 After having seen dozens of long COVID patients in my clinic and in my practice, as well as seeing the progression and the poor way that they're often treated in conventional medicine with dozens of medications being thrown at them and dozens of really doctors trying to treat them without much success in terms of healing, I thought I would share my two cents on the most common long COVID symptoms that I'm seeing and often how we approach them from the field of traditional Chinese medicine. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hein, Doctor of Acupuncture in Traditional Chinese Medicine and author of the health book, Master of the Day. So before we jump into this video, there are two very important links right below the video. The first link is for a free guide I've put together, which is four daily rituals that could potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. And the second is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, you can reach out to my private practice and clinic with the link right below this video. So first, let's jump into the literature a little bit and take a look at some of the documented most common long COVID symptoms. Now in one piece of literature, it discussed that long COVID had similarities with other viral onset illnesses, like chronic fatigue syndrome known as ME, myalgic encephalomyelitis, as well as POTS, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. So apparently according to this research paper, seeing these similarities has laid the way for some research, but there are many, many, many different systems in the body that encompass these, really that can have these symptoms. So cardiovascular, thrombotic, type two diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome, POTS like symptoms, dizziness, palpitations, et cetera. And the final line here, symptoms can last for years, particularly in cases of new onset chronic fatigue syndrome, they are expected to be lifelong. And I'm going to leave that there because it's BS. So in my practice, there are three broad categories that I see probably 90% of patients come in with. The very first category is just general nervous system, right? These are the POTS like symptoms, palpitations, issues with heart rate regulation, tachycardia, racing heart, anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia, dizziness, and even sometimes hot flashes associated with nervous system dysfunction. The second category is digestive slash respiratory. And I share them because in the field of traditional Chinese medicine, we often treat them in some cases the same way or with the same formulas even. So some examples are gas and bloating, nausea, mysterious abdominal pain, chronic coughs and shortness of breath, sinus issues and runny noses. And the third is a hybrid category, one that I lump under the category of lymphatic issues. So some of them overlap with digestive and respiratory and nervous system, but they involve things like chronic wandering sensations or low grade pressure in the head, chronic low grade headaches, low immunity and things like that. So I would say of the 50 or so most recent long COVID patients I've seen, probably 90% of them symptoms have been in these three buckets and a very smaller percentage in other buckets. Now the million dollar question is why does it happen, right? Because not everyone that gets COVID develops long COVID symptoms. And based in the literature, each research paper has a different estimate for what percentage of people develop long COVID as a general through line statistic across the board. But let's talk about this a little bit more from my profession. The first factor predisposing you to long COVID really is not your own genetic makeup, it's really your own health. So within traditional Chinese medicine, going back thousands of years, our ancient medical texts have said that almost regardless how bad the external threat is in terms of a virus or infection. If it is something like respiratory for example, just because it is a very, very strong bug or pathogen does not mean guaranteed you're going to get very, very ill. And COVID was a perfect example. The whole world went into shutdown and lockdown and yet it was very easy to predict based on these predisposing factors based on your age demographics and based on some genetic factors, how bad your COVID is going to be, your body weight, medications you're on, other illnesses you may have like depression or maybe you're taking antidepressants. These were strongly correlated with your outcome of COVID. It wasn't like a grand mystery, right? Of course there are outlying events, no doubt about it, but the curve was pretty damn predictable. And what that means is that within our profession, traditional Chinese medicine, there are certain illnesses and predisposing factors and constitutional archetypes we'll talk about in a second that indicate you may have a worse outcome than other people. But the biggest one is if you are in poor health, of course all cause mortality. If you are in worse health and more overweight and a smoker and a drinker, you're more likely to die of a lot of different illnesses, not just upper respiratory infections, right? Good health leads to generally better outcomes across the board. Now if you've seen some of my other videos, I've talked about this battery charge idea and I want to specifically make this reference the context of young patients that come in to see me for long COVID because I've treated most of them who are people around 30 or 35. And a high percentage of them have not even been able to work, which is why they've sought out my help. Those that have come in, every single one has been back to work within six months or so. And I will say that for these people, it was again no mystery why they got sick, right? These were people inevitably who were overtaxed, overworked, under-rested, not exercising, not necessarily eating the best, and were not frankly in as good health as they thought. And so again, from my point of view in traditional Chinese medicine, this was not some mystery. It was not random chance at all for these people that I have seen. It was predictable actually. And for many of us that I have seen that are young and got it were not frankly in as good health as they thought. I mean it was really that simple. Or they had significant predisposing factors. So the second one is constitution, right? One of the things, one of the early research papers that came out from China when COVID was becoming a major issue in the news was doctors describing their initial findings. And if you can remember, one of the most concerning was patients that were coughing up almost like a glue-like phlegm that was the most thick sputum that they had ever seen or experienced. Now they kept saying these things like glue-like, right? Along my own patients that I had initially seen when COVID was on the scene and was the initial strain, like the alpha strain, that was a much more virulent one and people were getting much sicker. They kept talking about this glue-like sputum that they were having. And early doctors within TCM that were working in hospitals seeing this had noted that it primarily affects the tie-in organ system. Now tie-in is the lung and the spleen, spleen-pancreas organ pair. And why that's relevant is that these organs, we say in one of our ancient medical texts says the spleen is the origin of mucus and phlegm and the lung is the container. So very often chronic disorders involving chronic sputum production we treat via the digestion, not via the lungs. It's very interesting. But many lung COVID patients I've seen have issues with chronic sputum or chronic rhinitis, right? Chronic runny nose, drippy nose, congestion, cough with shortness of breath. And we're often treating the digestion and not the lung to make this issue go away. So that organ system was one of the ones most affected. Now why that's relevant is that if you constitutionally, if you genetically have had that tendency your entire life, then in general you are statistically, not guaranteed, statistically more likely to be harmed or get a more serious case of COVID. It's a lot like if you're an asthmatic prone to chronic respiratory issues, then of course fall and spring when leaves are falling or when flowers are blooming is probably going to affect you more than someone who has no susceptibility to basically anything respiratory stirring up their symptoms. So that's always important to keep in mind. Now my final note here is probably my most important note. This is one of those conditions that conventional medicine is almost entirely useless for. I don't really know another way to say that ethically, but that there are alternatives that this is not that scary. I see patients who've been ill for two years now on a dozen medications, typically an antidepressant, anti-inflammatory, sometimes steroids, sometimes a benzodiazepine as well. And the majority of them are not that scary to treat to people in my profession. I will leave a veiled meaning in this video for you if you need the help. And it is something that is completely utterly mistreated and is conventional medicine has been useless for besides medicating you to high hell. So it's not common that I'll be this bold, but I've seen how sick some young people can get and older people and very few of these cases are not able to be helped by our profession. So I'll leave that there for you in this video. And that is my two cents on the most common symptoms I'm seeing in long COVID. Before we go, check out those other links below this video. I have a lot more to say on this and maybe over the coming months, I'll put out more information on how I actually treat this clinically for the people that aren't able to see a practitioner because I know that some people have gotten really, really sick from it. So that's what I have for you today, guys. Check out those links below the video and I'll see you soon.