Jessica's Long Covid Journey

Episode 98:

Long Covid Journey with Jessica and Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Evan H. Hirsch, MD  00:03

Hey there, Evan Hirsch here. Welcome back to another episode of the energy MD podcast, where we help you resolve your chronic fatigue long COVID and M casts by finding and fixing the real root causes of your symptoms: a combination of heavy metals, chemicals, mold, infections, and trauma when I call the toxic five. So I'm really excited about today's episode, because today we're going to be speaking with a participant in our program, and we're going to hear how they resolved their fatigue and other symptoms. So sit right back, and let's jump into it. Hey, Jessica, thanks so much for sharing your story with us today.

Jessica Drummond, PhD  00:43

Thanks for having me.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD  00:44

So you are working through a long COVID. Let's go back a little bit about your story. And you can make it as long or as short as you want, but kind of YOUR story leading up to working with us. So

Jessica Drummond, PhD  01:01

I got COVID in December of 2020. And I was pretty sick. I was in the house in the emergency room twice really bad. Heart rate heart, I guess Tec cardio, breathing issues, a lot of pain, specifically vascular pain, just terrible fatigue, dizziness, dysautonomia, all the classic COVID symptoms, and I had myocarditis or not myocarditis pericarditis after that was treated pretty aggressively, pretty quickly right after my acute COVID infection for about three months. And despite all that, so at that point, you know, I was really healthy, I was eating, you know, gluten free anti inflammatory, kind of like a vegan, well, not vegan, but high plant based paleo type diet. And I had been for years and years before that I was working out I was hiking and all that stuff. And so when I was sick, and you know, when the recovery, I was doing a lot of herbal antivirals and tons of you know, supportive nutrients and, you know, smoothies with beet powder, because I felt like my, my vessels were irritated, like all the things I knew. And basically, my traditional doctors, my cardiologist, and my primary care doctor, were like, Okay, three months, take these medications, your heart will heal, and you'll be good. And I was a lot better. But I was still waking up almost every night or several nights a week with really bad tachycardia, a lot of like sweating, restlessness, insomnia, like a lot of nervous system. Sensitivity, if you will, lack of, you know, I couldn't exercise I was limited in my work. Just I still struggled with a wide constellation of symptoms, and using kind of all of the tools I knew as a clinical Nutritionist and Functional Medicine Practitioner. But there were things that I was missing. And even after I had a significant improvement when I had my vaccines in the summer in the spring after that, but not fully. So I still kept like getting stuck at a plateau with a lot of you know, numbness and tingling and dizziness. And you know that I started losing vision in my eye at one point like it things some things got better, some things got worse. And it really didn't fully recover despite sort of throwing all the tools that I knew at it.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD  03:59

So then you came to see us. And what did we help you with? What do you feel like we were especially good at that has informed your journey?

Jessica Drummond, PhD  04:10

I think the two most important things were one just really having a person who had worked with several other people going through this long haul experience to just kind of start to put together various patterns. And because all of us are still learning so much this is all so new. And then just, you know, Evan, you as I've said and your whole team have really the best coaching bedside manner. Save space for people to come into and heal in a virtual setting. Your group calls are very nourishing and I really liked like the mind the kind of nervous system retraining the word for that. But yeah, resume retraining with more than my cognitive at this time is a little bit slower but my nervous system is much, you know, I just got very settled any like nervous system sensitivity major kind of anxiety related to just kind of the vagus nerve shock of all of this was really improved. My support for my hormonal system at the base, just kind of really taking a step back and looking at my HPA axis and my thyroid and having someone else to kind of give me input on all the labs and just having a person in my corner to help me navigate this for myself. Because when you have your own fatigue and brain fog, and you know, cognitive challenges and your workout you're trying to hold out, you know, I have a full time job running a big company, I have two children. I have other full time jobs other than trying to learn an entirely new health issue for myself with the health limitations that it came with. And just to kind of reassurance about some of those symptoms that are scarier like the really intense tachycardia, the really uncontrollable breathlessness and sleep issues, and you know, is it my heart? Is it my nervous system? What are some clues to tell us different things. So that was very helpful, the whole container of the experience. And then I think the other most important thing that I haven't seen anyone else do as as clearly is figure out how to kind of reduce my toxic load to take that, to take that part out of the picture more. So, you know, I lower II, there were some mycotoxins, none of it was like the driver necessarily, but it really did keep kind of freeing my body more and more to heal, to heal, you know, as we took away, more clean water, clean air in the house, you know, any mold issues, cleaned up my body using binding supplements to really get that stuff pushed out. And then I think it's helped me to really discover that while I don't think this is maybe true for every person with long, long, because there's a really, very presentation, a lot of us, I think, have some kind of viral persistence. And it going through the process of your program helps me to see that that was a huge component of what I think still has yet to be fully resolved.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD  08:09

Yeah, I'm so glad you said that, because that's one of those key parts that I try to hammer home with everybody you know that so much of this is that viral persistence. So tell us where you are now. And I know that you've worked with some other practice practitioners since we've worked together. Where are you now? What have you found to be the most helpful things for you? You mentioned, like five pillars that you've kind of come up with. So can you talk about those things?

Jessica Drummond, PhD  08:40

I think the first is vagus, nerve toning, and kind of that combines with pacing, and autonomic nervous system reeducation. So I've got to still really take care of my energy and rest and meditate. And all of that stuff is really not optional, and it really helps. A second is gut healing, which we did a lot in your program as well, but a little more depth into prebiotics, probiotics, like gut lining, healing, and that's all kind of personalized, just depending on how people's digestive function was before. And I didn't really ever have any digestive issues before or during or after COVID. But I think that most people could benefit from gut microbiome support. And so that's part of what you do and that's what I've also done. Then mitochondrial function, which for most people starts even with moving to the diet that I was already doing so more vegetables, no sugar, really feeding a healthy gut microbiome but an anti inflammatory plan anti inflammatories in general. So mitochondrial support and then going a little deeper with, depending on what part of the mind, you know, the kind of Krebs cycle is off what what we what I like to call kind of the energy bicycle of the cell. Any of you who are in clinical health care have memorized the Krebs cycle 100 time. Just think of it as like this little energy bicycle. And so lots of supplemental support for that. And then really, it's that antiviral. We're addressing the viral persistence, there's more and more data now, showing us that this virus hides it hides and brain and hides in the eye, it hides in the ovaries, it hides in the kidneys, and vascular system and everywhere. And so we have to get it out, or at least get it to quiet down. And so that's the part we're still working on a bit.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD  11:03

And so where are you at in terms of your energy and your function? Compared pretty

Jessica Drummond, PhD  11:07

good, I would say that I work I'm working as absolutely much as I need to, it's caused me to reevaluate my work a little bit, I think, in a good way. So you know, I'm working plenty, but I also have really built an interest in my team more and more in the last year. But I'm fully present in my wife, my daughter is graduating high school this year. And, you know, I don't feel like I'm missing anything, I There are rest more than I wouldn't have pre COVID. But I don't, I'm not in bed, I can walk as much as I need to, I can drive, I can work, I can parent, I can cook. You know, I'm living a very joyful and present life. The only thing I really can't do, I do have to pace the brain work, because mostly because of the visual changes that vary kind of day to day. So that's a totally new thing for me, I've never worn glasses in my life. So adjusting to that has been kind of challenging on the brain. But so I'm adapting to that. But otherwise, like, I don't have a lot of brain fog. I don't have terrible cognitive function. I lecture at conferences all over the world, at least virtually. Still, I'm back into all of that. I can travel a bit, we did college touring, that was totally fine. The only thing I can do physically, functionally that I really did a lot of exercise. But I'm holding space for that to come back. Excellent. Yeah. So I feel good. I think it's really important for me to say to people who are living with long COVID that while this is really complicated and highly variable, and we still have a lot of questions. There are a lot of things that integrative clinicians, integrative medicine, doctors, like Dr. Hirsch here, really do know, because this is not. So it's not totally different from things that have existed in the past. There are some new features of it that we may not totally understand. But there are tools like if you were in bed, or you can't eat or you can't work at all, or you feel like you can't be with your kids. You can make a lot of progress. There's a lot we do know how to do. But it takes a supported long term systematic patient approach. And that's the container that Dr. Hirsch has for you here.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD  13:57

Jessica, thank you so much for sharing your story with us today. Thank you. So if you have chronic fatigue, long COVID, or mast cell activation syndrome, and you're looking 

for help. Check us out at energy MD method.com. We have a program for almost every single budget, and we're here to help. I hope you learned something on today's podcast. If you did, please share it with your friends and family and leave us a five star review on iTunes. It's really helpful for getting this information out to more people desperately need it. Sharing all the experts I know in love and the powerful tips I have is one of my absolute favorite things to do. Thanks for being part of my community. Just a reminder, this podcast is for educational purposes only, and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. It is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. Thanks for You're listening and have an amazing day