Post Covid Recovery – Are You Suffering from Long Covid?

lady post covid

If you’ve had covid and are still feeling exhausted, run down, a bit short of breath when climbing stairs, muscles, joints or lungs aching and your brain not clicking into gear, you might be suffering from ‘post covid’ or ‘long covid’. It’s a very real thing that is just starting to be explored. Here’s a checklist of symptoms:

Are you gelatinously exhausted?
Is your brain still not clicking into gear?
Has your get up and go got up and gone?
Do your lungs hurt or are you a bit short of breath?
Do your muscles or joints aches?
Do you feel run down?
Have you had two or more ‘colds’ in the last three months?

If you answer yes to most of these questions you might need an immune system, brain and body reset.

What’s nutrition got to do with it? What we know is that this viral infection expends vitamin C, and other antioxidants, at an alarming rate. So much so that 17 out of 18 covid patients tested in a Barcelona ICU had ‘undetectable’ vitamin C levels, below that which is seen in scurvy which is outright vitamin C deficiency. Scurvy is caused by the breakdown of collagen, dependent on vitamin C, which holds everything together. It’s your intercellular glue. A couple of weeks with depleted vitamin C, and other nutrients, plus a raging viral attack causing high levels of oxidants and inflammation, lungs, muscles, the heart and the brain can get damaged.

Both vitamin C, the amino acid glutamine and MSM, an absorbable form of sulphur, help repair damaged tissue. You also need enough zinc. The lung’s best friend, however, is quercetin found in red onions. Quercetin is remarkable for restoring immunity and reversing inflammation, especially in the lungs. An onion with give you 20mg but I’d want 1,000mg of quercetin to recover full lung function after a severe infection. That’s 50 red onion’s worth! It’s great for asthma and hay fever too.

Anthocyans are another key player. Nutritionists know that glutathione is the master antioxidant, reloading both vitamin C and E, but few know that anthocyans, found in red/blue foods such as blueberries and elderberries, recycle glutathione. The berry with the most antioxidant punch is actually a cherry, or more specifically the Montmorency cherry. One shot of CherryActive, a pure montmorency cherry concentrate, delivers the same antioxidant power as you’d get from over a hundred carrots.

Nothing yet is proven to work for ‘post covid’. It’s just too soon to know. But my hunch is that maximising all these foods and nutrients for a month may put an end to these residual symptoms. I’m calling it my PCR test – post covid recovery. There’s no harm in taking the test, that is taking these nutrients in high doses for a few weeks and eating foods rich in them.

If that doesn’t work, and you’re still feeling gelatinously exhausted, my hunch is that your mitochondria, the energy factories in your cells, aren’t firing right. But how do you rebuild healthy mitochondria? One of the biggest breakthroughs in medicine in recent years is the remarkable effects of a ‘fasting mimicking diet. This is a five day, low calorie but high nutrient regime designed to trigger the body’s self repair process called autophagy. Autophagy is triggered after 3 days water fasting but you can actually get a bigger autophagy effect on a five day diet but it has to be low in calories (800kcals), low in protein (20g)and devoid of meat and dairy and high in specific foods that trigger autophagy, including vitamin C. My book The 5 Day Diet explains exactly how to do it.

Triggering autophagy with a five day diet rebuilds healthy mitochondria and restores energy. I’ve witnessed this many times with people who come on my five day diet retreats and report substantial and sustained gains in energy. I’ve also experienced this myself.
Time will tell what really works but, once a person has become nutrient depleted you need a short period of much higher intakes to restore balance. That’s your best bet for post covid recovery.

Post C Reset

Have you had your free PCR test?
Are you gelatinously exhausted?
Is your brain still not clicking into gear?
Has your get up and go got up and gone?
Do your lungs hurt or are you a bit short of breath?
Do your muscles or joints aches?
Do you feel run down?
Have you had two or more ‘colds’ in the last three months?
If you answer yes to most of these questions you might need an immune syste, brain and body reset.

There are five key ‘reset’ actions:
VITAMIN C plus

1. ZINC
2. QUERCETIN
3. MSM
4. GLUTATHIONE
5. ANTHOCYANIDINS

FURTHER INFORMATION

I am doing a webinar on ‘All Things Covid’ on Friday 15 October. Do join me. Book on the All Things Covid events page on this website.

If you want to measure your Vitamin C levels HOLFORDirect stock Vitamin C urine testing strips which make it easy. They also have supporting supplements that contain Vitamin C and antioxidants.