SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – With more than 200 potential symptoms, diagnosing and treating “long COVID” is a puzzle – one that needs to be solved to help at least 18 million Americans struggling with the condition.
Even though the pandemic emergency order in the U.S. expired last month and memories of it may be fading, people with long COVID could be dealing with their symptoms for years, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Long COVID has multiple manifestations in the body, and so by the time they come into a holistic practitioner’s office, they have maybe seen an average of five to 15 specialists and they’re pretty burned out – and they still feel like their symptoms have not been fully addressed,” said Dr. Carla Kuon of long COVID patients.
Kuon is an integrative medicine specialist at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Health who joined latest episode of KCBS’ “As Prescribed” with host Annie Wertz. She is the director of massage therapy service for patients with blood cancers.
“A holistic practitioner can be the glue that ties everything and also coordinates with that clinical care team,” said Kuon, who is also the co-director of the UCSF Optimal Clinic and author of “The Long COVID Solution”.
From the beginning of the pandemic to June 3, nearly 200,000 COVID-19 cases had been recorded in San Francisco alone. As of this January, around 17% of people who had COVID experienced long COVID and 11% were experiencing long COVID symptoms, according to National Center for Health Statistics data cited by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Kuon said that the most common symptoms of the condition are fatigue and malaise.
“The basic driver of a lot of the symptoms is inflammation,” she explained. “So, people can adopt an anti-inflammatory diet and they can take supplements to lower inflammation, and that can be enormously helpful.”
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