Recovery Resources

🔗 Quick links

Books

Long Covid Survival Guide (holistic approach including mental health, policies, finances and more)

Cured (I haven’t read it but it’s highly recommended))

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

The Way Out (somatic tracking with research support)

  • You can take a quiz to see whether you may benefit from The Way Out approach. Or read their treatment outline, which is a quicker, more cut-and-dried summary. However, I really recommend the book if possible; it is a positive and fun read.
  • Please note this is generally recommended for people who don’t have clear signs of structural damage. You can use it in tandem with treatment for structural issues or those with a clear physiological cause. Remember that you may have multiple things going on. It doesn’t disrespect or discount the physical parts of your experience if you get some relief on the somatic parts.

Apps

Apollo for CFS (app that you can input your activities/food/sleep/subjective measurement into, and get an analysis of cause+effect)

Insight Timer (mindfulness audios and good night audios — yoga nidra by Ally Boothroyd is very helpful for the long covid community; iRest by Richard Miller helps with brain fog and integration)

Curable (haven’t used it but hear good things)

STASIS (morning and afternoon breathwork program; “pre-habilitation” for long covid; app is just a helper but you can do it without)

Measuring daily “readiness” to help identify patterns and work with your body

These may not be needed once you have a good sense of what’s happening in your body and can regulate with ease.

EliteHRV (requires a Polar H10 chest strap, <$100 on Amazon)

HRV4Training (research validated and can work with a phone camera)

HRV4Biofeedback (similar to HRV4Training, but lets you see the impact of breath on your HRV in real time)

Wild AI (works with a smart watch and your own assessment; for people who are healthy as well as sick)

YouTube

Suzy Bolt (classes and interviews with experts and people who’ve recovered)

Gez Medlinger (expansive video series on Long Covid: virility, microclotting, personality correlations and more)

Devices

Sensate (nervous system calming device)

Wellness devices and home items to support healing and recovery (Ruth’s shopping list)

Supplements & Medication

Supplements I’ve tried (Ruth’s shopping list)

Metformin – a Long Covid buster? and university article on 2022 metformin research

“I have COVID! What should my kids and I take to reduce chances of severe illness and Long COVID?” (research-based article by a pharmacist)

Self-guided

Hyland Model body reprogramming guide (PDF including good fatigue management tips)

Mayo Clinic Post-Covid Resource (online portal with modules)

PTSD Coach (website and app)

PositivelyCovid.org (a readable “what now” guide for acute infection and long-term issues)

What to do if you have covid (from People’s CDC, with a long version)

Post-traumatic growth inventory (to encourage you or mark where you are)

Interactive/live programs

360mindbodysoul online programs for postviral recovery (yoga, breathwork, mindfulness, support; includes live classes and a library)

LoveMindfulness Long Covid and self-compassion programs (open to anyone, reasonably priced, virtual)

Vitality360 (pain and fatigue recovery clinic—the UK has many more resources for this than the US, this is just one example)

Gupta Program (a brain retraining program — these can be controversial but this is the one with third party research behind it, as well as multiple people I know personally who have found it instrumental in their healing)

Articles

Can this 19th-century health practice help with long COVID?

Can a sick note make you better? Dr Gavin Francis on the power of convalescence (with associated book: Recovery)

Neuroplasticity research and approaches for long covid

Short-term and Long-term Rates of Postacute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 Infection: A Systematic Review (research paper)

Audio

Mindfulness for Long Covid (2 dozen audio tracks of 3-15 minutes)

Ally Boothroyd on YouTube (science-backed yoga nidra for non-sleep deep relaxation, a wakeful sleep)

Jennifer Piercy on Insight Timer (yoga nidra for sleep)

Tell Me About Your Pain (podcast from Curable / The Way Out)

Guided meditations from Vidyamala Burch (mindfulness teacher for chronic pain)

STASIS breathing rhythm songs (inhale/exhale or inhale/hold/exhale/hold; for example, Cadence 1 is inhale for 4, exhale for 6)

Coalitions

Long Covid Research Fund (emphasis on dysautonomia)

People’s CDC (guides on prevention, current status, and how to respond if you get covid)

Communities

Yoga and meditation for gentle Covid recovery (Facebook group)

Body Politic Covid Support Slack Channel (for caregivers and patients, extensive searchable resources)

🦵 Exercises

Healing posters with early-stage exercises (UTSW Covid Recover program). Source with videos and more advanced exercises.

Bouncing Back from Covid (Johns Hopkins)

🫀 Exercise & rehabilitation theory

David Putrino (PT) on Twitter

Long Covid Physio: an international peer support, education and advocacy, patient-led association of Physiotherapists (Physical Therapists) living with Long COVID and our allies. We work internationally across advocacy, policy, guideline development and research. Our education outputs are for anybody living with Long COVID and people wanting to learn more.

Source: Persistent cardiac injury – An important component of long COVID-19 syndrome (2022)

🤠 Local programs in North Texas

UTSW Covid Recover. UTSW has special competencies: multidisciplinary approach and a world-renowned department focusing on one of the things some people wind up with post-covid (dysautonomia).

My local physical therapist has limited experience in dysautonomia and rehabilitating a condition with a nervous system component. The program has been helpful, but I had to adapt it. If I had the choice I’d try to see specialists at UTSW. However, I can share his information with anyone who would like it.

😎 Parr Physical Therapy

My top choice would be Parr Physical Therapy in Austin and Houston.

Parr PT works specifically with chronic conditions as well as more typical injuries. EDS, POTS, dysautonomia… and they have a specific 5-stage process for dysautonomia. Many people in a regional FB group have reported that Parr helped them regain function.

Parr’s 5 steps approach for EDS, Dysautonomia & POTS

  1. Autonomic Regulation: Regulating the body’s vital system by improving posture, reducing stress, and improving appropriate responses of vital functioning
  2. Body Awareness: Providing the right stimulus to allow eyes, head, and body to adapt to normal and variable environment. Focus is providing the right environmental awareness and reactions with less pain, strain, or compensation.
  3. Stability: Beginning to focus on the small muscles responsible for big movements. These muscles are the missing link in performance and recovery. Effectively targeting the right stabilizers reduce hypermobility and other faulty movement patterns.
  4. Strength: Once that the body is stable, time to transition to functional and progressive strengthening for higher level activities and performance. This phase continues the process of stabilizing joints and building strength specific to your functional needs.
  5. Endurance: As soon as the body is both strong and stable, the body requires further training to tolerate longer bouts of activities. This training begins to improve extended activity  tolerance while minimizing risk for compensation, strain, or pain.

💨 Breathwork

Win Hof method

  • App
  • Ice baths / cold therapy
  • Used by athletes and bio hackers
  • Attenuates the body to stress
  • Research-based

“The goal of the Wim Hof Method breathing technique is to teach you to develop mastery over your nervous, immune, and cardiovascular systems to help you be happier, stronger, and healthier.”

“Put in the simplest of terms, the Wim Hof Method® is a way to keep your body and mind in its optimal natural state.”

Breathe by James Nestor

Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can: – jump-start athletic performance – rejuvenate internal organs – halt snoring, allergies, asthma and autoimmune disease, and even straighten scoliotic spines.

Breathe

STASIS breathwork

⌚️ HRV tracking

Heart rate variability is a measure of stress/strain/rest/preparation in the body. It’s used primarily by athletes and people looking for peak performance. It’s been adapted by postviral people as an indicator of their body’s readiness each day. Marco Antolini: “HRV is about how you adapt and respond to stimulus… training, and also all the other stressors you’re facing.” “A tool you integrate with your training program so you can make meaningful changes over time.” This was one of the early game changers for me as my interospection (understanding of what was happening in my body and what it meant, based on how I felt) was shit.

About HRV

“Heart rate variability, or HRV for short, is a measure of your autonomic nervous system that is widely considered one of the best objective metrics for physical fitness and determining your body’s readiness to perform.”

WHOOP

HRV is now considered as a potential reference factor for many heart diseases and is also an assessment of the prognosis of cardiac surgery. In training, this can be used as a monitoring for physical fatigue and stress.

Garmin

Tracking HRV helps you:

Tune in to your body so you can make smart, informed decisions about your health, fitness, and well-being.
Prevent burnout from stress.
Avoid overtraining.
Identify risk of illness early to accelerate recovery.
Track quantified progress over time to see when your health, fitness, and well-being are improving or declining.
Stay accountable to your goals.

EliteHRV

Measuring HRV

When:

  • Measure it in the morning after waking up (with an app)
  • Ongoing measurement (with a wearable)

How:

Several trackers

  • HRV4Training (the only validated app, see below)
  • Welltory (phone only, not validated) – “What we measure, we improve”
  • EliteHRV (phone [not validated] or pair with chest strap)
  • Garmin (FAQ and blog post)
  • Apple Watch
  • Whoop
  • Oura (integrates with HRV4Training)

HRV4Training (best with chest strap)

Mindfulness is one aid for HRV and helping the nervous system recover from the shock of a virus. Breathwork is another. See the list at the end of this page for mindfulness resources.

🧬 Mitochondria

Mitochondria are the energy producers in our cells.

In a new report published in January 2022 in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Dr. Petrache and other members of her research team studied 50 patients with long COVID as they rode an exercise bike in a lab at a low intensity. The researchers measured participants’ breathing, heart function, and blood oxygen levels.

Heart and lung function in the patients were normal. But the participants had low fatty acid oxidation (the process by which fat is broken down to produce energy) and they had higher blood levels of lactate than is common for the low intensity exercise (lactate typically gets produced in the body when someone is performing a high-intensity exercise and their body can’t get oxygen to the cells that need it fast enough). Both of these findings are associated and suggest a defect in mitochondrial function.

Everyday Health

To our knowledge, our study provides the first evidence of mitochondrial dysfunction that advances our understanding of the pathogenesis of PACS in patients with preserved pulmonary and cardiac function.

Decreased Fatty Acid Oxidation and Altered Lactate Production during Exercise in Patients with Post-acute COVID-19 Syndrome (2022)