Long Covid may have an economic impact rivaling the Great Recession
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
Its medical dunning-kruger.
The fact that prednisone resolves so many of these cases, that there are experimental tests starting to gain traction about diagnosing LC, and there are numerous good theories put forward in the research community explaining the various pathways that explain LC outside of it being "psychosomatic".
The issue is that its new, studies are still on-going, and just from a basic infrastructure level western medicine is incredibly ill suited to treat chronic issues.
Of course, even if the cause is psychosomatic, you are still experiencing real symptoms - you would of course expect treatments like prednisone to work. Just like you would expect Tylenol to resolve a headache regardless of whether you believe the headache is caused by poor diet and exercise or the retrograde of Mercury.
> The issue is that its new, studies are still on-going, and just from a basic infrastructure level western medicine is incredibly ill suited to treat chronic issues.
Is there another version of medicine that is better suited to treating chronic issues like headache and fatigue? If anything about them would be superior to ours, it would be their ability to prescribe a placebo.
It is important to know when not to talk.
If a single doctor had the courage to be square with me that I didn't have a life-threatening condition and that an endless series of tests and procedures would gain me nothing, I could have had all of that time and money back. In an effort to listen to me, they endlessly strung me along in a process that was more painful than the actual condition.
I can guarantee I have more personal experience in this subject than you could begin to imagine, long before Covid was a thing - I do not appreciate being talked down to and I have just as much right to my opinions as you do.
But people - chronic disease sufferers included - really, really need to understand that "psychosomatic" doesn't mean you don't have a real medical issue. What it means is you have a real medical condition with a completely different set of treatment options. Often ones that are easy, affordable, and in your control.
Because I also have a lifelong issue that doctors have written off as psychosomatic, that only within the last 10-15 years have they finally reversed course on. That's too late to help my grandmother or my mother, though at least I can take advantage of it now.
So I've been on the exact opposite of side of the coin as you, and know full well the damage that comes from doctors writing off real issues as pyschosomatic, just because they can't figure out what it is. Which is so often what does happen.
So watching another person assert, with no basis and against current scientific evidence, that long covid is the same, was infuriating to watch.
I stand by my original comment, but believe we are both coming at this from an honest intent, and find it amazing that two people who have had such exact opposite and rare medical experiences happen to interact with each other via the internet.
Again though, why are you distinguishing between "real" and psychosomatic though? That is literally the opposite of my point. Psychosomatic issues are real issues.
We develop effective treatments for psychosomatic disorders all of the time - ADHD, ulcers, IBS, asthma (to some degree), RLS, etc.
I think it's equally important that we get rid of the stigma around "psychosomatic" as a diagnosis.
And I understand that stress and mental health can and do significantly affect conditions of the body, and vice versa.
And I understand that every physical condition has a mental component, and vice versa.
And I understand that psychosomatic issues are real, and important, and is an extremely important part of total health.
And I am happy for you that you were eventually able to find the root cause of your issue. It sounds like it was an awful experience.
I also understand that western medicine, in its (correct) intent to be objective, scientific and fact based generally tends to do a very bad job around issues, historically, that involve psychological and mental factors. Boiled down to a sentence, it is very difficult to objectively measure the psychological aspects of a condition, so western medicine often does not try. Combined with medical creed to 'first do no harm', which in turn means they do not treat what they do not understand, and you are left with a system that is surprisingly incapable of treating conditions that have a mental component.
The problem, is that I don't think you fully understand the implications of the fact that the western medical system defaults to "this issue is psychosomatic" when they are unable to find an objectively measurable explanation for a condition, because in your specific case, that diagnosis happened to be true.
The fact that western medicine blames psychosis as a default when they otherwise run out of explanation has two huge implications.
The first is, I don't think you understand how thoroughly, objectively life crippling that can be, when one doctor after another tells you "Well, we ran all of our tests, and we don't see anything wrong with you, so the issue must be psychosomatic. We can recommend some therapists for you to talk to" for a condition that is NOT mentally based or aggrevated.
Imagine, for a moment, that that is what you are told, if your particular ailment is NOT in fact, psychosomatic, but IS in fact, biologically based within the body.
It is devastating. Because it turns what should be an issue that should be researched by the medical community, and an issue for which you objectively need medical help, into an issue that blames the mental state of the individual, despite it being an issue that the individual is powerless to affect through mental attempt. It is a way of saying "Our science says that there is nothing wrong with you, so you must have a mental issue, therefore this issue is your fault."
And simultaneously, it gives the medical community the ability to ignore pressing issues that are difficult to study. Long-term chronic conditions after a viral infection have been postulated for DECADES, but have been consistently written off by the medical community as "psychosomatic, and therefore not biologically based, and outside of our realm of treatment." I know that is not how _you_ mean to use this word, but this is how it is ultimately used in practice.
As a throwaway example of a minor issue I am willing to discuss online and not the major issue I mentioned in a previous response: personally, I have tinnitus. When I started having the first signs of tinnitus, my doctors wrote it off as psychosomatic, because I was going through a high stress point of life at the time. And I agreed with them that it was a likely cause. Well, it turns out they were wrong. None of them thought to test me for sleep apnea, and now I have tinnitus for life.
If there is one positive thing that has come of Covid, it is that the Long Covid population is so large, that post-viral symptoma is no longer an ignorable condition. And yet the medical community is still attempting to do so. You can easily look up statements from the CDC or your medical association of choice stating things such as "Long Covid is not a concern as part of vaccine testing and emergency use authorization. Our job is saving lives, not making those lives comfortable." <-- That's a paraphrased quote about long covid from within the CDC two years ago. In that one quote you see a doctor dismiss what we now know to be a very real, very common, and very biologically based condition as not worthy of study, infer that long covid is a mental health issue, and then blame the victims of long covid for their status. This is the narrative that your suggestion reinforces.
The second implication of this all, is that you are right, there are psychosomatic disorders that the medical community now treats regularly.
But the fact that ADHD, ulcers, IBS, asthma, RLS, etc all have widely understood psychosomatic components that are understood by the medical community is a testament to how far the medical community has come with this topic in recent years.
But they are exceptions to the rule, not the norm. You don't have to go very far back in history to read papers that state that diabetes isn't real, and is a mental issue. That diabetics should be confined within mental institutions, and are liable to dance naked on a table at random. That hypoglycemia is fake, and a sign of an individual who is "highly susceptible to drama and overly excessive reactions to stress stimuli". That Lymes disease isn't real, and "Chronic Lyme" is a myth perpetuated by mentally unsound individuals. Just to name the first three that pop into my head.
This is because the normal process by which western medicine identifies new ailments is to first call them mental disorders (because the disorder doesn't fit known science, and therefore the individual must be faking/crazy!). Then to call it a psychosomatic issue (well, there may be some real biology going on here, but these patients are clearly not of sound mind). Then, as they continue to actually understand the science behind it, diagnose it as a real disorder, and develop real treatments for it (oh, wait, we get it now).
This battle to be recognized as an actual ailment worthy of study, and not written off by the medical community as a mental issue that needs psychological treatment, is what has been going on in the long covid community for years now. And it is another fight that your comment is on the wrong side of.
So not only are you on the wrong side of this issue scientifically (there are understood physical bodily causes of long covid), and not only does your comment reinforce a negative and harmful trope about long covid which the LC community has been fighting against for years in order to ensure that the condition is actually studied (the root cause of LC is not psychosomatic), AND not only does your comment further the already existing narrative that LC victims should be blamed for their condition (though I know that's not how you meant it), but merely by continuing to talk about this comment, our comment chain has crowded out the actual advice that might be of use to other LC people reading this thread.
And all of that was done, because you wanted to correctly that there are mental components to all chronic conditions.
It would have been better not to speak.
They are _clearly_ saying that psychosomatic affections are real affections. They're agreeing with you. This was an amazing display of self nerve hitting.
This is pretty undisputed as a very common occurrence among long covid victims after the infection. There is a lot of debate on whether or not this is sufficient as a metric to identify long covid, because there are lots of reasons why someone could have long covid, this is just a particularly common one. There is even more controversy on why this is happening (the fact that it is happening is not controversial), because the common belief is that once the body fights off the virus, the immune system should naturally calm down again, which, obviously, isn't the case for many patients.
There have been some studies that show that LC victims sometimes have sustained enough damage that the immune system is still raised as a result of that damage. There have been some studies that show that some LC victims still actively have the virus in their system, which could be responsible. And that's before you even start wondering about things like other complications, or the degree to which people may be getting reexposed on a regular basis. Etc.
Glucocorticoid steroids (of which prednisone is among the most common) suppress your immune system. Specifically, it suppresses cytokines IL-1,6, and 10, and the gamma one (sorry, I'm not a doctor). For a _lot_ of people, this seems to finally calm their immune system down, give the body a breather to restore back to normal, and _many_ patients stay better after the treatment.
Many Asthma medications have a similar cytokine effect, and users & doctors colloquially report positives there too.
Among the LC community, the supplements that are most touted seem to generally align with having effects on the same systems that are much more effectively targeted by a glucocorticoid steroid.
But again, LC can be for many reasons, studies are still inconclusive, and western science is awful at treating chronic conditions particularly when they're complicated by other underlying conditions, so fingers crossed and good luck.
That said, prednisone gave me my life back, so I would strongly recommend it if your symptoms line up with any of the raised cytokine / histamine symptoms. I could provide some documentation I've found about that if it helps.
https://www.spiegel.de/sport/olympia/kanu-steffi-kriegerstei...
I read about a few other cases.