In this video Dr. A explains what long‑haul COVID (also called post‑COVID syndrome or post‑viral syndrome) is, how it is defined, and why it occurs even after the acute infection has cleared. He notes that the exact prevalence and who is most at risk remain uncertain, though severe acute illness and even mild cases can lead to persistent symptoms beyond four weeks. The speaker outlines the wide spectrum of symptoms affecting multiple organ systems – pulmonary (clots, breathing difficulty), neurological (brain fog, memory issues, peripheral neuropathy), constitutional (fatigue, fever, muscle weakness), and cardiovascular – and describes how these may stem from organ damage, ongoing inflammation, hormonal dysregulation, blood‑sugar disturbances, co‑ or opportunistic infections, toxins, and drug reactions. Dr. A details the clinical work‑up that physicians typically perform, including assessments of heart and lung function, inflammatory and clotting markers, hormone panels, and screening for hidden infections. He emphasizes a stepwise approach to treatment: first address any life‑threatening organ dysfunction, then investigate and correct hormonal or infectious contributors, and finally manage lingering inflammatory chemistry that can perpetuate brain fog and other chronic symptoms. The video also clarifies that long COVID is defined as symptoms persisting beyond four weeks, can last months or even over a year, and aligns with recent CDC guidance. The presentation ends with a call for viewers to subscribe and stay informed about health topics.
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A syndrome that we know about in medicine that is called post-viral syndrome. It's just that with COVID there's a lot more triggers for triggering disease that lingers after the infection may be completely gone. Hey, it's Dr. A. I want to deal with a question that I've gotten in a lot of different forms. What is COVID long haul Or long COVID or post-COVID syndrome, they're all basically the same thing. Infectious illnesses, so whether they come from a parasite or a bacteria, but especially viral illnesses, are well known to have a post-viral illness condition. Now, I guarantee you, if you have ever had, say, pneumonia, especially pneumonia that put you in the hospital, And it was bacterial, you probably had a post-pneumonia syndrome that you went through as well. There's a lot of other post-infectious syndromes that go on. A syndrome that we know about in medicine that is called post-viral syndrome, it's just that with COVID there's a lot more triggers for triggering disease that lingers after the infection may be completely gone. And that is a hallmark of a post-viral syndrome, is usually the virus is down to low numbers or gone, but you still have illness. So the first thing is, uh, there's, there's new data all the time on how many people, what percentage of people get long COVID, and I'm here to tell you that I've looked at all of it and none of it tells us exactly how many people or even who's got a propensity for long COVID. What we do know is that there is a percentage of people who have COVID as an infection and then who get long-haul symptoms. In the beginning, when we were looking at research, it seemed that people who had to go to the hospital were more likely to have long COVID, which makes sense. But now there's also a phenomenon where you have people whose COVID experience wasn't so bad, but then they have lingering symptoms after their not-so-bad COVID infection goes on. Long-haul COVID literally means If you get— and there are differences in opinion about length— but basically, if you get to 4 weeks, certainly, and you're still having symptoms and you don't have the infection anymore, we call it post-COVID syndrome or COVID long haul. Usually, you're supposed to be kind of getting better about 2 weeks, and then by 4 weeks, you should be, you know, not 100%, but you should be on the road to 100%. So then you have to say, well, what is long COVID? Long COVID is a lot of different There's a potential for any number of problems that go on after the infection. For some people, it's directly related to their organ damage that they got. So let's say, as is very common with certain types of people that get COVID, that the lungs were the most affected and the heart wasn't, and the brain and the nervous system wasn't. Post-COVID syndrome may revolve around your lungs. You might have clots in your lungs, you may have breathing difficulties, you may have any number of problems that are pulmonary, lung-related. I've seen patients where their lungs were fine, but their brain was affected, and so they had a lot of brain fog, a lot of central fatigue, a lot of memory problems, or maybe peripheral nerve problems where they had some neuropathy, burning, numbness, tingling, things like that in the extremities. Anything that could go wrong in the nervous system can go wrong. Then you have people with constitutional symptoms. Now those are things that are kind of all over the body— recurrent fevers, all-over-body fatigue, weakness of the muscles, any other thing you can think of. Then you have cardiovascular problems as well. A lot of the people with COVID long haul, if it's not one of these highly specific specific things like pulmonary disease, specifically brain, heart, etc. Usually it's a constellation of things that then push you into more of a chronic illness picture. So when you're looking at it, another question I got was, my doctor told me, you know, I've been 6, 8, 12 weeks with this COVID. My doctor said they're going to do a whole bunch of tests. Why are they doing tests on me now when they said I don't have COVID anymore? Well, what your doctor is now testing when you have COVID long haul— COVID or any viral illness or any illness generally, when you're that sick, it opens the door to other problems to come in. So we find in patients with COVID long haul, for example, hormonal dysregulation that they didn't have before. So they might have had hormones that were really balanced and great before, and they don't after COVID. Those have We find people, and this is very pervasive in the medical literature, and if you're in the hospital, they often are looking for this, but sometimes you get out of the hospital and, uh, you know, we doctors forget to look. But one of the things we look for commonly are called co-infections or opportunistic infections. And if you look at the research around COVID, people with COVID have a number of other infections that are going on. And one of the reasons people die with COVID it's also a reason you can die with influenza and other problems, is if you have, say, COVID going on, but you also then have a bacterial infection like Mycoplasma pneumoniae or Chlamydia pneumoniae, or you have a parasitic infection, or you have some other, you know, thing that goes on, or 3 other viruses that came in because the door was open, Meaning, you know, COVID knocked your immune system down. If we don't treat those other problems, you've got either chronic issues or sometimes acute things that can really take you out. COVID long-haul patients often— and so the hormonal system is one that gets really dysregulated. Sometimes the blood sugar system will, which affects a lot of things. But this thing of, of co-infections or opportunistic infections, and that can be a pretty wide net that the doctor might be looking at. They may be looking at the common respiratory ones that come in. They may look at certain other common viruses, but also fungal infections and even certain parasitic infections will happen. Why is this important for chronic problems? If you have one of these underlying things like hormonal issues that are not balanced out after COVID or other infections that are just there in you, and because it was COVID they were worried about, the only thing they checked you for was COVID. It's gone. You've got other fish to fry. You can't have a normal life with no brain fog, great energy, and all that if you're carrying around a bunch of opportunistic infections, or if your hormone system or your blood sugar is all messed up. So the way that it's stratified with long COVID, the first thing is that you want to look at higher disease morbidity and mortality problems. So things that can either make you very ill or take you out of the game. So that would be looking at Heart function, lung function, inflammatory markers in your body, clotting markers in your body, all of those sort of things. A lot of times those don't look so bad, but you are feeling horrible. Then you have to get in and you have to start turning rocks over and looking underneath them. The big areas that we see would be triggers for stuff like throwing the hormonal system. Now, hormones is a lot of stuff, right? Then there's looking for these infections, and then there's looking more broadly for other inflammatory things. Now then there's sort of another layer. If if those look good, you know your organs aren't falling apart, your heart's working. We found a couple opportunistic infections that we're dealing with with medicine and maybe some hormone imbalance, but you still aren't feeling really great. Then the next thing that we tend to look at are other sneaky opportunistic things that can come along. So that could be bigger imbalances in your inflammatory chemistry in your body. That can be things I have seen such as toxins that either were sort of stirred up by the inflammatory process in the body, or sort of your body is just now weakened, and so it's more sensitive to toxic things. It could be reactions to medications you weren't reacting to before. Any number of things can happen. Long COVID is, technically speaking, something over 4 weeks of symptoms after your infection is gone. It can go on for a couple months. It can go on— there are people who had COVID early on, a year and a half ago, and they still have symptoms. It's like any other chronic process. What you do to treat it Depends on what rocks you turn over and find underneath that have been disturbed. If there's a lot of rocks that show disease states underneath, it may take a while to get over. The other thing is the increase in inflammatory chemistry in your body that often will affect your brain function and cause the brain fog, central fatigue, maybe headaches, maybe all sorts of other stuff. That can be real Sneaky because it is, it's a little harder to test for. It is often there after the infection is long gone. So you're not really treating the infection at that point. You're treating this inflammatory process. But the other thing is that that inflammation can be kept rolling and going by these underlying problems, out-of-whack hormonal system, chronic infectious things, toxic things, drug reactions, all those other things underneath. As I said, if it's not your brain getting the primary symptoms. The inflammation could be affecting your lungs, your heart, your muscles, potentially your liver, as we talked about clotting disorders, any number of things. So hopefully that answers the question about what is long COVID or COVID long-haul syndrome. We have a little bit of a maybe understanding of the bigger picture and what we're really looking for when someone has COVID long-haul. I did Just listen to CDC update on COVID long haul. Essentially, they just said all of the stuff I just said, but but they've made it official now from the CDC for whatever that's worth. I'm Dr. A. Thank you so much. Thanks all you subscribers. Please do like, share, subscribe, notification bell. I'm going to keep answering questions and keep talking about issues in health. So thank you, and I'll see you again.
