50: Still Sick After COVID? – The 3 Most Promising Treatments for Long-Haul Recovery with Dr. Aaron Hartman

One of the interesting things we learned early on in the pandemic is that individuals with dysbiosis or abnormal issues in their gut were more prone to severe Covid hospitalization with COVID and death, which was also one of the reasons why kids did so well, because they didn't have more robust gut microbiomes. What are three major things you can do to help with long Covid? What's a functional approach to long Covid? I've been avoiding talking about this for quite some time, but I was recently told by my team that it's okay to talk about it now. We've kind of removed a lot of the barriers online, so. And some patients have been asking me about that. It's really interesting to think about the statistics that maybe 10% of our population has some degree of long Covid. And some of the things I've looked at may be up to up to 30%. So the gist is any doctor that's out there is going to be dealing with long Covid. So I'm going to deal with three major factors with long Covid and three interventions that can have a big impact on long. Long Covid. The first thing you have to realize is long Covid, there's something else going on. Long Covid is a mast cell activation syndrome. It's a SIRS chronic inflammatory syndrome phenomenon, meaning you have just inflammation. And these inflammations have things that come before they have prerequisites. They have things that have to be going on for this to happen. So you want to look for inflammation stuff in your body. You want to get your gut better. One of the interesting things we learned early on in the pandemic is that individuals with dysbiosis or abnormal issues in their gut were more prone to severe Covid. High hospitalization with COVID and death, which was also one of the reasons why kids did so well, because they tend to have more robust gut microbiomes. Early on as well, we learned that low vitamin D status, super critical. If your vitamin D level was over 50, then your chances of dying of COVID were less than 0.005. Such a big deal that actually in Ireland, their public health actually sent patients with COPD and cystic fibrosis, which patients with lung issues the most likely to die from COVID they actually sent them by vitamin D. So, you know, you gotta look at that status and you have to look in your environment. What is going on that's keeping you stuck? Is there a mold in your environment? I found that some individual patients who are Kind of stuck in their healing process, have past traumas. There's a thing called the cell danger response which is your body's natural healing cycle and gets stuck with illnesses, concussions, environmental things. And so if it's a trauma in the past that hasn't been dealt with or a trauma response or just maybe a long term stress, so that can kind of keep your body stuck from healing. So what are three basic interventions you can do that can have a massive impact on your body healing with COVID One of those is using low dose naltrexone. It's something that we used, we started using early on in the pandemic. It helps balance your immune system. I actually did a couple of TV interviews with this and actually heard back from individuals saying that taking low dose naltrexone had a big impact. If someone has long Covid, we know they have cytokine issues, we know they have ongoing inflammation and imbalance in their immune system. And one of the basic things that low dose naltrexone does is just balance that immune system. Next thing you have to look at is getting your vitamin D status optimized. That means over 60, ideally closer to 80, between 6 and 80, but you got to get it into that optimal range.

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Low vitamin D status probably was the major nutrient deficiency. Yeah, of course, zinc and a bunch of other stuff. But the biggest one, vitamin D for severity of COVID lingering symptoms. You got to get that level up. The other thing you need to think about is that can help your brain fogginess. I'm actually gonna give two extra bonuses. Here is methylene blue. Methylene blue is an interesting chemical, one of the first chemicals synthesized in the west back in the 1880s. By the late 1890s or 1900, it was actually being used to treat malaria before we actually came out with quinine or hydroxychloroquine. Later started getting used in hospitals 1950s to treat methemoglobinemia and then started getting used for chronic Lyme patients because its impact on Biofilms back about 20 years ago. What we've also realized about methylene blue, it's neuroprotectant, helps protect your neurons, and there's interesting research looking at it in Parkinson's disease, for example. But it also helps improve mitochondrial function at complex 3. Which part of any chronic illness with brain issues, fog, energy issues, mitochondrial issues, is going to be dealing with mitochondria. So methylene blue is a, is a relatively safe thing that can address all those things. You don't want to take it if you're taking Adderall or stimulants or SSRIs because there are some medication interactions. But if you're not taking those, it's a great medication add on. Caveat. Don't buy it online because a lot of stuff online is actually tainted with cadmium and heavy metals. So you want to make sure you're getting it from a reputable compounding pharmacy. And the bonus thing is actually synapsin, which is a nasal spray of a ginseng, ginsinoside extract with a version of NAD or nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide and B12 in it. It's basically brain juice. It helps with clarity of thought, helps your brain deal stress. There's interesting research using it. I'm with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's patients and I've had some pretty good results with it. Helping with patients, clarity of thought, helping with some of the brain fog related to long Covid. Gotta get your guts squared away. Of course. Do those nutrients we talked about and find out what your root cause was. What sets you up for this? And the three top things I've seen during the pandemic that set people up for this was mold in the environment, hypermobility, undiagnosed nutrient deficiencies. Again, mold in the environment, hypermobility, and undiagnosed untreated nutrient deficiencies. Addressing these, these three of three things can have a massive impact on your long Covid. Of course, mast cell activation, of course there's a bunch of other things, but this is like my little data drop, so to speak, in regards to that. And people are asking more and more about this. I was gonna do a separate thing about this beside not to. There's an interesting article that was actually published in Elsevier maybe two years ago, plus or minus, talking about a new swath of autoimmune diseases we're gonna be seeing related to Covid. We're seeing COVID infection is uniquely related to certain autoantibodies that your body makes. The infection triggers your body making autoantibodies. This process called molecular mimicry. The concept is one infection causes your body to be inflamed and then through the impact on its immune system, you create antibodies against yourself and not against it. Associated with positive ana thyroid antibodies, lupus, multiple sclerosis, mixed connective tissue disease there's actually a whole host of autoimmune issues we're seeing popping up in this post Covid world. So if you're having issues after Covid feeling kind of cruddy, you should get an antibody screen looking at those those nutrients I've mentioned before and start diggin and there is hope. To date, the vast majority, I have a handful of COVID patients who haven't gotten back to their normal status. So I've had really good clinical outcomes with my patients because I've been getting to the root cause. Hope this information's helpful. Gives you hope. Don't give up. We have a ton of blogs on Long Covid, lots of videos as well, and it's something we're gonna be seeing for quite some time due to its impact on our immune systems. Anyway, I hope this information was helpful. Take care, we'll talk to you soon.

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