Early stages of covid - what to do?

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

Together group is the name of a group of people doing clinical trials on COVID

Thanks !!!

UNSOLICITED ASSISTANCE/ADVICE .... APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE ....

Instead of hitting "Reply" at the bottom of whatever you're responding to, which posts the whole thing in your answer and tends to clog up the thread, try this....

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[Husband of]

@YippeeKi YOW !!
I was about to ask for this advice, then I figured I shouldn't burden people with MECFS so I didn't. So thanks.

 

[Husband of]

So some interesting info:

- she only tested positive this morning
(I was pretty confident she had COVID because she got symptoms on Wednesday morning just before the people we saw on Sunday all tested positive, with the same symptom onset (sore throat), and it being omicron it's expected that sore throat is the first thing, plus the time from catching it on Sunday to symptom onset on Wednesday morning seemed right for omicron, and there s a current surge happening here in omicron infections)

- despite rats for three days being negative, she had a pretty badly sore throat and cough (couldn't talk at times), suggesting a strong immune response to a low viral load (or nasal swabs just not being the most accurate for early days of omicron because it starts in the throat)

- I still haven't tested positive, but have had mild symptoms since Tuesday evening.

 

[Marylib]

I did go to a pharmacy and they asked how old she is and when I responded they said I needed a prescription. How did paxlovid affect your MECFS by the way? Also who is your doctor and do they characterize MECFS as neurological or neuromuscular? We went To a neurologist and they weren't interested, said my wife has cfs and she should work on her grief issues.

I haven't tested positive, so I have not needed it. I was a 'suspected case' in 2020 - but I will never know. Yeah, was reviewing the criteria and am sorry your wife does not meet it currently. Neurologists are the worst kind of specialists - forget them. Only see people who you know are educated or you and your wife will have to deal with that bullshit forever. It's by word of mouth - depending on where you live, etc. Maybe your wife has never been through the whole process with Winz for a benefit. You learn that way to tick the boxes where it says "other immune" disorder.

How is your wife feeling? Just go to ED if you want and raise hell.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

@Husband of

We seem to be on a similar time line .... DB became symptomatic over the weekend, thought it was just a flu, I followed with unignorable symptoms on Monday (up til then I thought I was just having a moderate ME spike, which happens from time to time), he went into the VA (he's ex-air force) on Tuesday, got the results confirming that it was COVID Wednesday AM, by which time we were both pretty miserable.

But not as bad as it could be. As I said somewhere above, we've been dealing with it with Vit C, increased levels of Vit D, moderate levels of zinc, magnesium, and calcium (which does more than just build bones), increased water intake (not sure how much it helps, but it does manage the dryness), a little additional selenium.

So far, it seems to be doing the trick.

I'm hoping that you're also finding something that works without doing additional damage or creating ore discomfort ....

PS .... Thank you for your generous "Thank you" re how to quote posts you're replying to, and for recognizing what a challenge it was to make it concise and clear, given my current brain function .... much appreciated

 

[Marylib]

@Husband of - I mean raise hell 'politely'. I should say stand firm when you get to ED and insist that someone give your wife medicine if she wants it. More than one person has just given up because they were alone and had no one to fight for them.

I guess you are fairly certain you were both exposed last Sunday? The RATS aren't picking it up until the symptoms are very gooey - nose and throat or in the rectum - if it's gastro.

 

[Husband of]

@Husband of - I mean raise hell 'politely'. I should say stand firm when you get to ED and insist that someone give your wife medicine if she wants it. More than one person has just given up because they were alone and had no one to fight for them.

I guess you are fairly certain you were both exposed last Sunday? The RATS aren't picking it up until the symptoms are very gooey - nose and throat or in the rectum - if it's gastro.

Fairly certain.

we just had an online doc appointment too, and , unlike the pharmacist, he was very happy to call MECFS a neurological condition but what I hadn't realised is that she'd have to have had three of the conditions on the list, so yeah you are right she didn't meet the criteria. He said the criteria were a bit crazy and he had tried to get around the criteria before but the pharmacies weren't accepting it.

I said I was surprised one of the criteria was immune suppression, but not overactive immune system, guven severe COVID is caused by cytokine storms. He agreed.

He said if she gets bad in terms of breathing difficulties she should call an ambulance and they'll give her oxygen and antivirals.

 

[Husband of]

@YippeeKi YOW !! we can do it! Do you think the form of zinc and vit d matter? and what dose are you taking?

Currently we have vit d as colecalciferol, and zinc as glycinate. Today, Planning to take 4200 IU D3, 64mg zinc, and 8.8g liposomal vit c, spread through the day.

and thanks for the effort to converse!

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

Do you think the form of zinc and vit d matter?

Vit D, definitely and cholecalciferol is the absolutely right one. WIth zinc, I think it's whichever one yo tolerate best. I use gluconate, but glycinate is an excellent choice, too.

and what dose are you taking?

DB takes 5000 iu a day, because he's out and about and gets some sunlight. I'm house and sometimes bedbound, so I get none, and I take 7000 iu a day with no bad effects as far as I can tell. Whether or not I'll boost both our doses of D I don't know, cause I cant think too well right now and would probably deeply distrust any decision I make.

Today, Planning to take 4200 IU D3,

I think you might be able to boost that a little, but it's up to you, your system, and how you react to it. Also, where you feel safe, in terms of dosing.

64mg zinc

That seems like a lot, tho possibly not if taken thru-out the day.

The biological half life of zinc in various parts of your brain range from 15 to 40/45 days, so there is a possible cumulative effect, and too much zinc can be not only counterproductive, but actually damaging.

Some of the signs of excess zinc are nausea, dizziness, upset stomach, vomiting, headaches, and loss of appetite. As you can see, it could be difficult to tell that from standard COVID symptoms .... if you take a lot of zinc for a protracted period, you could run into problems like low levels of HDL cholesterol, low copper levels (copper and zinc compete for absorption), and lowered immunity.

and 8.8g liposomal vit c, spread through the day.

I' a big believer in Vit C, so I might not be the best judge, and while 8.8 gms seems like a lot, its liposomal which mitigates a lot of its negative effects, and Vit C is so critical to soooo many functions in your body and even your brain and CNS, that when you're under the stress of COVID, I'm not sure if there IS an upper limit.

Take the above with a large grain of salt. I'm absolutely ZERO kind of medical professional, and damned proud of it !!!!

EDIT .... Typos, idiot mistake, mor typos .... oops, there's another one .....screw it ....

 

[linusbert]

For some reason Drs who pooh-poohed the value of Vit D (which is actually a hormone) preciously, suddenly decided that the way to deal with adeficit was to prescribe 50,000 iu at a time, which is hella dangerous in some people.

5000 iu i a far more sensible does, and if you're deficient at say 20 ngL in a blood test, then you could up that by 50% and still be on the safe side.

yes i agree, i clarified my initial statement. my apologies for confusion.
thats a problem with many of those vitamin D scientists who actually do something good but they also ignore the fact that there are chronic ill people who do not tolerate these high doses.
and magnesium and k2 doesnt always fix the issue - it never did for me.

Absolutely right. One of the main things that it immediately depletes is magnesium, which is required for hundreds and hundreds of actions and conversions in our bodies, and when needed, will be pulled from bones and soft tissues to make up the short-fall. No need to yammer on about what that would do to the human body over a fairly short period of time ....

i read this a lot, i tried it a lot and magnesium never worked for me. and i still try it. but magnesium never did anything good for me - at best it did nothing.. but i still try to keep it balanced for the reasons you stated.

i believe (unscientifically) that the actual problem for me is calcium "poisoning" as my symptoms fit hypercalcemia and the increased influx of calcium into the cells need to be pumped out by ATP which is insufficient for most of us.
there are certain medications i can use which give me a short boost and if i take them i do not have the negative symptoms of vitamin D. but in the meantime i did change nothing with vitamins or magnesium. so the stores are exactly the same as before when i didnt tolerate vitamin D.
also when my asthma and coughing gets worse, my cfs and muscle issues get better. this is a state were i can tolerate vitamin D in high doses again for like 1-2 weeks.

therefore i rule magnesium and k2 out for the cause of my vitamin D intolerance issues. but i sure might get longterm problems with mg and k2 if i dont supplement.
i am not saying that magnesium/k2 isnt the vitamin D intolerance cause for others.

 

[Marylib]

we just had an online doc appointment too, and , unlike the pharmacist, he was very happy to call MECFS a neurological condition but what I hadn't realised is that she'd have to have had three of the conditions on the list, so yeah you are right she didn't meet the criteria. He said the criteria were a bit crazy and he had tried to get around the criteria before but the pharmacies weren't accepting it.

Glad the online doc at least tried to help. Which one did you speak with? I've heard good things about some of these guys.

He said if she gets bad in terms of breathing difficulties she should call an ambulance and they'll give her oxygen and antivirals.

Hope she doesn't need to. It's so disturbing that medical care is so limited until a person is having trouble breathing. So little has changed since 2020 - even after the govt. borrowed so much money and spent so much money to deal with covid.

@Husband of - sorry - trying to wade through this thread and find where you might have asked me something. The friend I mentioned can't get the supply - she can only see that the supply is abundant - last I checked. That may have changed too.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

my apologies for confusion.

No apology necessary !!! Drs, in their infinite .... let's call it wisdom cause the other words I'd use might be construed as insulting ..... Drs actually prescribe those high doses of Vit D routinely, and even better, they administer that without considering the stress that massive amount puts on the normal, or abnormal system.

thats a problem with many of those vitamin D scientists who actually do something good but they also ignore the fact that there are chronic ill people who do not tolerate these high doses.

NOBODY probably would.

For one thing, in order to metabolize Vit D, you need a boatload of magnesium, cause metabolizing Vit D sucks up mag like a Hoover on crack, and without additional supplementation, unless your system is uncommonly rich in mag (and pretty much no one's is .... it's one of the most widely used and rapidly depleted minerals in our bodies, essential to almost 400 different processes and the count keeps going up), it's going to be sucked out of your bones and soft tissues, leaving you with brittle bones and damaged joints.

and magnesium and k2 doesnt always fix the issue - it never did for me.

It was a life saver for me, altho I had to start out on both th Vid D and the magnesium very very slowly, and in tiny amounts, which I got from a liquid formula (easy to titrate to any dose you need) made for babies and toddlers.

What form of magnesium were you using? That can make all the difference, as I found out in my frantic search for a for of mag I could tolerate.

i believe (unscientifically) that the actual problem for me is calcium "poisoning" as my symptoms fit hypercalcemia and the increased influx of calcium into the cells need to be pumped out by ATP

Vit D releases calcium into your bloodstream, where it wanders around doing all kinds of damage, most devastatingly to your arteries, veins, joints. That's why MK-7 is soooooo critical.

ATP generally pumps calcium INTO cells, but then I slept thru most of biochemistry. so I could be wrong, and I wouldnt be surprized. Or you might mean adenodiphosphatase, verysimilar to ATP but not quite the same, involved in the last step ot wo of the Krebs/citric acid energy cycle ...

I think the main regulating hormone for calcium is PTH (parathyroid hormone). Again I wouldn't take that to the bank, cause between ME and COVID brain is totally shite right now ....

EDIT .... to make a correction and add an expansion to explanation ..... not that any of it makes any more sense, but there you are ....

 

[linusbert]

..... Drs actually prescribe those high doses of Vit D routinely, and even better, they administer that without considering the stress that massive amount puts on the normal, or abnormal system.

actually i like it when they do high dose - for healthy people.
in my country germany sadly they do not for healthy people. usually they do not care about VD at all and if they find a deficiency you get something like 1000 IU. and its only treated as deficiency when its below 20ng/ml.

for healthy people i think its best to go with 10-20k doses for like a month. and then continue with 1-4k IU per day.
for cfs, everyone needs to figure out themselves.

it's <magnesium> going to be sucked out of your bones and soft tissues, leaving you with brittle bones and damaged joints <on high dose VD>.

(i did add context in <>)
i just learned something new! i thought i've read everything about VD and mg, but i didnt know it would be leached out of bones. makes sense, could explain why some elderly suffer from muscle weakness and easier broken bones after high dose VD.
thats why this forum is so great.. everyone knows one little detail more.

which I got from a liquid formula (easy to titrate to any dose you need) made for babies and toddlers.
i got a 200 IU baby mct oil as well. but right now i test 30k IU every 1-2 weeks. i never tried non-daily intake schema before. sofar i got 82k IU down the last weeks. but i think i am at the turning point to stop.


What form of magnesium were you using? That can make all the difference, as I found out in my frantic search for a for of mag I could tolerate.

i guess every form.
mg -citrat, -malat, -chlorid, -orotat, -oxid, -carbonate, -glycinat, -ionized, liposomal citrat...

ATP generally pumps calcium INTO cells, but then I slept thru most of biochemistry. so I could be wrong, and I wouldnt be surprized. Or you might mean adenodiphosphatase, verysimilar to ATP but not quite the same, involved in the last step ot wo of the Krebs/citric acid energy cycle ...

actually i believe its the other way around. calcium needs to be pushed out, thats why relaxing muscles cost more energy than contracting the muscle.
if body stops to pump out calcium due to no ATP anymore, you get rigor mortis. a dead body is a stiff body.
magnesium needs to be pumped in.
but everything has a active and passive mechanism.
but to be frank, i do not now bodychemistry. just read this somewhere.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

I cant 'quote' your alteration of my original quote, which initially baffled me, since I didnt remember writing anything LIKE that ... then I realized that you'd altered my actual quote which is generally a bad idea, or, if you feel that you must, explaining those alterations might be helpful to the original writer of the quote, and to members reading it subsequently.

Here's a copy and paste of your re-quote of my quote (damn ..... this is getting confusing), and below it is my original, actual quote:

YippeeKi YOW !! said:
it's <magnesium> going to be sucked out of your bones and soft tissues, leaving you with brittle bones and damaged joints <on high dose VD>.

it's one of the most widely used and rapidly depleted minerals in our bodies, essential to almost 400 different processes and the count keeps going up), it's going to be sucked out of your bones and soft tissues, leaving you with brittle bones and damaged joints.

thats why relaxing muscles cost more energy than contracting the muscle.

And I think that it's the other way around ,,,, contracting a muscle requires more energy than relaxing it ....

if body stops to pump out calcium due to no ATP anymore, you get rigor mortis.

Rigor mortis generally occurs as the result of the failure of the body's oxygen supply, which then starts a cascade of chemical changes that finally result in rigor and lividity. Chemical reactions and trades just dont happen absent oxygen, and yes, the muscles can create ATP, so the muscle's filaments (actin and myosin) stay tensed.

i guess every form.
mg -citrat, -malat, -chlorid, -orotat, -oxid, -carbonate, -glycinat, -ionized, liposomal citrat...

I had no luck with any of them, and two of them, citrate and oxide, are very poor forms of magnesium, with a 4% bioavailability rate, which is why they're so effective as laxatives, which is their primary purpose. Mag citrate in fact is used in most hospitals here in the US as the necessary colon clean-out prior to surgery. At that, it's superbly effective and it doesn't take much to do the job. Ditto mag oxide.

I'm surpized that you were able to tolerate it in any amount that would provide adequate quantities of magnesium.

I found mag glycinate the most congenial, since it's magnesium bound to a large molecule, the amino acid glycinate, which holds it in the stomach for digestion instead of shooting straight thru to the colon, as mag oxide and citrate do, drawing large amounts of water with them.... hence the laxative effect.

actually i like it when they do high dose - for healthy people.

I dont think that large intermittent amounts of Vit D is a good idea, but that's just me. It's disruptive to the system, it isnt accompanied by necessary adjuvants like magnesium, and it can cause a lot of uncomfortable damage.

for healthy people i think its best to go with 10-20k doses for like a month. and then continue with 1-4k IU per day.

10-20,000 iu a day for a month could cause some real disruption and difficulty, particularly on systems as wacky as ours (ME). As a one-off, or a once a week dose, it might work, but why subject your system to that kind of potential stress, unless your results are so dangerously low in 25(OH)D tests (like, 10 or 15 ng/mL) that emergency measures are necessary.

But I tend to be conservative in my approach, having learned some hard lessons in pursuing potential treatments/alleviations for ME....

for cfs, everyone needs to figure out themselves.

That goes for absolutely everything. One of the things we all learn pretty fast is that NOTHING works for everyone, or in the same way, or even the same amounts. We're all our own lab rats and Petrie dishes. Not fun, but there it is ....

 

[Rufous McKinney]

by which time we were both pretty miserable.

sorry to hear your household got COVID-stuck. Feel better soon!

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

sorry to hear your household got COVID-stuck. Feel better soon!

Thank you, Red .... it's no where near as bad as my first bout, two years or so ago, but it def has it's moments of misery. I think DB is suffering more than I am, which might point to a small protective effect from the previous bout, which for reasons that mystify me DB didn't get ....

 

[linusbert]

Here's a copy and paste of your re-quote of my quote (damn ..... this is getting confusing), and below it is my original, actual quote:

i wanted to save space keeping things short as i am always writing too much text.
well didnt work out as intendent. i clarified.
i got this idea from newspapers which add contextual concrete words when a quote contains "it" or so.

I found mag glycinate the most congenial, since it's magnesium bound to a large molecule, the amino acid glycinate, which holds it in the stomach for digestion instead of shooting straight thru to the colon, as mag oxide and citrate do, drawing large amounts of water with them.... hence the laxative effect.

mine smelled really bad, i threw it away. i also thought i got mild diarrhea like with every form. but too long ago, can try this again.
usually i am fine with mgCl or malat until up to 1g magnesium if i spread it out over the day. used to only get diarrhea but recently i have the feeling i get muscle weakness with muscle burning from it. therefore i do not supply magnesium anymore if i dont have to.

unless your results are so dangerously low in 25(OH)D tests (like, 10 or 15 ng/mL) that emergency measures are necessary.

mine were 4mg/ml recently. probably i am at 10ng/ml now after 82k. but i cannot continue the side effects become to ugly.
i might try one more time 30k to get above 10ng/ml flanked with a bit magnesium. i got a new k2mk4 now maybe it helps. also my cod liver oil is here, it has 2k IU itself and 10k IU vitamin A.
the actual reason i am forced to supplement VD was because my asthma and allergies have gotten worse and worse. VD used to help me with asthma and allergies so in desperation i go in high.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

mine smelled really bad, i threw it away.

You deinitely got a contaminated batch. Mag gly has virtually no small at all, and at one point I as taking as much as 2400 mgs A DAY with abslutely no diarrhea.

Compare that to mag oxide, which I take at night when I'm fighting thru a bout of constipation .....300 to 500 mgs is waaay more than enough .... almost too much ....

i also thought i got mild diarrhea like with every form. but too long ago, can try this again.

Oh, please please do. I use Solgar's (it's a company I trust, not sure if you can get it in Germany, but possibly thru Amazon???) Chelated Magnesium, 100 mg tablets (which are easy t clip in half if you want to take small doses more frequently) which is one molecule of mag bound to 1 molecule of glycine, with a very small amount of mag oxide in the mix, why I don't know. But it still didn't cause diarrhea even at extraordiarily high doses ....

mine were 4mg/ml recently. probably i am at 10ng/ml now after 82k. but i cannot continue the side effects become to ugly.

OMIGOD !!!! How are you still upright? Yours would be the one case I know of where 20,000 iu a day may be a good idea.

ANd a lot of your bad reactions to Vit D are almost certainly due to your low magnesium levels, tho nthing's a guarantee. We're all different. Adding mag gly in could make a world of difference to you. I think your hypercalcemia is due to lack of mag, and lack of MK-7, which properly directs the calcium released by Vit D to the places where we need it, like bones and teeth, and not where we don't, like arteries, veins, joint synapses, but more on that some other time. For now, try to get a reputable brand of mag gly, because it should be odorless and pretty pure whte, with no diarrhea ....

Disclaimer .... I'm absolutely NOT a medical professional of any sort, something fo which I thank God daily ...

 

[linusbert]

Oh, please please do. I use Solgar's (it's a company I trust, not sure if you can get it in Germany, but possibly thru Amazon???) Chelated Magnesium, 100 mg tablets (which are easy t clip in half if you want to take small doses more frequently) which is one molecule of mag bound to 1 molecule of glycine, with a very small amount of mag oxide in the mix, why I don't know. But it still didn't cause diarrhea even at extraordiarily high doses ....

i can get it from iherb. this one i guess? https://de.iherb.com/pr/solgar-chelated-magnesium-250-tablets/64381
the smell problem i get a lot with amino acid based drugs. finding for example a carnitine supplement which doesnt stink like fish is almost impossible. i think the supplement industry needs more quality checks. its like wild west.
in germany we have sunday which usually ships in good quality, also one of the few companies which uses almost no fillers. https://www.sunday.de/en/magnesium-glycinate-capsules.html
but they do not have everything. and sometimes only plant extracts and i react badly to those.

OMIGOD !!!! How are you still upright? Yours would be the one case I know of where 20,000 iu a day may be a good idea.

i am not, i am lie'ing in bed most the time. but i've been all my life low in VD. one time after a summer of beeing every day nacked in midday sun no sun screen... i had like 25 ng/ml. maybe i got a gen polymorphism which enables efficacy for low serum levels. idk.

ANd a lot of your bad reactions to Vit D are almost certainly due to your low magnesium levels, tho nthing's a guarantee. We're all different. Adding mag gly in could make a world of difference to you. I think your hypercalcemia is due to lack of mag, and lack of MK-7, which properly directs the calcium released by Vit D to the places where we need it, like bones and teeth, and not where we don't, like arteries, veins, joint synapses, but more on that some other time. For now, try to get a reputable brand of mag gly, because it should be odorless and pretty pure whte, with no diarrhea ....

we will see.
i dont have blood serum hypercalcemia anymore. it used to be borderline high, but since this year it is declining.
a few month ago when we also did measure the 4ng/ml VD, calcium was borderline low. mg low. sodium low (used to be high as well). potassium low.

 

[Wayne]

Hi @Husband of -- I'm a firm believer in the COVID treatment protocol that's been used extensively by Dr. David Brownstein. He's been treating respiratory infections for 25 years using primarily nebulization techniques, combined with ozone therapies and a handful of key nutritional supplements.

When COVID came along, he felt his long-used protocol would work well in treating it, and it did. Unfortunately, he got harassed by the FDA for posting YouTube videos on his success stories. So if you google some of the therapies he recommends, you're likely going to find "official" references to be critical of his "untested" therapies.

That said, his #1 therapy is nebulizing very dilute (.1%) hydrogen peroxide for about 5-10 minutes, every 1-2 hours in the initial stages. I've done it myself and it's very benign. After doing it only a half dozen times or so, I now have much improved sinus breathing.

I believe he also recommends nebulizing glutathione. A number of other therapies he recommends were used by Thomas Levy when he got COVID. After reading about his protocol and experiences, I started a thread here on PR (link below). The other two links take you to a couple other things I posted regarding COVID.

Good luck to you and your wife finding something that works really well for you!

Dr. Thomas Levy -- How COVID Helped Me Regain Good Health

Randomized Control Study Shows 1200 mg of NAC Daily Dramatically Reduces Flu Severity - "May" Be Applicable to COVID

Hydrogen Peroxide Nebulizer for Sinus Cleansing - UPDATED!

BTW, when somebody has a serious infection, my understanding is the body (and immune system) can and will use many times the normal amounts of certain nutrients like Vitamin C and D. So when I hear about "megadosing" of either of these, it really doesn't concern me if done on a short-term, as needed basis.

I've even heard of some people with COVID being prescribed as much as 200,000 IUs of VIt. D. I would want to be working with somebody familiar with the protocol before doing that much however. -- The IV Vitamin C protocol used by Thomas Levy brought back his sense of taste and smell within 5 minutes of starting the procedure.