Covid long hauler worried about music career and reinfection

[guitarguy251]

I am a male Covid long hauler in my late 20s who is finally starting to recover after a year of not being able to work or go to school. Now I'm worried about reinfection and continuing my career as a musician. 

Playing gigs as a guitarist and teaching students can be risky for avoiding COVID. I'm worried reinfection may cause my long covid symptoms to come back to how they were a year ago or get even worse. 

Playing guitar has always been what I've wanted to do since I was 9, so I really don't want to give it up as a career. My friend think I am just worrying and being too anxious. I know the public and politicians are saying the pandemic emergency is over but I'm still pretty scared of catching it again. But it hurts seeing my friends and fellow musicians having the time of their lives while I'm at home. How can I accurately assess my risks, especially with so many unknowns surrounding covid? Also @Leo Gura I wonder if this is something you may have some insight on in terms of assessing risks or even career advice.

(My symptoms are shortness of breath, fatigue, and GERD which have improved since last year. I've had 2 Pfizer shots and one booster. Contemplating on getting another booster but worried how that will effect my long COVID too.) 
 

Edited July 12, 2023 by guitarguy251
Grammar was confusing

[Michael569]

Long covid is a condition that requires an integrative approach - one or two things won't cut it, you need to go all in - inside out and outside in. 

A guy I worked with over a year ago had a good results from long covid through the combined protocol of targeted supplementation for intracellular antioxidant protection and cell strengthening, a lot of cold exposure & building up stress resilience, lot of weight-bearing exercise, saunas, sleep optimisation, going for about 90% plant-based diet and a lot of body scanning type of mindfulness. 

Full disclosure: this was an experimental protocol so practice at your own risk, but I think with long covid your main goal needs to be rebuilding your resilience from the inside out, massive immune support and hepatic detoxification support, massive antioxidant status improvement, replenishing of essential fatty acids if needed, removal of heavily digestible foods (processed meat, beef, animal oils) and going heavy plant-based - need to be careful not to slip into protein deficiency tho, so it is a balancing strategy. 

The addition of deliberate cold exposure worked really well as well as a lot of weight-bearing exercise (within limits of available energy). We did a sort of a yin yang protocol where we would be switching between going hard and focusing more on anabolism and then allowing a week to go easy, replenish, eat a lot of yang - hot spicy foods, rest - hot showers, saunas and then go back yin - cold exposure, exercise, colder foods etc. 

It was a bit counterintuitive because long covid causes fatigue and malaise, but I think pushing against that is how the body regains its resilience as long as you leave enough room for adaptation and replenishing. 

Also, I would consider getting a chest X-ray for that shortness of breath - just to be safe. Testing your iron status through full blood count (doctor test) can give some hints as well. Also, check your vitamin D status (doctor test) - vit D is like your nuclear submarine when fighting covid - you want to be in the upper 80s even low 90s. 

Obviously things like alcohol, tobacco, cigars, pipes, vaping, bongs, marihuana, recreational drugs, energy drinks, sodas, sugar drinks - 100% removal. I would accept nothing less in such a case. You don't want to be poisoning your system when doing this. 

You need to be filtering your water, eating more organic if possible and minimising exposure to pollutants where possible - reduce everything that taxes liver and kidneys 

If you do all of the above to a reasonable success, you can expect massive improvement in the near 3-6 months. 

Nutrient tracking for 7 days on cronometer.com to assess zinc and magnesium status is a good idea as well, and correct whatever needs to be corrected. 

Good luck! it is definitely an uphill battle. 

Edited July 13, 2023 by Michael569

[LfcCharlie4]

@Michael569 This is an awesome response. Tbh if you can follow this 80-90% even without Long Covid you're majority of the way there for overall health and longevity! 

[Leo Gura]

On 7/12/2023 at 10:46 AM, guitarguy251 said:

Also @Leo Gura I wonder if this is something you may have some insight on in terms of assessing risks or even career advice.

Sorry, but that's just not within my area of knowledge.

If I had to guess, if you already survived Covid once I think you shouldn't worry too much about it. But I don't know your unique health situation.

I just don't see how you can realistically hide from it at this point. At some point you gotta say Fuck it and get on with your life. The only reason for being cautious about Covid was early on in order to get the vaccine. But if you're not getting a vaccine or you already got one, then there's really nothing more you can do other than stay generally healthy with good diet and exercise. And at that point if it kills you it kills you. What else can you do? You can't live in fear your whole life.

Edited July 15, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Yimpa]

On 7/12/2023 at 0:46 PM, guitarguy251 said:

(My symptoms are shortness of breath, fatigue, and GERD which have improved since last year. I've had 2 Pfizer shots and one booster. Contemplating on getting another booster but worried how that will effect my long COVID too.) 

The new COVID boostah should be available latter part of September. Get yo arm ready!

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/13/health/covid-19-vaccines-hhs-letter/index.html

[guitarguy251]

@Michael569 @Michael569 @LfcCharlie4 @Leo Gura Thank you so much for the help!@Leo Gura That's definitely been on my mind a lot. Thanks, that helped put my fears in perspective. Dealing with a disease that we still don't fully understand has been quite a mind fuck. I was young and healthy so death wasn't too much of a worry once I got my vaccines, but I wasn't ready for it to negatively impact my health and at least am fortunate I'm improving. 

Michael you gave me a lot to work with, thank you! I've tried a few of these already, such as vitamin d supplementation, cleaning up my diet, meditation and breathing exercises, zinc and magnesium. Unfortunately with the plant based diet I was really losing weight (almost underweight) and it was tough getting enough protein, so I switched back to eating meat. Doctors have done chest x-rays and blood tests, no vitamin tests yet though. Really appreciated what you said about the yin and yang approach to exercise, cold exposure, stress resistance, etc.

 

@Yimpa Thanks I'm hoping this one will better target the new variants! Still trying to figure out the data on how long haulers handle boosters. There is so much we still don't know. 

[Yimpa]

1 hour ago, guitarguy251 said:

Dealing with a disease that we still don't fully understand has been quite a mind fuck. 

If you really think about it, there’s still a lot we don’t know about the human brain, despite significant advances in neuroscience. 

[guitarguy251]

@Yimpa Very true, I wonder if we can ever fully understand the complexities of the human brain.

 

@Michael569 When you were describing cold exposure and body scanning mindfulness I thought of Wim Hof. I have heard some success stories with Wim Hof's breathing method and cold showers/ice baths (he himself takes it a little extreme) and am curious what do you think of its use for long COVID?

[Yimpa]

Just now, guitarguy251 said:

@Yimpa Very true, I wonder if we can ever fully understand the complexities of the human brain.

Maybe the aliens will help us with that.

[Michael569]

9 hours ago, guitarguy251 said:

When you were describing cold exposure and body scanning mindfulness I thought of Wim Hof. I have heard some success stories with Wim Hof's breathing method and cold showers/ice baths (he himself takes it a little extreme) and am curious what do you think of its use for long COVID?

it is an extreme protocol to a condition that (in my opinion) requires an extreme approach - almost like a reset. Alongside everything else I described, it may work (but results not guaranteed, the LC can be a bitch to treat) 

Edited July 27, 2023 by Michael569