There are now many people suffering with Long Covid and it can be very debilitating so I wanted to give help you understand what causes it and what you can do about it. Please share this with anyone you know who you think may find it helpful.
The most recent statistic I could find suggested that over one million people in the UK were suffering from Long Covid by May 2021 and by now that number will be even higher. I am a member of various Face Book communities of people who are affected, and I have been struck by how badly this condition can affect people and also the lack of understanding, empathy and support that often they are subject to. Not only do sufferers feel ill, at times struggle to do basic acts of daily living such as getting out of bed, cooking, or looking after their families, but they feel that they are being unfairly treated by employers and the benefits system and are often not able to get the help they need through the NHS.
I am struck by people I know with Long Covid and how similar it is to ME or chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and with my nutritional therapy and functional medicine training I know that the root causes are likely to be similar including problems with energy production, inflammation, and the immune system. Of course there is much we don’t know yet and there are thousands of research papers being published all the time which will help scientists and health professionals to find the best ways to support people to get well again.
What Is Long Covid?
The NHS definition of Long Covid is when you still have ongoing symptoms more than 12 weeks after you had an acute infection of Covid-19. The data suggests that this applies to around 10% of people who have had Covid-19. With the statistics I mentioned early this means there are a lot of people struggling with ongoing health issues after having Covid-19 and there is a need for specific tailored packages of support to help them regain their health.
There are trial services being established in England with NHS Long Covid clinics and other partnership projects including with The Chrysalis Effect who specialise in recovery from ME and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. In Scotland the government has set aside funding to develop services likely to be done by working in partnership with NHS and private or non-profit specialist services. The good news is that the services being developed are generally taking a holistic approach and looking at health and well-being as including lifestyle and nutrition and involving a range of health professionals. As we will see the symptoms of Long Covid are varied and individuals are likely to need personalised solutions to help them get fully well again.
I want to clarify that Long Covid is itself not a diagnosis, just like chronic fatigue syndrome, instead it is a list of clinical symptoms. As I mentioned above not everyone with Long Covid will present with the same symptoms as the way covid affects our bodies is different and will affect different organs and tissues in different people. This is the reason that Long Covid is not a diagnosable condition as there is no single set of symptoms or specific testing that can be done to positively identify it as such. Again this is the same as with chronic fatigue syndrome which has led to my people not being given a ‘diagnosis’ or identified with the condition, often for long period of time. The International Classification of Disease ICD-11 for Mortality and Morbidity Statistics does now include post viral fatigue syndrome which sits under Other Disorders Of The Nervous System which is at least some progress and here you will find ME and CFS included in the list.
You may also find that your doctor may write something different in your medical notes, as there are other diagnosable conditions that often come along with Long Covid such as Autonomic Disorder, Functional Disorder, POTs, Fibromyalgia and MCAS. Many of these conditions are commonly associated with post-viral fatigue but can be diagnosed separately too.
So What Are The Symptoms Of Long Covid?
There is no one test a doctor can do to diagnose Long Covid and even if there was it wouldn’t necessarily give you any answers on how to resolve it. When you go and visit your GP it is often a short 10 minute consultation, it is difficult to cover all your symptoms or have a full discussion about diet, sleep, or stress in addition to this. That is why it often takes several visits and in some cases of chronic fatigue even years before the condition is successfully identified.
So let’s look at the symptoms of Long Covid. You can find the NHS list here: https://www.yourcovidrecovery.nhs.uk/what-is-covid-19/long-covid/ but from my experience and listening to clients and other professionals there are a few more that we could add in.
Breathlessness
Cough
Chest tightness
Chest pain
Palpitations
Fatigue
Fever
Pain
Cognitive impairment (‘brain fog’, loss of concentration or memory issues)
Headache
Sleep disturbance
Pins and needles or numbness
Dizziness
Delirium (in older people)
Abdominal pain
Nausea
Diarrhoea
Anorexia and reduced appetite (in older people)
Weight loss
Joint pain
Muscle pain
Symptoms of depression
Symptoms of anxiety
Tinnitus
Earache
Sore throat
Loss of taste and/or smell
Skin rashes
Many of the symptoms of Long Covid are similar to ME/CFS likely because there are similar underlying root causes affecting the body’s energy production systems, inflammation and immune system. But in addition sufferers of Long Covid often present with a cough and breathlessness which is less common in ME/CFS.
Types of Long Covid
I also want to mention here that there are now recognised to be 4 types of long covid:
Type 1 – post-viral fatigue - Common symptoms include fatigue, aching muscles and difficulty concentrating. Researchers are looking into potential overlap with chronic fatigue syndrome.
Type 2 - fluctuating multi-system symptoms - a variety of symptoms affecting many different areas of the body: the heart, lungs, digestive system, brain, and skin.
Type 3 – lasting organ damage - this does not necessarily mean permanent damage, but changes that last for a number of weeks after the initial COVID-19 infection, to lungs, heart, kidneys etc...
Type 4 – post-intensive care syndrome - already a recognised condition, post-intensive care syndrome describes a collection of physical and psychological issues that patients may experience after leaving the ICU.
So the two sub-types that relates to energy are type 1 and type 2 and again you will see the similarities with chronic fatigue and these two are the types of Long Covid which I will be covering in this blog.
Which Body Systems Does Long Covid Affect?
So you can see from the list of symptoms above that Long Covid sufferers can have many different body systems that are affected, and these include: the immune system, cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal, neurological, musculoskeletal, metabolic, renal, dermatological (skin), otolaryngological (head and neck), haematological (blood) and autonomic (nervous) systems as well as energy production and mental health problems. This explains why the symptoms are so varied for different people.
As nutritional therapist trained in the functional medicine approach, I start by exploring someone’s symptoms in detail so that together we can decide which body systems we should focus on to begin with to try and make the biggest impact on your health. It is important to realise too that all our body systems are interconnected and have an impact on each other and often we need to work on supporting three or four body of them over a period to see big improvements.
What Might Make You More Susceptible To A Virus?
Research tells us that there are three main areas to focus on which are metabolic health which I will explain in more detail and lifestyle and diet. Metabolic health is about how we generate and process energy in our body, it is also about the absence of metabolic disease which is when our energy pathways become disrupted from what is considered normal and can result in chronic disease. We can measure our metabolic health in several ways including looking at blood markers for glucose and insulin, assessing our body fat and measuring our blood pressure. When we think about lifestyle factors we want to consider if we are living our lives in a way that is compatible with good health, are we moving our bodies, managing stress, eating well, sleeping, and resting sufficiently, spending time in nature, avoiding pollution, and fitting in with the natural seasonal patterns of day light? When we think about diet, research has shown that we are at risk if we are deficient in vitamin D or C, zinc, iron, selenium, or omega-3 fats which are all important for our immune system. In addition to this a diet high in processed food and refined carbohydrates puts us at risk of metabolic disease too and again this is a risk factor too.
Why Is The Virus The Trigger For Chronic Fatigue?
As the most common symptom for Long Covid is fatigue I am going to focus in on this a little bit more now. You might wonder why some people get Long Covid and some do not. We know from studies of people with CFS that the virus is often only the trigger for chronic fatigue and not necessarily the only factor affecting it. By this I mean that we must look back before the virus to what was going on in our lives in the build up to it.
One of the difficulties is that there is generally not one single thing that causes us to be fatigued. Various factors contribute to fatigue, and these include mental stressors such as having too much work, too little control over your work, uncertainty, or a lack of clarity about what to do and having your values compromised. These include emotional stressors which are things like trauma, relationship or family dynamic problems, grief, fear, financial problems, isolation, anger, or frustration. Then there are less obvious stressors, but which are still important in terms of affecting our energy and these include environmental and physical stressors. So environmental ones might include chemicals in our personal care products or cleaning agents, pesticide exposure, air pollution or a lack of connection with nature. Physical stressors include too much or not enough exercise, lack of sleep, illness or injury, an unhealthy diet or nutrient deficiencies, poor blood sugar control and high body fat. All of these put our bodies under stress and the problem is that over time these stressors accumulate quietly, and we cope with them but then something happens which tips us over the edge and our bodies refuse to cooperate and keep going.
I think if we are honest then most of us are living our day to day existence with several of these stressors going on all the time as they are endemic in our society. Some of us we will have periods of very high ongoing chronic stress, and this is when things start to get problematic for the body. Eventually we reach a point when the natural balance in our body can’t be retained, it becomes overwhelmed and disrupted and it can lead to disease and ill health. The virus is often this trigger point, it is a stress too big for the body to cope with on top of the background stress we are all subject to. Our bodies are really just biochemical processes, and it can’t differentiate between one type of stress or another. It is just the total cumulative effect that is important. When some of us get the virus at that point our body can no longer cope and bounce back and we find it difficult to regain the balance that gives us our health.
Why Do I Feel So Fatigued?
When we experience some form of ongoing fatigue it is our bodies way of trying to protect us. When our body senses it is overwhelmed, our immune system makes us exhibit sickness like behaviour even after the infectious period has passed. This sickness behaviour includes tiredness makes you want to lie down, and sleep and it is there for a reason. It is your body’s way of saying something is wrong and you need to rest and recover. In our modern society it is also a difficult message to be presented with as we have children to look after, jobs to do, parents to care for and most of us don’t feel we can stop for very long, so we often push ourselves to get back to work and start exercising too early.
At a cellular level what may be happening is a bit more complicated but basically there is a balance between the cells being happy and sensing they are safe and therefore producing lots of energy for the body and the opposite. If our cells, especially the mitochondria in our cells, sometimes called our powerhouses because they make our energy, sense things are not good and they might be under threat then they switch from energy production to cell defence mode. They don’t all do it at once but if enough of them swap over then you are going to feel very fatigued. This cell defence is a kind of survival mode and makes you feel fatigued so that you don’t use more energy up doing non-essential activities. When they do this, they release chemical messages that results in inflammation and an immune system response. This then generates the sickness behaviours I mentioned earlier, and it is a vicious circle as the immune system sends out its own messages which can be inflammatory and adversely affect your mitochondria. People with Long Covid and chronic fatigue have markers in their blood suggesting increased inflammation and immune activation.
Research is also pointing now to the fact that the virus can get into the brain and affect the neurons potentially leading to tissue damage and inflammation. There may also be an impact on the nervous system and blood flow in the brain. Again this could be another mechanism contributing to fatigue and brain fog too.
Why Are Seemingly Healthy People Are Affected?
So the mechanisms I have described above can also help to explain why seemingly healthy people are affected by long covid and chronic fatigue. Most of the time you can’t look at someone and see how much stress is accumulating, you don’t know what their metabolic health is like and probably not even their mental health, you may have no idea if they have chemical exposure or whether they have had previous trauma. When I previously suffered from post-viral fatigue myself for a year, I would have said I was extremely healthy but looking back I now recognise that I wasn’t eating as healthily as I could have been, I was in a very stressful job, I was doing extreme physical activity and using chocolate and coffee to keep me going. Looking back I now recognise that it is likely that my blood sugar balance was probably poor and therefore my metabolic health might not have been great, my nervous system and mitochondria were probably under a lot of stress, and I likely had a certain level of background inflammation and immune system activating going on as a result.
Building on this, all these factors affect how our genes are expressed. They don’t change our genes which we are born with, but they can help switch certain genes on and off, something called epigenetics, and they can affect which proteins are instructed to be made in our cells with important consequences. This is a new area of science, but researchers now think that all the lifestyle stressors I talked about above can change our gene expression with likely impacts on our health. This means that epigenetic changes can affect how well we recover after having Covid-19. Our gene expression helps to control our bodies biochemical pathways.
The ACE2 receptor is important as it is the site on cells that the Covid-19 virus binds to. We all have different amounts of ACE2 receptors, and we now know that how many receptors we have can be affected by our epigenetics including underlying diseases and diet related effect. The receptors are found in all the mucus membranes in the body, so hence our oral/nasal passages, our lungs, and our gut. These of course are where most of the initial symptoms of the coronavirus infection are found with symptoms including breathing problems, lack of sense of taste/smell and diarrhoea. This might help explain why some people are less likely to show symptoms or have long term effects.
Scientists also know that coronaviruses themselves can have an epigenetic effect altering the response of our immune system and other important processes in the body. And it is likely that both our genes and our environment create our individual response to the virus and help determine the severity of disease.
Another reason why seemingly healthy people can be affected is because previous infectious bacteria and viruses like EBV (Epstein Barr Virus) or Herpes viruses can become reactivated. When our immune system is under threat from a new virus it is possible that the healthy balance of bacteria and viruses in our gut, lungs and skin becomes disrupted and enables previous infections that were dormant and kept under control to resurface.
I think you are probably getting the idea why it can be difficult for doctors to unpick what is going on during a short consultation and why people suffering from long covid need individualised solutions and support to help them get well again.
Why Are More Women Than Men Are Affected With Long Covid And CFS?
78% of people self-identifying with having long covid are women according to a study published in the Lancet Medical Journal. This is very similar to chronic fatigue syndrome where with women experience it at approximately 1.5 to 2 times higher levels than men.
There have been various theories put forward as to why this is, including differences in immune system, nervous system, gut bacterial populations, hormones, and genetic factors. There has been no consensus in the scientific community and some researchers point to lifestyle factors including previous trauma, chronic stress, personality type and amount of responsibility at home and work all playing a potential part too.
So Most Importantly What Can You D To Get Well Again?
So although I have repeatedly said that we need to look at personalised solutions there are some basics that I think everyone should be doing to support their health and especially if you have Long Covid or chronic fatigue. To personalise this a little bit have a think about which areas you consider would be most beneficial for you considering your own symptoms as well as your own diet and lifestyle and make a start there.
For me there are 6 key things to consider:
· Eating for Energy
· Reducing Inflammation
· Managing Stress
· Supporting Your Immune System
· Syncing Your Body Clock
· Moving Your Body
1. Eating for Energy
When I talk about eating for energy, I don’t mean calories, instead I mean making sure you provide your body with the right types of macronutrients and micronutrients to fuel how your body works. Micronutrients are vitamins and minerals and other compounds that our bodies need in very small amounts. These micronutrients are part of the chemical formula of important molecules such as enzymes that are needed for reactions to occur, to build and breakdown different compounds. We have thousands of enzymes all doing very important jobs even though you are not aware of it. Some of the most important nutrients for energy production are Vitamin C, B vitamins, Iron, Sulphur, Magnesium, Zinc, CoQ10, copper and Alpha-lipoic acid and ideally, we get as much as we can from food without needing to take a supplement. To do this you need to eat nutrient dense foods like fruits and vegetables, meat and fish, eggs, nuts, and seeds. Whole unprocessed foods are best, processed foods like pasta, bread, cereal tend to have very little nutritional value. So for breakfast you might have sauteed onions, peppers and garlic with an egg fried in coconut oil or perhaps coconut yoghurt with blueberries topped a nut and seed based granola.
Moving onto mention macronutrients too. Carbohydrates are not essential foods, and it might surprise you to know that we can survive without them. But high fibre fruit and vegetables which do contain carbohydrates play an important role as they are fermented in our guts and produce short chain fatty acids which among other things can be used by our mitochondria (those power houses) to make energy. Eating your carbohydrates mainly as vegetables is best as it provides plenty of fibre, keeps your carb intake low and provides essential vitamins and minerals for the body too. I would like to encourage you to eat your greens every day as they are a great source of B vitamins which are needed for energy production. Greens include things like spinach, kale, broccoli, chard, parsley, coriander, spring cabbage and lettuce.
Next up we have healthy fats which we need for energy, they also help to transport fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K around the body and build healthy cell walls that enable key nutrients to pass through and into our cells. They should be one of our main sources of fuel for the body. Healthy fats are found in coconut oil, ghee, olive oil, hemp oil, avocado, nuts, seeds, eggs, oily fish, and fatty cuts of meat.
Last of the macronutrients is protein which provides the building blocks for most of your body’s tissues and helps to keep you feeling full for longer which reduces cravings for unhealthy snacks and junk food. Eating a palm sized portion of protein at each meal is a good guide. Protein can include animal sources such as red meat, chicken, fish, eggs and dairy or vegetarian sources such as lentils, beans, peas, tofu, nuts, and seeds.
2. Reducing Inflammation
My best tip for reducing inflammation is to make your plate colourful! Eating lots of colourful plant foods that are packed full of micronutrients, including vitamins and minerals as well as polyphenols, plant chemicals that are anti-inflammatory, is a good starting point. Eating berries is one great way to do this. Blueberries, raspberries, strawberries are all great additions to your plate. As they are also high in fibre these plant foods help to keep your gut healthy by feeding the bugs that live in your lower gut and they then produce helpful compounds with an anti-inflammatory effect too.
Avoiding foods that are high in carbohydrates and that are highly processed will help reduce inflammation in your body. Foods that are high in carbohydrates like biscuits, cakes, cereals, pasta and bread all breakdown into glucose and can make it difficult to keep your blood sugar stable. Regular high blood sugar levels are inflammatory in nature and can lead to metabolic health problems like diabetes or other chronic diseases. Highly processed foods containing colourings, flavourings, preservatives, stabilisers, and emulsifiers can all contribute towards gut problems, leading to inflammation too. Getting back to basics and eating whole fresh produce is the best option.
3. Supporting Your Immune System
First make sure that you get sufficient rest. Your body is telling you that you need to rest, so listen to it. Try not to overdo it, ask for help if you need it, see if your work would let you have a phased return or a couple more weeks off. Avoid overdoing exercise, pace yourself and make sure that whatever you do today you would be capable of repeating tomorrow, if not then cut it back.
Secondly you can make sure that you are getting sufficient vitamin D. As we are heading into winter in the UK you will not be able to get sufficient from being outside in sunlight and will need to take a supplement. Recent research suggests that taking between 800 – 00IU of vitamin D each day is helpful to prevent Covid-19 and suggests a higher dose of up to 4,000IU for 4 weeks reducing to 800-1000IU after for anyone for who may be deficient in vitamin D (those more at risk may have darker skin, be obese, elderly or live in a care setting).
Also make sure you are getting enough zinc, vitamin C, iron, selenium, and omega-3 in your diet, or from a supplement if this is not possible, as these are all important for supporting immune health. You can find zinc in meat, some beans, pumpkin seeds, yoghurt, cashew nuts and chickpeas nuts, seeds, and meat. Vitamin C is in high amounts in sweet peppers, kiwi, citrus fruit, green peppers, strawberries, broccoli, and brussels sprouts. The best sources of iron are meat, seafood and poultry, beans, lentils, spinach and peas and some nuts. Selenium in brazil nuts, tuna, halibut, sardines, ham, beef, turkey, and cottage cheese. Omega-3 oils can be found in nuts especially walnuts and flax and chia seeds, olive oil and oily fish such as mackerel, salmon, herring, anchovies, and sardines.
4. Managing Stress
Stress is ubiquitous now, that means it is everywhere and hard to escape from. You feel it if you lose your car keys or are late for an appointment, forget to buy something for dinner, or the kids are upset, you have too much work to do and too little time or you are on the end of a cross word said by a work colleague or family member. While these all might seem small, if your days are filled with small stressors, you can find you are living under a chronic stress situation. On top of this some of you might be dealing with bigger stressors like financial problems, loss of a loved one or a car accident. We all need to find ways to manage our stress and calm down our nervous system as research shows it is linked to inflammation and immune system activation. If we can do this, we are sending our body a message that we are safe, and everything is going to be ok and if we keep trying to do this eventually our body will respond, and we will begin to feel better.
There are lots of ways to do this, but my favourite is spending time mindfully in nature, you can do this in your garden or a park or anywhere you can find a spot with trees that you can walk in or sit in. Try to be really present, to do this focus on each of your sense, what can you see – look for the detail – the veins on a leaf or beetles on the ground, feel the bark of a tree and pick up sand on a beach, what can you smell is there a scent from flowers or the trees or the sea and finally you can taste things, wild herbs if you know what you are doing – or you can take something like berries or an apple with you and really concentrate on the tanginess and sweetness and how it feels in your mouth. Then you can think about how your body and mind feel, how does it feel when your foot touches the ground, how about the wind or sun on your face. All of this helps to ground you in the present, so you are not worrying about the past or the future. Next best and something I also do a lot of is meditation using an App like Calm or Headspace or just sitting in silence or listening to calming music and concentrating on how your breath and body feel.
5. Syncing Your Body Clock
As humans we have a 24 hour body clock that is mainly controlled by the phases of light and dark from day and night. There are other factors that influence it too, like being active during the day and resting at night and eating during our active phase and fasting at night. It is important that we keep our body clock in sync because when it gets out of balance it is associated with chronic disease and poor health. There are plenty of ways to do this, but the key ones are getting bright natural light first thing in the morning and as much natural light as possible during the day as well as avoiding artificial light at night especially just before bed. To do this you need to avoid using screens for an hour before you go to sleep, that means your mobile phone, TV, iPad, kindles and ideally you keep your home lights dimmed too. Another option that works well is to wear blue light blocking glasses for an hour before bed, you will be sleepy and yawning very quickly! Keeping your body clock in sync sends a message saying that all is well which is what we want our body to be hearing or feeling.
6. Moving Your Body
Listening to your body is very important. You might have heard of pacing; this is where you try to make sure you don’t overdo the amount of exercise you do so that you feel set back again a day or two later. When this happens it is because your energy production can’t keep up and takes a short cut where it makes lactic acid which is more difficult to recycle and results in you feeling fatigued and can cause muscle pain. Being aware of what you can do while very slowly trying to increase it within your comfort zone is the best way forward. When I say exercise, I really mean movement as proper exercise may well be too much for you to begin with if you have Long Covid or chronic fatigue, but it is still important to move your body. Moving your body again sends positive messages and helps keep your body clock in sync by signalling the active phase to it. This might mean doing very gentle stretches a few times a day to begin with and then perhaps adding in a gentle walk. I think a helpful way of working out how much is ok and how much is too much is to only do something that you could repeat again tomorrow. If you can’t repeat the activity the next day, then it is too much at the moment. If you were someone who was very active before you had the virus then you may feel very frustrated and try to push on through, but this often results in longer term fatigue problems so just try to listen hard to what your body is trying to tell you.
Of course there is a lot more I could talk about, but I can’t cover it all in this one blog! If I was working directly with you, I would consider your symptoms, your diet and lifestyle and any test results you may have so that together we create an individualised plan for you to work on. But the six tips in this blog are a good starting to point and will hopefully provide you with something you can think about and see what areas of your nutrition and lifestyle you could improve on.
The rest of this blog is going to focus on a bit more practical advice to help keep you focused on your goal of getting back your energy. Please don’t be disheartened if it doesn’t happen overnight. When you think about how long you might have had some form of stress in your life or how long you might not have been eating healthily or perhaps have had a sedentary desk or job or even the opposite and been an ultra-runner it will give you an idea that it is likely to take a few weeks to put things right again.
Stay Positive
A positive mentality is important. Research shows that with many different health problems people are more likely to recover if they believe they will and if they have a positive outlook in general. You can use positive affirmations or music to lift you up when you need it. I like to use affirmations in the shower in the morning – just choose three words which you are choosing to try to be such as calm, healthy, energised, mindful, happy, and repeat them to yourself a few times or write them down and pin them up somewhere you will regularly see them. If it feels like they are not true them you can preface them with “I am going be calm, happy etc…”. You can also ask your friends and family for help and support to keep you going, if you find it hard to explain to them what Long Covid is then ask them to read this article.
Don’t Expect To Get Well Without a Bumpy Ride
The road back to health will have its ups and downs; you will get days where it feels like one step forward and two steps back but you will get there! I like this diagram which I think says it all, keep heading towards where you want to be and you will get there, keep hold of the belief that you will get well again as this is so important. Don’t let the odd bad day hold you back too much, of course there are likely to be more of them to begin with so just bear that in mind.
How Should I Get Started?
Before I finish, I want to make three suggestions to help you get started on making changes to get well again. As we all know sticking to a plan and making changes to our lives can be difficult, we have all had New Year resolutions that we couldn’t keep up after only a couple of weeks. The trick is to make sure you have the three things you need for success and to keep it simple!
First you need to be motivated, so consider why you want to get well again, why is it so important to you and what difference will it make?
You need to know what you are going to do, and you want to keep it very simple. So it might be that you are going to eat an apple every day or that you are going to do some stretching twice a day. Don’t take on too much and only start one new habit at a time.
Third you need to know how it is going to fit into your daily routine. Getting out of bed, brushing your teeth, or making breakfast probably feels natural and you don’t need to think about doing it too much as it is part of your daily routine (at least when you were well). Do now you know what you are going to do you need to make it into a new habit by attaching it to something in your daily routine. So perhaps you will eat an apple after you have had your cup of tea at 11am or maybe you will stretch after you get dressed and before you have breakfast. You can add a reminder on a note pad or put it in your phone to begin with too.
Only add in another new habit when the first one has successfully become part of your daily life.
I really hope that this blog gives you a feeling that you can get better, and you will get better. Do seek out support if you need it from someone like myself who has a special interest in Long Covid or chronic fatigue and can help you work out exactly what you need support with.
If you would like a copy of My Personal Long Covid Checklist then please click HERE.
The checklist tells you exactly what I would do if I was suffering with Long Covid. It gives you a checklist of actions for the 6 key areas which I think are most important.
This is my starting point and it focuses on the key areas of energy production, immune and nervous system health, reducing inflammation, moving your body gently and syncing your body clock. No matter what my exact symptoms were I would go back to basics and do this first.
Disclaimer: Before changing your diet or lifestyle and taking any supplements always seek the advice of your doctor or another suitably qualified professional such as a nutritional therapist.
References are available on request.