Long Covid vs ME/CFS Studies | Gupta Program |

And so a recent systematic review of the literature found that when they reviewed 21 studies, they found that 25 of the 29 symptoms found in ME and chronic fatigue syndrome were also found in Long Covid. And one of the defining characteristics of ME in chronic fatigue syndrome is what we call post exertional malaise, which means that when people exert themselves and that can be anything from cleaning the dishes through to some physical exercise, there's that malaise afterwards. So that can hit them straight away where they feel extreme exhaustion, sometimes bed bound or housebound, and that can last for a few hours right through to days and weeks following some kind of exertion. So a real crossover that was found in this particular study by Wong and Weitzer and then a very interesting study by Lenny Jason, who I know personally, they did once again a review and also comparing long haulers to ME cfs and some of their findings are very interesting. So they found there was a similar crossover of the types of patients that they were seeing. So in me CFS you have between 70 to 80% are women. And they were finding a similar percentage of women versus men being diagnosed with Long Covid. And an average age once again between the 45 to 55 age range in terms of the peak, although it can impact on all ages. I mean, in fact, we had somebody who was in their early 20s, just at university who was struck down with Long Covid. And it seems from the research that long haulers, their symptomatology starts out worse than the average person with ME cfs. So the first few months are quite intense. And the most intense symptoms tend to be the immune symptoms, which makes sense because there is a, an insult or a challenge to the body, which is the COVID 19 infection, and it's beginning to be fought off. But those immune symptoms seem to be much worse in this first few months. Sore throats and fevers and also some of the cardiovascular and orthostatic intolerance type symptoms are worse in the early months and obviously breathing difficulties being more predominant in Long Covid. And I'd like to refer to this chart that was created by Court Johnson from Health Rising. So this is where this particular chart came from, which used the, I think it was the DePaul questionnaire. So this is from DePaul University questionnaire looking at the intensity and frequency of symptoms. So in the first column here we have Long Covid initial. So the first few months of Long Covid, then Long Covid after five and a half months, and then people on average with me and Chronic fatigue syndrome. And as you can see, on average, the numbers are very similar in terms of across the board, whether it's initial or longer term. But the one that really stands out are the immune symptoms. So the sore throats, the swollen glands, the fever are the immune symptoms. So you can see it has a score of 44 with long Covid initially and then comes down to 20 for long COVID patients after about five and a half months. And people with CFS, they were to score out of 128. So showing that those immune symptoms seem to just relieve themselves over the months and also some of the neuroendocrine symptoms, so that some of the autonomic symptoms, like difficulties dealing with hot and cold or hot flushes or that kind of thing, beginning to also slightly relieve later down the line. But actually, in general, you can see there's a slight decrease in these scores, but overall still pretty high and still pretty comparable to people with ME cfs. So I hope you find that useful, a useful chart to compare the symptoms. I thanks to Court Johnson from Health Rising for that analysis and some other analysis. Similar results to the Leonard Jason study. There is Holt and Wild Wing. They found that the severe neurocognitive symptoms actually got worse over time. So those can be the headaches, some of the difficulty thinking, concentrating, that improvements happen in certain areas. But their particular study found that neurocognitive symptoms actually got worse over time. And finally, there have been some French studies with brain scans and they found hypometabolism in the limbic system. So hypometabolism is where certain brain structures are not using as much glucose. And they found that in the thalamus, the amygdala, the brainstem and the cerebellum. Cerebellum was where a lot of sensory processing occurs. And this is obviously quite interesting. So we can see that there are changes in the brain directly in patients with long Covid and obviously as part of the Gupta program, just to give you a bit of background to how we see long Covid and what our hypothesis behind it is, I can just bring up a chart here. We believe that in Long Covid and many of these types of what we term neuroimmune condition syndromes, there tend to be precipitating factors that bring on this type of illness. So at number one, we have some predisposing factors. Those can be genetic, they could be anything related to personality traits, they could be related to upbringing or things that we find difficult to define right now. But perhaps more on the genetic side, then at number two, we have acute or chronic stress. And although in this circle it says acute psychological stress, actually, this can be physiological stress, it can be emotional stress, it can be biological stress. It can even be over training. So we have seen people who are not stressed in the classic emotional sense, but have been over training physically and have been more prone to getting long Covid, you know, marathon runners and people like that. And finally, at number three, that viral trigger being the COVID 19 infection. Now, most of the time when this happens, the brain and the body are able to enact a defensive response, which involves the immune system and the nervous system fight off that virus and go back to balance. So then our health returns, you know, a few days after we've had a virus. But in the case of COVID 19, we are finding from the research that between 5 to 30% of patients with COVID 19 infection are going on to get longer symptoms, 60 to 90 days, minimum, afterwards. Now, why is that? Our hypothesis says that what's happening is there is a conditioning event occurring. Now, what that means is the brain learns something new. Now, from a logical perspective, our brains and bodies are designed for survival. We are survival machines. And if perhaps someone in the run up to getting the condition had been perhaps exhausted in some shape or form, pushing themselves a little too hard, as we've talked about the acute or chronic stress that may have been occurring in the run up to having the condition, the immune system has to work harder to fight off the virus. And in doing so, even once the original infection has been removed from the body, the brain may still be responding as if the virus is still present and now may be responding to what we call conditioned stimuli. That means things or situations or characteristics of the original event which now become conditioned stimuli. That simply means the immune system gets triggered if this thing is present. And that might be symptoms in the body itself. And this causes what we call the vicious cycle of ill health. So we believe a trauma occurs in the amygdala and insular part of the brain. And this has been shown in animal studies on conditioning effects on the immune system, which then at number four, causes chronic stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system as well as chronic stimulation of the immune system at number five. And that means we have inflammation in the body. And we know that from the research that's happening in COVID 19 over inflammation in the brain, which may be causing some of that hypometabolism. And once again, you know, surging of cytokines in the body. All of these Things then go on to leading to chronic exhaustion and a depletion of the body because the immune system is not meant to be triggered chronically for long periods of time. And the nervous system itself as well gets overstimulated. So there's chronic sympathetic arousal, then number five that leads to the symptoms. So we've got the muscle dysfunction and pain, the cognitive difficulties, sleep issues, post exertional malaise and then of course gut issues. So many people suffer from irritable bowel, varying between diarrhea and constipation. We may have those swollen glands, breathing difficulties, difficulty thinking, a whole host of symptoms. And there may be secondary cycles at number seven, such as the mitochondria not functioning according to what they should be doing, latent virus or bacterial reactivations, more sensitivities in the system and those symptoms get pass back to the brain at number eight, where the brain is chronically sensitized to those symptoms and sees those as a conditioned stimulus that is learnt to respond to that stimulus. So at number nine, the brain says, I knew it, I knew we were still in danger. Let me chronically trigger the immune system and nervous system again at number five to ensure survival. And then we get caught in this vicious cycle where the brain and the body are constantly responding to each other in this vicious cycle, causing ongoing illness for weeks and months. So this is our model of how we see these types of chronic illnesses as described for COVID 19 as well. Long haul Covid. And one of the things that we strongly recommend if you yourself get COVID 19 infection or you know, someone else that does, we believe that part of the reason this system also gets triggered is if somebody doesn't take the time to fully rest after the illness. And that's not to blame anyone or you know, this is just something that happens sometimes. We can become very motivated to get back to work as quickly as possible, get back to physical training as soon as possible. But the body isn't ready and in that sensitive vulnerable state it begins to overstimulate those defensive responses again and get stuck. It's like our immune system and nervous system get stuck in that over response. And the purpose of the Gupta program and the neuroplasticity approaches is we retrain the brain out of this particular vicious cycle. Shona, anything you want to share as we have this diagram on the screen right now just from your experiences in working with clients and how they feel about this process.

Well, I just want to add to what you were saying. A lot of clients report that when they a lot of people recover, actually recovered from COVID and then they went back to work right away, or they were caring for others or attended Black Life Matters protests, and they weren't completely well. They were just kind of on the fence. And then they got post Covid. So to reiterate what you said, I think it's just so important if you do get Covid to really give yourself that time to heal. But, yes, they report that they had stress in their life and they should have taken that time to recover more.