Are you in for the long haul? Recovering Your Health after COVID-19

Are you still struggling from a recent COVID infection?  Do you appear to have lingering symptoms (commonly referred to as long COVID) such as shortness of breath, fatigue, rapid heart rate (tachycardia), persistent coughing, dizziness, brain fog and the associated anxiety and fear that surrounds the uncertainty of the illness? Are you just not feeling entirely, right?

Could breathwork provide a vital link in supporting the journey back to health after infection? Researchers at Mount Sinai would indicate that the answer to this question is yes.

 “A missing piece of the puzzle: the Mount Sinai teams soon found, was right in front of them: breathing. Everyone knew of course about severely sick COVID‑19 patients on ventilators. What the researchers and doctors at Mount Sinai hadn’t realized was that even mild cases might be affecting respiration after the acute phase of the disease”. (Meghan O’Rouke, 2021)

 Dysfunctional breathing pattens, such as mouth breathing, shallow, fast, and upper chest breathing all disrupt the nervous system on a fundamental level, causing the body to respond to the increased respiratory rate with a sustained sympathetic response (fight or flight).  The symptoms associated with long haul COVID sufferers reflect similar dysfunctional breathing patterns and thus feed directly into the symptoms being experienced.

 When an individual breathes in a functional and optimal way, oxygen is effectively distributed to the body and brain, whilst the vagus nerve (communication highway for the brain and body in monitoring and receiving information from many of the body’s functions) is stimulated releasing acetylcholine and creating greater balance of the autonomous nervous system. Dysfunctional breathing on the other hand will promote sympathetic activation, inhibiting the distribution of oxygen and increasing the fight or flight response. Individuals will generally struggle with poor quality sleep, lower immunity, digestive issues, difficulty regulating temperature in the body (cold hand and feet) and a heightened stress response, which culminates with low emotional resiliency, commonly associated with poor vagal tone.

 As Dr Konstantin Buteyko so acutely questioned when observing sick people, is it the sickness causing the hard breathing, or the hard breathing causing the sickness?

 Long haul symptoms may occur as a direct result of the lung inflammation or viral damage to the vagus nerve during the infection period, but the resulting common component experienced by suffers appears to be dysfunctional breathing traits and resulting low levels of carbon dioxide in the body (hypocapnia). When we breathe too hard and too fast (hyperventilation), the body offsets too much carbon dioxide making oxygen delivery to the body inefficient and placing the body into sympathetic drive as respiratory rate continues to increase. It is the disruption to the nervous system that then feeds into the symptoms and so a dysfunctional cycle begins.

 Dysautonomia is impairment of the autonomic nervous system and controls blood pressure, digestion, and temperature. There are many levels and sublevels of dysautonomia that may be experienced, but ultimately if this element is not addressed progress to regain better health is unlikely to eventuate. Breathing education and practices can be used to help bring the challenged nervous system back into balance.

 The Buteyko Method and Oxygen Advantage techniques aim to restore functional breathing patterns through the dimensions of biomechanics (breathing to increase the amplitude of the diaphragm), biochemistry (addressing carbon dioxide sensitivity) and cadence (slowing down breathing). By activating the parasympathetic nervous system, stimulating the vagus nerve, and soothing the body and mind a more optimal environment can be created for the body to fully heal and restore.

 Combining breathwork with other lifestyle changes such as diet, optimising hydration levels and physical therapies could provide suffers of the long haul much needed hope and support on the extended road to recovery.

 More people are seeking treatment to help support their health after infection and research suggests more women are affected with these ongoing symptoms than men, with the severity of the infection not seeming to correlate to these ongoing issues. The months following illness can be extremely debilitating and previously active and healthy individuals can barely meet the basic requirements of their day. The impact on mental and emotional wellbeing can be overwhelming, so the ability to be able to self-soothe and reset the nervous system through systematic breathwork will assist with resiliency and ability to cope, thus reducing stress related anxiety and giving the body permission to heal.

 If you are suffering with similar symptoms and would like to know more about the Buteyko Method/ Oxygen Advantage Technique, then please reach out, I offer a free 30-minute discovery call to help increase understanding and to see if this method is a good fit for you and your health (I know it will be).

Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/unlocking-the-mysteries-of-long-covid/618076/