than be sold another protocol?

If so, I aim to help bring some clarity to things!

Book an appointment: lc-sc.co.uk/book-an-appo...
✉️ [email protected] (🚫please no DMs)
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
I’m incredibly grateful for my husband.

He never doubts my symptoms. He’s always supportive and willing to take things off my plate so I can rest.

I wish everyone in the #MECFS community had a caregiver like him.

Too many have to go this illness alone often to the detriment of their health.
November 28, 2025 at 4:45 AM
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
Just another day, shouting into the void. 😩

#ChalderFatigueSyndrome
November 28, 2025 at 11:15 AM
This is cool:
Anti-obesity actions of mastication driven by histamine neurons in rats
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14610247/

Chewing activates histamine neurons, implicated in satiety. But what implications might this have in MCAS and ME?
Anti-obesity actions of mastication driven by histamine neurons in rats - PubMed
Implications of mastication in energy intake and expenditure regulated by histamine (HA) neurons were investigated in rats. Depletion of neuronal HA from the mesencephalic trigeminal sensory nucleus (Me5) reduced eating speed, but that from a satiety center of the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) inc …
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
November 28, 2025 at 11:16 PM
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
I was nominated for the Disabled Creators' Award for the categories below:

🌸 Intersectionality Matters - Disabled BIPOC Creator of the Year

🌸 Chatty Gamer Award - Disabled Just Chatting Creator of the Year

Vote for me & many other talented creators!

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Disabled Creators' Award Voting Form (Round Two)
Vote for your favorite creators for the Disabled Creators' Award. Please read each description carefully. There are 18 categories, and creators can be nominated for multiple awards. This form is due b...
docs.google.com
November 28, 2025 at 8:40 PM
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
Australia just recorded zero cervical cancer cases in women under 25 for the first time since records began in 1982. The amazing result of HPV vaccination.
November 28, 2025 at 8:44 PM
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
Fun fact: peregrine falcons dive at ~200 mph, making them the fastest known animal. At such high speeds, air pressure can damage their lungs; to counter this they have little boney cones in their nose, similar to a jet engine
blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/2016...
Watch: youtu.be/legzXQlFNjs?...
2016 | UCL UCL Culture Blog
UCL Homepage
blogs.ucl.ac.uk
November 28, 2024 at 9:26 PM
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
Fun fact: emerging evidence suggests we taste sweet more intensely in the morning and this has nothing to do with our blood sugar or insulin but does track well (seemingly causally) with a key fullness & body weight regulating hormone, leptin
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18633111/
Diurnal variation of human sweet taste recognition thresholds is correlated with plasma leptin levels - PubMed
This synchronization of diurnal variation in leptin levels and sweet taste recognition thresholds suggests a mechanistic connection between these two variables in humans.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
November 28, 2024 at 9:21 PM
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
Fun fact: cancer cells (in a petri dish) can hijack the mitochondria from immune cells via physical nanotubes. this depletes the immune cells of energy and may help the cancer cells grow
nature.com/articles/s41...

easy to read summary:
www.newscientist.com/article/2298...
Intercellular nanotubes mediate mitochondrial trafficking between cancer and immune cells - Nature Nanotechnology
Cancer cells adopt a series of strategies to evade the immune response mounted by the organism against them. Here we find that tumour cells can hijack mitochondria from immune cells by forming physica...
nature.com
November 28, 2024 at 9:20 PM
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
Fun fact: drinks tins have a thin plastic coating inside to protect the drink from the can and the can from the drink
google.com/amp/s/www.sc...

Cool video here (and another one in the link above too 👆🏻):
x.com/JamieBGall/s...
Viral Video Reveals The Bizarre Way You Can Make a Soda Can Fully Transparent
The world produces a staggering 180 billion aluminium cans every year, but it's a safe bet many of the people consuming those beverages don't know about a hidden material concealed inside the metal cy...
google.com
November 28, 2024 at 9:19 PM
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
Fun fact: platelets are often seen as just plugs to help stop bleeds. However they store & release many things (eg inflammatory proteins, neurotransmitters), & the way they work has been described as similar to circulating neurons
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
Fresh Evidence for Platelets as Neuronal and Innate Immune Cells: Their Role in the Activation, Differentiation, and Deactivation of Th1, Th17, and Tregs during Tissue Inflammation
Recent studies suggest that in addition to their common function in the regulation of thrombosis and hemostasis, platelets also contribute to tissue inflammation affecting adaptive immunity. Platelets...
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
November 28, 2024 at 9:18 PM
Colin Berry who ran the CISCO-21 resistance exercise in long COVID study has replied to my comment 👇🏻

Utterly predictable that he completely bypasses the point of my comment. 🧵
November 28, 2025 at 5:59 PM
#MEAction Scotland's @meactionscotland.bsky.social Summary of Health Board Proposals for Funding
meaction.org.uk/news/2025/11...
News Article - MEAction UK
MEAction UK - Supporting people with ME
meaction.org.uk
November 28, 2025 at 5:41 PM
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
ugh, ffs.

I know, let's give some budget to the gaslighty assholes at NHS GGC CIC for 'services' for pwME.

The same CIC who is still pushing the Lightning Process.

Despite the NG206 now officially being the only ME guidelines in scotland.

Which state clearly "Do not offer LP to #pwME"
NHS Scotland ME/CFS Provision – NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde
The inexactitude of how the Scottish Government's £4.5m allocation of annual funding for specialist services will enable NICE compliant provision for ME/CFS led Rhoda Grant MSP (with assistance from M...
www.meresearch.org.uk
November 28, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
In case you needed one more reason not to use AI …

The CEO of ChatGPT is blaming a teen’s suicide on his failure to follow the terms of service:

Adam Raine, 16, told ChatGPT he was suicidal and the AI bot told him his feelings were valid and even provided suggestions and detailed instructions.
OpenAI says teen's 'misuse' of ChatGPT is to blame for his suicide, because he broke the TOU: 'Users must comply with OpenAI's Usage Policies, which prohibit the use of ChatGPT for suicide or self-har...
The lawyer presenting Adam Raine's family calls the response "disturbing" and I have to agree.
www.pcgamer.com
November 27, 2025 at 8:33 PM
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
"Runctitiononal features"? "Medical fymblal"? "1 Tol Line storee"? This gets worse the longer you look at it. But it's got to be good, because it was published in Nature Scientific Reports last week: www.nature.com/articles/s41... h/t @asa.tsbalans.se
November 27, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
Fun fact: Many people have heard of ghrelin as THE hunger hormone, but emerging evidence suggests insulin-like peptide-5 is also a hunger hormone.

pnas.org/content/111/...

We know loads of fullness hormones but we have not been as successful finding hunger hormones
November 27, 2024 at 9:00 PM
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
Fun fact: figs are essentially inverted flowers; some figs require wasps for pollination who deposit their eggs in the fig and then usually die
link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...
hilgardia.ucanr.edu/fileaccess.c...
pnas.org/content/pnas...
November 27, 2024 at 9:00 PM
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
Fun fact: NASA developed a foamless safe-to-ingest toothpaste for astronauts, that also has application for people with disabilities & kids, called NASAdent
ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citation...

Though using regular toothpaste in space is less of a problem these days: youtu.be/3bCoGC532p8?...
ntrs.nasa.gov
November 27, 2024 at 8:59 PM
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
Fun fact: a chemical in some vinyl gloves (DINP) has some structural similarities to a chemical that makes things spicy (nordihydrocapsaicin). This guy 👇🏻 used that knowledge to make hot sauce out of plastic gloves!
youtu.be/1B3Xi5L6siI?...
Short version:
www.facebook.com/NileRed2/vid...
Turning plastic gloves into hot sauce
YouTube video by NileRed
youtu.be
November 27, 2024 at 8:58 PM
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
Adorable fact: these 👇🏻 are skeleton panda sea squirts (Clavelina ossipandae) 🩻 🐼 🥹
www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/spec...
www.livescience.com/animals/skel...
November 27, 2024 at 8:56 PM
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
📢 #OverlappingIllness Alliance parliamentary drop-in update

Over 50 MPs, Peers, and their colleagues attended the Overlapping Illness Alliance's drop-in event in Parliament yesterday!

The event raised much need awareness and understanding of the impact of
November 27, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Ooh i love this!

A zombie stat in the nutrition world is "you can only live 3 days without water". Despite some effort a while back, I'm yet to find a source. Everyone cites each other saying the same thing, and the trail usually ends when someone writes it sans citation
A thread. 🧵

1. First of all, what is a "zombie stat"? you may ask.

Well, it's a statistic or factoid that persists in the literature despite, and possibly even because of, there being no obvious original source of its existence.
This is really neat!

Today happened to be the day I fell down a bacterial biofilms rabbit hole, while chasing a "zombie stat"... (as you do).
November 27, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Reeves says 'ordinary people' will have to pay 'a little bit more' as she defends Budget tax rises
www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cy...
November 26, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
Fun fact: free radicals are often only seen as the bad guys, but for proper immune function there needs to be a balance between free radicals and antioxidants:

annclinlabsci.org/content/30/2...

Antioxidant rich foods are absolutely important ofc so dont skimp on the fruit and veg!
annclinlabsci.org
November 26, 2024 at 8:09 PM
Reposted by Harriet Carroll: Long Covid Scientific Consultancy
Fun fact: some people can voluntarily tense a muscle in their ears creating a sort of 'roaring' sound that they can hear
sciencealert.com/some-people-...

Can you?
November 26, 2024 at 8:08 PM