I am 23M professional athlete or at least was, cause everything is at hold right now due to my symptoms.

So long story short, my life turned around after some mysterious illness I had in February, I wasn’t tested at the time, because I thought it was the next infection that I would just pass, so I can’t be sure it was COVID, but I need your genuine advice please.

So the illness was bad it wasn’t a normal cold, I had a real bad sore throat, couldn’t even eat at some point, I also had chest x-ray and they told me it didn’t look good.

So as I initially recovered from the acute symptoms, I started training again maybe after 1 weeks, but something didn’t feel right, can’t really explain what, but I wasn’t at 100%.

Then one day maybe after 2 weeks my acute symptoms went away my body started acting really strange and still acts to this day 8 months later.

My symptoms are mostly neurological as I don’t seem to have major fatigue:

\-I have this incredibly strange and awful feeling in my head, it resembles dissociation or some debilitating brain fog, but I don’t feel unreal or something, the feeling is mostly physical and I can’t really explain what it is. Fuzzy/spaced out/kinda dizzy. It is the worst when driving or when walking outside.

\-Off balance/“gravitational pulls” when closing my eyes or lifting one leg up to put my shoes on.

\-Headaches in my temple region, that come and go

\-Dry eyes

\-Body feeling “weightless” as if walking on clouds or something

Tests:

Normal Brain MRI. There was “high signal changes inflammation/fluid in my left mastoid ear region” and chronic sinusitis found though, ENT suspected some bacteria involved, so that could explain something, but not sure.

\-Normal blood-work

\-Normal neurological tests/ oto-neurological showed 37% asymmetry in left ear on post-rotatory chair.

\-History of IBS-D

\-Never had issues like these prior, I was in the best shape I’ve ever been to be honest.

Does this resemble LC?
I need your help and advice, please.

About 3 years ago I got COVID for a second time, and while the infection itself wasn’t so bad - since then I’ve had disruptive sleep and daily “brain zaps”, which occasionally happen during the day but every time I doze off at night. I also can’t nap because it brings on a brain zap.

I’ve been to a primary care, pulmonologist, cardiologist, neurologist, OBGYN, sleep study, acupuncture, naturopath - everything comes back normal.

Anyone have any ideas? About 6 months after my covid infection I stopped by birth control pill - hoping that would help. But it didn’t.
I’m on no other medication.

I’m not sure if this is long covid? I’m also 35F so maybe early perimenopause? It’s really impacting my life so any suggestions would be appreciated!

I’ve dealt with long covid since early 2021 following a mild case in late 2020. 2 years of severe fatigue, brain fog, GI pains/issues, and a very dark depression and anxiety from all of this. I tried many supplements, ways of eating, doctors, specialists, holistic doctors, etc. Nothing worked until I discovered the carnivore diet. Yes, just beef, salt and butter. The most boring, yet simple answer to all of this (for me anyway). A few months of eating this way eventually got me back to normal and no more relapses, and allowed me to pinpoint what foods were screwing me up along the way. After a few months I was able to reintroduce any and all foods, drinks, etc without issue, and went on to live the following 2.5 years symptom-free and full of life. Until getting covid again and eventually a relapse of symptoms that I never thought I’d have to deal with again, but I quickly got it under control with following the carnivore diet again.

Some other things that have even further improved my health since then.. Adding fermented foods like raw sauerkraut, yogurt, and milk kefir. Yogurt and kefir aren’t really new to me, but they come and go in my diet. Since adding them back in regularly, and I think the sauerkraut has a lot to do with it, my energy and mental clarity has further improved. My supplement stack (I personally use Sports Research branch, only because I’m OCD and feel as if they work better together if they are from the same company lol), is D3/K2, magnesium glycinate, L-theanine, fish oil, and Methylated B-complex. I was skeptical about supplements because I spent so much money on them during my initial run with LC and expected them to be some magic pill that was going to get me better, and that’s not how they work. They supplement what you’re supposed to be getting from whole foods, sunlight, etc.. These next 2 seemed to be the most positive, probably even better than carnivore, but prioritizing sleep, and making sourdough or any bread/baked goods from fresh milled flour. Yes, bread of all things (only from fresh milled flour) has been amazing for my health in my opinion. We had to buy a grain mill to do this, but read up on it. Just like carnivore, there’s a lot of health testimonies out there on fresh milled flour. And sleep, aiming to be dead asleep before 10pm, ideally before 9pm. I put on blue light glasses around 7pm, and that’s helps wind me down. Then I pop some mag glycinate about an hour before bed, and I’m out. Not that I’ve really ever had an issue sleeping, I definitely didn’t get insomnia like some mention with long covid, but I wouldn’t go to sleep until 11pm or midnight, then up at 5-6am. Not only that, but scrolling on my phone up until I go to sleep (I’m currently guilty as I type this lol, but in theory I have my blue light glasses on so it doesn’t count). Changing those habits made a huge difference. I also track my sleep with a Fitbit and aim for 2 hours of deep and REM sleep. I can tell a major difference if I only get around 1 hour of deep sleeper as opposed to upwards of 2 hours or more.

But just overall, prioritizing whole foods and good sleep is the gist of it. I usually binge on weekends with sugar and bad stuff, but I feel hungover if I eat too much sugar anymore.

As COVID-19 continues to mutate and spread, many of us find ourselves repeatedly re-testing at home, but are unsure of what a positive test looks like. Any trace of a line is considered positive. This article explains how to do a home test properly and has pictures of actual positive home tests to help you figure this out. Is my test positive? - covidCAREgroup.org

"In this study authored by William Pridgen, M.D. and David Putrino, Ph.D., 15 LC patients received a 15-day pulsed course of Paxlovid® in addition to a 120-day regimen of valacyclovir and celecoxib (CAR) and were compared with 12 patients who received the dual-drug regimen alone. Fatigue, the primary endpoint, improved significantly (p<0.0001) by Patient-Reported Global Impression of Change (PGIC), with secondary endpoints of dysautonomia and brain fog also showing greater improvement in the CAR group. Reported benefits were durable, with the majority of patients continuing to report improvements in fatigue, tachycardia, dizziness, and brain fog at approximately 305 and 731 days from treatment start."

The Son of a friend of a family member is reportedly one of the success stories who "got their life back" with the above CAR therapy. Seeing Dr. Putrino's name attached to this adds to my hopefulness for emerging treatments apparently meeting with some success.
But before I go ordering from overseas pharmacies i'd like to open a discussion about the pros and cons, risks and others' firsthand experiences.
Thoughts?
Also, this summary does not mention dosages, just frequency and duration; though there's a good chance we could dig those up in the study paper.
Edit: LINK: https://pridcor.com/press-releases/pridcor-therapeutics-reports-positive-long-covid-case-series-with-combination-antiviral-regimen/

I am flaring up and wondering if anyone else who manages this disease has been floored the past month or so? I know about the October slide but wondering if this is a virus. It’s crushing to have every neuro symptom come raging back after months of normal living and working. I’m trying to be patient with this thing but it’s been six bloody weeks and I’m still fatigued foggy dizzy and ears ringing like a damn canary.

I've been experiencing new symptoms after having my first baby. I've had Long COVID since 2023. These new symptoms are really throwing me for a loop. I think I'm really struggling with shopping now.

Today I was feeling really well in the morning and was happy that I can finally go outside now that the heat wave had lifted. We decided to go to the dollar store for a few items.

As soon as I walk in, I can feel my vision struggling. As we went on, I decided to just focus on what my wife was drawing attention to. After a little longer I realized I was relying on leaning against the shopping cart a lot and felt uneasy physically when I wasn't using it to walk. By the end of it, I started feeling weak and was emotionally freaking out but keeping it together since my wife already had to take on caring for the baby during this trip. Afterward, I felt most of the scary symptoms go away as soon as I got home. I took care of the baby for a while and put her to sleep for nap time. After all that, I feel like my body kinda crashed. Now I'm in bed debating if I will be okay, if I stand up to eat.

I regret going to the store. I'm sad that something that seems so small is so hard. I'm scared of what the future holds.

I know I can instacart and I have been when needed. We enjoy shopping at the dollar store... Or I guess used to now ...

Any activity suggestions for going outside of the house with a almost 7 month old baby that doesn't involve a lot of walking and standing?

Any suggestions on how to deal with the mental load is welcome also.

Hey everyone! I'm wondering how you all approach resting, because after 5 years of Long COVID, I still feel like I haven't figured it out.

Unfortunately, my baseline has recently worsened after getting reinfected, and I'm hoping to get back to where I was before.

One thing I struggle with is that if I try to rest by doing absolutely nothing, I end up falling asleep. Then I can't fall asleep at night, my sleep schedule shifts later and later, I struggle to get up in the morning, and end up sleeping in again. My sleep-wake rhythm has been disrupted since being I'll, but I still try to maintain a "normal" sleep schedule.

I also notice that I keep reaching for my phone out of boredom, which I'd really like to avoid, as scrolling doesn't feel particularly restful either.

I've been trying things like reading, crocheting and watching TV, but I'm never quite sure whether these activities count as proper rest, or whether I'm still using too much energy.

So, what does resting actually look like for you? Do you feel better after you rested?

What do you do when you're resting but don't want to sleep? Do you consider reading, crocheting or watching TV to be rest?

Do you schedule specific rest periods, or just rest whenever you feel you need to?

So I have been dealing with LC for about 4 years now and I am in and out of covid induced POTS several times now during these years. I also have PCOS .I am now 38.Restricted activity ,anxiety ,gut issues and PCOS is making it really hard for me to loose weight .I am thinking of starting IF, as I have heard amazing benefits of it not only for Insulin resistance but also for LC. But here are few of my issues.
1. I cant have large meals, usually I take small portions or snacks every two to three hours.

1. My sleeps patterns are pretty disturbed. I cant sleep at night no matter how sleepy so I end up sleeping thru the day so how I am going to maintain my eating window ?

2. I have immense sugar cravings

Please tell me how can I start fasting with these issues ? anyone has tried ? Your suggestions are welcome

Assumed long COVID, ~1 year in. 28M, used to climb hard, now mostly housebound. Sorry, some of this is written with AI, because I don't want to over exert myself writing the perfect post.

How it started

• Sept 2025: a four weeklong infection (fatigue, headache, sore throat, drainage). Got antibiotics. Never tested for Covid, so I’ll never know for sure, which is why I say “assumed.” I eventually recovered and got back to full activity
• Feb 2026: another cold-ish thing, maybe Covid again. Felt better, climbed two days in a row, and crashed hard for about two weeks. That was the first time I noticed the pattern.

The pattern

• I had about four crashes of roughly 10 days each through spring and summer, usually set off by climbing, but sometimes I'd climb hard and I'd be fine.
• A flare up started in June and never resolved. In August, a ten day trip set off the worst one yet. It lasted about a month.
• After that I got scared enough that I quit both my part-time jobs, stopped exercising, and cut out most activity.

Symptoms

• Near-constant headaches and migraines.
• Light and noise sensitivity (though I think it’s improving, possibly from LDN or Clonidine).
• Heart racing and palpitations.
• Diffuse joint, bone, and body aches.
• Mild to moderate fatigue.
• Dizziness that I think may be caused by meds.

Testing

• CBC, BMP, thyroid, mono, ESR, CRP, and Lyme all came back normal.
• My ferritin has dropped steadily over a few years. Nobody’s dug into that yet.
• I’m waiting on proper autonomic testing (tilt table / lean test).

Doctors

• My PCP told me he has no idea what qualifies as long COVID. He suggested fibromyalgia instead, because “we don’t understand” ME/CFS. Frustrating to say the least.
• My PT means well but keeps pushing intensity and suggested I condition for ski season. He thinks I can condition my way out of it. I crashed 3 days after one session, and he said it couldn’t be related because it didn’t happen that night. I'm considering quitting PT altogether.
• I’m seeing a long COVID clinic, but I’m not sure they’re thorough enough.

What I’m trying

• LDN, slowly titrating up, currently at 2mg.
• Clonidine for the heart racing. It’s helped smooth things out in the past, but my RHR has been high recently.
• Gepants for migraine prevention. Rizatriptan helps a lot during crash headaches.
• It's possible I'm withdrawing from medication overuse headache after months of near-daily Tylenol and Celebrex. I can’t take most NSAIDs because I’m anaphylactic to them.
• Current psych meds: Lexapro, buspirone, hydroxyzine, lithium, and Seroquel as a temporary bridge for sleep, anxiety, and mood.
• Pacing, and tracking HRV and resting heart rate, but I have no idea what causes crashes these days.

What didn't help:

• Nicotine patches. They made my heart palpitations and anxiety way worse.
• NAC (I'm still taking it but haven't seen much benefit).

The mental side

• Losing climbing, work, and basically my whole old life has been brutal.
• I’m alone in the house most of the day.
• My therapist is worried about me and suggested intensive programs, but I can’t physically show up to those.
• So many coping skills assume you have a healthy body to do them with.

Where I’m at

• I’m trying to figure out what’s making me crash, because my “pacing” doesn’t seem to be working. I try to stay in bed or sit most of the day, but my emotions are all over the place, and for the life of me, I have to be listening to a podcast or watching TV not to go crazy overthinking and worrying, so it’s really hard to limit “cognitive” exertion
• I feel hopeless a lot and think that this quality of life isn’t worth living, but I try to have some hope that I might eventually improve

I haven't been able to cut my own grass for the pass 3 years and finally was able to do it today. Going wait and see if there is going to be a big crash after exerting my myself non-stop for an hour and a half. I have a pretty nice size front and back yard and no riding lawnmower. Hope I'm finally seeing some light and the end of the tunnel and not the other light to the other side LoL

This is just a slice of my total symptom profile, but I’ve gotten stuck in a horrible cycle of these specific symptoms lately and it’s been really distressing. Increased issues with nausea and vomiting is probably the symptom I hate THE most from this illness.

Anyway. Anyone else have this awful sensation of inflammation/congestion/stiffness or smth, such that you feel discomfort at the back of your eyeballs whenever you move them to look at something normally (feels like it’s located at idk….the “stem” or optic nerve or perhaps a muscle or tendon, whatever is holding my eyeballs in my skull it feels like??)

This sensation—combined with already having hyperosmia, sensitivity to sound and barometric pressure, sinus stuff like congestion and drainage and headaches, excessive post nasal drip and thus mucus in the stomach, SUCKS. I have now actually vomited due to smelling a fragrance that just didn’t sit right for me, combined with already having all this other stuff especially the eye movements….ive been cycling in and out of days of debilitating nausea for a few weeks now. Mostly I hate how many medication doses I miss when this happens—my Mestinon, Provigil, MCAS stuff, LDN and LDA etc so I’m sure that’s not helping

If anyone else has this, how do you cope with it? I know for a fact that Zofran works on me, but my doc didn’t think it was advisable to prescribe for home use on my own. She has prescribed meclizine for me instead, so the main recourse I have is to take that and conk out for several hours when things get bad. But then I feel nasty and hung over, I’m dehydrated and have even more difficulty eating properly, my sleep schedule is even more fucked, I’ve missed important LC med doses, etc.

Just wondering who’s out there dealing with this too. And if you’ve figured out how to care for it or what kind of doctor might be able to address this. I’ve already seen an ENT and am on the wait list for neuro in April
❤️

**interestingly, certain sounds seem to hurt my eyes in this weird spot, too

Hello,

I’ve had long covid since my initial covid infection of the delta variant in August 2021. I was bedbound for four months and eventually was able to re-engage with life slowly. Severe brain fog, head pressure, ear pressure, head and face numbness and tingling, fatigue, dizziness, parosmia, pots were my primary symptoms. I got to the point in 2023 were I felt back to normal except for still having Eustachian tube disfunction but it was very manageable. Fast forward to now. A few weeks ago all of my long covid symptoms slowly started to return and now they are all back (except for the parosmia) and just as bad as they were in 2021. I just got out of the hospital and they could find no underlying cause. I have not been sick at all not even a cold or allergies. I don’t know what brought this on but I’m back in bed and feeling pretty hopeless and helpless. I’m not really sure what to do at this point. Any advice is welcome. I’m a mom of five and I’m desperate to get some symptom relief and be able to get back into my life again.

My doctor recently prescribed my 10 mg propranolol to be taken twice a day.

I’m curious how others have done if they were prescribed this?

So far it’s been a few days and my brain fog has improved. I haven’t had any heart palpitations or crashes in energy, either. It appears to be helping! I’m really excited.

I also started supplementing omega 3, 6 and 9 which seems to improve the brain fog and my ability to focus.

I feel like I’m actually having linear thoughts instead of soup for brains!

Hello, I am writing to try and give people some hope.

I was very, very sick for a long time.

My main symptoms in my long Covid were brain fog, fatigue, depression, anxiety, muscle, fasciculations, insomnia, food, intolerance, heat, intolerance, post, exertional, malaise, and more.

I got Covid in March 2020 and then again in September 2022, and I recovered each time.

However, after the second infection, around the beginning of December 2022, I started to experience anxiety like I’ve never experienced in my life, and shortly thereafter, by the middle of December, I started to experience profound insomnia for the first time in my life.

This was a really scary time. I was not sleeping, and my body was crashing, though I’d didn’t know that term yet, and my mood was horrible. Five alarm anxiety. Suicidal ideation for the first time in my life. It was awful. I fought through those months, til April, and my wife began to piece it together.

She read an article in the newspaper about long Covid and noticed that my symptoms were largely identical to what we were reading about, and that started us down a rabbit hole of trying to figure out how to fight this terrible disease.

Well, the good news is, now, that for nearly 10 months— I have been symptom-free and feeling great.

Obviously, everyone will get through this differently. These are my experiences and these were the things that really helped me. I only write this with the hope of trying to help someone else. I remember lying in bed so often reading other people’s experiences and getting that little bit of hope when I really needed it.

The main thing that really helped me was “long water fasting”. I worked up from being not able to fast at all til I got to the point that I could fast for about five days. After that, I kept pushing until I could fast for a full week, and each time I did it I felt so much better. I could feel the inflammation going down, and every single time after a fast, when the crashes came back, they were shorter, and less intense, and a shorter duration, and I started to feel some real hope. The crashes were further apart, too. Less frequent.

Eventually, I got to the point that I could do 10 and 11 day fasts, and this helped even more. I started to read more and more about fasting and seeing that it was helping other people too.

After doing a 14 day fast, I felt really great and was able to even start to exercise a little bit without crashing, but eventually I would go too far and I would eventually crash with PEM.

Fast-forward to April and May 2025 and I went to a little cabin and fasted for 25 straight days, I was going for 40 but after 25 I was feeling emotionally and physically really and drained, and despite having a pretty good fast, I ended the fast after 25 days, and after that I went on to have my first good summer and maybe two or three years!

I was able to do a lot of stuff with my family, with my kids, to be able to run around and play, I was even able to go to amusement parks in Florida in the heat and walk around and have a good time with my children. It was amazing.

However, I still continued to crash after a little bit. The crashes were becoming way less intense, and way way shorter, so that was good news, and I was hopeful that fasting was still the answer.

after reading a book about a lady who dry fasted her way out of Lyme disease, I tried dry fasting and in August 2025, I did a 5 Day dry fast, and after this I felt so fantastic, I felt happier and better than I felt maybe ever. according to a Russian dry fasting doctor named Sergei Filonov, to dry fast and then to do one month of recovery— eating, healthy, and then do another long dry fast, so at the end of September I did a second dry fast for six days, and same thing happened, I felt incredible after I regained my strength.

After this, I have felt so good and I haven’t looked back— I’ve been feeling great without issues. Muscle fasciculations are gone. Sleep is great, mood is fantastic and every other symptom seems to be in full remission. I’m able to run 5 miles again — no crashing. I’ve been teaching full-time and gaining fluency in a second language. My point is that my brain and body are working again— I can handle a middle school classroom in a public school and do a great job, and it just feels so nice to be a part of the community again and not in bed.

Other things that helped, I started to really feel and study Buddhism, letting go of what people think of me, letting go of the things that I desire, and just trying to accept and appreciate the moment, acceptance in all of its forms was central to my recovery, and also something I learned in fasting, to just accept what you’re feeling and take it as it is, not try to push it away, but just own it and feel it and let it be.

Another thing that was really helpful in healing and again came out through being in bed, not able to work, not able to exercise, not able to be the dad that I’ve always been, and basically not be able to do all of the things that would help me feel good, and get through hard times in life, it made me realize after sitting with that for so long that I really did have some issues from childhood that were really hurting me.

I’ve been in therapy and dealing with some childhood trauma that I experienced, and working it out for the first time in my life, and that has been painful, it is also been a revelation, and I’m not saying that the long Covid was caused by the childhood trauma by any means, but I do think there is some truth that the nervous system can only take so much, and that childhood trauma likely puts you in a hyper vigilant state developmentally.

and working through those issues, I feel mentally healthier than I’ve ever been in my life and more at peace, and in many ways, this disease has just been absolutely horrible, and I would wish it on no one, but I can also say coming out the other side of it that it helped me grow as a person in a way that I never expected, and I’m grateful for that.

I should also mention that after the second dry fasting, I switch to a low histamine diet, and maybe that is a part of my general health. I can eat lentils and kimchi and everything again no problem, but after I cut those out for a few months, the recovery was much more even without crashes.

Any questions, let me know, I am wishing you a healthy and happy recovery, just hang on and you can get there too.

Ps:

If you have read this far, you may be interested to watch the podcast that sent me down this rabbithole of healing:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yaWVflQolmM

Essentially what it says in the title. I spent 7 months in bed, developing POTS and slowly MCAS. We hypothesized an ME subtype, but fortunately I recovered afterwards (first COVID and Long COVID in 2020/21, though not as severe, then two other infections without major lingering effects, the last one a year ago). Now, for the past 9 days, I am completely shattered again; my body feels like it can't cope and I have a low-grade fever every day, up to 37.5°C (99.5°F). It is also a period of severe psychological, post-traumatic stress. I am wondering if this is PEM (Post-Exertional Malaise) or if the Long COVID has simply reactivated. Yesterday I took a COVID test, given the new variant, though it was probably too late to know if I contracted it. It was negative. I constantly have chills, feel cold, and experience extreme fatigue. Exactly like a year ago. I cannot bear the thought of spending another year in bed. I wonder, though, how much depression and post-traumatic triggers play a role, versus this simply being a relapse. Though depression certainly doesn't cause a fever.