How I Cured My Long COVID
A Researcher’s Guide to Understanding, Treating, and Healing Long Haul COVID (Post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2)
Long COVID is a b****. There, I said it. And if you’re here reading this, you know exactly what I mean. And I think you’ll agree that profanities are warranted. Because Long-haul COVID, Post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2, PASC, chronic COVID, L-COVID, or whatever else you want to call it… is the COVID curse that keeps on cursing.
But I’m free! (Meaning, my symptoms are about 90% improved.)
And this is my story.
An Epidemic within a Pandemic
L-COVID is a post-viral syndrome (or post-viral injury) that has turned life upside down for millions of people — 65 million to be exact.
Brain fog, crushing fatigue, daily headaches — you name it. But the worst part is — no one knows how to fix it. That’s right. There is currently no established treatment for L-COVID. In fact, the official CDC position on L-COVID gives instructions on self-care, “Take deep breaths, stretch, meditate, and practice mindfulness.” I’m not joking.
But there is one helpful piece of advice the CDC offers — “Read about the experiences of other people with Long COVID.”
Well okay then…
I’m here to tell you there is hope!
After over a year of suffering and trying everything under the sun, I finally pieced together a protocol that has me feeling like MYSELF again. So this is my journey to unraveling the L-COVID mystery through research, trial and error, herbal supplements, and lifestyle tweaks.
I will never tell you what to do! It would be against my ethos. But I will share what I’ve learned so far and what has worked for me.
So if you’re on this L-COVID journey too, consider us comrades — friends by tragic circumstance, chatting in the trenches. And if anything that I‘ve learned can help you piece together your own L-COVID puzzle, then I will be satisfied — knowing that I did my small part to defy this merciless foe.
But first, a quick disclaimer…I’m not a doctor and this is not medical advice! Please consult your physician before trying anything suggested here. And of course, as always, DYOR.
Okay, now let’s get to it!
A Little Background
I’m not a doctor, but I am a researcher and meta-analyst completely obsessed with solving challenging social issues, to help people thrive. In fact, I founded the Libertas Institute for the R&D of ideas and solutions that optimize human wellness, progress, and potential. (You can read more about us HERE.)
But I’m also a single mom who doesn’t have time to be dealing with this L-COVID crap! So I declared war on COVID myself — and won my freedom.
So if you’re suffering from L-COVID, and you’ve tried everything and nothing has worked… then, welcome to the rogue frontier of independent and decentralized research aggregation. And welcome to our newest project — the Liberty of Health.
(This is the first article in a four-part series on L-COVID.)
My L-COVID Story
I first caught COVID in 2021. And then again in 2022. At the time, I thought I recovered fine — but the symptoms began to creep up.
My symptoms? Crushing fatigue, muscle weakness, nightly ice-pick headaches, TBI-style cognitive issues, incessant calf itching, gut issues, dairy and histamine intolerance, weight gain, hypoglycemia, shortness of breath, heart racing spells, phantom smells, post-exertional malaise, Bell’s Palsy, occasional hives, persistent neck and low back pain, excessive dry eyes, chalazions, and more. But worst of all… was the unbearable sensation that gravity was somehow 10x stronger. Literally.
Do any of these sound familiar?
I was a frog in boiling water — experiencing a gradual and mysterious decline that I didn’t even connect to COVID until much later. I just kept pushing myself harder and harder to be healthier… but kept getting sicker and sicker, until I could barely work or function.
And as a single parent and sole provider, let me tell you, there is nothing more dispairing than that.
Furthermore, my doctor was just as confused. We ran countless tests but they yielded no answers. All we knew was that I had major inflammation issues. We considered reactivated Epstein Bar, but that didn’t explain everything. I even ran genetic testing and found some dirty genes, so we thought it was that! But, nope.
And then one day I landed on a Reddit page for Long COVID. And I’m a researcher, so down that rabbit hole I went…and there you go. L-COVID may not be in the textbooks yet — but I was textbook.
I had L-COVID.
Mysterious illness solved
So in the end, it was indeed ALL of the things my doctor and I suspected. Because that’s what L-COVID does, you see — The vast chaos of L-COVID (and why I believe the root causes have remained so elusive to researchers), is because it instigates hardcore inflammation, that; reactivates old viruses, triggers autoimmune issues, flips on dirty genes, exasperates pre-existing conditions, and wreaks total havoc on your brain — the general command center for countless internal operations.
Which explains why the symptoms are a little different for each person. That said, there are a few upstream issues that seem to underlie them all. But I’ll come back to that.
The point is, once I realized I had Long COVID — I got mad.
As if this super sus virus hadn’t done enough harm already! But then anger turned to righteous determination — there was no way I was going to let this a-hole virus win.
Declaring war
So I did what any researcher would do — and I made it my mission to understand L-COVID, alleviate my own symptoms, heal my body, and reclaim the liberty of my health.
After diagnosis, it took many months of research and experimenting… but the puzzle pieces finally began falling into place. I slowly developed my own protocol and I stuck with it. And today… I’m myself again!
Am I completely healed? No. L-COVID damages things. It’s an injury and the body needs time to heal. But I’m 90% symptom-free (with good days and bad days) and improving every day!
Now I know that everyone is different. But it's my hope that my journey can help shortcut yours. So don’t give up hope — you CAN heal!
Now let’s get into the science…
Understanding L-Covid
Know thy enemy! In order to attack L-COVID I first had to understand it. And that took a great deal of research. I’ll post an article to help you understand it in more detail later, but here’s the cliff-note version:
COVID-19 invades the body much like Orcs descending on Middle Earth. It wreaks havoc and leaves untold destruction in its wake. The virus injures immune defenses, causes inflammation, damages nerves, impairs cognition, leaves viral debris, and reduces cellular energy.
The havoc involves multiple interacting body systems, so the impact is vast. But for simplification, the main areas of impact are:
- Immune System Dysregulation — COVID-19 skews the immune response into overdrive, causing widespread inflammation through cytokine storms and autoantibodies attacking the body itself.
- Viral Persistence — Spike protein debris and viral remnants linger after infection, triggering continued immune activation and inflammation.
- Nervous System Disruption — The virus impacts the nervous system, contributing to brain fog, neuropathy, and neuroinflammation.
- Mitochondrial Dysfunction — Damage to the cell’s power plants reduces available energy for healing and contributes to crashes and fatigue.
So in simple terms, a COVID attack sets off an out-of-control army, leaves toxic debris behind, damages the messenger network, and sabotages your power grid.
Are you starting to see why Long COVID is so debilitating?
My Integrative Recovery Approach
So how do you treat all that? Well, to address the devastation left behind, I narrowed it down to four areas of focus — calming the cytokine storm, repairing neurological function, removing viral remnants and spike proteins, and rebuilding damaged mitochondria.
Targeting — the blow up, clean up, heal up, and rebuild.
Make sense? With this overview in mind, I got to work researching how to address each issue using available supplements and lifestyle changes.
Why supplements? Because our food supply is nutrient-poor. Because I have a beef with big pharma. Because prescription meds are too expensive, have too many side effects, and take too long to obtain. And because I’m a single-mom researcher on a budget and I can’t exactly whip up my own intravenous treatments!
So I trialed MANY supplements to build my protocol targeting:
- Immune system regulation — calming cytokine storms and autoimmunity.
- Removing viral remnants and spike proteins — detoxification.
- Nervous system repair — addressing neuroinflammation, brain fog, and neuropathy.
- Mitochondrial support — rebuilding cell “power plants” for energy production.
It was tedious, but I slowly pieced my puzzle together.
I will post an article with my full PROTOCOL soon. Because I firmly believe that these supplements laid the foundation for my miracle moment — Yes. There’s a miracle moment!
But the whole protocol is important because the various herbs are doing the hard work of helping my body to heal itself — while my miracle herb seems to be more about bringing symptoms under control. Make sense?
We don’t want to just treat the symptoms — we want to heal our bodily systems.
Now without further ado…
My Miracle Cure!
Okay, here’s what happened. I was taking all my protocol supplements consistently, but I honestly wasn’t seeing much improvement in my symptoms. And I was growing impatient. Something was missing. And since the fatigue was utterly consuming, I started researching supplements to target that mitochondrial issue. This led me to studies on chronic fatigue syndrome…
And that’s when I stumbled upon Rhodiola Rosea.
So I dove deep and found some super interesting things. I’ll post the research behind it in another article, but I found some reputable evidence and also learned that it can be quite fast-acting. So I got excited and I ordered it.
Well, it came the next day and I took a ½ dose before bed.
And by morning I was a new person.
I swear. It was as though that crushing 10x gravity simply lifted with the rise of the sun. The fatigue was gone. The ice-pick headaches, gone. The terrible itching, gone. Stomach issues, gone! Literally, overnight.
I couldn’t believe it. And I’m much too practical to believe in overnight miracles! So for the first 4 weeks, I walked around fairly certain it wouldn’t last.
But it did.
And now I can say with confidence that taking Rhodiola Rosea is maybe the closest thing to a miracle that I’ve experienced.
And then I lived happily ever after. The end.
Now!
The Unknowns
Is Rhodiola Rosea merely MY miracle puzzle piece or could it help you too?
I honestly don’t know.
Does the small amount of Ashwagandha in this one, make a big difference?
I don’t know that either.
But friend… I sure would love to find out!
Come back and tell us!
So if you‘ve already tried Rhodiola Rosea or if you DO decide to try it — please remember to come back and log your results HERE. It will help us direct future research efforts.
Where To Go From Here
Well, that was a lot of uncharacteristic vulnerability for me. But I hope my story and approach can help you on your own L-COVID journey. And if you want to join our war-on-Covid cause, here are some next steps to consider:
- Clap and share this with anyone you know who might benefit.
- Follow the Libertas Institute on Instagram and Twitter for updates.
- Stay tuned for our next article in this series! Sign up for our newsletter to be notified.
- And please consider donating to the Libertas Institute so we can continue researching problems & solutions that help you THRIVE — without relying on special interests to fund it.
We are all in this together. By sharing our stories and finding solutions, we can all benefit together as well.
Now let’s get YOU thriving again! May liberty and good health be yours.
- Full disclaimer, our Amazon link is affiliate so there’s a 1% affiliate reward. We’re doing this simply to keep track of reader response.
