Study helps explain post-Covid exercise intolerance
news.yale.edu
news.yale.edu
- Measure Vo2 max, and try to improve it monitoring it, there are some things that just work better for vo2 max, like HIT, and specific protocol of max intensity and rest, for example 4 min intensity followed by 4 rest, 4 times is one of them. Better explained at this Rhonda Patrick's video [1]
- Additionally I notice a big improvement when doing hikes in high altitude, I did vomit few hours after coming down from Teide mountain, hiked from tele-spheric station up to 3200mts. I think I over did it for my fitness level, and didn't protect from sun properly, but after recovering I could feel a big improvement in my usual walks, and Apple Watch showed and increment of Vo2 bigger than usual.
- Also this is more specific, and probably does not apply to you, but check your hormones. Because lack of sleep and stress, I had ACTH, Estradiol, Prolactin and Homa-IR out of whack, was nearly developing type 2 diabetes, fixing this made losing weight so much easier, and gym sessions way less tiring.
I guess what I'm trying to say to the commenter, is that it would be useful to measure those things (assuming they didn't) before thinking it falls into the category of those people in the study. The markers I mentioned are very easy to obtain, at least VO2max, and both cases can be reverted if the right specific type of training/intervention.
I went from 30 to 38,7 Vo2 max in 10 months but I could only do it after fixing hormones, before training wasn't effective for me, and I even tried 20K steps day, without success. After hormones fixed, just 15k steps/day would increase slowly but steady my VO2 max.
It may be that covid does unique physiological damage, but it could also be that most severe sicknesses do some sort of permanent damage.
I wonder how much of this is unique to covid, is my point.
Likewise, PDE5 inhibitors and presumably other med classes seem capable of nearly reversing mild-to-moderate nerve damage through local NGF release secondary to improved endothelial function and nerve blood supply.
Isn't that a pretty good improvement? I was really happy when I went from 1 rep at 90% of my max to 3 reps. It took me a fairly long time and this was before COVID.
Or perhaps I use a different definition of stamina? Regardless, the fact that there was an improvement shows that it can get better?
Keep at it. If you've got the resources, a good PT might be able to help. Not one of those grifters that did a 3 week course, but someone with an actual understanding of sports science.
I somewhat agree though, albeit with a sense of resignation rather than reassurance, that some improvement offers some hope that continuing will yield further improvement.
PT is out of the question for now given the financials. We'll see in the future.
Thanks for trying to encourage me though.
Korean Pine Needle pills made the most dramatic improvement, but there were a ton of supplements that helped along the way leading me to being cured of LongCovid over 2 years ago. I feel sorry for people who rely on doctors instead of methodical experimentation with supplements.
Doctors just gaslight and provide no solutions - it’s been over 3 years they’ve had patients like this and best they can do is say “maybe cells aren’t using energy as well” with this research. Modern medicine is a joke, it’s just a sick people bankrupting scheme… at least with herbs/supplements you have anecdotal evidence from others and a history of cultures safely using those herbs.
And a lot of the time, the supplements have understudied or unnoticed side effects or risks, not to mention the fact that they target the actual root causes as rarely as the meds do.
Not everyone can afford or has the heart for this either, and sooner or later, we NEED mainstream healthcare to have the answers.
https://www.cell.com/med/fulltext/S2666-6340(22)00167-2
So, I suspect your symptoms may be due to another mechanism.
What is your resting heart rate, and how is your sleep?
I have read thousands of covid / long covid papers. I think you would be surprised at what symptoms persistent virus in the gut lead to:
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(23)01034-6
The books "I contain multitudes" and "Gut" are excellent recent titles helping bring light to the power of the gut. I personally think some other organs may be involved too and even the vagus nerve. But none-the-less covid is hijacking mitochondria:
https://www.s4me.info/threads/serotonin-reduction-in-post-ac...
There is a lot of crap science published, and that serotonin paper is pretty poor.
Anyway, it's up to you what science you want to pursue. I managed to recover from ME/CFS myself by looking deeply into the science, so I'd recommend looking further. Stress seems to be one of the major issues. Anyway, from what you say it sounds like your symptoms are pretty mild (correct me if I'm wrong here).
There is also a great re-cap of this work here:
PS downvoting good faith discussion is bad form.
I still do not know what your main points are here. This study isn't going to be replicated yet because it is considered a "breakthrough" and only two months published. It is going to have limitations because all studies do and authors disclose what they think are their limitations.
Also I haven't downvoted anything for what it is worth.
Let us know what happens after that?
Suffice to say, it’s pretty uncompelling, as far as contrarian evidence for viral involvement is concerned =]
EBV is very detectable when it reactivates. When it is dormant it doesn't cause symptoms, as far as we know. Even when it reactivates it's unclear if it causes symptoms (that happens in astronauts and students taking exams, and they don't report ME/CFS symptoms).
Yes, but to do this, first:
- find a doctor that “believes” post EBV infection problems are even real
- wait 2-5 weeks for appointment and prescription for blood work
- get laughed at when it shows Undetected again
- prepare for next bout of illness some weeks or months later
This is the failure mode for many EBV patients, especially those dealing with other opportunistic infections at the same time.
- multiple studies in ME/CFS patients, even ones with EBV reactivation, show that antivirals aren't helpful. - students studying for exams and astronauts have high EBV titers (signifying reactivation), but they don't have any kind of ME/CFS symptoms.
EBV reactivation is just a symptom, caused by stress. It doesn't seem to be central to the illness itself.
Also, I mentioned pretty specifically why it’s pretty difficult, even in retrospective studies, to link the symptom with the Active status in blood work - were you uncompelled by this, disagree for some reason?
We could be further ahead on this if we hadn’t been treating post-viral illness as psychogenic for so long.
It would also help if the literal handful of ME/CFS specialist researchers and clinicians were pulled a little closer by LC doctors.
im at the end of my tether with the issues...but i supposed it could be worse...
Apparently COVID can give you Histamine Intolerance:
https://medium.com/@calebwilemon/covid19-survivors-alcohol-i...
Also, what's a gluggy feeling?
The presence of this and other telling symptoms suggests that you may have a thiamine insufficiency. Alcohol is a powerful inhibitor of thiamine. This is why when alcohol is consumed it causes exacerbation of symptoms.
Please note that B1 (thiamine) deficiency is a dynamic thing. A healthy individual needs a very specific amount, but a compromised individual may need up to 1000x of thiamine RDA dose to overcome the pathology after its onset.
This goes in line with an acquired mitochondrial dysfunction suggested by the article.