COVID-19
Post Covid Syndrome
Post Covid Conditions include a wide range of physical and mental health consequences experienced by some patients that are present four or more weeks after SARS-CoV-2 infection, including by patients who had initial mild or asymptomatic acute infection. Normal objective laboratory and imaging findings do not invalidate the existence, severity, or importance of a patient’s Post Covid symptoms. The Carolina Center has excelled in the diagnosis and treatment of post-infectious chronic inflammatory conditions and is able to address this syndrome through the use of nutritional and complementary therapies. See below:
Currently the use of masks in medical practices is optional
If you have an acute covid infection and are a current patient, please call us to inquire what services we are currently offering and we will assess treatment options for you. Patients who are sick will be placed in an isolation room.
If you have an acute covid infection and are NOT a current patient, please contact your Primary Care Physician or go to the Emergency Room as our new patients appointments are booked weeks in advance.
Patients are encouraged to bring only one support person with them for their office visits and treatments. Please do not bring multiple family members to the office.
Are you displaying any common flu-like symptoms (fever, cough, shortness of breath) or any respiratory difficulty?
Have you traveled to an area with widespread or ongoing community spread, notably any travel or travel to large US cities?
Have you had direct contact with a confirmed case of COVID-19 or some other viral illness?
Post-Acute Sequelae COVID or “Long-COVID” – Lessons Learned from Chronic Lyme
Although most patients recover from acute COVID-19, some experience Post-Acute Sequelae of the Coronavirus (PASC). One subgroup of PASC is a syndrome called “long-COVID.” The Lyme Disease community has become acutely aware of the similarity between this condition and persistent Lyme and tick-borne illness noting that many long-haul Lyme disease symptoms are similar to long haul COVID symptoms. The main symptoms that overlap are chronic fatigue, cognitive problems, musculoskeletal and neurogenic pain and autonomic nervous system dysfunction. Similarities also exist with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) raising the following questions: is it ongoing infection? Is it a post-acute syndrome? Is it an immune response?
Words like “immunocompromised” and “long-hauler” were not part of the general lexicon before COVID-19, even though they’ve been part of Lyme patients’ vocabulary for years. Now these words are vernacular, and that’s good news for Lyme and ME/CFS patients, and anyone else struggling with a complex illness that strikes different patients in different ways. Patients struggling with chronic tick-borne illness know that the problem is underrecognized but immense. One silver lining of a horrific pandemic that has killed more than half a million Americans and left countless others still struggling is that it’s bringing recognition to illnesses that have long caused long haul suffering.
Living through the coronavirus era after spending so many years in the world of Lyme disease is a strange experience because you can see all kinds of different pieces of the tick-borne epidemic refracted strangely in the Covid pandemic—disputes over testing, mysterious and shifting symptomatology, expert failures and medical populism, and controversies around what it means when the disease just hangs around indefinitely. One important distinction between long-haul COVID and Lyme, ME/CFS and other illnesses is that we’re taking the lived experience of long-haul Covid patients seriously—probably because we have so many of them all at once—instead of treating them as weaklings or hypochondriacs.
Using our knowledge about how to treat tick-borne illness and ME/CFS, therapies to help those with Long Haul Covid are showing great promise. These treatments focus on restoration of cellular metabolism through the use of targeted nutritional support, oxidative therapies such as high dose vitamin C and brain oxygenation through hyperbaric therapy among others. Much effort is now being spent to study chronic illnesses following COVID-19 and as that research is published, we will continue to stay current with the latest integrative care options for the management and treatment of Long-COVID. We are hopeful that the tremendous resources for long haul COVID research could help accelerate Lyme disease knowledge and treatments as well.
