Possibly of Use: Special COVID Edition
Sep. 4th, 2024 07:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swan_towerLast week, after four and a half years of successfully dodging it, my husband and I got hit by the covid bullet. Not too badly, and Paxlovid helped to reduce our symptoms more rapidly (at the cost of, yes, a very unpleasant metal taste that came and went for five days), but it nevertheless wiped us out pretty hard. A week after first testing positive, I still don't quiiiiiiite have a negative test result, and I am still sleeping far more than I used to.
This experience prompted me to experiment with two things that -- per the mission statement of these posts -- could possibly be of use to others. Big asterisk this time, which is that I'm about to pass on Internet Medical Advice, and we all know what that's worth . . . but hey, this at least one comes with PubMed citations? It's also stuff that in most cases will, at worst, do you no harm, which puts ahead of some of the other Internet Medical Advice out there.
The straightforward one first: melatonin. A friend linked me to this study, which says that in addition to helping address the sleep disruption caused by covid, it may -- more studies are needed -- actually do something against the virus itself, up to and including making vaccination more effective. Since I got absolutely shitty sleep the first two nights I was sick, I figured that if all it did was help me sleep better, I was already ahead, and if it did more than that, bonus! It made a massive difference in my ability to rest, which is good for healing all on its own. (I did, however, have to check for potential interactions with the small mountain of other medications I was taking. The only real flags were that it + dextromethorphan, aka cough suppressant, might make me extra drowsy -- oh no, don't throw me in that briar patch -- and that ritonavir, one of the components of Paxlovid, might make the melatonin less effective.)
The slightly less straightforward one comes from this blog post, which collects sources in support of a certain antihistamine protocol. The short form is that combining two classes of antihistamine -- one found in most OTC anti-allergy medications, and one found in most OTC acid controllers -- may improve your chances of full recovery and reduce the risk of long covid, improve the symptoms of long covid, and (weaker evidence here) even lower your chances of catching covid in the first place. There's more explanation there if you're interested, along with the specifics of the protocol.
Take all this with a grain of salt, of course (provided there are no negative interactions between salt and any other medications you might be on). IANA doctor of any stripe, your own personal medical situation might include factors that make one or both of these a bad idea, and all of them need more study. But in my case, there was no compelling reason not to try them. Whether they helped against the virus itself, I don't know -- but at least I got some better sleep out of it.
This experience prompted me to experiment with two things that -- per the mission statement of these posts -- could possibly be of use to others. Big asterisk this time, which is that I'm about to pass on Internet Medical Advice, and we all know what that's worth . . . but hey, this at least one comes with PubMed citations? It's also stuff that in most cases will, at worst, do you no harm, which puts ahead of some of the other Internet Medical Advice out there.
The straightforward one first: melatonin. A friend linked me to this study, which says that in addition to helping address the sleep disruption caused by covid, it may -- more studies are needed -- actually do something against the virus itself, up to and including making vaccination more effective. Since I got absolutely shitty sleep the first two nights I was sick, I figured that if all it did was help me sleep better, I was already ahead, and if it did more than that, bonus! It made a massive difference in my ability to rest, which is good for healing all on its own. (I did, however, have to check for potential interactions with the small mountain of other medications I was taking. The only real flags were that it + dextromethorphan, aka cough suppressant, might make me extra drowsy -- oh no, don't throw me in that briar patch -- and that ritonavir, one of the components of Paxlovid, might make the melatonin less effective.)
The slightly less straightforward one comes from this blog post, which collects sources in support of a certain antihistamine protocol. The short form is that combining two classes of antihistamine -- one found in most OTC anti-allergy medications, and one found in most OTC acid controllers -- may improve your chances of full recovery and reduce the risk of long covid, improve the symptoms of long covid, and (weaker evidence here) even lower your chances of catching covid in the first place. There's more explanation there if you're interested, along with the specifics of the protocol.
Take all this with a grain of salt, of course (provided there are no negative interactions between salt and any other medications you might be on). IANA doctor of any stripe, your own personal medical situation might include factors that make one or both of these a bad idea, and all of them need more study. But in my case, there was no compelling reason not to try them. Whether they helped against the virus itself, I don't know -- but at least I got some better sleep out of it.
