Long COVID is a chronic illness where some people experience a range of symptoms that continue, return, or develop long after the initial COVID infection has gone. While most people recover from COVID well, Long COVID involves new or ongoing symptoms following acute COVID-19 infection, which may include fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, and breathlessness.1 Long COVID usually presents with clusters of symptoms, often overlapping, which can fluctuate and change over time and can affect any system in the body.2 The most commonly reported symptoms are fatigue, headaches and difficulty concentrating or thinking clearly. Some people report ongoing joint pain and other signs of long-term systemic inflammation that just does not subside.3
The reason that this happens is that the immune system gets “stuck”, so to speak. It stays in a state of chronic activation.4 Following the cytokine storm of COVID these inflammation inducers remain elevated. This chronic inflammation has been suggested as a trigger for auto-immune conditions, as well as cause vascular damage, impair mitochondrial function, compromising the gut microbiome, and even cause autonomic system dysfunction.3 It’s fair to say that COVID affects every system of the body and so it is no wonder that people are still feeling the after affects.
How can Naturopathy help if my GP couldn’t?
The big difference in care for Long COVID is in the treatment focus. Medical doctors are great at symptom management and providing relief through standardised protocols. Naturopathic treatment is fundamentally different in that we treat the whole person, not just the diagnosis.5 By using a holistic, root-cause methodology, we investigate how your various body systems are interacting with each other to create symptoms, then we are able to build a individualised treatment plan that addresses the underlying core drivers of your illness, be it chronic inflammation, immune dysfunction, or gut imbalance. For a complex condition like Long COVID, which affects multiple bodily systems, this highly individualised, multi-system treatment strategy is a well-matched path to healing.
Blog by Dr Melissa Morns PhD
- Gorna R, MacDermott N, Rayner C, O’Hara M, Evans S, Agyen L, Nutland W, Rogers N, Hastie C. Long COVID guidelines need to reflect lived experience. The Lancet. 2021 Feb 6;397(10273):455-7.
- Excellence, Care. “COVID-19 rapid guideline: managing the long-term effects of COVID-19.” NG188 (2020).
- Natarajan A, Shetty A, Delanerolle G, Zeng Y, Zhang Y, Raymont V, Rathod S, Halabi S, Elliot K, Shi JQ, Phiri P. A systematic review and meta-analysis of long COVID symptoms. Systematic reviews. 2023 May 27;12(1):88.
- Crook H, Raza S, Nowell J, Young M, Edison P. Long covid—mechanisms, risk factors, and management. bmj. 2021 Jul 26;374.
- Steel A, Foley H, Bradley R, Van De Venter C, Lloyd I, Schloss J, Wardle J, Reid R. Overview of international naturopathic practice and patient characteristics: results from a cross-sectional study in 14 countries. BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies. 2020 Dec;20(1):1-2.