9 ms·

The Causes of Long Covid

169 points by maxall4 4mo ago

GenerocUsername 4mo ago
[flagged]
- decremental 4mo ago
  [dead]
- bigyabai 4mo ago
  Maybe try reading the studies they cited and linked? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666379126001102 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266637912... > In the first transfer experiment, most patient participants had been vaccinated prior to sampling, whereas the controls were not. Importantly, in our follow-up experiment, we used post-pandemic controls (exposed and vaccinated), and their IgG still did not induce the overt pain phenotype seen with long COVID IgG, suggesting vaccination alone is unlikely to explain the transfer effects.
- antonvs 4mo ago
  Given that the major COVID-19 vaccines had a significant protective effect against Long COVID, this is a particularly perverse variation on the conspiracy theory. Long COVID is much more prevalent among people who’ve experienced severe COVID symptoms, and unvaccinated people have the most severe symptoms. One doesn’t need a PhD to do the math here.
  - SV_BubbleTime 4mo ago
    > Given that the major COVID-19 vaccines had a significant protective effect against Long COVID, Are there studies for this?
    - kuerbel 4mo ago
      https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9905096 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9905096 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38388-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38388-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65302-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65302-0 Do you need even more?
      - solid_fuel 4mo ago
        It will never be enough for these guys. In 6 months they'll be in the comments on the next article about covid railing against the vaccine again. It's never enough with these guys, because it's not about being right or wrong, it's about having their feelings validated. They feel like the vaccine was bad, facts be damned.
    - defrost 4mo ago
      "yes" ... Australian studies show a protective effect (in that the fewer people that got COVID (correlated with vaccines) the fewer got Long COVID) See Page 8: https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/9592f439-9b96-4589-a55d-6b04e262e5e1/aihw-phe-318.pdf.aspx https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/9592f439-9b96-4589-a55d-6b0... (2022) Australian studies in W.Australia also show: In multivariable analyses, pre-existing health conditions at the time of initial SARS-CoV-2 infection and reporting fatigue, shortness of breath, and cough 3 months post-infection were independent predictors of persistent long COVID. Age, sex, and number of COVID vaccinations were not significantly associated with persistent long COVID. which needs to be qualified with an "of course" as W.Australia (3xsize of Texas, small population) was isolated from the world and then almost the entire state got two to three rounds of vaccination at much the same time: * https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-infection/article/factors-associated-with-persistence-or-recovery-from-long-covid-6-months-postsarscov2-infection/FCCC46404097E5470DCD72D10107A29B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-inf... (2025) ( In Pop. Press: https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/more-than-half-of-long-covid-patients-still-showing-symptoms-after-six-months https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/more-than-half-of-long-... )
- wetpaws 4mo ago
  That's because vaccine does not cause autoimmune disorders
  - DaSHacka 4mo ago
    Source?
    - kuerbel 4mo ago
      https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-50656-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-50656-8 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.25.23285014v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.25.23285014v... Oh sorry, the last one shows that covid increases the likelihood to develop autoimmune disorders.
prh8 4mo ago
Sadly, no mention of Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, or even mast cells at all
- Matticus_Rex 4mo ago
  It'd have been interesting for them to discuss it, but from what I understand it looks like MCAS is probably an entirely separate thing (that can also be triggered by COVID), but because of the overlap in symptoms, many people who assumed they have long COVID actually had MCAS. And even after teasing those two out, there may be more conditions in the long COVID bucket. And of course people can have both.
- sebasv_ 4mo ago
  This is a blog on the root cause. MCAS would be an intermediate mechanism in making you feel sick, but something must have triggered the MCAS. Thats the autoimmune response.
  - prh8 4mo ago
    MCAS is the underlying condition, which is then triggered by a Covid infection. This results in an escalation of baseline symptoms, which is what Long Covid is
indiandeodorant 4mo ago
[flagged]
aaron695 4mo ago
[dead]
sebasv_ 4mo ago
I am really grateful to see this still gets attention.
MrBuddyCasino 4mo ago
[flagged]
- deminature 4mo ago
  >implying there is at least a substantial fake element to it. The article actually argues against that reading: IgG transferred from patients into mice reproduced the symptoms. Mice don't have a nervous disposition. That points to a physical mechanism.
- tehjoker 4mo ago
  FTA: " Importantly, IgG fractions from the blood of these individuals cross-reacted with several types of mouse tissue in vitro, and transfer of this IgG to living mice reproduced symptoms such as pain, fatigue, coordination problems, temperature sensitivity and more. These effects were not seen with IGg transfer from unaffected patients. It hardly needs pointing out that you cannot transfer a nervous disposition or a persistent bad attitude by transfusing antibody fractions. Long Covid is a real a disease as lupus, MS, Hashimoto’s, or Type I diabetes, all of which are driven by production of antibodies to a person’s own tissues."
- kennywinker 4mo ago
  That you can see improvements in people with long covid by giving them SSRIs isn’t clear evidence it’s partly fake or a “social contagion”. Whatever improvements recorded are just as easily explained by the fact that being sick for months is depressing and alienating and a bunch of people think you’re faking it. On top of that, the SSRI article you linked suggests a biochemical mechanism by which SSRIs might be acting (i.e. not by making something “fake” go away, by actually treating the cause of something real)
  - MrBuddyCasino 4mo ago
    Why then do SSRIs also work on fibromyalgia, Morgellons, Chronic Lime and Chronic Fatigue?
    - 4mo ago
deminature 4mo ago
I caught this in the Dec 2023/Jan 2024 Covid wave, in a densely-packed Bay Area tech office. I only returned to near-full mental clarity in Jan 2026 - two years later. It's an insidious illness that needs more visibility. Poorly ventilated offices full of sick colleagues in close proximity are ideal conditions for transmitting airborne diseases, and it's far too easy to develop a debilitating chronic illness this way. There should be minimum clean-air standards for open offices to protect workers.
lend000 4mo ago
I had a long process with this that mostly manifested as exercise intolerance and general inflammation/discomfort, and sleep struggles. I made no progress for 2 years, lost most of my muscle (I had been very active before) and started thinking "is this how it's going to be forever?". After not finding anything promising from traditional medicine or supplements, I finally made some dramatic life changes. I'm fully past it now (with persistent lifestyle changes), but I really had to rethink my relationship with food. Ended up doing a paleo diet, avoiding stressors (some of which are not obvious like just being on your phone scrolling, bad posture/circulation/sitting for too long), improving sleep hygiene, and ramping up consistent cardio exercise, with an emphasis on getting up to 4x/week zone 5 cardio without triggering intolerance. Since then I've discovered a lot of other things that are great for overall health, like HRV-reset breathing and long-duration water fasts (around 3 days is optimal for me). I imagine those would have been very helpful if I had tried them earlier. A water fast is a complete metabolic and inflammatory reset of the body, and it's not as hard as you might think. Hopefully most affected folks have recovered and are living normal lives by now, but if not, there are things you can do! It seems like the more challenging those things are, the more efficacious.
- stringfood 4mo ago
  A non-inflammatory rocket shock diet can certainly aid in symptoms of long covid in many users, often people megadose on antioxidants to dilate their recovery window and not regress. Glad to hear you are feeling better and I totally agree that movement and diet are key in recovering from inflammatory disease.
- nurettin 4mo ago
  What do you mean by water fasting? Do you avoid drinking water directly, or do you avoid all food? For example salads are basically sacks of water.
  - empressplay 4mo ago
    no you only consume water
  - 4mo ago
smj-edison 4mo ago
Maybe a bit of a strange take, but after having dealt with chronic illness personally and talked with a lot of others with chronic illness, I don't think classifying chronic illness by symptoms will help with curing, and in fact I don't think categorizing works at all for chronic illness. We've been trying to classify chronic illnesses for so long, and yet in most cases no pattern emerges. This has led me to conclude that perhaps in most cases chronic illness is an emergent behavior from a complex system, namely our body. Now tbh this is kind of a cheap take, because it's not that hard to conclude. But gosh darn it, we're programmers and we deal with complex systems all the time! What I want to see is a complete quantitative mapping of human metabolism, so that we can see all the in-between steps, not just the surface levels. That way curing chronic illness is more about comparing metabolite levels against known pathways and seeing what's regulated incorrectly. There's just not enough introspective capability currently. My vision is some day a person who's been chronically ill can walk into a clinic, take a blood test, and with mass spectrometry get the level of the around 1800 different intermediate metabolites. That gets mapped to a known good metabolic graph, and it's optimized to find what in-between step is off kilter. They're then prescribed a drug that resets the bad state, and it 6 weeks they're back to normal. I also doubt that AI will substantially help either. It still doesn't bring any more introspection capability, and if we can't figure out why someone is sick, I have little faith that a predictive AI can figure it out either.
- _3u10 4mo ago
  You used to be able to order a paper version but here it is. https://web.expasy.org/pathways/ https://web.expasy.org/pathways/
  - smj-edison 4mo ago
    Thanks for the link! I looked over it, but I'm not seeing quantitative levels of reactions. That's been my biggest issue with current pathway databases. It's great to know what's connected to what, but very quickly it becomes everything connected to everything. And unfortunately everything doesn't reduce the problem space.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
FionaZhu 4mo ago
Maybe intermittent fasting could help treat it.
uwagar 4mo ago
[flagged]
- hhh 4mo ago
  how would you explain people without the vaccine getting long covid?
  - uwagar 4mo ago
    did they even ask the participants of the study if they took the vaccine?
- camcaine 4mo ago
  [flagged]
amelius 4mo ago
Why are women far more likely to have long covid?
- kranke155 4mo ago
  Some speculation is the pill. Some kind of unmapped interaction.
- Earw0rm 4mo ago
  Perhaps because it involves immune system dysregulation.
- iamkrazy 4mo ago
  [flagged]
- defrost 4mo ago
  Are they though? The results follow a 2024 study led by Dr Mulu Woldegiorgis that surveyed 11,000 people from Western Australia three months after they contracted COVID-19. Almost one-in-five (18.2 per cent) had developed long COVID. The researchers then monitored the same group of people six months after their initial infection. “We wanted to get a sense of the trajectory for people with long COVID. After six months, the average number of symptoms remained stable, indicating little improvement,” she said. ~ https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/more-than-half-of-long-covid-patients-still-showing-symptoms-after-six-months https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/more-than-half-of-long-... and from that study: In multivariable analyses, pre-existing health conditions at the time of initial SARS-CoV-2 infection and reporting fatigue, shortness of breath, and cough 3 months post-infection were independent predictors of persistent long COVID. Age, sex, and number of COVID vaccinations were not significantly associated with persistent long COVID. ~ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-infection/article/factors-associated-with-persistence-or-recovery-from-long-covid-6-months-postsarscov2-infection/FCCC46404097E5470DCD72D10107A29B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-inf...
- smj-edison 4mo ago
  I've heard things hypothesized to be either differences in hormone levels, or the one that's more fascinating to me is it could be because an issue came up with suppressing the second X chromezone.
timr 4mo ago
Before you can investigate the causes of an illness, you have to define it. Otherwise, you’re chasing an ever-shifting cloud of ambiguous symptoms, any of which could have different causes. The article opens with this admission, so I’m not stating anything new here. The problem with “Long Covid” as it exists today is that there’s no such definition. Literally anyone who had Covid once and feels bad today (and quite a few people who never had a confirmed case at all) includes their set of symptoms in the communal diagnosis. Thus, if you dig into these studies, you always find that the syndrome is a wide-ranging and variable constellation of symptoms, making it impossible for a study to have any systematic legitimacy. Moreover, the results of any particular study are more strongly influenced by the inclusion criterion (if there even is one) than by any other factor. It’s perfectly possible to evaluate treatments in this situation, and would be a better use of resources - pick symptoms, make an inclusion criteria, and run a randomized trial of existing drugs or therapies. But this is likely to fail, and it’s much, much easier to write papers with unprovable theories and retrospective analysis.
- dyauspitr 4mo ago
  Sometimes the symptoms are so ambiguous that it is hard to nail anything down. It’s the same thing with Lymes disease, which is definitely a real thing, but there aren’t good, reliable tests for it. It takes a long time to manifest and the symptoms vary wildly from person to person.
  - kranke155 4mo ago
    There are increasingly positive markers - autonomic dysfunction in previously healthy people, measurable small fiber neuropathy, and auto immune dysfunction in largely unmapped parts of the immune system.
  - Aurornis 4mo ago
    > It’s the same thing with Lymes disease, which is definitely a real thing, but there aren’t good, reliable tests for it There are actually good, reliable tests for it. However Lyme disease (not Lymes disease) became an alternative medicine explanation for everything vague and many people became obsessed with thinking they had it based on vague symptoms like fatigue. When they couldn’t get positive test results to confirm their belief, the Lyme disease online communities established the idea that the tests cannot detect their version of the disease. It’s a belief that allows anyone to diagnose with Lyme disease in a completely unprovable way. > and the symptoms vary wildly from person to person. This belief is an unfortunate result of the online Lyme communities encouraging everyone with any unexplained symptoms to believe it’s caused by Lyme disease that can’t be detected. When the disease becomes redefined as being untestable and causing wildly different symptoms in everyone, it becomes impossible to say that anyone doesn’t have it. If you have any vague symptoms like feeling tired, a Lyme disease community will encourage you do believe that it’s caused by an undetectable case of Lyme disease. There is a lot of strong evidence that these patients do not have Lyme disease, but they’re always good at coming up with another reason why they have it but it can’t be detected in them specifically
camcaine 4mo ago
[flagged]
- iamkrazy 4mo ago
  You must love getting cancelled.
- ultimaweapon 4mo ago
  > After never catching covid Maybe it is because you are vaccinated?
throw9393r93 4mo ago
[flagged]
- ragequittah 4mo ago
  These comments show me how amazing the world of covid disinformation still is. After every country/health authority in the entire world studying it for so long and all coming to the exact same conclusions there's still those who are positive they know better. Billions of people being studied for years vs I heard it from some dude on Twitter.
  - thrirnfjri 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - ragequittah 4mo ago
      You're proving the idea that the science wins out though. The vaccine that caused problems in a vanishingly small amount of people was almost instantly recalled. I believe here in Canada we started giving it to people in February and stopped in March. The signal was so clear even though it was something like 1 in 50,000 people who had a problem. We have giant populations of people who refused the vaccines. We also have a giant resurgence of measles now because those people are so large in number and so influential. Long covid is far more prevalent in those populations than anywhere else despite the seemingly blanket belief that covid was inconsequential among them. The trials for the Pfizer vaccine came back as 95% effective. Not sure what paper you're holding saying blanket immunity for all time but it was probably political not scientific. It then did an insane pivot with omicron. Way too many mutations at once for any vaccine to accommodate. The science is very broad and very clear on all of these matters. I feel bad if politicians or news agencies lied to you but my advice is to take an aggregate of every country / health authority in the entire world and disregard your own anecdotes / the Joe Rogans of the world. There's just no way that a conspiracy can be as far reaching as what you're implying.
      - 4mo ago
motbus3 4mo ago
I know someone's case who got it 3 times. The first 2 times full recover in no time. The third one took couple of months and now feels tired all the time, lost all sense of taste and smell, swollen tongue, body pain of sitting still due to the compression of muscles. This person told me it was sure it was related to COVID because there was nothing before or after it and that was the only thing that happened. Kinda sucks to thing that everytime it might be a chance for that or worse
- kranke155 4mo ago
  Maybe tell this person to see an autonomic dysfunction expert.
  - motbus3 4mo ago
    Not sure if needed. It depends much on your exposure. If you have someone on your family it is a factor of risk. Which just makes things insane considering that they exploit it get couple hundred bucks more per insurance. It has been cheaper to not work for the healthcare system lately. Also because people are a**oles to nurses and the rest of the staff.
- wetmore 4mo ago
  I had covid 7 or 8 times lol. Basically 2-3 times a year from Jan 2022 until spring of 2025. Luckily there have been seemingly no long-term effects for me, and it's been over a year since I last tested positive.
OutOfHere 4mo ago
This author and the article is utterly and chronically useless and cringe. It offers no insight. If you want something that's more useful: Long COVID may be fueled by inflammation and tiny clots (2026) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/01/260107225532.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/01/260107225532.h...
whiskey_ranger 4mo ago
Covid almost killed me. I distinctly remember feeling near death when the hospital attempted a last-ditch effort with a transfusion. I don’t remember all of the details, but I know that someone, somewhere, saved my life. And I’ve done fuck all with that gift — it’s been almost five years. Personally, the only long Covid symptom I know of is that I have a coughing fit after every meal (and sometimes during). Some foods seem to lead to worse fits, but anything other than liquid will make me cough to some degree. Sometimes, it’s to the point that I see stars and nearly pass out. All in all, I got off easy with Covid. It could have been worse.
- saulpw 4mo ago
  > coughing fit after every meal (and sometimes during). This might be stomach acid aspirating into your lungs, from GERD or similar caused/exacerbated by Covid, and that may have negative consequences for your health apart from the coughing.

169 points by maxall4 4mo ago

GenerocUsername 4mo ago

[flagged]

decremental 4mo ago
[dead]
bigyabai 4mo ago
Maybe try reading the studies they cited and linked? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666379126001102 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266637912... > In the first transfer experiment, most patient participants had been vaccinated prior to sampling, whereas the controls were not. Importantly, in our follow-up experiment, we used post-pandemic controls (exposed and vaccinated), and their IgG still did not induce the overt pain phenotype seen with long COVID IgG, suggesting vaccination alone is unlikely to explain the transfer effects.
antonvs 4mo ago
Given that the major COVID-19 vaccines had a significant protective effect against Long COVID, this is a particularly perverse variation on the conspiracy theory. Long COVID is much more prevalent among people who’ve experienced severe COVID symptoms, and unvaccinated people have the most severe symptoms. One doesn’t need a PhD to do the math here.
- SV_BubbleTime 4mo ago
  > Given that the major COVID-19 vaccines had a significant protective effect against Long COVID, Are there studies for this?
  - kuerbel 4mo ago
    https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9905096 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9905096 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38388-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38388-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65302-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65302-0 Do you need even more?
    - solid_fuel 4mo ago
      It will never be enough for these guys. In 6 months they'll be in the comments on the next article about covid railing against the vaccine again. It's never enough with these guys, because it's not about being right or wrong, it's about having their feelings validated. They feel like the vaccine was bad, facts be damned.
  - defrost 4mo ago
    "yes" ... Australian studies show a protective effect (in that the fewer people that got COVID (correlated with vaccines) the fewer got Long COVID) See Page 8: https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/9592f439-9b96-4589-a55d-6b04e262e5e1/aihw-phe-318.pdf.aspx https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/9592f439-9b96-4589-a55d-6b0... (2022) Australian studies in W.Australia also show: In multivariable analyses, pre-existing health conditions at the time of initial SARS-CoV-2 infection and reporting fatigue, shortness of breath, and cough 3 months post-infection were independent predictors of persistent long COVID. Age, sex, and number of COVID vaccinations were not significantly associated with persistent long COVID. which needs to be qualified with an "of course" as W.Australia (3xsize of Texas, small population) was isolated from the world and then almost the entire state got two to three rounds of vaccination at much the same time: * https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-infection/article/factors-associated-with-persistence-or-recovery-from-long-covid-6-months-postsarscov2-infection/FCCC46404097E5470DCD72D10107A29B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-inf... (2025) ( In Pop. Press: https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/more-than-half-of-long-covid-patients-still-showing-symptoms-after-six-months https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/more-than-half-of-long-... )
wetpaws 4mo ago
That's because vaccine does not cause autoimmune disorders
- DaSHacka 4mo ago
  Source?
  - kuerbel 4mo ago
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-50656-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-50656-8 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.25.23285014v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.25.23285014v... Oh sorry, the last one shows that covid increases the likelihood to develop autoimmune disorders.

prh8 4mo ago

Sadly, no mention of Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, or even mast cells at all

Matticus_Rex 4mo ago
It'd have been interesting for them to discuss it, but from what I understand it looks like MCAS is probably an entirely separate thing (that can also be triggered by COVID), but because of the overlap in symptoms, many people who assumed they have long COVID actually had MCAS. And even after teasing those two out, there may be more conditions in the long COVID bucket. And of course people can have both.
sebasv_ 4mo ago
This is a blog on the root cause. MCAS would be an intermediate mechanism in making you feel sick, but something must have triggered the MCAS. Thats the autoimmune response.
- prh8 4mo ago
  MCAS is the underlying condition, which is then triggered by a Covid infection. This results in an escalation of baseline symptoms, which is what Long Covid is

indiandeodorant 4mo ago

[flagged]

aaron695 4mo ago

[dead]

sebasv_ 4mo ago

I am really grateful to see this still gets attention.

MrBuddyCasino 4mo ago

[flagged]

deminature 4mo ago
>implying there is at least a substantial fake element to it. The article actually argues against that reading: IgG transferred from patients into mice reproduced the symptoms. Mice don't have a nervous disposition. That points to a physical mechanism.
tehjoker 4mo ago
FTA: " Importantly, IgG fractions from the blood of these individuals cross-reacted with several types of mouse tissue in vitro, and transfer of this IgG to living mice reproduced symptoms such as pain, fatigue, coordination problems, temperature sensitivity and more. These effects were not seen with IGg transfer from unaffected patients. It hardly needs pointing out that you cannot transfer a nervous disposition or a persistent bad attitude by transfusing antibody fractions. Long Covid is a real a disease as lupus, MS, Hashimoto’s, or Type I diabetes, all of which are driven by production of antibodies to a person’s own tissues."
kennywinker 4mo ago
That you can see improvements in people with long covid by giving them SSRIs isn’t clear evidence it’s partly fake or a “social contagion”. Whatever improvements recorded are just as easily explained by the fact that being sick for months is depressing and alienating and a bunch of people think you’re faking it. On top of that, the SSRI article you linked suggests a biochemical mechanism by which SSRIs might be acting (i.e. not by making something “fake” go away, by actually treating the cause of something real)
- MrBuddyCasino 4mo ago
  Why then do SSRIs also work on fibromyalgia, Morgellons, Chronic Lime and Chronic Fatigue?
  - 4mo ago

deminature 4mo ago

I caught this in the Dec 2023/Jan 2024 Covid wave, in a densely-packed Bay Area tech office. I only returned to near-full mental clarity in Jan 2026 - two years later. It's an insidious illness that needs more visibility. Poorly ventilated offices full of sick colleagues in close proximity are ideal conditions for transmitting airborne diseases, and it's far too easy to develop a debilitating chronic illness this way. There should be minimum clean-air standards for open offices to protect workers.

lend000 4mo ago

I had a long process with this that mostly manifested as exercise intolerance and general inflammation/discomfort, and sleep struggles. I made no progress for 2 years, lost most of my muscle (I had been very active before) and started thinking "is this how it's going to be forever?". After not finding anything promising from traditional medicine or supplements, I finally made some dramatic life changes. I'm fully past it now (with persistent lifestyle changes), but I really had to rethink my relationship with food. Ended up doing a paleo diet, avoiding stressors (some of which are not obvious like just being on your phone scrolling, bad posture/circulation/sitting for too long), improving sleep hygiene, and ramping up consistent cardio exercise, with an emphasis on getting up to 4x/week zone 5 cardio without triggering intolerance. Since then I've discovered a lot of other things that are great for overall health, like HRV-reset breathing and long-duration water fasts (around 3 days is optimal for me). I imagine those would have been very helpful if I had tried them earlier. A water fast is a complete metabolic and inflammatory reset of the body, and it's not as hard as you might think. Hopefully most affected folks have recovered and are living normal lives by now, but if not, there are things you can do! It seems like the more challenging those things are, the more efficacious.

stringfood 4mo ago
A non-inflammatory rocket shock diet can certainly aid in symptoms of long covid in many users, often people megadose on antioxidants to dilate their recovery window and not regress. Glad to hear you are feeling better and I totally agree that movement and diet are key in recovering from inflammatory disease.
nurettin 4mo ago
What do you mean by water fasting? Do you avoid drinking water directly, or do you avoid all food? For example salads are basically sacks of water.
- empressplay 4mo ago
  no you only consume water
- 4mo ago

smj-edison 4mo ago

Maybe a bit of a strange take, but after having dealt with chronic illness personally and talked with a lot of others with chronic illness, I don't think classifying chronic illness by symptoms will help with curing, and in fact I don't think categorizing works at all for chronic illness. We've been trying to classify chronic illnesses for so long, and yet in most cases no pattern emerges. This has led me to conclude that perhaps in most cases chronic illness is an emergent behavior from a complex system, namely our body. Now tbh this is kind of a cheap take, because it's not that hard to conclude. But gosh darn it, we're programmers and we deal with complex systems all the time! What I want to see is a complete quantitative mapping of human metabolism, so that we can see all the in-between steps, not just the surface levels. That way curing chronic illness is more about comparing metabolite levels against known pathways and seeing what's regulated incorrectly. There's just not enough introspective capability currently. My vision is some day a person who's been chronically ill can walk into a clinic, take a blood test, and with mass spectrometry get the level of the around 1800 different intermediate metabolites. That gets mapped to a known good metabolic graph, and it's optimized to find what in-between step is off kilter. They're then prescribed a drug that resets the bad state, and it 6 weeks they're back to normal. I also doubt that AI will substantially help either. It still doesn't bring any more introspection capability, and if we can't figure out why someone is sick, I have little faith that a predictive AI can figure it out either.

_3u10 4mo ago
You used to be able to order a paper version but here it is. https://web.expasy.org/pathways/ https://web.expasy.org/pathways/
- smj-edison 4mo ago
  Thanks for the link! I looked over it, but I'm not seeing quantitative levels of reactions. That's been my biggest issue with current pathway databases. It's great to know what's connected to what, but very quickly it becomes everything connected to everything. And unfortunately everything doesn't reduce the problem space.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

FionaZhu 4mo ago

Maybe intermittent fasting could help treat it.

uwagar 4mo ago

[flagged]

hhh 4mo ago
how would you explain people without the vaccine getting long covid?
- uwagar 4mo ago
  did they even ask the participants of the study if they took the vaccine?
camcaine 4mo ago
[flagged]

amelius 4mo ago

Why are women far more likely to have long covid?

kranke155 4mo ago
Some speculation is the pill. Some kind of unmapped interaction.
Earw0rm 4mo ago
Perhaps because it involves immune system dysregulation.
iamkrazy 4mo ago
[flagged]
defrost 4mo ago
Are they though? The results follow a 2024 study led by Dr Mulu Woldegiorgis that surveyed 11,000 people from Western Australia three months after they contracted COVID-19. Almost one-in-five (18.2 per cent) had developed long COVID. The researchers then monitored the same group of people six months after their initial infection. “We wanted to get a sense of the trajectory for people with long COVID. After six months, the average number of symptoms remained stable, indicating little improvement,” she said. ~ https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/more-than-half-of-long-covid-patients-still-showing-symptoms-after-six-months https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/more-than-half-of-long-... and from that study: In multivariable analyses, pre-existing health conditions at the time of initial SARS-CoV-2 infection and reporting fatigue, shortness of breath, and cough 3 months post-infection were independent predictors of persistent long COVID. Age, sex, and number of COVID vaccinations were not significantly associated with persistent long COVID. ~ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-infection/article/factors-associated-with-persistence-or-recovery-from-long-covid-6-months-postsarscov2-infection/FCCC46404097E5470DCD72D10107A29B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-inf...
smj-edison 4mo ago
I've heard things hypothesized to be either differences in hormone levels, or the one that's more fascinating to me is it could be because an issue came up with suppressing the second X chromezone.

timr 4mo ago

Before you can investigate the causes of an illness, you have to define it. Otherwise, you’re chasing an ever-shifting cloud of ambiguous symptoms, any of which could have different causes. The article opens with this admission, so I’m not stating anything new here. The problem with “Long Covid” as it exists today is that there’s no such definition. Literally anyone who had Covid once and feels bad today (and quite a few people who never had a confirmed case at all) includes their set of symptoms in the communal diagnosis. Thus, if you dig into these studies, you always find that the syndrome is a wide-ranging and variable constellation of symptoms, making it impossible for a study to have any systematic legitimacy. Moreover, the results of any particular study are more strongly influenced by the inclusion criterion (if there even is one) than by any other factor. It’s perfectly possible to evaluate treatments in this situation, and would be a better use of resources - pick symptoms, make an inclusion criteria, and run a randomized trial of existing drugs or therapies. But this is likely to fail, and it’s much, much easier to write papers with unprovable theories and retrospective analysis.

dyauspitr 4mo ago
Sometimes the symptoms are so ambiguous that it is hard to nail anything down. It’s the same thing with Lymes disease, which is definitely a real thing, but there aren’t good, reliable tests for it. It takes a long time to manifest and the symptoms vary wildly from person to person.
- kranke155 4mo ago
  There are increasingly positive markers - autonomic dysfunction in previously healthy people, measurable small fiber neuropathy, and auto immune dysfunction in largely unmapped parts of the immune system.
- Aurornis 4mo ago
  > It’s the same thing with Lymes disease, which is definitely a real thing, but there aren’t good, reliable tests for it There are actually good, reliable tests for it. However Lyme disease (not Lymes disease) became an alternative medicine explanation for everything vague and many people became obsessed with thinking they had it based on vague symptoms like fatigue. When they couldn’t get positive test results to confirm their belief, the Lyme disease online communities established the idea that the tests cannot detect their version of the disease. It’s a belief that allows anyone to diagnose with Lyme disease in a completely unprovable way. > and the symptoms vary wildly from person to person. This belief is an unfortunate result of the online Lyme communities encouraging everyone with any unexplained symptoms to believe it’s caused by Lyme disease that can’t be detected. When the disease becomes redefined as being untestable and causing wildly different symptoms in everyone, it becomes impossible to say that anyone doesn’t have it. If you have any vague symptoms like feeling tired, a Lyme disease community will encourage you do believe that it’s caused by an undetectable case of Lyme disease. There is a lot of strong evidence that these patients do not have Lyme disease, but they’re always good at coming up with another reason why they have it but it can’t be detected in them specifically

camcaine 4mo ago

[flagged]

iamkrazy 4mo ago
You must love getting cancelled.
ultimaweapon 4mo ago
> After never catching covid Maybe it is because you are vaccinated?

throw9393r93 4mo ago

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ragequittah 4mo ago
These comments show me how amazing the world of covid disinformation still is. After every country/health authority in the entire world studying it for so long and all coming to the exact same conclusions there's still those who are positive they know better. Billions of people being studied for years vs I heard it from some dude on Twitter.
- thrirnfjri 4mo ago
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  - ragequittah 4mo ago
    You're proving the idea that the science wins out though. The vaccine that caused problems in a vanishingly small amount of people was almost instantly recalled. I believe here in Canada we started giving it to people in February and stopped in March. The signal was so clear even though it was something like 1 in 50,000 people who had a problem. We have giant populations of people who refused the vaccines. We also have a giant resurgence of measles now because those people are so large in number and so influential. Long covid is far more prevalent in those populations than anywhere else despite the seemingly blanket belief that covid was inconsequential among them. The trials for the Pfizer vaccine came back as 95% effective. Not sure what paper you're holding saying blanket immunity for all time but it was probably political not scientific. It then did an insane pivot with omicron. Way too many mutations at once for any vaccine to accommodate. The science is very broad and very clear on all of these matters. I feel bad if politicians or news agencies lied to you but my advice is to take an aggregate of every country / health authority in the entire world and disregard your own anecdotes / the Joe Rogans of the world. There's just no way that a conspiracy can be as far reaching as what you're implying.
    - 4mo ago

motbus3 4mo ago

I know someone's case who got it 3 times. The first 2 times full recover in no time. The third one took couple of months and now feels tired all the time, lost all sense of taste and smell, swollen tongue, body pain of sitting still due to the compression of muscles. This person told me it was sure it was related to COVID because there was nothing before or after it and that was the only thing that happened. Kinda sucks to thing that everytime it might be a chance for that or worse

kranke155 4mo ago
Maybe tell this person to see an autonomic dysfunction expert.
- motbus3 4mo ago
  Not sure if needed. It depends much on your exposure. If you have someone on your family it is a factor of risk. Which just makes things insane considering that they exploit it get couple hundred bucks more per insurance. It has been cheaper to not work for the healthcare system lately. Also because people are a**oles to nurses and the rest of the staff.
wetmore 4mo ago
I had covid 7 or 8 times lol. Basically 2-3 times a year from Jan 2022 until spring of 2025. Luckily there have been seemingly no long-term effects for me, and it's been over a year since I last tested positive.

OutOfHere 4mo ago

This author and the article is utterly and chronically useless and cringe. It offers no insight. If you want something that's more useful: Long COVID may be fueled by inflammation and tiny clots (2026) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/01/260107225532.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/01/260107225532.h...

whiskey_ranger 4mo ago

Covid almost killed me. I distinctly remember feeling near death when the hospital attempted a last-ditch effort with a transfusion. I don’t remember all of the details, but I know that someone, somewhere, saved my life. And I’ve done fuck all with that gift — it’s been almost five years. Personally, the only long Covid symptom I know of is that I have a coughing fit after every meal (and sometimes during). Some foods seem to lead to worse fits, but anything other than liquid will make me cough to some degree. Sometimes, it’s to the point that I see stars and nearly pass out. All in all, I got off easy with Covid. It could have been worse.

saulpw 4mo ago
> coughing fit after every meal (and sometimes during). This might be stomach acid aspirating into your lungs, from GERD or similar caused/exacerbated by Covid, and that may have negative consequences for your health apart from the coughing.