Treating people with long Covid

Improving people’s resistance to future infection is a major goal for acupuncture in respect of Covid-19. However, we must also recognise the need for help for those struggling with long-lasting symptoms of the disease, that is long Covid.

UK data suggest that people are suffering in this way:

• one in seven of those with Covid symptoms would be ill for at least a month
• one in twenty for two months; and
• one in forty-five for three or more months

Symptoms vary in type, intensity and duration, leading some experts to suggest that there may be several different syndromes at play, with consequent difficulties in diagnosis. Some people may not get the recognition and treatment they need for long Covid, which will affect their mental as well as physical health. This is particularly true for non-hospitalised patients, who did not have severe respiratory problems and are assumed to have had only a mild version of the disease that will clear up in a couple of weeks. One group of people get respiratory symptoms like cough and shortness of breath, but another has symptoms across many body systems. Fatigue is seen commonly, as are ‘brain fog’ and heart symptoms.

Acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine are well-placed to help people with long Covid. Patients with multiple, chronic symptoms are treated using a holistic approach, helping to support their own self-healing capabilities to provide better sustained, overall improvement, rather than focusing on one symptom at a time. This approach will include the effects on the immune system and inflammatory processes, which then may contribute to treating long Covid.

Many of the common symptoms seen with long Covid have been shown to respond to acupuncture in other contexts such as:

• chronic fatigue;
• fibromyalgia;
• COPD;
• heart arrhythmias;
• nausea; and
• poor digestion.

It has been still too early for results from clinical trial but promising outcomes from individual cases have been reported.

British Acupuncture Council, Let’s talk about… Long COVID and Acupuncture: An Introduction (Retrieved 31st January 2022, https://acupuncture.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Long_Covid_introduction.pdf)