Looking to collaborate to increase awareness of ACES/trauma and Long Haul COVID

Hi Elizabeth, thank you for your post. I believe this is an important topic to discuss and explore. I have somewhat limited time to give, and also would potentially be interested in some level of engagement in anything you put together. The core of mind-body medicine research as relates to systems management of allostatic load emphasizes that if stress is unmitigated it can challenge all systems and contribute potential to the emergence of ill health as opposed to well-being. In my clinical practice (I'm a physiotherapist with focus on mental health, chronic pain/illness/disease, and mind-body medicine/mind-body integrated care) I am finding that providing experiences that regularly support the CNS/ANS relationships/patterns, for persons with long-Covid, is very supportive of improvements over time. I also use ACT and yoga therapy within the model I offer to support those with long-Covid. You may find this paper of interest: https://bioelecmed.biomedcentr...6/s42234-020-00058-0 and actually if you go to Google Scholar and type in "autonomic covid" (see here: https://scholar.google.com/sch...omic+covid&btnG= ) you will see many papers and studies looking at these associations. I consider long-Covid to be a "neural injury" and yes, the experience of it can be experienced/received as traumatic, especially within the environmental container of a global pandemic that is challenging our post-normal times patterns of living, late-stage capitalism, and that demands a capacity and forum for inner/psychospiritual work. If you advance any specific efforts that are collaborative, keep me informed, you can PM (private message) within this community forum.

Hi Elizabeth,

I'm sorry to hear you are long-hauling. I agree that long-covid may indeed be linked to our trauma histories such as ACEs and other adverse events in the face of too few buffers (including the isolation of covid) and reflect an altered ANS.

I'm a former family doctor and somatic trauma therapist. I now integrate (existing) research on the role of adversity in risk for chronic illness (on my blog). I've also been using this lens for gradually improving from chronic fatigue syndrome over the past 20 years, which I see as a state caught in freeze and likely similar to long-covid. Some people improve through stress reduction approaches but I suspect that a lot of us with long-term illnesses have more of a trauma response in our nervous system, which may be more deeply primed towards survival physiology and tend to need more than this.

I don't do research and, like Matt, my time is limited but I might be interested in some level of engagement. I'd be happy to discuss if of interest / or exchange emails etc.

I have found one excellent article summarizing this adversity perspective for long-covid in The Atlantic, which might give you further leads. I have seen very little else with this view so far re long covid.

As for working to support healing, I suspect optimal approaches aim at reducing ANS trauma responses / increasing perceptions of safety in the body. I have a post summarizing tools that seem most helpful to those with other chronic illnesses and that fit a similar context to what Matt has found to be helpful in his clinical practice. Healing might also include  trauma therapies.

Thank you for that paper, Matt! It's really interesting to see how the biochemical effects of SARS-CoV-2 are being understood.  Also interesting that it seems to find severe infections result from dysbalanced nervous systems, whereas long covid often occurs in persons whose immune systems were able to prevent a severe infection, but the immune or autonomic systems do not completely recover. I suspect that previously dysbalanced nervous systems contribute to that as well (as with PTSD), but in different ways than from those with preexisting severe heart/lung disease or diabetes.