A Root Cause Roadmap for Long COVID and Spike Protein Damage
COVID and Long-COVID have brought complex chronic illness to the world stage.
Affecting an estimated 65 million people globally, long COVID causes ongoing immune derangement. In the niche lane of working with patients suffering from chronic complex illness, we began to notice that the assessment, evaluation, and treatment of patients started to feel off. Lab testing would come back and/or not reveal a big enough problem for how the patient was presenting. Equally curious, treatments weren’t responding like they used to. Some patients would have null effect and some would have an over-expression.
We began to notice ongoing issues post infection, which we now describe as long COVID. True among this patient population are symptoms like fatigue, body aches/pains, brain fog, shortness of breath, chills, headache, cough, and lingering loss of taste or smell. Long COVID is characterized as occurring after SARS-CoV-2 infection and present for at least 3 months.
One of the main reasons people stay sick so long is immunological damage and imbalance — this is what keeps the pathology going and makes standard therapies resistant. Infections, toxins, exposures, stressors, and poor lifestyle habits act as epigenetic stressors on the mitochondria, cell membranes, and DNA. Over time, this wears down a person's overall vitality and leaves them more sensitized, where they start reacting more strongly to things that didn't use to bother them.
This lowered tolerance means mold, heavy metals, or chemical exposures can become a problem post-COVID. Even without any new exposure, the body's capacity to handle them has diminished.
Things like chronic inflammation, chronic infections, intolerance to standard medical treatments, or newly developed or worsened changes to the endocrine system (adrenal, thyroid, pancreas, sex hormones) are often layers that have to be investigated to adequately support people.
Lab options and symptom/assessment workup
This is where testing and a personalized plan come in. Firstly, we have to know whether and how much of an influence the spike protein is having in the system. Through commercial labs in the US, we are able to screen with the SARS-CoV-2 Semi-Quantitative Total Antibody, Spike [S Protein, Semi-Quant]. This can tell us if we have a zero-to-small, medium, or large spike protein problem.
Secondly, we need to assess how much function is affected. How do we do this? A group of researchers developed a patient self-reported scale called the Post-COVID 19 Functional Status (PCFS). You can find that scale in their research article here. Each PCFS grade comes with a baseline set of labs to consider, and as severity increases, we layer on additional testing to systematically work through the components that could be driving symptoms.
Addressing the whole person means combining lab diagnostics with functional status data to guide treatment. Early therapeutic options include exercise, hydration, a low-inflammatory diet, and centering/meditation practice, along with targeted nutritional supplementation. For appropriate patients, we also evaluate anticoagulant therapies as part of the workup.
Healthcare requires an integrated approach
This is the kind of root cause work we do with every long COVID patient. If you haven’t felt right since COVID, or you just want to know what your levels actually look like and what you can do about it, schedule a Discovery Call today and let’s connect the dots to your unique health constellation.
