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.
@coolusername@lemmy.ml commented this study about Glycine & NAC supplementation for relief of long covid symptoms caused by oxidative stress
Very interesting and very promising, but still very early in the research pipeline. Please no one just on this as a silver bullet.
presumably you haven’t put it here because of the caveat you put on it when you mentioned it in another thread, but
Nicotine may help. I can’t stress enough that the research is very new, possibly wrong, and might bring more problems that it solves.
one of the citations from the article: https://bioelecmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s42234-023-00104-7
obviously it’s not conclusive, but I know some of us are pretty desperate for anything that might help, so maybe it’s worth mentioning here
Can’t stress enough, nicotine may cause more problems than it solves. This stuff hasn’t hit clinical trials.
Drugs!
NOT MEDICAL ADVICE, VERY SMALL SAMPLE SIZELong-COVID symptoms improved after MDMA and psilocybin therapy: A case report - PubMed
I’m sooooo sorry. I can’t in good conscious let studies with 3 cases and 1 case be up in an advice post. Can you at least please edit it and report to state how small the effect is. What is someone hurts themself doing self-treatment?
Better?
It’s totally fine. Thanks comrade. Sorry to be so pedantic about stuff.
No apologies necessary!
I appreciate all the helpful comments. I can’t stress enough that everything posted so far is in the early stages of research. They haven’t done any large trials nor have they looked at side effects and interactions with other drugs. I highly recommend that users don’t yet do any of the treatments below, especially without consulting a doctor. I don’t want the death of a Hexbearian on my conscious.
NOT MEDICAL ADVICE, EARLY RESEARCH
Not a medical scientist, etc. If somebody that knows what they’re doing can look these over that’d be great.
Creatine - i don’t believe either one of these studies explore it, but a chemist friend who turned me on to creatine as a treatment a couple years ago also suggested it may help with heart issues.
Eight-Week Creatine-Glucose Supplementation Alleviates Clinical Features of Long COVID - PubMed
L-Arginine - there’s previously been research into L-Arginine helping with endothelial diseases, these two studies find evidence it should help with endothelial issues caused by covid. 🤞
Combining L-Arginine with vitamin C improves long-COVID symptoms: The LINCOLN Survey - PMC
The first study as 12 participants, the second has 14. I’m too lazy to read the last two. This is very early research, and should not be taken for medical advice. I’m sorry, but I don’t want anyone to get hurt.
No worries. The first l-arginine study had 1390 patients successfully complete they survey. The second one, 46.
Tbh, I wasn’t expecting anything in this post to be seriously taken as medical advice merely stuff to look out for. Imo, things are still very early and idk that anyone is gonna find anything that meets that criteria. As I said in the other post we’re all kinda shooting in the dark here with very little options. But that’s also why I wanted a mod in charge and not me. Whatever y’all are comfortable with.
Nah it’s fine. I just feel that I have a responsibility to speak up and comment, just to keep people from too quickly self medicating. I think that people are understandably desperate, and could do something desperate. I don’t mean it to criticise you.
Totally get it. Also, agree with your concern, but also with people who might experiment. Extraordinary circumstances, I guess. I don’t have healthcare, but watching doctors and nurses just abandoning germ theory and prevention makes me think the future is gonna require some sort of alternative that is probably gonna be pretty messy starting off.
Not medical advice, just sharing research :)
These are more relevant to either possibly reducing infection or possibly helping with an acute infection. I think that things that may help limit (re)infection are helpful to mention here.
Azelastine:
Antiviral Potential of Azelastine against Major Respiratory Viruses
Early intervention with azelastine nasal spray may reduce viral load in SARS-CoV-2 infected patients
Carrageenan:
Cetylpyridinium Chloride:
Melatonin / melatonergic drugs:
these are a bit more dubious
animal testing
Therapeutic potential of melatonin and melatonergic drugs on K18-hACE2 mice infected with SARS-CoV-2
Assessing the therapeutic potential of agomelatine, ramelteon, and melatonin against SARS-CoV-2
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:
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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.
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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.
Reddit links were detected in your comment. Here are links to the same locations on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.
Link 1:
Link 2:
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The only actual covid recovery protocol is
- stop being around people
- wait 1-2 years
