Every fifth person who has recovered from covid suffers from post-covid syndrome.
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Every fifth person who has recovered from covid suffers from post-covid syndrome, and scientists have finally come closer to understanding what kind of condition it is and how it can be cured. Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a leading specialist in the field of pulmonology, head of the Department of Hospital Therapy of the Russian National Research Medical University named after N.I. N.I. Pirogova Alexander Chuchalin during a symposium on the diagnosis and treatment of the post-COVID state.
One of the biological markers, objective indicators that a person has post-COVID syndrome, is an increased level of ferritin in the blood, which indicates a sharp oxidative stress in the body.
Among the symptoms of post-Covid, the academician called the “dark four”:
– fatigue,
– depression,
– Shortness of breath
– Cognitive dysfunction (decrease in memory, ability to concentrate),
– Next come the symptoms from various organs and systems of the body (lungs, heart, brain and central nervous system).
“The important thing that we noticed in patients with post-COVID is that their body does not send alarms about a lack of oxygen,” says pulmonologist Alexander Chuchalin. – This is such a “happy hypoxia”, in which there are low rates of saturation, blood oxygen saturation, and the person does not seem to feel this.
THREE IMPORTANT SIGNS OF POST-COVID
1. Such a “happy hypoxia” could well be one of the reasons why, in post-COVID cases, neurological signs and symptoms take second place after a blow to the cardiovascular system: depression, sleep disturbance, fatigue. And the subjective feeling of people is that they have become older by several years, or even several decades.
This is nothing more than the consequences of oxidative stress – a sharp violation of the metabolism of a number of active substances in the human body. It is caused by the so-called reactive oxygen species, which destroy biological membranes and lead to auto-inflammatory diseases.
2. In addition, fungal colonization of the human body has become one of the results of suppression of the immune system after suffering a coronavirus infection, the academician notes. So, it is possible that the rampant Candida auris fungus in the United States is indirectly provoked by the consequences of the covid pandemic.
3. And another key consequence of coronavirus infection is a violation of blood microcirculation, a sharp slowdown in blood flow and the formation of microclots. The tissue of the endothelium lining the vessels from the inside, in the pictures under the microscope, resembles the wool that the mole has eaten, the smallest vessels lose their elasticity.
HOW TO TREAT POSTCOVID AND HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
Rehabilitation after coronavirus should include an assessment of blood microcirculation and treatment with active forms of gas, the pulmonologist and scientist believes. Such a practice is successfully carried out on the basis of university medicine at the Pirogov Medical University, on the site of the Institute. N.V. Sklifosovsky, in the 57th city clinical hospital named after Pletnev and in three sanatoriums in the Moscow region, Sochi and Kislovodsk.
With the help of special installations, people with post-COVID breathe medical gases – this is thermal (heated) helium and nitric oxide in combination with hydrogen. This combination and consistent use of gases helps to saturate the blood with oxygen, open capillaries, and increase exercise tolerance. Thermal helium can not only improve oxygen transport, but also has the ability to drastically reduce the reproduction of viral particles in the human breathing tube. Such a disinfecting effect.
– Hydrogen does have a unique property – to remove a symptom of physical weakness from a person, to restore the elasticity of blood vessels, – says pulmonologist Alexander Chuchalin.
– Alexander Grigoryevich, how long do you think it will take a person and humanity to cope with the post-COVID syndrome?
– In many ways, recovery from post-COVID syndrome depends on how a person’s blood microcirculation is restored. The second line is if the coronavirus has caused rheumatically similar autoimmune reactions in the body. That is, covid has led to immune pathology, and when it ends, this is a different scenario.
Another scenario, when the virus did not leave the human body for various reasons. And the disease proceeds in waves, and the depot of the virus itself remains in some people in the gastrointestinal tract. Post-COVID, I think, even requires the registration of a new specialty in medicine – a physician – a virologist. After all, diseases of the lungs and liver, HIV infection, encephalitis, impaired microbiota in the gastrointestinal tract and in the upper respiratory tract are also associated with viruses – viral dysbiosis. So, it is difficult to name the terms, but a year after the transferred covid may be positive for treatment.
