Long Covid and Mitochondrial Dysregulation
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I have been suffering from symptoms of long covid(not after exposure to covid obviously) for 10 years after exposure to flouroquinolone antibiotics. You could say I am a hipster who was suffering from fatigue before it was cool. All joking aside, there are some studies on these drugs which found mtDNA issues. An individual recently had his muscle biopsied by a researcher at mayo and he found mitochondrial depletion. The research has also looked at another individuals muscle tissue who suffered from flouroquinolone toxicity with same results. The researcher is planning on sharing his findings at some point but I believe his focus has been shifted to long covid.
Symptoms are quite similar fatigue, dysuatonomia, joint paint, post exercise fatigue, therefore, I am quite excited about long covid.
Many individuals recover over weeks...or years supplementing mito cocktail and antioxidants.
I posted the above because I'm researching what's happening to me along with what a long covid specialist told me. I don't know if I have the mitochondrial issue yet, but my doctor said I was at risk for Dysautonomia that could progress to POTS if I didn't a, do diaphragmatic breathing exercises, b, avoid weight training, c, do small amounts of cardio. He described anaerobic exercises causing dysautonomia due to the mitochondrial issues I later found the above.
And reading what you wrote, I had a very strong reaction to Levofloxacin I was taking for an asymptomatic infection. For 12 hours I had fever, joint pain, nausea, anxiety, headache, chills fever, and it went away, til I took another dose (for the last time ever).
My covid experience reposted:
Two months ago I caught it, had two weeks of being reasonably sick, the last 10 days being a mean dry cough. Then the shortness of breath began, and the night sweats with the inability to sleep. Also a lot of very deep seated anxiety/ fight or flight feelings.
The doctor said Dysautonomia was a very high risk and to avoid any real exercise, especially weight training. I started to feel better and caught a cold which brought back the cough.
I don't know what this all means, but it seems likely that: covid affected the nervous system, that it may have caused neurological damage, that it caused long term inflammation...and finally, I'm sorry, but three vaccine shots doesn't prevent this (surely didn't for me).
I've learned a lot these past months, and I'm meeting people regularly with dysautonomia symptoms after covid (dizziness, racing heart, shortness of breath). Some of them thought it was the vaccine. Nope, this can start months after infection.
I've been lucky that I've never had any of the breathing issues, even after I for sure had covid in December of 2021. But the post-anaerobic activity suffering is the worst. The general neurological damage (brain fog, nerve pain, untriggered anxiety) is the most frustrating bit as no one can seem to find the cause of it using any conventional scanning, at least not with me.
and how soon after lifting weights do the symptoms begin?
Have you tried re conditioning your cardiovascular system with aerobic exercise?
If I'm honest reading your message makes me nervous the same will happen to me. I've been able to do some simple calisthenics without obvious fallout so far.
Monitor your heart rate, especially the delta from lying down to standing up for 10 minutes.
The metabolic issue discussed in an article is a possibility but Dysautonomia / POTS are worth exploring.
What you describe is what the long covid specialist warned me about.
I'm a bit shocked that it took a year to manifest.
>brain fog, nerve pain, untriggered anxiety
that all reminded me the time when i had anemia (for different than covid reason though), and reading symptoms described by others it all very similar to low oxygenation. I wonder if covid screws with oxygenation machinery - either lung function or in some anemic like way.
>The most common reported symptom of long COVID is fatigue and the overall symptom picture resembles that of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), which is often triggered by a viral infection.
There have been studies connecting the chronic fatigue syndrome to the post-viral infection rage of B-cells which may go for months https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/are-b-cells-to-blame... - in this and other similar studies they've used cancer (like methotrexate) and/or immune suppressing drugs to kill the B-cells.
Covid messes around with the oxygenation machinery in multiple possible ways including botching up the lung ability to restrict blood flow to damaged vessels in the lungs, formation of micro-clots in the blood vessels and severely disrupting the normal air-blood flow ratios.
fluoroquinolones are poison and should not be used at all unless nothing else works
if you develop heart failure or dysfunction after chemotherapy it doesn't just reverse itself overtime. it's permanent. it's a similar mechanism downstream just different upstream
there's studies showing yeah if you take extra magnesium or antioxidants etc during fluoroquinolone therapy then the likelihood of damaging side effects decreases but after the fact nothing is shown to actually reverse it conclusively
I was hoping the long haul covid research would provide some insight but the truth is that anyone with post-viral long haul symptoms gets left behind.
I strongly suspect the month long course of Levaquin I took 10 years ago has something to do with my screwed up shoulders.
i have diastolic dysfunction and severe exercise intolerance still 7 years after fluoroquinolones
the mtdna destruction from fluoroquinolones has been in research since the 90s idk why the drugs are even legal
I only had two 12-hour doses and it was a horrible 24 hours.
Yeah there's toxicity immediately but I think the lasting damage comes from mitos reproducing while their being damaged directly
This study is tracking Covid using a randomized, controlled study measuring multiple factors in order to identify is exactly what long Covid is.
“…this is an ongoing study, but so far there are no diagnostic findings that would allow you to even say for sure that post-Covid even exists, biochemically.”
I can’t imagine why their study is controversial, when their study rules out a huge class of cases where symptoms weren’t even noticed until well after infection.
As per the trial design, if a patient had any symptoms of Covid and a positive Covid test, then they could be included. And despite a battery of tests, there was no physiological difference between those patients and the controls who had never been infected with Covid.
I had some symptoms of it two weeks after testing positive but now I'm living under the spectre of a lifelong disablement. Or, I'm overthinking it.
I'm slowly ramping up exercise, my only symptoms are some sleep issues as well as a relatively anxious malaise but there are a lot of life stressors unrelated to the illness I recently recovered from.
There's evidence this is an autoimmune condition, which could be why steroids seem to help the symptoms, and juicing your body with vitamins doesn't. Having said that, high dose flushing niacin is the only thing which really helped alot.