Most probably during the months and years to come we will be confronted with patients that have recovered from Covid-19 but still experience long-term symptoms like fatigue, cough, breathlessness, muscle and body aches, chest heaviness or pressure, insomnia, skin rashes, palpitations, recurring fevers, headache, diarrhoea, and pins and needles,...
Here are some resources to prepare us to work with those patients:
Journal of Chinese Medicine:
BBC:
Long Covid: 'It's like someone has piled sandbags on top of me'
Trusting the Fundamentals- Using Chinese Medicine in the Treatment of Epidemic Disease Podcast with Heiner Fruehauf:
Prevention and treatment of COVID-19 using Traditional Chinese Medicine: A review
Guidelines for Patient-PractitionerContact and TCM Management inPost-COVID Syndromes
Long covid: How to define it and how to manage it
Gu Syndrome: An In-depth Interview with Heiner Fruehauf
Report from the Front Line in Wuhan:
Don’t Just Fixate on the Virus: Thoughts from Quarantine in Guilin: https://classicalchinesemedicine.org/dont-just-fixate-on-the-virus-thoughts-from-quarantine-in-guilin/
Long COVID: Der lange Schatten von COVID-19
Postdischarge symptoms and rehabilitation needs in survivors of COVID-19 infection: A cross-sectional evaluation: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32729939/
Covid-19: What do we know about “long covid”?
Covid-long: ce qui va changer pour les malades
Coronavirus : « J’ai retrouvé le sourire ! »… Une association propose de prendre soin des soignants grâce au shiatsu
Les vidéos de la conférence "Prise en charge des patients Post-Covid-19"
Prise en charge des patients Post-Covid-19 - Dr Staub - Maladies Infectieuses: https://vimeo.com/519800186
TCM's angle of COVID-19
COVID-19 falls under the category of "pestilence" and it can be called "lung pestilence" based on its cause, pathogenic sites and characteristics. It is "dampness-toxin pestilence", according to the characteristics of cases. The pathological nature mainly shows dampness, heat, toxin, deficiency, and stasis.
COVID-19 can be divided into 5 phases as mild, moderate, severe, critical stage, and a recovery stage, by the characteristics of the symptoms and syndromes.
Comparing COVID-19 with SARS: COVID-19 pertains to dampness-toxin pestilence and SARS is a warm pestilence.
From the view of epidemiologic features, COVID-19 has stronger infectivity and less virulence than SARS. Judging from the number of infected cases and mortality, there were over 80,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in China and the mortality rate was about 3 percent, but there were only over 7,000 confirmed cases of SARS, and the mortality rate was 11 percent. From clinical features, COVID-19 shows mild fever and attacks multiple organs besides the lungs, especially causing severe damage to the immune system; SARS caused milder damage to the immune system.
Some patients with COVID-19 after discharge have tested positive again in nucleic acid testing, and some postmortem results showed the existence of damage accompanied by mucous secreta in the deep airways and pulmonary alveoli.
Largely forgotten for generations, Amabie, as it’s known, is an auspicious yokai (a class of supernatural spirits popularised through Japanese folklore) that was first documented in 1846. As the story goes, a government official was investigating a mysterious green light in the water in the former Higo province (present-day Kumamoto prefecture). When he arrived at the spot of the light, a glowing-green creature with fishy scales, long hair, three fin-like legs and a beak emerged from the sea.
Amabie: the ancient beast helping Japan ward off the coronavirus
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/1117/
Some recommended books:
THE UNCHARTED BODY: A NEW TEXTBOOK OF MEDICINE Dr Daniel Keown
CLASSICAL CHINESE MEDICINE Liu Lihong
CHINESE NUTRITION THERAPY Joerg Kastner
Medicinal Mushrooms
