 One of the bigger discussions going on today that is also a little bit worrisome is what's called the COVID long-haul symptoms. So people who have gotten COVID, often in many cases they've gotten mild cases, mild to moderate symptoms, but these other more severe symptoms have lingered for a long time, often even months or eight months later. So for a lot of people, they're getting COVID at a very mild expression with pretty minor and not that debilitating symptoms, but they last for a long time. I was reading this brief by Johns Hopkins and they were talking about some of these research efforts that are underway right now to try to address these symptoms and understand why they're happening and how they can treat them. But I thought I would share in this video the Chinese medicine perspective on a lot of what these symptoms are, as I do have experience treating them in my private practice. Hey, I'm Dr. Alex Hein, acupuncturist and Chinese medicine doctor, author of the health book, Master the Day. So let's talk about the most common COVID long-haul symptoms that are presenting when you look at the tens or hundreds of thousands of people who are still experiencing those symptoms. So let's pop on over. We'll take a look at what several medical schools have said, a few other research institutions, as well as the CDC and Mayo Clinic. So let's take a close look at some of the specific symptoms that are coming up in terms of the long-term effects of COVID. So what initially prompted this for me was looking a little bit at this Johns Hopkins, this brief here, but then there are a lot of stories circulating in the news right now. New York Times has an opinion and expose on it here, featuring case studies from people, talked about this woman named Fiona, who, after being discharged from the hospital, had GI problems, rashes, hives, and migraines. And then even more than that, fevers, headaches, memory lapses, and brain fog. So that was one of the anecdotes that was shared. But in terms of the research, there's a couple medical schools that have shared some of the most common symptoms that the research is pulling up from surveying thousands of these COVID long haulers. In this particular link, the Baylor College of Medicine, they mentioned shortness of breath, lingering cough, chest pain and palpitations, dizziness and lightheadedness, fatigue with even very little exercise. That's something I've seen clinically a lot in the COVID long haulers that I've treated, including shortness of breath, chest pain, palpitations, loss of taste and smell, insomnia, GI symptoms, depressed mood and anxiety. UC Davis mentioned some similar things, cough, fatigue, body aches, joint pain, shortness of breath, loss of taste and smell, even if this did not occur during the peak of the illness. Sleep problems, headaches, brain fog, the CDC themselves cite the main symptoms in COVID long haulers being fatigue, brain fog, headache, loss of taste or smell, dizziness, unstanding, heart palpitations, or tachycardia, heart racing, shortness of breath, cough, anxiety, fever, so that's pretty consistent. This Medscape internal medicine paper cited the four most common complaints specifically in Sweden and healthcare professionals, loss of taste and smell, dyspnea, shortness of breath, and fatigue were the top four. And then finally, the Mayo Clinic mentions some very similar patterns, but then what they also mentioned that's more worrisome is that some COVID long haulers are showing actual structural organ damage. So some have been shown that there's damage to the heart muscle. Some have shown that there is actual scar tissue in the lungs after and strokes and seizures rarely in even in young people potentially. So those are some of the main patterns we're seeing in terms of the sequela or the related long-term symptoms that's now being called COVID long haulers or long haul symptoms. All right. So there are a few important things that have to be said here. The first one is from the Chinese medicine perspective, you have to understand the nature of what coronavirus is, what the actual virus is presentation, the clinical presentation is. Because in Chinese medicine, we categorize diseases and illnesses and viruses, pathologies like that, the symptoms they present in varying different ways. When I spoke to the mentors that have a lot of experience seeing patients with coronavirus, as well as mentors that have lived in China or that are Chinese, and that have, for example, treated SARS or seen the presentation of SARS clinically, as well as other diseases throughout history and viral infections, they mostly said that this is called a damp epidemic toxin disease. So it follows the general progression of other pathogenic infections that have aspects of dampness in Chinese medicine. There's an epidemic nature, obviously, and there's some aspect of what we call warm. And I'll clarify what those are in just a sec. Now, why this is important as a preface before I go into some of these symptoms and where they come from, because a lot of these symptoms manifest in other diseases that I'm treating every day in my clinic. These other various presentations or these various other symptoms. So it's really about understanding three things. The first thing is that the clinical presentation is a manifestation of what we call damp and warm or toxin. And that's important because certain illnesses present with symptoms of what we consider damp, meaning they can affect the tissue or the joints, they can cause joint pain, they can be damp in terms of they produce a lot of phlegm or mucus in the lungs. And there are many other presentations regarding the GI as well. The second reason is that from our point of view, from the mentors I learned from, it's often these individuals who are the most susceptible. So people who constitutionally, meaning genetically, have certain presentations to certain illnesses or upper respiratory infections that are the most susceptible to this kind of infection. That's obviously something you would want to know if this is going around. And the final reason, the third, is that the residual COVID symptoms also for some people fit the initial presentation symptoms. And that's very, very key to keep in mind. So I've tried my best to cluster these symptoms into three clinical pictures. These three clinical pictures are symptoms that present in all different kinds of illnesses. They present different just constitutional types. For example, some kids are more flemy. They're always clearing the throat like this. They always have some mucus and saliva they're trying to cough up or they get post nasal drip or they're the combination of gut problems with asthma. So mucus membranes are very sensitive. So the first one, cluster of symptoms I put together is the cluster of shortness of breath, cough, palpitations, dizziness and vertigo. So this is a very, very, very common residual symptom picture that you tend to see that presents in many different ways that I see clinically probably almost every day in my private practice. Now from the Chinese medicine point of view, there are two main causes of this that I see. The first is what's considered a water pattern. So some aspects of room. So there's something going on where the mucus membranes are they're overproducing mucus and that can result in cough. That doesn't go seem to go away. It can be they're always clearing their throat. It can be sensitive GI. It's often in a lot of my patients that have anxiety, they're often have a strong correlation with GI problems like this as well. For example, I've seen several patients that have had long-term treatment for tuberculosis. And after the six months or so of antibiotics, they have residual issues with their lungs, shortness of breath, breathing, almost this identical presentation. And their Chinese formulas have been quite effective for treating those residual symptoms. Now on the other hand, you just generally see that the body has a hard time getting rid of residual congestion. So if you are somebody that day to day regularly has a flemy throat or you always have kind of a stuffy nose or you're always getting bloated, these are symptoms of congestion in Chinese medicine. So it's understandable that if you had COVID, you may have a susceptibility to some of these symptoms lingering as well. A lot of my patients that are very flemy and have problems with water retention, like it could be edema, could just be bloating, they're always just feeling full. A lot of them, for example, will present with these symptoms of shortness of breath, dizziness and even vertical palpitations due to digestive causes are very, very common in Chinese medicine. So one of the patterns is not only this room or water presentation, but sometimes mixed with heat. So that depends on the presentation. The second symptom cluster is again, something I see very frequently in my practice almost daily, minus anosmia, the lack of smell and taste. But this is the cluster that I've put together of fatigue, brain fog, loss of taste and smell, and headaches. So these all fall into one category in Chinese medicine primarily, which is tie-in, which are illnesses involving the lung and what we call the spleen. These are exceptionally common. This is like the key presentation in most of my patients with SIBO, small intestine bacterial overgrowth, or a lot of patients with IBS that come in have this exact same symptom picture. I had this symptom picture for years as someone who's always had a lifelong difficulty with digestion. So these are all dysfunction of the digestion and gut. So again, we already talked about that a lot of what COVID affects from a Chinese medicine perspective is the tie-in organs, the lung and the spleen, which is why patients have residual effects regarding phlegm, regarding brain fog and headaches and fatigue, even dizziness, cough, whether the cough is dry or wet, that's going to be a differential right there. But this is long-term dysfunction of the gut. Now for some of these people, I'm sure they were, quote, healthy people by modern medical standards, but maybe they had digestive problems or that was their weak point. Maybe it wasn't severe inflammatory bowel disease like ulcerative colitis, but they had poor digestion. So that system was not functioning very well. That was a chink in their armor. That susceptibility has now become effectively a chronic illness. Also, the interesting symptom of loss of taste and smell in Chinese medicine, you know, the only natural population I see this in is geriatric patients who are older. They begin to lose their sense of taste and smell. And Chinese medicine has a saying that one of the early warning signs of a poor prognosis is stomach cheat decreases. And one of the manifestations of that we see is that the loss of taste and smell. So loss of smell usually related to lung function in Chinese medicine. Loss of taste usually decrease in digestive function, what we call the spleen or the spleen pancreas. So those two organs are actually an organ pair in Chinese medicine. So formulas that treat one often treat the other, which is why you can treat both of them together at the same time. And in my experience, it's very effective for working on some of those symptoms that are residual in that way. And finally, one of the most residual patterns that we see in addition is GI symptoms, which should not be surprising, giving everything I just told you. We hear everything about the respiratory aspects because that's the scary, you know, the acute respiratory distress. But the GI is in Chinese medicine, most likely going to be the root of what is affected, which is then producing some of these other problems as well. So the gut and the lung are one shared organ system in Chinese medicine. So even acute infection, we would give a formula or herbs that would work on both. So that's this understanding of these shared mutual relationships, these organ systems, understanding how the physiology is all linked. So again, because I've just described that COVID from a Chinese medicine perspective, primarily affects the GI and the lung. It's not surprising that residual GI symptoms are so common. So that is a very long winded intro to some of these COVID long haul symptoms. The reason I shot this, even though I'm sure there's going to be some CDC banner and blah, blah, blah below this video is I've seen so many of these patients with severe debilitating symptoms that conventional care is maybe not so good and not so effective at treating. It doesn't understand. But in my experience in Chinese medicine, there is a deep understanding of why these are occurring. And again, they just present from other illnesses as well, just as chronic fatigue does related to SARS and other illnesses. But I wish that people knew that there were other options as well and to seek multiple opinions because they may be able to get the help they're really looking for that way. So I hope this helps you guys. 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