Make sure to consult a doctor before doing self treatment.

Nearly everything in the comments is at the early stage of research. Be careful being your own doctor

Some posters asked me to make a sticky threat on long COVID recovery, including medication, supplements and behavioural changes. Thoughts y'all? Is this a good idea? If the response is positive, I can make this a sticky.

I'm afraid that it possibly could link to unproven recommendations, but frankly I haven't looked enough into the issue.

Feel free to comment on any method on long COVID recover that you know. Please link to research and medical papers. Sadly overly weak or pseudo-scientific stuff will have to get removed, but please no hard feelings for making an effort. I'm very comfortable with Wikipedia's policy on medical sources, so I might err in that direction if it's OK. I'm definitely not working in medicine, btw.

Thanks!

edit: I just worry that a lot of this below is early stage research. I know that comrades are suffering, but we could be doing real damage if people go out and do self treatment, they can very seriously hurt themselves worst. I'm sorry that medical stuff is hard, expensive, and unfair. But I have a duty to inform people to be careful with self treatment.

  • sovietknuckles [they/them]
    ·
    21 hours ago

    For recovery from long COVID, one user from r/covidlonghaulers who recovered thought in 2022 that long COVID is result of too much glutamate, and more recent studies support that hypothesis (for example, see this review). Normally, your body is supposed to convert glutamate to GABA, but under this theory, long COVID patients struggle to convert all of their glutamate, resulting in brain fog.

    That poster thinks that magnesium and iron are key. From a 1-year follow-up after that:

    • Magnesium, in various forms (see their follow-up post for details). The form of magnesium that crosses the blood-brain barrier most easily is magnesium threonate, but it's patented by a bazinga company that licenses its patent out to to supplement companies, so this form is far more expensive than other forms of magnesium. Other magnesium supplements are probably fine.

    • Iron, if you're iron-deficient. A ferritin lab will tell you this.

    Even if you're doing everything right, it will probably take months and months at the very least to recover, though hopefully you'll notice a difference sooner than later.

    They also suggest DLPA as a shorter-term crutch, since magnesium and iron take longer to help regulate your glutamate.