Does Nervous System Retraining Help Long COVID? with Evan H. Hirsch, MD - #129

Does Nervous System Retraining Help Long COVID? with Evan H. Hirsch, MD - #129

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Hey there, Evan Hirsch here, the Energy MD, and welcome back to the Energy MD podcast. So if you have long COVID, you might be wondering what nervous system retraining is and whether or not it's something that you should be doing. So that's what I'd like to discuss today. So if you're not familiar, long COVID is a conglomeration of symptoms that resulted after a COVID infection. You may not have even realized that you had this infection, but...

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you had a virus, oftentimes it's mild, and then symptoms either persisted afterwards or ended up getting worse and you got a bunch of weird symptoms. And this has happened since November 2019. So. The question about whether or not nervous system retraining is important in long COVID is a really, really important one. You know, I've been working with people with chronic fatigue syndrome for the last decade.

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and long COVID for the last couple of years. And what I have found is that the more that people work with their nervous system and do nervous system retraining, the faster they get better. And so I saw this happening with chronic fatigue syndrome, but I wasn't sure whether or not it was the same with long COVID, but in fact it is. So let's talk a little bit why this is the case. So when you get an infection like COVID that ends up persisting, it gets into different parts of the body.

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In fact, the research has shown that you can have over 250 different symptoms from COVID that persist in long COVID. And that becau- that is because it can get into many different compartments in the body, including the nerves and the vagus nerve in particular. So there are two aspects to your autonomic nervous system, which runs most of your organs. This is the sympathetic nervous system, which is fight, flight, or freeze.

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or the parasympathetic nervous system, which is rest, digest, and heal. So when you have trauma or a stressor, like an infection, it ends up triggering the nervous system to exist mainly in a sympathetic state. So this is that fight or flight or freeze where the nervous system is essentially jacked up. It's like you just drank a pot of coffee most of the time. Oftentimes there's anxiety related to it.

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but it is very hard to heal when you are in that state, when the body thinks that it's in a scary situation and needs to be on task in order to be able to respond quickly. Cause that's essentially what's happening, is that our nervous system is present in order to be able to keep us safe. So if we don't feel safe, then the immune system will go into overdrive in order to protect us.

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that ends up causing the immune system to go into overdrive as well as many other different parts of the body.

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So all that to say, we want to live in the parasympathetic nervous system as much as possible. So you've heard me probably talk about the toxic five before. So these are the real root causes of ME CFS or chronic fatigue syndrome, as well as long COVID. So this is a combination of heavy metals, chemicals, molds, infections, and nervous system dysfunction, otherwise known as trauma.

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So any one of these toxic five can actually cause nervous system dysfunction. So heavy metals, chemicals, molds, and infections all get into the nervous system and cause nervous system dysfunction, which ends up causing this hyperactive nervous system and this emphasis on the sympathetic nervous system. A lot of people think that nervous system dysfunction or trauma comes solely from mental and emotional

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trauma or nervous system dysfunction. So things like abuse, things like adverse childhood events. And while that's true, it's important to remember that these other toxins also can contribute to nervous system dysfunction. So what I have found is that everyone requires nervous system dysfunction. And there's a number of nervous system dysfunction programs out there that can be incredibly helpful. We have incorporated a number of these tools into our program.

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There's mindfulness and meditation. There's mindset tools. There's breath work. There are other techniques that can be very helpful, like humming in order to regulate your nervous system. So if you have long COVID, if you have ME-CFS chronic fatigue syndrome, I highly recommend that you start doing some nervous system retraining work.

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Because what I found is that we don't know if nervous system dysfunction is 10% of your issue or 90% of your issue. So, and it's low cost doesn't cost much in order to do this work. It just costs your time and your energy, which I know is low right now, but it is worth it. I promise you. So please dedicate yourself to this and you're going to see the benefits. All right. Thanks so much for joining me today. See you in the next episode.