A Functional Medicine Approach to Post-Covid Syndrome
June 9, 2022
by Heather Steinacker, MS, CNS, LDN
How many of you have had Covid? Show of hands (hypothetically, of course). Most of you, you say? Honestly, at this point all I can say is that I’m not surprised. How was it for you? Was it what you expected? Was it just a little cold? Or did it completely knock you out, and are you now one of the people who are suffering from what is being dubbed “Post-Covid Syndrome” or “Long-Haulers Syndrome” (or some other name that means the same thing, but you get the gist)?
We are now about 2 years into this, and you would be hard-pressed to find someone who HASN’T had some sort of experience with Covid. For most people, it has been a mild cold/flu/respiratory thing. But for others, it has been something that seemingly came from the pits of hell (sorry for my language, but having had Covid myself and based on my experience with it, I feel that hell is the only way I can accurately describe it). If you would describe it as “hell” then you most likely had the “knocked off your feet” version, or more horrifically, you might have tragically lost someone to this virus. If you have, I send my sincere and deepest condolences. That, coupled with my experience, coupled with the millions who are now suffering from some sort of after-effects of having this virus, ticked me off to the point that I felt the need to write. I will keep this as short and sweet as possible, and as succinct as I should (I could easily go off on many-a-tangent regarding this topic, but I won’t right now – perhaps in another blog post….). This post is to talk about Post-Covid Syndrome.
When I got sick with what I presume was the Omicron variant, I figured I would be out for a day or 2 with maybe a sniffle. I take good care of my immune system, having been on a decade-long journey to get to where I feel confident that my gut is healed and my autoimmune symptoms are under control. You see, I have Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, which is an autoimmune condition where my own thyroid is basically under attack by my immune system. It took years for me, but I finally got to a place where I felt healthy. And so, I was confident that I could handle any Covid variant that came my way. Boy, was I wrong. It seriously knocked me out. For several days, and then it was several weeks before I felt myself again. I am eternally grateful for the many doctors who have banded together to work on finding early treatments, because I used those treatments and I am 100% certain that I am now not suffering with as bad of a Post-Covid Syndrome as I should have been, based on my health history (please reference our prior posts in our Facebook community group for details on the protocols). But, let me talk a bit about that Post-Covid Syndrome….
When I first started hearing that term mentioned, the symptoms that were being thrown around were: chronic fatigue, joint and muscle pain, brain fog, poor gastrointestinal health, intolerances to heat and cold, tingling in extremities, ringing in the ears, etc. My first thought was “that all sounds autoimmune” and “welcome to the world of living with an autoimmune illness!” Of course, there have also been reports of more serious post-covid complications, ranging from myocarditis (inflammation in the heart) to blood clotting disorders. But the common thread between all of these symptoms seems to be autoimmune in nature, and driven by inflammation of sorts. In the functional medicine world, this is our language! Autoimmunity is when the body cannot distinguish between foreign and self, and begins an attack on what appears foreign but what is in fact self. Typically, autoimmune illnesses are triggered by a specific event. This can be something like pregnancy, environmental toxins, stress, traumatic events, or ILLNESS. So, having a virus is one of the many known triggers of autoimmunity. It seems as though many people have had some form of autoimmunity “turned on” by Covid. Almost like Covid came into a dark room and needed light, so it flipped the light switch to “on,” resulting in a plethora of weird and unexplained responses, AKA Post-Covid symptoms. Many of these symptoms are driven by inflammation in the body, which has likely been increased due to the body’s natural innate immune response to the virus. There is a whole slew of physiology in there, which I won’t dive deep into, but in a nutshell – virus enters body, body makes memory cells, virus enters body again, body remembers virus and starts an attack against it. When it comes to Covid (or if we are being more specific, we are talking about the virus that causes Covid, or SARS-CoV-2), we are also dealing with the presence of a spike protein that allows the virus to penetrate host cells and cause infection. This seems to be where the problem is. I can’t find too much information out there (trust me, I’ve looked), but there has been some speculation that the spike protein has since been circulating around our bodies and causing damage to cells, tissues, and organs. Remember I mentioned autoimmunity, and how autoimmunity is the inability of the body to distinguish foreign from self? It would make sense then if an autoimmune cascade of sorts was happening in response to this darn spike protein. Now take a step back and look at the Post-Covid symptoms that people are experiencing – these symptoms are systemic, meaning they seem to be impacting the entire body. Fortunately, the field of functional medicine focuses on finding “root causes” of illness, which means viewing the body as a whole. Systemic. Functional medicine has been one of the few modalities that has seemingly had any impact on aiding Post-Covid Syndrome in people. Since functional medicine works to get to the root of the problem, there is a lot of focus on immune health, gut health, mental health, sleep, stress, and nutrition. Addressing all of these things can help lessen the amount of inflammation in the body, which in turn can help alleviate Post-Covid symptoms (to learn more about our functional medicine approach, visit Optimal Wellness at https://www.owforlife.com/).
To learn more about some of the things I mentioned above, you can visit these links:
https://worldcouncilforhealth.org/resources/spike-protein-detox-guide/
https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(20)31171-2/fulltext
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/21649561211056597