The Hidden Link Between Long COVID & Mitochondrial Damage

If you're real fatigued, you might say, I don't want to work out. I don't want to go on a run. You don't even have to do that. Let's say you're coming from not moving at all because you're so fatigued. You can do a little bit more work as you go along by just— Hey, I'm Dr. A. Welcome to the channel. I've been researching and teaching in the integrative and naturopathic medical communities for over 30 years now. And I've been practicing medicine a long time. And I use this channel to answer questions that people have. This one was around long COVID and the mitocondria. This came from some comments that I made that basically said most of the primary symptoms around long COVID have some connection, if not 100%, some connection to damage and decrease in our mitochondrial activity and function after we have COVID. So if you're looking at long COVID, it has a lot of crossover with other chronically fatiguing types of illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome and other what they call infection-related illnesses, chronic illnesses. And so I want to answer the specific questions around what is the actual connection between long COVID symptoms and the mitochondria, and what might be some ways we could deal with that. So let's get into that right now. The first thing to keep in mind is that when we have really any virus of any kind, we have an immune response that can throw off our mitochondrial function. And then we actually can have the virus, viruses inhabit our cells. in order to replicate. That's how they get around. And so the virus can actually directly damage the mitochondria, and then the immune response to the virus can slow the mitochondria down as well. So the first thing to keep in mind is whether you have influenza or RSV or COVID or whatever, when you get an infection, especially a virus, it's going to go, it's going to infect your cells, and then your immune system is— hope you hope for your immune system to come in here. It's going to see that biochemically. It's going to have an immune response. Well, the The first immune response is a pro-inflammatory response. And so during the days of COVID you probably heard about, you know, IL-6 being inflammatory and these other inflammatory mediators. And if IL-6 stayed too high for too long, it was associated with bad outcomes in COVID, especially with the earlier types of COVID that were around. Well, here's the important thing. We need that immune response in the beginning. Those aren't bad things. We just don't want them around high all the time. But one of the things that happens is when those cytokines, those chemical messengers go Because we're having a response to an infection, then we call in the other parts of our immune system to deal with the infection. Eventually, we want those things to go down. One of the things that was unique about COVID for some people, influenza for some people, and other you know infections is that for some people those pro-inflammatory stimulate the immune system chemicals didn't go back down. And so then we had sort of this long burn of smoldering inflammation and an immune system that it takes its orders. from these chemicals and it gets sort of runs off the rails. Well, how does that affect my mitochondria? Well, the direct effect is the virus can actually damage the mitochondria when it invades the cell. But the other indirect effect of the virus is it creates this immune response because virus is seen by the immune system. Immune comes in and reacts to it. Those chemical mediators that are put out by your immune system have an initial effect of kind of turning your metabolism down. It wants you to hibernate and rest, right? There's a bunch of chemistry involved in that. Also through the inflammatory cytokines and chemicals that can come along, some of those can go directly to the mitochondria and kind of put it offline a little bit, slow it down, et cetera. Now, this is all part of how the system works, but if it goes on too long, then you wind up with mitochondrial dysfunction that can lead you to symptoms. Now, before we had COVID, we had many, many people who had post-viral illness, post-viral fatigue, post-viral headaches, all sorts of things, right? Now with COVID because it was in the news, You know, every minute, and people were really monitoring how they felt before and after. We had one virus that affected, you know, pretty much everybody. And then we had a lot of people with a post-viral illness effect affected by COVID. So what do the mitochondria do when we affect them in the ways I just said? So they downregulate or they get damaged that give me long COVID symptoms. Well, many of the long COVID symptoms are hallmarked by low mitochondrial function. Now there's other reasons for these symptoms. Don't, don't lump them all together, but there's a lot of things That would fit into mitochondrial dysfunction. Fatigue. So the first thing is, if you feel fatigued, you know, we've all had a bad cold or the flu or something, right? And you don't feel good, especially if you have like influenza A, you feel really fatigued, right? That's part of your body saying, this is not a time for you to be out running around doing stuff. This is a time to rest and recover. Your body's trying to get you to slow down and go to sleep. There's a lot of chemicals that create that. Well, what happens is if that goes on longer and your mitochondrial function is affected by those things, then that's going to slow that down. So you have You have trillions of cells and you have trillions upon trillions of mitochondria, because most cells have multiple. Some cells have thousands of mitochondria. So if I slow all your mitochondria down, you don't feel energy. Literally, your energy goes down because you're not making as much energy as you used to. So that's, that's a mitochondrial connection directly to fatigue. Brain fog, very common, common in post-viral illnesses, virally associated illnesses. That can be from a number of reasons, but also your brain has a lot of mitochondria in each brain cell. And if they slow down, which they do, one of the effects or manifestations can be brain fog. Your brain just isn't clicking. It's not working, you know, quite like it used to. Another thing from your central nervous system that can change if mitochondria in your central nervous system, your brain and spinal cord, aren't working quite right is you can change your sensation around pain. And so mitochondrial dysfunction in the nervous system can throw off your nervous system's management of pain, which is actually quite complex. And so your pain threshold may change. Meaning you have more body-wide or chronic pain, or maybe you started with pain of a certain type, like joint pain or something, and now that's worse that you have, you know, long COVID or post-viral illness. So that's another connection there. Muscle weakness, muscle pain, same thing. Your muscles have lots of mitochondria. If they slow down, that's all going to be part of it there. And on and on and on. So most of the primary hallmark symptoms of long COVID are related to some degree of mitochondrial dysfunction. Quick plug here. If you're a healthcare practitioner working with patients with these issues, I have a CE website and I do webinars on this topic and others. So we're going to put a link in the description below to the CE website link and the particular webinar of interest. Thank you. So if we just ended the video right here, it would be a super downer because you think, well, okay, I've got this post-viral type illness or infection-related illness and I feel horrible. Now I know why, you know, mitochondria and everything else. What can I do though to kind of bring it around to a happier place to help the mitochondria out. Now, I'm going to go through some high-level things. We've got other content. We're going to get into these treatments and modalities more deeply, but let me just get through a couple of the kind of high-level things that may be helpful. The first thing is diet and lifestyle things that could be pro-mitochondria, help the mitochondria, et cetera. We did a whole video on this, so you can go take a look at the playlist and everything, but having a delineated time— this is a diet and lifestyle thing— between eating and not eating. So feeding and fasting actually helps with mitochondrial repair, cleanup, mitochondrial formation, et cetera. And it doesn't need to be a ton of not eating. If you basically have just sort of a bumper of time around when you sleep, where you're not eating generally when you're asleep, and you just, just drink water, you can drink all the water you want, but no new calories go in. And so you stop eating after dinner and you stop eating before breakfast with just water. During the time you're sleeping, you're not eating. You can call that intermittent fasting if you want. It's a normal thing of the human life cycle. cycle. If you get that past about 11 or 12 hours, you're starting to get benefits in mitochondrial regeneration, all sorts of stuff. And that's not that hard to do. If you sleep, you know, 6, 8, 9 hours, and then you just add a little bit of time on before and after where you're just drinking water, you can get to 11, 12, 13 hours fairly easily for most people. Now, if you have any medical issues, please talk to your doctor before you do anything like that. But that on its own can help. The next thing in the diet and lifestyle category, even if you're feeling really tired, fatigued, Et cetera. Getting your core muscles working again is very, very important. And core muscles mean the bigger the muscle, the more it will benefit you. Your leg muscles are the biggest ones. That's huge. The muscles that move your arms are big. And then just the core muscles in your body. If you're real fatigued, you might say, I don't want to work out. I don't want to go on a run. You don't even have to do that. Let's say you're coming from not moving at all because you're so fatigued. You can do a little bit more work as you go along by just getting up and walking. Walking can be one of the best intro introductory things to get your muscles involved. That also will help stimulate mitochondrial renewal, biogenesis, et cetera. And there's other things you can do, but those are big, the big ones. Nutrients. So the B complex of vitamins are very important. Trace minerals are very important. And both of those do come in many foods that you eat. You can look those up. That's very easy. But you can also take supplements that are B complex and, and multi-minerals. But then specific Specific nutrients that help to support the mitochondria. And again, we get into this in other videos more, but coenzyme Q10 is very supportive for mitochondrial function. A lot of people take that for heart things. It's a big mitochondrial nutrient. Alpha-lipoic acid is another one, ALA. That one is very commonly used for all sorts of things and antioxidants and other stuff that people take it for. That actually has a very helpful effect on your mitochondria. A lot of in the news, the niacinamide or nicotinamide-related things for your mitochondria. Your mitochondria use NAD, which is all over in social media, as the primer to help donate the residues that get turned into energy essentially through OXPHOS. So NAD is one thing you can do intravenously or something. You can take supports for NAD like nicotinamide riboside. You can also take nicotinamide. Nicotinamide is a slower way to get there because it takes 2 nicotinamides and some other chemistry to make NAD, but that can be a benefit. So some people will take their B complex, and then they'll take niacinamide, nicotinamide, on top of that. And there's other things that also help, but those are the core things for the mitochondria from the point of view of nutrients, supplements, etc. And then the other thing is, the longer that you're sick with any, you know, fatiguing illness, post-viral illness, whatever, it's really probably a good idea if you're just not getting better and you're trying all the usual stuff to connect with a provider who works with fatiguing illnesses, infection-related illnesses, etc., because there might be other laboratory tests you need to rule out other diseases and disorders. There might be tuning up of your treatment protocol, or there may be specific treatments that could be very helpful. All right, well, I'm Dr. A. I hope that answers those questions about that intersection of mitochondrial dysfunction and things like long COVID, post-viral illness, et cetera. Appreciate all of you guys. Please like, share, subscribe. Welcome to the channel, all you new subscribers. Do notifications, and I'll be back to answer more questions on the next video.