Long COVID: All you need to know

This video comes with a quiz which you can take here: quizwithit.com/start_thequiz/1700725855464x6235692…

Dianna aka Physics Girl has long covid for a few months and it's heart-breaking to see someone so energetic and positive in her videos to be bedridden and suffering so much. Her family and friends have posted some tweets and videos with updates on her condition that illustrate how terrible this illness can be. Stay safe people

Just sharing here in case it might help anyone: After a bad covid this summer I felt my digestive system had been affected. I couldn't tolerate some greasy foods, and alcohol suddenly made me very sick. My doctor told me my covid infection probably left me with a destroyed microbiot. I took high quantities of pre- and pro-biotics during two months, and was extremely cautious with my diet (lots of veggies, no sugar, few carbs, only healthy fats like olive oil)... Everything is now back to normal.

Thank you for presenting this. I have served on the board of directors for the Solve ME/CFS initiative for a decade and my wife has had ME/CFS since 1995. Solve has completely embraced the Long COVID community including significant support for the Long COVID Alliance. Short of a cure or treatment we seek a bio marker to catalyze much needed research. Yes, many improve over time but for others it is a chronic condition that only gets worse with time. The cost to individuals and to society is extraordinarily high and warrants a more significant investment in research.

Thanks for bringing up medical gaslighting! I don't know if I even suffered LC or still do, but I relate to mental fog for a few years now and doctors telling me I'm stressed. This is not only happening in countries where you pay for medical attention. I live in Spain and medical assistance is a right, paid by the state. Still doctors treat you with contempt too often.

The worst thing about long covid is, even if you get someone to listen, you still have extremely limited options for recovery. Doctors don't know anything about this, and don't seem to be seeking information.

I had meningitis at 4, barely survived. Life-long worsening chronic fatigue syndrome. When I read the list of Long Covid symptoms, except for those relating to lungs, it's dot for dot the same. Post viral syndrome need to be acknowledged more widely and studied! Turns out covid and meningitis and a host of other illness that attack the brain use the same pathways in the brain. I don't think it's a coincidence when afterwards so many develop similar symptoms, especially the central nervous system disorders like dysautonomia. Cheers and thanks for talking about it! The more research is done, the better chances for all the other post-viral syndromes without solutions out there.

I had nearly all of these symptoms for months. Someone told me I had long covid. Turns out I was in an emotionally abusive relationship and shortly after I left it, cognitive functions were better, heart palpitations dissipated, and my digestive problems were vastly improved. Perhaps I did have long covid but getting away from soul crushing stress is what made things turn around for me.

Thank you Sabine for bringing this under the attention. As a father and husband of two long COVID patients I can really appreciate it. Having become a bit of an expert on this by necessity, I can say that I found your video accurate and well balanced.

Brazilian Neurologist here. Contracted COVID five times during the pandemic, working in the ICUs. I have mithocondrial disfunction because of COVID. And I'm one of the lucky ones. Saw it all, from COVID alopecia to COVID ungueal dystrophy on the toe. Till this day I treat the poor chaps that have long COVID. No cure in sight, but I have some success with vortioxetine, sulpiride, l-carnitine, biotine and coenzime q10.

I was hospitalized with long covid in 2021 before the vaccine was available to me. After two CT scans, an MRI, more blood tests that I can shake a stick at; the neurologist shrugged his shoulders, told me "there is no physiological cause to your symptoms", strongly implied that I had munchausens and sending me straight to a psychiatrist who then told me that this isn't a psychiatric disorder.

My son was 16 when he got covid in 2021 and he's been sick since then. He couldn't finish school after being an honor student. He didn't even have a severe case. I almost died at the time after covid-related pneumonia and I have struggled too, but he was formally diagnosed. There was no help for him with our horrible US state insurance. He had 8 weeks of PT but that was about it. He's so out of it all the time now he says its dissociation. I wish I could help him. We are doing the exercises but it's exhausting and he often struggles through it. He's just so weak and it's stolen his teen years. All his friends moved on and went to all their proms and dances and he's just gone through test after test, repeated labs and brain scans with allt hese specialists and all they can come up with is long covid.

I have been following you on Twitter for quite a while now, chiefly for physics. I contracted COVID in July 2021 and have been bedbound and housebound with a multitude of debilitating symptoms since then, it's basically disabled me. I was somewhat improving by late 2022, went from completely bedbound to housebound to being able to resume my studies (graduate classes 2 days a week), then I took MMR vaccine in early 2023 for relocating to Canada and it has reversed whatever improvements I have made and brought even more severe cognitive/brain issues and I have been back to bedbound since getting the MMR vaccine. COVID-19 isn't the only virus that causes long-term, disabling post-viral symptoms, especially ME/CFS, there are many other viruses that can also cause similar long-term symptoms. For example, Dengue fever and EBV. Post-dengue symptoms are very identical to post-COVID sequelae symptoms and even severe, both viruses severely affect the brain.

As someone who's life has been pretty much ruined by Long Covid over the past two years: thank you for this video!

I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome in may of 2021 after 7 months of testing. I still suffer from it today. I failed 8th grade because I was too tired to do school work. Nearly the same thing happened last year in 10th grade. I could not attend school because I was so tired and nearly failed. I’m very worried about what colleges will think about my gpa. I was a gifted student and excelled in school, but now it’s hard to even do the simple things.

My 'Force of Nature' cousin suffered from ME before it was properly recognised and diagnosed, and a long time before COVID. It's no joke, and the worst part for her was not being taken seriously for many years..

Thank you Sabine for summarizing this so well! It seems that my employer, my friends and some of my family even have begun to ignore the ongoing risks both individually and societally that this virus whose origins remain unclear continues to wreak. I will be showing this to my supervisor and to my friends and family. Many thanks for your hard work on this and for your other videos and humour as well 🤗

I suffered from long Covid for almost 8 months, but didn't seek treatment because I didn't think there was any for it yet. When I got hit, it was still so new in the US that no one believed it was here, so there weren't even tests available. And yeah, the first medical professional I consulted with dismissed my symptoms. The next day, the pandemic was declared.

This is wonderful. I've had Long Covid since March 2020. You cover just about everything I have either had or heard of and you do it very well. Many thanks !

I had all this symptoms and thought I was becoming hypochondriac or crazy. I had my heart going crazy fast, becoming extremely tired while doing my moderate intensity cardio (I actually had to stop doing it at all). I went to the hospital for what I thought it was a panic attack and many test were done ECG, X-rays to check for heart size among other things like blood-tests, urine tests, the doctors found nothing so they ran a COVID test and it was positive. After that "panic attack" I've had a couple days where my heart go fast while I try to sleep and the anxiety keeps me from sleeping the entire night. It happened to me yesterday. I couldn't sleep at all at night, thankfully I slept for about 3 or 4 hours in the day 8am to 12pm. I also get extremely tired at times for very low activity effort like doing the dishes, picking up things from the floor, sometimes walking gets me crazy tired in 15 minutes and I usually walk at least 1 hour pretty much every day so I normally had a very high resistance for walking (I walk fairly fast, not turtle pace walking) I also have woken up wheezing for air and had shallow breathing. Thanks for this video! it really eases my mind to know I'm not just having some kind of psychotic break.