Jordan Shlain shares with us the latest findings on how COVID-19 increases the risk of long-term health problems.

Jordan is a physician based in California, chairman, and founder of Private Medical, a family office for health and medicine.
He shares with us the latest findings on how COVID-19 increases the risk of long-term health problems and the likelihood of a COVID-19 patient developing persistent symptoms but also outlines vital wellness strategies to better resist and/or cope with the virus.

KEY TAKE-AWAYS

Long haul post-viral syndrome is nothing new what the COVID-19 pandemic has changed is the scale and thus the impact. To date, 3.8 million people worldwide could be affected. The taxonomy of post-viral syndrome declines four ways

  • Post-intensive care patients: fatigue, serious memory loss, trauma
  • Patients who exhibited mild symptoms: brain fog: sleep disturbances, memory issues, dizziness
  • Long term organ damage: lungs, liver, gallbladder, skin, and nose,
  • A constellation of symptoms embracing memory loss or concentration problems.

Viral infection provoking inflammation that assaults the body’s highly complex immune system is the common denominator of all the above.

Sometimes this assault is such that the immune system ‘goes off-piste’ causing the (normally) troubleshooting neutrophil to self-destruct and in so doing provoke complex damage in very small parts of the body.

What can we do to strengthen our immune systems?

  • Sleep is critical. The immune system is recharged during the last hour of sleep therefore it is advisable not to set an alarm in the morning but instead, set an alarm to go to bed earlier and wake up naturally.
  • In terms of diet – unprocessed, mostly plant-based is best as it will favour anti-oxidants.
  • Vitamin D has been identified as playing a significant role in buoying up our immune system. It needs to interact with fat so Vitamin D should be in the evening and after food.

It is highly likely that the coronavirus will become a seasonal occurrence requiring an annual vaccine.  There are already individual cases of re-infection suggesting that the virus is mutating. However, unprecedented levels of collaboration on the part of scientific institutions combined with burgeoning technology are sources of optimism about how we can live with the coronavirus (it will be with us until at least 2022) and others. Home-testing, tracing, and isolation work and are the methods of the future.  This, combined with more robust therapeutics to treat downstream symptoms could limit the long-term economic impact of living with viruses.

Climate change is the underlying driver of pandemics and there will be more.  We underestimated the complexity and precision of our physiology.

Our bodies are a portfolio of systems combined with lifestyle factors. The sum of these parts (healthy or not) defines our risk level. People need to know their risk scores and then behave accordingly. For best results, societal behaviour needs to be animated by a subtle mix of the self-preservation and altruism gene.

There are arguments to suggest that fatality rates are not what really matters in terms of the economic impact of the pandemic – rather we should be focussing on the long-term syndrome rates and their prolonged economic consequences.