That's unfortunate. I had some complications after COVID as well (with blood tests showing decreased T cell counts and a CD4+/CD8+ T ratio that's well below the healthy range.
I think one thing that took me by surprise is just how COVID seems to damage the immune system in some people, causing T cell exhaustion (chronic exposure to an antigen causing molecular changes in T cell expression so there's more inhibitory receptors and they're not as functional).
If you've noticed some strange symptoms a few months after having COVID, like thrush, unexpected autoimmune issues, or just feel like infections hit you a lot harder nowadays, I highly recommend doing a lymphocyte subpanel blood test.
You can order them online. Might help clarify some things.
I'm currently using a protein called Thymic Protein-A to increase my CD4+ T cell counts and it's been somewhat successful in making me feel better (doubled my lymphocytes which were on the low end for a few years in about a week), though time will tell whether or not it's ultimately a successful treatment (especially since CD4+ T cell counts increase at a rate of about 10 cells per microliter in healthy human adults).
Just my two cents. Obviously it's different for everyone. But I think every bit of information counts while we're still trying to figure this thing out.
Tl;Dw - Physics Girl, a popular science education YouTuber, is on an indefinite hiatus due to complications from long COVID resulting in chronic fatigue. The video has a lot more detail about the severity of her condition and her husband's efforts to care for her. Her friends are asking people to consider subscribing to her Patreon.
She has almost 9000 patrons, and is an already successful Youtuber / e-celebrity. I'm sorry for what's happened to her, but I sincerely think charity is better directed elsewhere (for example, a local org that helps disadvantaged families receive healthcare/resources).
This is very sad to see and I wish Dianna and her family the very best for her recovery. I'm into year three of long COVID (ME/CFS) and was fortunate to not reach this level of severity, and to have improved slowly with time to mostly housebound rather than bedbound, but it is a remarkable disease.
The name does it little justice, and fatigue - while certainly pathological and disabling - is not the primary feature. The disease appears unique in terms of an abnormal response to exertion. This has been characterised via two-day cardiopulmonary exercise testing. Healthy controls and even those with other severely limiting diseases will show improvement on day 2, but ME/CFS uniquely shows a reduction on the second day.
Other key features are orthostatic intolerance with demonstration of reduction in cerebral blood flow in the majority on sitting/standing. Neurological symptoms including extreme sensitivity to light and sound explain her blindfold and ear protectors. Many have fluctuating cognitive slowing ("brain fog").
New insights into the metabolic derangements are being gained. Recently[1] evaluation of urine metabolomics demonstrated that healthy sedentary controls excrete many metabolites at 4 and 24 hours following an exercise challenge, while ME/CFS patients do not.
Apart from the devastating effects on patients and the economic impacts of losing so many from the workforce[2], I believe that understanding the immune and metabolic derangements underlying this condition will lead to major insights across many health domains.
At the risk of being labeled a quack, try taking an L-citrulline supplement of about 1g/10kg of weight. This greatly helped my long COVID recovery.
My thesis, which I have no direct science to back up, is that the blood vessel damage done by COVID may be partially responsible. Citrulline metabolizes in the liver into arginine, which is used in either to produce ATP or by epithelial cells to repair vascular damage. The body prioritizes vascular repair, so the arginine you normally produce if you have vascular damage is directed away from “energy” leaving you chronically fatigued. This is the same process by which sickle cell anemia leads to chronic fatigue - the shape of the sickle cell irritates the blood vessel lining. Citrulline is effective in phase II/III trials (sadly the primary researcher died and the research stopped) with sickle cell patients.
This helped me a great deal, within a few hours of my first consumption of a citrulline malate blend I bought on Amazon I was myself again after a year of suffering. Within a few months I was able to stop supplementing and felt generally normal. YMMV.
I asked several doctors before starting the regime about safety concerns and they had none (the body urinates any excess it can’t process, and citrulline is a non essential amino acid fundamental to the nitric oxide cycle) and they generally expected it would improve energy - as it did.
That was a heartbreaking video to watch. My heart goes out to this woman and her family.
In my experience, having caught covid in March 2020, fatigue is the problem. It's just that calling it "fatigue" doesn't spell out how dehabilitating that aspect is. It's maybe 100 ft/30 meters from my bed to the kitchen. At the worst of my long covid, I was getting winded walking from my bed to the kitchen. So then I'm in the kitchen, I'm supposed to make food for myself. But it's not like I could stand up for any amount of time. Chopping vegetables is right out. Making anything more advanced than microwave food was too difficult at the worst of it. And even then, figuring out the directions on them was sometimes too complicated. And I figured out C pointers and passed calculus. You don't know how your body can fail you until you can't do something that should be trivial to do but you simply can't. It's easier to see for physical maladies - you'd not ask someone with two broken legs why they can't stand up.
Fatigue in a Long Covid context means it's too tiring even to just watch Netflix. That the exertion to sit there and focus your mind even slightly is beyond you. People are able to put Netflix on in the background and still fall grasp most of the story. With long covid, following a plot, just listening, with all the power you have remaining, is simply asking too much of your body.
The most damning part of it is the aftermath from any significant physical exertion. Like going to the doctor in person. Remember, it's a marathon of exhaustion going from bed to the kitchen, so leaving the bed, getting dressed, going to the doctor, sitting the waiting room, filling out forms - remember your brain only barely works so writing out the answer to eben the first question, name, is a challenge. Seeing the Dr, hopefully they're of any use. Then you have to dance for them and take their tests. Finally you get home and crawl back in to bed, exhausted, so you take a nap. You wake up after that nap get some water and go back to sleep becy you're still tired. When you wake up it's literally been 4 days. You pushed yourself because going to see the doctor was important, but the overexertion of going to see the doctor wiped you out and not only were you bedridden for four days, but you were unconscious. That forces you to recalibrate your whole life. You can't just push through things and stay up a bit late or go out to see friends without stopping to think (which, again, is in and of itself a challenge in ways it never was before)
is there anything I need to be conscious for in the next four days?
So at least for me, "fatigue" was the primary complaint (followed by "brain fog"), it's just that without spelling out what fatigue actually means in the context of long covid, it's not apparent what that actually means.
Post exertion symptom exacerbation however is worse because many other symptoms get worse the follow days, weeks even months after that visit to the doctors. This is what makes the disease so horrific because doing things you need to do worsen everything afterwards and sometimes you don't recover so you get iller and iller the more you push through. That isn't just fatigue.
I went to high school with Dianna and was good friends with her older sis. They were both super genuine and truly wonderful people back then. I saw this on social media a few days ago from mutual friends, it's really sad to hear how much she's been impacted. Really heartening to see this community cares too. I've seen a lot of go-fund-me grift over the years and am usually an extremely skeptical person, but if Dianna's family is asking for support fwiw I believe that means they really do need it and likely don't have any other options.
I know taylor from high school and trust him. And know many that know Dianna. I would trust whatever support they get will go to good use. Also, taylor we going to 20 yr this summer? :| :) good to see you on this corner of the internet.
Very intensive with cardio. A big wall climb is probably 2-3k vertical feet or more of climbing. That's like climbing hundreds and hundreds of floors in a building (but even steeper and harder). Speed climbers can ascend something that high in a matter of hours. It's a big cardio and endurance demand.
Hopefully firmly in the had serious health challenges category.
If you don’t know her videos, I think Simone produces some of the greatest content on youtube. Deeply authentic, highly skilled, with a really funny subtext of knowing absurdist humor to them. Really great content.
Yes. Absolutely. One of my favorites is this video that shows a robot she built to argue with people on <strike>the Internet</strike> Hacker News. (7 seconds)
Cara Santa Maria also had a cancer run in last year[0]. It seems is was caught about as early as possible and she'll be fine, but still a bit bizarre. I've also personally known 3 women who got kidney cancer in the last 2 years. One was in her late 30's and died within weeks of diagnosis. One had a kidney removed and so far is doing fine, and the last will die of it within months.
During my first round of COVID I suddenly developed Terry's nails and extreme exercise intolerance.
The tips of my fingernails were bands of dark red and the rest of my nail bed was completely white. I showed it to something like 5 different doctors and was shrugged off every time. I also started to develop skipping heart beats that got so bad it was happening hundreds of times a day.
Prior to COVID I was highly active 6 days a week and had been for nearly a decade. After COVID I was finding it hard to exercise once or twice a week. This went on for years, all the while I was trying to figure out WTF was going on with me. Eventually I started supplementing copper and my heart issues went away completely within a week. I then started to supplement Iron and my nail beds started to fill back in.
After a month of supplementing I got my Iron/Copper levels checked out of pocket and my ferritin was below range and my copper was just in range. I don't know if I was susceptible to this and COVID kicked me into this territory or what but man was it a shitty ride.
Readit News
I think one thing that took me by surprise is just how COVID seems to damage the immune system in some people, causing T cell exhaustion (chronic exposure to an antigen causing molecular changes in T cell expression so there's more inhibitory receptors and they're not as functional).
If you've noticed some strange symptoms a few months after having COVID, like thrush, unexpected autoimmune issues, or just feel like infections hit you a lot harder nowadays, I highly recommend doing a lymphocyte subpanel blood test.
You can order them online. Might help clarify some things.
I'm currently using a protein called Thymic Protein-A to increase my CD4+ T cell counts and it's been somewhat successful in making me feel better (doubled my lymphocytes which were on the low end for a few years in about a week), though time will tell whether or not it's ultimately a successful treatment (especially since CD4+ T cell counts increase at a rate of about 10 cells per microliter in healthy human adults).
Just my two cents. Obviously it's different for everyone. But I think every bit of information counts while we're still trying to figure this thing out.
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The name does it little justice, and fatigue - while certainly pathological and disabling - is not the primary feature. The disease appears unique in terms of an abnormal response to exertion. This has been characterised via two-day cardiopulmonary exercise testing. Healthy controls and even those with other severely limiting diseases will show improvement on day 2, but ME/CFS uniquely shows a reduction on the second day.
Other key features are orthostatic intolerance with demonstration of reduction in cerebral blood flow in the majority on sitting/standing. Neurological symptoms including extreme sensitivity to light and sound explain her blindfold and ear protectors. Many have fluctuating cognitive slowing ("brain fog").
New insights into the metabolic derangements are being gained. Recently[1] evaluation of urine metabolomics demonstrated that healthy sedentary controls excrete many metabolites at 4 and 24 hours following an exercise challenge, while ME/CFS patients do not.
Apart from the devastating effects on patients and the economic impacts of losing so many from the workforce[2], I believe that understanding the immune and metabolic derangements underlying this condition will lead to major insights across many health domains.
[1] https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/24/4/3685 [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2
My thesis, which I have no direct science to back up, is that the blood vessel damage done by COVID may be partially responsible. Citrulline metabolizes in the liver into arginine, which is used in either to produce ATP or by epithelial cells to repair vascular damage. The body prioritizes vascular repair, so the arginine you normally produce if you have vascular damage is directed away from “energy” leaving you chronically fatigued. This is the same process by which sickle cell anemia leads to chronic fatigue - the shape of the sickle cell irritates the blood vessel lining. Citrulline is effective in phase II/III trials (sadly the primary researcher died and the research stopped) with sickle cell patients.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11688916/
This helped me a great deal, within a few hours of my first consumption of a citrulline malate blend I bought on Amazon I was myself again after a year of suffering. Within a few months I was able to stop supplementing and felt generally normal. YMMV.
I asked several doctors before starting the regime about safety concerns and they had none (the body urinates any excess it can’t process, and citrulline is a non essential amino acid fundamental to the nitric oxide cycle) and they generally expected it would improve energy - as it did.
Good luck!
In my experience, having caught covid in March 2020, fatigue is the problem. It's just that calling it "fatigue" doesn't spell out how dehabilitating that aspect is. It's maybe 100 ft/30 meters from my bed to the kitchen. At the worst of my long covid, I was getting winded walking from my bed to the kitchen. So then I'm in the kitchen, I'm supposed to make food for myself. But it's not like I could stand up for any amount of time. Chopping vegetables is right out. Making anything more advanced than microwave food was too difficult at the worst of it. And even then, figuring out the directions on them was sometimes too complicated. And I figured out C pointers and passed calculus. You don't know how your body can fail you until you can't do something that should be trivial to do but you simply can't. It's easier to see for physical maladies - you'd not ask someone with two broken legs why they can't stand up.
Fatigue in a Long Covid context means it's too tiring even to just watch Netflix. That the exertion to sit there and focus your mind even slightly is beyond you. People are able to put Netflix on in the background and still fall grasp most of the story. With long covid, following a plot, just listening, with all the power you have remaining, is simply asking too much of your body.
The most damning part of it is the aftermath from any significant physical exertion. Like going to the doctor in person. Remember, it's a marathon of exhaustion going from bed to the kitchen, so leaving the bed, getting dressed, going to the doctor, sitting the waiting room, filling out forms - remember your brain only barely works so writing out the answer to eben the first question, name, is a challenge. Seeing the Dr, hopefully they're of any use. Then you have to dance for them and take their tests. Finally you get home and crawl back in to bed, exhausted, so you take a nap. You wake up after that nap get some water and go back to sleep becy you're still tired. When you wake up it's literally been 4 days. You pushed yourself because going to see the doctor was important, but the overexertion of going to see the doctor wiped you out and not only were you bedridden for four days, but you were unconscious. That forces you to recalibrate your whole life. You can't just push through things and stay up a bit late or go out to see friends without stopping to think (which, again, is in and of itself a challenge in ways it never was before) is there anything I need to be conscious for in the next four days?
So at least for me, "fatigue" was the primary complaint (followed by "brain fog"), it's just that without spelling out what fatigue actually means in the context of long covid, it's not apparent what that actually means.
Dead Comment
The history of controversy surrounding it is worth a read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_related_to_chr...
It seems that cardio health was the biggest contributor to not getting serious Covid, seems surprising that an athlete would get this.
Worth noting that Simone [1] had some serious health challenges of her own not too long ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x5XRQ07sjU
Something about being a female STEM YouTuber...
:-(
---
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Giertz
If you don’t know her videos, I think Simone produces some of the greatest content on youtube. Deeply authentic, highly skilled, with a really funny subtext of knowing absurdist humor to them. Really great content.
https://youtu.be/PJiRijiLwbQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKv_N0IDS2A
Just the first 50 seconds are pure gold.
https://twitter.com/CaraSantaMaria/status/154449776549699584...
> Giertz is a descendant of Lars Magnus Ericsson, founder of Ericsson.
Dead Comment
The tips of my fingernails were bands of dark red and the rest of my nail bed was completely white. I showed it to something like 5 different doctors and was shrugged off every time. I also started to develop skipping heart beats that got so bad it was happening hundreds of times a day.
Prior to COVID I was highly active 6 days a week and had been for nearly a decade. After COVID I was finding it hard to exercise once or twice a week. This went on for years, all the while I was trying to figure out WTF was going on with me. Eventually I started supplementing copper and my heart issues went away completely within a week. I then started to supplement Iron and my nail beds started to fill back in.
After a month of supplementing I got my Iron/Copper levels checked out of pocket and my ferritin was below range and my copper was just in range. I don't know if I was susceptible to this and COVID kicked me into this territory or what but man was it a shitty ride.