Hey, welcome back to the show.
You know some people who got COVID-19
early in the pandemic still haven't
recovered their lingering symptoms are
often different than the infection itself.
Brain fog, exhaustion, joint pain,
insomnia, well in their new book,
chronic doctor Steven Phillips and his
former patient explored the parallels between
long COVID and autoimmune conditions.
Why does it happen and can what we've
learned about other chronic illnesses
help us unravel the mysteries?
Of long COVID you were in the middle of
writing this book chronic when you
decided to add a new chapter to the book.
Yeah, we were writing a book about
a pandemic in the midst of the
greatest pandemic in 100 years,
and the book is about chronic illness.
The underlying causes infections
that can cause chronic illness,
and lo and behold, we have COVID
swept the globe in a matter of months,
and it's a major cause of chronic illness.
long COVID so couldn't be more opportune,
so we had to write a chapter.
And so some of the chronic
illnesses you talk about are
autoimmune disorders and such.
And you believe there are serious
parallels between long COVID
and the autoimmune epidemic.
Well, the symptom list of autoimmune and
chronic illnesses that we see day today.
I've been in practice for 25 years
and the patients that I see this is
represented in the lung COVID population.
They have this long COVID
panel which is a blood test.
We look for inflammatory markers and
we said just for kicks we're gonna
send this panel off in our chronic
illness patients and see how they
compare it to the patients diagnosis
along COVID it's identical so there's
only so many inflammatory pathways
of the body can take in response to
infection in their common themes and how
you can go about getting people well.
But it isn't common that doctors will
kind of go that extra mile to say,
well, it doesn't look so abnormal,
but let's check it out and and Dana
you were one of those patients.
You were former doctor of a former patient.
I should say of Doctor Phillips.
How did you know something was wrong?
And what was your experience
navigating the health care system?
To find answers?
I imagine that had to be frustrating,
it was. And what you just said about you
know doctors not going the extra mile was
exactly my experience and I know this.
Is also very common throughout
the long COVID community,
so I was at a wedding in New Jersey and
got a bite from a tick on my shoulder.
Came back to New York City where
I lived at the time and had a
had a little bullseye around it.
I knew it was Lyme.
I got three weeks of antibiotics at
the emergency clinic around the corner
and they said I would be fine and not
to worry about it and a few months
later I woke up my breast was swollen.
I had rashes all over my
chest and my sternum.
I had severe weakness fibromyalgia.
I was diagnosed with I had severe.
Insomnia anxiety depression all sudden onset.
I never had these symptoms before and
then I was going from doctor to doctor
the best doctors in New York City.
I went to about a dozen and by December
I couldn't breathe and it turned out
that I was actually in heart failure.
They all kept saying it's not Lyme,
it's not.
I kept saying what about that tick bite?
I did have Lyme,
you know it's cured with antibiotics you use.
Well I don't really know how
that makes sense.
'cause my symptoms got so horrible
like after I stopped anyway.
Very common story,
very commonly unknown in medical
community and it took somebody
referring me to Doctor Phillips
in order to save my life.
I mean, you really have to be
your own advocate until you find
a doctor like Doctor Phillips,
help you Doctor Phillips.
How common are autoimmune disorders
are incredibly common?
I mean the estimates vary but up to 50
million people in the United States alone.
You know, have an estimated to suffer
from some form of autoimmune disease.
The issue that people don't talk
about is that there is a slew.
Was Lyme is probably the big chronic
infection that people have heard about,
but they have not heard about Bartonella.
They haven't heard about the many,
many others that can list and the
data on this is really extraordinary.
There's so much published you
know ******** medical data in the
best journals linking chronic
infections to chronic illness.
But it's really not a profitable area
for Pharmaceutical industry to go after.
You know, these tend to be generic,
cheap medications,
and they're not the multi billion dollar,
you know immune suppressants that
people take for years and years.
Is there hope for people with long COVID?
What treatment options can be gleaned
from other autoimmune problems?
Well, the first thing is that you know
ounce of prevention is always better
than a pound of cure, and you know,
I've been treating COVID with early
treatment options since they first became,
you know, efficacious.
Since we first knew, like, for example,
everyone knows about PAX livid now,
but before that there's been
data above fluvoxamine,
which is a common at the present.
There are drugs like that that can improve
the lot for COVID patients in general.
So if you can prevent.
Long COVID that's the best
thing that you can do,
and then in terms of looking for a,
you know causes and treatment swollen
COVID you have to define the groups.
Some patients have vascular damage
and simple things like you know
having their intake of cocoa and
black tea which have chemicals that
stimulate the bone out have stem
cells migrate back to the lining of
blood vessels to help regrow them.
Could be you know a simple additive
that people can do to their
lifestyle to help them feel quicker.
Other people we have to look
for reactivated infections.
People don't realize that having a bad
case of COVID can upset your immune
system and previously asymptomatic
infections become sometimes symptomatic,
and we've seen that in my practice
and we've identified those patients.
A lot of them have gotten better
just that way.
Daniel, last question for you.
Do you have a message for people
with one COVID after going
through what you've experienced?
I definitely know that there's
hope I came back from the dead
with heart failure and many,
many other symptoms that I
had 38 out of 60 symptoms on
the checklist, and here I am.
Thanks to Dana and Doctor
Phillips for sharing their
knowledge and experience on this.