Micro-dosing GLP-1 helped me significantly with my long haul Covid
Wanted to share something that worked for me in case it's helpful to any of you. I've been a Covid long hauler for six years now and my main issues have been extreme fatigue, brain fog, joint and muscle pain, depression/anxiety, and terrible GI issues.
I legitimately felt like I was a prisoner in my own body. Couldn't stand up for more than 20 minutes straight, everything was so freaking exhausting and hard for me. I put all my energy into my job and spent every weekend at home recovering, just to get ready to go back to work and survive another week. Sucked. Sucked bad.
Anyways, I tried so many things with little to no success. Alllllll the vitamins and supplements, hormone replacement therapy, homeopathic doctor protocols, special diets, nicotine patches, everything. I read on this group or another Covid group about someone having success with micro-dosing a GLP-1 so I gave it a shot.
I started out on Noom and was micro-dosing semaglutide. I lasted just shy of a month before switching because I was so incredibly sick every day from that medication. The worst nausea and stomach pains - it sucked. Went back to my trusty ol' Reddit research to find out a lot of people do better micro-dosing tirzepatide, so I found a different provider (Fridays) that offered micro-dosing for tirzepatide.
My first week to two weeks there was definitely nausea, but it wasn't debilitating like it was for me on semaglutide. Kind of glad I went through that so I didn't wimp out on the tirz because I'm not the best at handling nausea. But once I got through that, I started to see my energy levels were improving. Like by a lot. I wasn't coming home every day and crashing, I was actually doing things around the house again and enjoying it. My sleep improved drastically, which I'm thinking is a direct correlation to the medication. Just last night my apple watch gave me a sleep score of 83! For reference, I was in the 20s/30s before. My joint issues have improved so much it's hard to really put into words. I went everywhere with my heating pad and took a lot of Advil on the regular, but now I only use my heating pad for my endometriosis (lucky me) when I need it. I didn't take the medication to lose weight, but I have lost a few pounds as well so that's been kind of nice fitting into my clothes again.
I have experienced some GI upset, mainly constipation. My fix to this, which has worked really well for me, is to take a cap full of Miralax mixed into cranberry juice every other night with dinner. Since I started doing that, no issues at all. If you do start micro-dosing, I would encourage you to be proactive about managing constipation because I didn't and there was a week or two in there I wasn't feeling great because of it.
I just wanted to share my perspective because I know the toll long Covid takes on all of us, and it's a very lonely illness that so many people disregard. Definitely talk to your doctor, do your research, and determine if this is something that you want to try or not.
There are a lot of different online places you can look for micro-dosing so you won't get bored checking them all out, but in case it's helpful, I have been using Fridays for my treatment. Fridays has referral codes you can use to get $120 off. I found one on Reddit when I started and it helped. If you'd like to use mine, you can message me for it, but I don't want people thinking I'm writing this for that reason (because I do get a credit if someone uses it) so I'm not going to list it here. You could find lots of referral codes on Reddit or a google search I'm sure so there is that option, too!
Anyways, wishing you all well. Thanks for listening and I hope you find something that helps you very soon!