Long Covid is the common term for long-lasting health impairments after a corona virus infection. Sometimes extreme physical and mental exhaustion, concentration and memory disorders, and a general reduction in performance are at the forefront of the symptoms. However, shortness of breath, muscle weakness and muscle pain are also common. Not infrequently, a normal life is hardly possible.
The exact causes are still unclear. Virus persistence, microthrombosis (occlusion of the smallest blood vessels by blood clots) as well as excessive and misdirected immune reactions (autoimmunities) are discussed.
Thus, the Long Covid Syndrome is strikingly similar to the clinical picture of chronic Lyme disease or post-Lyme syndrome (persistent symptoms after Borrelia infection), both in its symptoms and in its mechanisms of development. There are also similarities to chronic Epstein-Barr virus infection (EBV), the most common cause of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), and to chronic infections with chlamydia, babesia, bartonella and other pathogens.
It can therefore be assumed that a substantial part of the symptoms is not caused by the pathogens themselves, but by the triggering of a reaction cascade in the immune and metabolic system of the human being. In the end, the pathogens are no longer necessarily involved in the course of this cascade, and the reactions can take on a life of their own. Although pathogen persistence can be a permanent trigger that fuels and reinforces the misdirected reactions, it is not a mandatory prerequisite for their course. One example is chronic fatigue syndrome, which is the result of a pathogen infection: In this case, the immune system confuses the pathogens (e.g., the corona virus) with the body's own structures in the brain and, as a result, attacks these brain structures. The consequences are a permanent feeling of exhaustion, concentration, memory and sleep disorders.
The thesis of the triggered reaction cascade also explains why patients with other chronic diseases experience a flare-up of known symptoms after suffering a corona infection or receiving a corona vaccination. Both corona infection and vaccination can reactivate the immune system's faulty response once learned, causing old symptoms to reappear.
If the clinical pictures of Long-Covid patients and patients with other chronic infectious diseases are so similar in their development and symptomatology, then from a holistic-naturopathic point of view, diagnosis and therapy are also similar.