As the article says, it's nice to have something to latch on to. But the article says that reconditioning doesn't work. What the hell am I supposed to do? I've been working out like crazy for the last year. My strength is up, my total endurance is up, but my stamina almost hasn't moved. I feel winded and oxygen starved only a couple reps later than when I originally started. Am I supposed to just accept that I'm permanently disabled? Anybody here have any experience or reading for me?
> I feel winded and oxygen starved only a couple reps later than when I originally started.
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.
Yeah, I think we're thibking about this differently. I train high reps, like really high reps, in no small part for the exact reason that I run out of stamina really quickly and want to improve it. Also because I don't have money for gym or equipment, so many of my exercises are body-weight.
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.
I'm not a doctor, so I just can say my anecdotal experience, take it like grain of salt.
- 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.
Per there article the tissues are not uptaking the oxygen that is present. In healthy people VO2max is primarily limited by supply not utilisation; increasing the oxygen supply (this is what VO2max protocols aim to do) is barking up the wrong tree.
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.
I have long Covid. I am in the best shape of my life but sometimes have stamina issues. All I can say is that as I would take supplements that target mitochondrial function, I’d notice that to increase. I believe the root cause is viral persistence and will require monoclonal antibodies, antivirals, and synbiotics to repair. Just taking synbiotics recently has slowly been increasing my alertness and lowering my fatigue levels. Look up SIM01 clinical trial.
I'm not sure why this is only clicking for me now, as a person with chronic fatigue who always, invariably, gets really winded by about 300m no matter how regularly or how much I jog, and finds any strength exercise to be incredibly aversive after very similar amounts of exertion regardless of all other variables... agh.
I had the same experience coming out of a serious bout with pneumonia in 2016. I haven't improved much at all. I often wonder if covid does the same thing to people. The chronic issues with energy line up pretty much perfectly.
I get the sense that covid is “where the light is” in terms of the search for after-effects of sickness - I had a non-covid cold (at least several at home 15 minute tests were negative) in 2022 that had long symptoms, my sinuses and ear canals still feel different than before.
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.
Blood vessel/nerve damage is likely specific to COVID, the more general energy utilisation disorders seemingly aren't, and are triggered by any kind of ongoing inflammation, and often seem to last after any sufficiently severe immune events, though it's possible that this is related to e.g. herpesviral reactivation.
Energy utilization disorders inevitably cause nerve damage if left untreated. It can be a slow process, it can be fast, but the end result is nerve and tissue damage leading to a plethora of symptoms and secondary diseases.
Nerve damage does not necessarily mean irreversible consequences, depending on the degree. E.g. any amount of sleep deprivation, both in terms of quantity and quality, causes (minuscule) brain damage, but even people with severe sleep apnea mostly recover with treatment.
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.
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.
While you're right that doctors can often be some of the least competent and most unhelpful professionals to exist, I'd just like to highlight that most people spend thousands of tens of thousands of dollars on various supplements with no or limited results.
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.
This is a big deal. Doctors are constantly telling patients they are “deconditioning” and encouraging exercise as a result. There is a large controversy of exercise clinical trials for that reason. Experiencing this first hand, I am in very good shape and have excellent stamina. On certain days when my mitochondria are hijacked(it is cyclical for my long Covid), you couldn’t tell the difference of me(young 30 year old gym goer) and an 80 year old man from walking up the stairs. The virus is persisting likely in our gut and hijacking our powerhouse of the cell! Many studies are showing this is likely the case.
My RHR baseline(average) is 51. HRV baseline(average) is 95. I sleep very well & consistently but wake up feeling wired & tired (common in chronic fatigue I suppose). My cardio fitness averages to 52.9 which is a measurement of my VO2 max.
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:
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:
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).
Okay, you believe you have persistent virus impacting your systemic health, possibly by allowing other opportunistic infection, then you would take an antiviral.
No, I have no opinions on that serotonin paper. I was just referring to the facts, which are that other papers haven't replicated its findings and there are a lot of factors that affect serotonin that they haven't taken into account. If you're interested, take a look. If not, no worries.
Look, I'm more than willing to hear your opinion but I'm not going to dig for yours in a forum post. I took one look and immediately sent you that comment because those are opinions I do not even remotely share besides the last post of someone who linked a detailed newsletter talking about why this work is important.
Fair enough, its always better to analyze it yourself and check the validity of any particular research or criticism of such research. Opinions in science arent really useful unless they are weakly held and based on the evidence. If you have any response to the main points i posted above feel free to post. As i said i have pretty much zero opinions on this, and have only looked at it very briefly.
What are you saying here? That this entire paper and subject area is an "opinion"?
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.
It was in the s4me discussion. I think the more interesting question is why you put so much stock in a study you admit is exploratory, which you havent checked for validity.
Two studies that explore metabolic pathways in different ways. That doesn't mean they "failed to replicate". This happens all the time in science, especially EBV research. For example they failed to find EBV reactivation in long covid in one study, but then also found that it is a smoking gun in others. Aside that, what is your gripe with the Penn study?
Your comment is somewhat unclear, and I'm not sure what part "contrarian" is referring to. We just go on the evidence we have, and so far there isn't any evidence (as far as I'm aware) that covid survives longer than a year in the gut, or that it causes non-GI symptoms in the gut.
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).
I'm someone who has suffered from post-viral ME/CFS, so I know how devastating it is. However, there isn't any evidence that EBV reactivation causes symptoms. (Initial mono infection is different).
- 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.
Now we need to expand on what “stress” can cover, for the very diverse set of humans on this planet (it’s a long list - even just being too warm or cold for too long!).
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?
I developed severe exercise intolerance after taking ciprofloxacin and have been told by several doctors at Pacmed in seattle, Kaiser, Scripps, and UCSD in San Diego that I developed deconditioning and just needed to exercise. I forced myself to walk up to 5-10 miles a day over a one year period to “correct it” since 2021. I still cannot run without extreme dyspnea in a very short period nor lift weights in 2023. I recently got diagnosed by an older cardiologist at Cedar Sinai with dysautonomia. I have gotten my VO2 max up to 42, however there are some cardiac abnormalities during exertion. I used to bike 20 miles a day and ran 7 minute miles on repeat the week before the ciprofloxacin. I didn’t “decondition”. I was poisoned by a well-known mitochondrial toxin in research. Any drug that causes peripheral neuropathy should be highly suspected. Really hard to trust the vast majority of doctors in this day and age.
Article isnt very impressive. No details given in results section for that 75% figure, no control group for that result, control group for other results is obese group from a different study, no corrections for multiple comparisons, etc.
since getting covid nearly 2 years ago: i have developed chronic acid reflux, lactose intolerance, alcohol intolerance, muscle weakness (which seems chronic at this point), weight loss (10kg)...im well over it - i relate @Superkinkendo.
im at the end of my tether with the issues...but i supposed it could be worse...
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.
What kind of symptoms do you get from alcohol now? I feel like I'm not able to drink as much as I used to before feeling sleepy but that could also be me getting older.
just feels like poison...even hoppy zero alcohol makes me feel shit.
though it doesnt taste that good - i cant drink more than 1x 2.5% or 3.5% beer without feeling like absolute crap. not to mention the gluggy feeling of the liquid itself...
I had something similar (not covid related tho). I was having allergy issues, which caused post nasal drip, which caused acid reflux, which caused asthma! Once I fixed my allergies, all the other stuff went away.
@tru3_power I would love to know more about how you addressed your allergy issues. I am living with someone who is having a very similar experience to what you described (acid reflux => asthma). Any info you can share could end up being a huge help.
i have the same issue with reflux, asthma and post nasal drip, except i already take allergy meds daily and they dont help. im my case i think treating GERD with a regular ppi helps my situation after a week or two. Talk to a doctor for your specific case.
