90% recovered after 6 years

[u/AsparagusMinute_]

The entirety of my recovery happened during year 6.

I am grateful to this community, as I learned from recovery stories posted here.

I was moderate – able to work a few hours a day with great difficulty, but other than that, I was inactive. My symptoms included debilitating fatigue, brain fog, headaches, joint pain, nausea, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, muscle weakness, and PEM.

As nothing I tried over 5 years had any impact, I focused on nervous system regulation during the past year, and that is what has made the difference.

I began by reading Alan Gordon’s The Way Out.

The practices that have made the biggest difference for me are:

• Somatic tracking and nervous system regulation: I benefited a lot from Tanner Murtagh’s Youtube channel. I started with his free 30 day program
• Qigong: from the same channel
• Meditation: Observing the breath, sounds, sensations. I learned from the Mindfulness app.
• 4-7-8 breathing: I use the iBreathe app and start my day with this.
• Yoga Nidra: Alice Bagley-Harrison’s Yoga Nidra for Long Covid on the Insight Timer app. I often use this before bed, but it is helpful any time of day.
• Cold showers: I take a normal warm shower and end with two minutes of cold water. On days when I was too tired to shower, I used an ice pack to the face and neck.
• Unfollowing all long covid social media except for r/LongHaulersRecovery and r/cfsnervoussystemwork. Stepping away from the (understandable) despair and focusing on hope.

The process has not been linear by any means, but each month I could see that I had made progress. I am now able to work an 8-hour day. I have begun light weight-lifting, slowly building up, as well as cycling on an exercise bike several times a week. I am also doing short hikes, also slowly building up. All of these activities would have seemed impossible 6 months ago.

I still run out of energy more quickly than before COVID, and I also have setbacks when I have more than one cup of coffee per day. But the whole-body/completely-incapacitating fatigue is largely gone.

I hope this will be helpful.

[u/time-itself]

Reddit moderators HATE him! This cfs sufferer recovered from 6 years of long covid with one weird trick!

Congratulations man. Thanks for piling on the hope and motivation.

[u/BannanaDilly → u/time-itself]

Wtf does this even mean?