MDPI (Mask side-effects)
We were able to demonstrate a statistically significant correlation of the observed adverse effect of hypoxia and the symptom of fatigue with p < 0.05 in the quantitative evaluation of the primary studies. Our review of the literature shows that both healthy and sick people can experience Mask-Induced Exhaustion Syndrome (MIES), with typical changes and symptoms that are often observed in combination, such as an increase in breathing dead space volume [22,24,58,59], increase in breathing resistance [31,35,60,61], increase in blood carbon dioxide [13,15,17,19,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,35], decrease in blood oxygen saturation [18,19,21,23,28,29,30,31,32,33,34], increase in heart rate [23,29,30,35], increase in blood pressure [25,35], decrease in cardiopulmonary capacity [31], increase in respiratory rate [15,21,23,34,36], shortness of breath and difficulty breathing [15,17,19,21,23,25,29,31,34,35,60,71,85,101,133], headache [19,27,29,37,66,67,68,71,83], dizziness [23,29], feeling hot and clammy [17,22,29,31,35,44,71,85,133], decreased ability to concentrate [29], decreased ability to think [36,37], drowsiness [19,29,32,36,37], decrease in empathy perception [99], impaired skin barrier function [37,72,73] with itching [31,35,67,71,72,73,91,92,93], acne, skin lesions and irritation [37,72,73], overall perceived fatigue and exhaustion”
“…Wearing masks does not consistently cause clinical deviations from the norm of physiological parameters, but according to the scientific literature, a long-term pathological consequence with clinical relevance is to be expected owing to a longer-lasting effect with a subliminal impact and significant shift in the pathological direction.”
“…We not only found evidence in the reviewed mask literature of potential long-term effects, but also evidence of an increase in direct short-term effects with increased mask-wearing time in terms of cumulative effects for: carbon dioxide retention, drowsiness, headache, feeling of exhaustion, skin irritation (redness, itching) and microbiological contamination (germ colonization) [19,22,37,66,68,69,89,91,92].”