r/LongCovid

Hello, I am writing to try and give people some hope.

I was very, very sick for a long time.

My main symptoms in my long Covid were brain fog, fatigue, depression, anxiety, muscle, fasciculations, insomnia, food, intolerance, heat, intolerance, post, exertional, malaise, and more.

I got Covid in March 2020 and then again in September 2022, and I recovered each time.

However, after the second infection, around the beginning of December 2022, I started to experience anxiety like I’ve never experienced in my life, and shortly thereafter, by the middle of December, I started to experience profound insomnia for the first time in my life.

This was a really scary time. I was not sleeping, and my body was crashing, though I’d didn’t know that term yet, and my mood was horrible. Five alarm anxiety. Suicidal ideation for the first time in my life. It was awful. I fought through those months, til April, and my wife began to piece it together.

She read an article in the newspaper about long Covid and noticed that my symptoms were largely identical to what we were reading about, and that started us down a rabbit hole of trying to figure out how to fight this terrible disease.

Well, the good news is, now, that for nearly 10 months— I have been symptom-free and feeling great.

Obviously, everyone will get through this differently. These are my experiences and these were the things that really helped me. I only write this with the hope of trying to help someone else. I remember lying in bed so often reading other people’s experiences and getting that little bit of hope when I really needed it.

The main thing that really helped me was “long water fasting”. I worked up from being not able to fast at all til I got to the point that I could fast for about five days. After that, I kept pushing until I could fast for a full week, and each time I did it I felt so much better. I could feel the inflammation going down, and every single time after a fast, when the crashes came back, they were shorter, and less intense, and a shorter duration, and I started to feel some real hope. The crashes were further apart, too. Less frequent.

Eventually, I got to the point that I could do 10 and 11 day fasts, and this helped even more. I started to read more and more about fasting and seeing that it was helping other people too.

After doing a 14 day fast, I felt really great and was able to even start to exercise a little bit without crashing, but eventually I would go too far and I would eventually crash with PEM.

Fast-forward to April and May 2025 and I went to a little cabin and fasted for 25 straight days, I was going for 40 but after 25 I was feeling emotionally and physically really and drained, and despite having a pretty good fast, I ended the fast after 25 days, and after that I went on to have my first good summer and maybe two or three years!

I was able to do a lot of stuff with my family, with my kids, to be able to run around and play, I was even able to go to amusement parks in Florida in the heat and walk around and have a good time with my children. It was amazing.

However, I still continued to crash after a little bit. The crashes were becoming way less intense, and way way shorter, so that was good news, and I was hopeful that fasting was still the answer.

after reading a book about a lady who dry fasted her way out of Lyme disease, I tried dry fasting and in August 2025, I did a 5 Day dry fast, and after this I felt so fantastic, I felt happier and better than I felt maybe ever. according to a Russian dry fasting doctor named Sergei Filonov, to dry fast and then to do one month of recovery— eating, healthy, and then do another long dry fast, so at the end of September I did a second dry fast for six days, and same thing happened, I felt incredible after I regained my strength.

After this, I have felt so good and I haven’t looked back— I’ve been feeling great without issues. Muscle fasciculations are gone. Sleep is great, mood is fantastic and every other symptom seems to be in full remission. I’m able to run 5 miles again — no crashing. I’ve been teaching full-time and gaining fluency in a second language. My point is that my brain and body are working again— I can handle a middle school classroom in a public school and do a great job, and it just feels so nice to be a part of the community again and not in bed.

Other things that helped, I started to really feel and study Buddhism, letting go of what people think of me, letting go of the things that I desire, and just trying to accept and appreciate the moment, acceptance in all of its forms was central to my recovery, and also something I learned in fasting, to just accept what you’re feeling and take it as it is, not try to push it away, but just own it and feel it and let it be.

Another thing that was really helpful in healing and again came out through being in bed, not able to work, not able to exercise, not able to be the dad that I’ve always been, and basically not be able to do all of the things that would help me feel good, and get through hard times in life, it made me realize after sitting with that for so long that I really did have some issues from childhood that were really hurting me.

I’ve been in therapy and dealing with some childhood trauma that I experienced, and working it out for the first time in my life, and that has been painful, it is also been a revelation, and I’m not saying that the long Covid was caused by the childhood trauma by any means, but I do think there is some truth that the nervous system can only take so much, and that childhood trauma likely puts you in a hyper vigilant state developmentally.

and working through those issues, I feel mentally healthier than I’ve ever been in my life and more at peace, and in many ways, this disease has just been absolutely horrible, and I would wish it on no one, but I can also say coming out the other side of it that it helped me grow as a person in a way that I never expected, and I’m grateful for that.

I should also mention that after the second dry fasting, I switch to a low histamine diet, and maybe that is a part of my general health. I can eat lentils and kimchi and everything again no problem, but after I cut those out for a few months, the recovery was much more even without crashes.

Any questions, let me know, I am wishing you a healthy and happy recovery, just hang on and you can get there too.

Background
I’m a 32-year-old Indian entrepreneur in Texas. I own and operate a real estate company with about 40 employees which I started while I was 20 years old and was thriving until I got hit with COVID.

Before COVID, I was in excellent health and extremely high-functioning mentally and physically. I had great memory, strong communication skills, plenty of energy, high motivation, sex drive and felt like I could work endlessly.

I caught COVID in June 2020 at age 26, well before any vaccines were available. I also never got vaccinated when they did come out later.

I don’t carry health insurance (that will change come November), so everything so far has been paid for out of pocket. I’ve spent a significant amount trying to figure this out, with some findings but no real solution yet.
At this point I’ve largely been managing my own medical journey because several doctors essentially told me my tests were normal, nothing major was wrong, or I was simply getting older.

My COVID Experience
During the infection, I completely lost my energy and motivation. I didn’t want to work, answer calls, socialize, or interact with anyone.
My highest fever was around 103.4°F, and the fever resolved within roughly three days.
Aside from fever & fatigue the only strong symptom I recall is developing a strange smell distortion where almost everything smelled like a burnt cigar — food, candles, marijuana, etc. (I did take a few puffs from a buddy’s cigar a week prior which I believe is the night I caught the virus)

By around day 5 I no longer felt severely sick, but the exhaustion and cigar smell remained.

About three weeks later I tried a NeilMed sinus rinse to curb the awful cigar smell which lingered on with little to no improvement since the onset. The burnt-cigar smell curbed by roughly 80% almost immediately, with the remaining 20% subsiding over the following week.

The fatigue and cognitive problems never went away.

Symptoms I Struggle With Today
-Inability to think critically (feel like my IQ dropped by 50 points)

-Brain Fog

-Terrible memory and recollection (short term & long term)

-Decline in diction/verbal fluency and ability to speak as professionally as before

-Chronic fatigue regardless of how much I sleep. Ex. I lie on the couch to watch TV or read emails on my phone, I fall asleep and literally drop the phone on my face

-More days with virtually no drive or energy than not

-Very low motivation

-Anhedonia-type symptoms

-Low Cortisol more often than not

-Low libido despite still being able to get erections

The biggest change is that I simply do not feel like the same person cognitively or motivationally that I was before COVID.

Testing / Treatments So Far
Function Health — Blood Testing App
I use Function Health for extensive blood work and tracking trends over time. I personally recommend it for anyone who wants a large amount of lab data organized in one place.

Amen Clinics SPECT Brain Scan — 2022
Nothing useful came from it. Report was that everything generally looked appropriate.

Endocrinology / Low Testosterone — 2022
Testing showed:
Total Testosterone: 223 ng/dL
Free Testosterone: 6.29 ng/dL
SHBG: 12.8 nmol/L
I never had hormone testing before COVID, so I have no idea what my normal testosterone levels were when I felt healthy.
I was placed on TRT and stayed on it for about three years.
TRT probably improved how I felt by around 20%, and at the time every bit helped.
However, I never experienced the dramatic improvements in energy, drive, motivation, cognition, libido, etc. that many men describe on TRT.
I also lost roughly 60% of my hair during those years.
I stopped TRT in December 2025.
Interestingly, I did not experience major negative effects immediately after stopping. Around five months later, my testosterone had essentially returned to my pre-TRT levels.

Gastroenterology — 2025
I had comprehensive stool testing for bacterial and gastrointestinal abnormalities. Nothing significant was found.

Pituitary MRI — 2026
A newer endocrinologist ordered a pituitary MRI. Nothing was found that explained the severity of my symptoms.

What I’m Doing Next
—ACTH stimulation test scheduled Monday to further evaluate adrenal function.

—Scheduling my first neurology appointment @ Baylor College of Medicine. As I’m increasingly wondering whether the primary problem is neurological rather than purely hormonal/endocrine.

What have you done that you feel others have not & have you found an underlying cause?

Has anything meaningfully bring your cognitive ability, energy, motivation, or personality back toward your pre-COVID baseline?

I am willing to spend as much money as I need to improve my situation. For me, on the business end, it’s more expensive for me to do nothing. Curing myself would allow me to make the investment back 10 fold, not to mention the priceless quality of life I would which all of us are after.

How much do you feel you have improved the last

3 , 4 or 5 (+ plus); years

Basically from 0 to 10

0 lowest

10 highest.

and, for those that improved more than 50 percent.

Was it time, treatment or

other

How do you get up in the morning when you feel like you have been hit by a truck? I dread life every morning. What do you do to get through the day?

Currently 5-6 months in myself and everything has only gotten progressively worse from the initial infection (I believe I have the me/cfs subtype). Radical rest is the only thing to help (slightly)
I’m still hopeful of a full recovery- though it’s going to take a long time!

I went from mild to severe and was curious about others’ experience in terms of timeline

I do have some positive changes and am hopeful there wil be more. That’s why I try to start this Reddit. (One is no more medication, only for shortcomings based on blood tests). Now I have slept normal for almost a week in five years of lc. Feeling so much more energy is coming back. My head feels on the one site much better but still problems with long and short memory. But at the same time I’m feel like I’m myself again, how I was five years ago. But the hardest part now is so weird: I have absolutely no condition. Can’t walk far. Dit better with medication but it’s time to try and test what I’m capable of and what I can handle. I’m so curios if anyone can relate to my short explanation.

I know one of the reasons that long covid is so hard to treat is that there's like 12 different issues in a trench coat that can all present similarly. Viral remnants, gut damage, lung damage, and so many others.

I've noticed that CBD seems to help my symptoms of fatigue and brain fog, particularly when I'm recovering from a flareup. Does that point to any specific issue within the long covid umbrella? Maybe that it's specifically an inflammation thing or something? Is there anything I can do with that knowledge in deciding what else to try?