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Almost a year since the world first heard about the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, it appears there are still more questions outstanding than confirmed answers.
We still don’t know why some people stay asymptomatic and others need hospital intervention. We are still learning about the role of antibodies and T cells and what it all means for long term immunity. We are still hoping for a vaccine and looking for the right cocktail of drugs to treat the sickest among us.
Where it seems like the majority of questions remain is regarding ‘long haul’ COVIDs, people who have been infected with COVID and weeks – and in most cases, months – later are suffering. still effects of this dangerous virus.
Scary mom spoke with Dr Noah Greenspan, DPT, Founder of the Lung Wellness Program to understand what we have learned about long haul COVID so far and to make sense of the unanswered questions.
There are no finite characteristics that define long-term COVID other than an ongoing illness.
One of the scariest things about COVID and COVID in the long run is that there is more stuff we don’t know than we know, according to Dr. Greenspan. “More than any other condition I have ever seen in my twenty-eight year career, there is so much person-to-person variability and so much variability in the same person from day to day. other, even from hour to hour, even from minute to minute. So it’s so hard to rank people right now. “
The defining characteristic for most patients is simply that the symptoms have not gone away. He is seeing patients who have been battling COVID and the aftermath of COVID since February – almost nine months.
Likewise, the patients Dr Greenspan sees span the gamut of COVID realities. Those with the most serious case – requiring hospitalization, for example – are not necessarily the ones who become long-haul. In his office, he sees patients who have had a severe case of COVID that has never gone away, patients who have had a mild case that then got worse, as well as people who have had a mild case with certain symptoms but which then developed into new and different symptoms as the disease progressed.
More than 100 different symptoms have been associated with long-term COVID.
Field investigations have shown that the spectrum of symptoms experienced by long haul COVID is varied and often affects multiple systems in the body, including the heart, respiratory and neurological systems.
In his practice, Dr. Greenspan has identified the eight symptoms that appear to have the most profound effect on the lives of his patients. They include:
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Profound and generalized fatigue
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Difficulty concentrating and / or concentrating
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Dizziness or lightheadedness due to fluctuating changes in blood pressure
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Chest pain or chest pressure
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Elevated heart rate or heart rate
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Shortness of breath, whether at rest or during exercise
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Muscle or body pain
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Intolerance to exercise
Jenny from Boston, a patient of Dr. Greenspan and attending her COVID Bootcamp, donated Scary mom a first-hand account of her experience with long-term COVID and exercise intolerance. Before becoming infected with COVID, she used her Platoon an average of four times a week and walked her dog for about an hour twice a week. Since COVID, even walking a half-mile has left him with a rapid heartbeat and an inability to get out of bed for the rest of the day. (Good news: She is slowly and surely regaining her strength at Dr. Greenspan’s COVID bootcamp.)
Dr Greenspan has also seen a significant number of patients with autonomic dysfunction, in which the nervous system is affected. It can present in a variety of ways, including seizures, tingling, tremors, and unexplained internal vibrations.
Since March, Jenny has experienced a variety of symptoms including burning sensations in her forearms, one pupil getting larger than the other, split headaches, droopy eyelids, gastrointestinal symptoms, and more. . Doctors believe her symptoms are the result of inflammation of the brainstem.
Most of Dr. Greenspan’s patients are women in their 30s, 40s, or 50s.
Unlike COVID, where older populations tend to be more susceptible to serious illness and require hospitalization due to COVID than younger patients, and where men tend to fare worse than women, long-haul COVIDs tend to be younger women, often with no strings attached.
The average age of a long haul COVID, according to Dr Greenspan, is 43 and 80% of patients who contact him are women.
“COVID is a master at finding your weaknesses and exploiting them,” says Dr. Greenspan.
It is still unclear exactly what causes the symptoms of COVID in the long term, although it is clear, according to Dr Greenspan, that it is an inflammatory disease. Researchers and health officials are still uncertain whether the symptoms of long-lasting COVID are caused by the disease or by the immune system’s response to the disease.
Dr Greenspan gave the example of someone who broke their ankle ten years ago and then became infected with COVID. In long-term COVID, that person may begin to experience sensations similar to those they experienced a decade earlier.
We may not yet have the diagnostic tests necessary to diagnose COVID in the long term.
In May, Jenny visited the emergency room twice due to low oxygen levels accompanied by shortness of breath and a rapid heartbeat. All of her diagnostic tests came back to normal. Fortunately, for Jenny, doctors in Boston knew how long COVID could be.
Many patients have experiences similar to Jenny’s. It is common for patients with COVID over long distances to show symptoms while undergoing normal heart and lung diagnostic tests. Dr Greenspan believes this may be a direct result of the fact that we do not yet have the necessary diagnostic tests, which is not surprising. COVID is unlike anything else none of us have seen yet.
Despite all the misfortune and gloom, Dr Greenspan points out that there is reason for hope.
On the one hand, long-term COVID is now widely recognized. Patients in need of care have resources and doctors to turn to. And second, Dr. Greenspan and his team are starting to see people heal and get their lives back – maybe not as fast as they would like, but there is a healing.
The answers are coming. Slowly but surely. And there’s real reason to believe long-haulers will get better, feel better, and start feeling like them again. In the meantime, it’s important for all of us to stay socially distanced, wash our hands, and wear a mask.
Information on COVID-19 is changing rapidly and Scary Mommy is committed to providing the most recent data in our coverage. Because news is updated so frequently, some of the information in this story may have changed after posting. For this reason, we encourage readers to use the online resources of local public health departments, the Centers for Disease Control, and the World Health Organization to stay as informed as possible.
See the original article on ScaryMommy.com
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