Treating Long-Covid
Welcome back to Dr. Ark’s Healing Tribe!
Today, I'm back with a new and rapidly growing issue in the medical world called post-COVID or long-COVID syndrome.
This condition has been affecting people worldwide since the COVID-19 pandemic, and people are reporting lingering symptoms like headaches, tinnitus, chronic coughs, fatigue, brain fog, sleep problems, and low mood.
With limited medical treatments available, many people are exploring acupuncture and massage as complementary options. In my practice, for the last three to four years, the number of patients with post-COVID complications has increased significantly. Patients have been presenting with new and chronic symptoms that they developed or have become exacerbated after being exposed to the COVID-19 virus. Let’s break it down and talk about each modality individually.
Acupuncture is known for its anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects, and substantially impacts the nervous, immune, endocrine and reproductive systems. It is widely used as primary and adjunctive therapy to treat respiratory, neurological, digestive, and gynecological disorders.
A multitude of symptoms similar to those reported with post-COVID syndrome have been treated with acupuncture for a long time before the pandemic. Thus, experienced practitioners have been able to adapt similar techniques for the treatment of post-COVID syndrome.
Before we discuss specific message techniques, which could be a significant part of complex treatment, I want to give some insights into how Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) explains post-COVID complications.
When people think of COVID-19, the lungs usually come to mind. However, research shows that the liver is also affected during infection. Even though the virus does not live there in large amounts, both Western and Traditional Chinese Medicine give us helpful ways to understand what happens.
Western medicine studies have found small amounts of viruses in liver tissue, but not nearly as much in the lungs. Most liver changes come from inflammation, low oxygen, medications and stress on the body during infection. Common signs of liver involvement in COVID-19 include elevated liver enzymes (ALT, AST), fatigue, poor appetite, and sometimes jaundice.
Similarly, according to TCM, the involvement of the liver as the primary target, in combination with other organs or systems, is precisely what causes post- or long-COVID symptoms. Treating symptoms only is going to be symptomatic treatment; however, targeting the cause of the problem will give us more stable results and possibly eliminate symptoms.
Given the explanation above, the logical suggestion would be to support liver function. I have been using a combination of several different massage techniques that directly support liver and gallbladder function, and improve detoxification, which is an essential part of recovery for many chronic conditions.
From my hands to your healing,
— Dr. Ark
