The Cause of Post-Exertional Malaise (PEM) in Long-COVID

This majes so much sense, i have been saying for years now that i feel like im not getting oxygen, even when im taking deep breaths! Like, i can feel like my tissues are starving for air, i don't know how to explain it. Long covid for 4 years, march 2020. Used to be an athletic, super fit, active person. Now, bed or couch most days, but try to exercise any day i feel good enough to try. Then feel like absolute garbage after for days. This is crazy

Thank you so much. As a relatively mildly affected LC patient I sincerely hope that medical science will find a way to (partially?) cure LC. Literally millions of people would be hugely grateful!

Doctor Stein - you have a new subscriber. I'd found you on Raelans channel and the advice that stuck with me as a 21 month long hauler is that if the 17th thing didn't work, try the 18th. If i didn't have MCAS/anaphylaxis reactions, id be wiling to try the 200th thing.

But this video is a gem. I needed to hear what I deep down believed to be the case right since the 2nd month of my long haul journey about the impact of the virus on oxidative phosphorylation.

I think viral persistence in the form of viral debris or intact spike proteins in huge sludge-like quantities that has shifted the body from normal oxidative phosphorylation to lactic or glycolysis type of energy delivery system.

I also think that viral persistence in the form of debris or intact spike protein in difficult to reach areas such as the CNS/Brain/ Brain stem is reason behind why patients are forced to stay with this illness longer than they would have. Nerves they say take longer to heal thus affecting the functioning of the Autonomic Nervous systems ability to cope with stress and rest and digest.

Also, are those amyloids/misfolded proteins the root cause behind microclots in the blood?

Id love to learn more from some like you who knows what we're going through and has gone through an eternal suffering for decades.

Thank you Dr Stein :).

Thank you for sharing this research❤

Thank you 🙏

B vitamins are crucial for Nervous System functioning, energy (ATP) generation & digestive function, especially B1 & B12. They all directly or indirectly play a role & all support each other, however these two are major players, but many people are very deficient.

Thiamine is often lacking because the modern highly refined & processed wheat & sugar-laden diet places demands for a far higher amount of it in the body than it supplies. So, many have gone into CV already deplete. B12 can be deficient because many lack the biome microbes that metabolise & synthesise B vitamins. Even if they get enough in their diet & can absorb it, the process that converts it from inactive to active for use at cellular level may be failing at some point. And if it cannot get into the cells, it doesn’t matter how much shows in the serum test - which does not determine how much is active or inactive, only the total.

B Vitamins, along with other nutrients like Magnesium, are part of the body’s ‘stress-management’ armoury. Any stress or trauma, whatever form it takes, can rapidly deplete these crucial nutrients. We’ve all gone through a hugely stressful & traumatic period. If people were already deplete in these vital nutrients, it’s pretty inevitable that they could come out the other side in abject deficiency along with all the issues that go with that depletion.

Modern Thiamine deficiency is a whole different animal to the historic textbook versions.

This article penned by Dr. Derrick Lonsdale & Chandler Marrs who wrote the tome ‘Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia & High Calorie Malnutrition’ is extremely interesting.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8533683/

Excellent presentation, concise with lots of information. The question now is how do we turn back from a state of glycolysis to oxidative metabolism??? Any response would be appreciated!

Thank you so much for summarising this research; it’s near impossible to read research papers with LC brain fog. Do you have any suggestions as to potential implications of this research for treatment or self-management? How do we as patients support our metabolic function?

dr stein I struck gold when I found you just subscribed thank-you

Finally some answers!

Excellent comments here . I recall a study not long ago about iron anemia in some long-covid/vax patients. Knowing the function of hepcidin would be helpful as you would not want to supplement iron in this situation. So i see several things when trying to recover ; restoring the gut biome , repair/replace mitochondria, reduce inflammation, chelate iron stores/reduce hepcidin.

It is interesting to note that when neutrophils acted on spike protein with neutrophil elastase formation of amyloid fibrils was observed .

This rings true to my experience. Dr Patterson’s work agrees with this as far as viral remnants

So is this mitochondrial change reversible and how?

Could you add a link to the article into the description?

I have started taking CoQ10 supposedly it repairs / boosts the mitochondria
I don’t feel so Potsy standing up now but still suffer severe PEM
I will keep trying it for a while and see how it goes
Anyone had good results with CoQ10 ?
I am only taking 100mg

Ugh. Its been a year now and in some ways I’m much worse with post exertional malaise

Do you think the work of Berlin cures with the drug BC007 could be the answer? Is it an antibody problem?

If breathing has nothing to do with the abnormalities, why do long covid patients have such a hard time breathing?

In people who are vaxed and also get covid infections how would you know for sure which of the two are causing the symptoms. Has research been done to find out?