From June 2023, I’ve been trying to consult doctors on China’s internet hospitals to prescribe herbs for long COVID patients, and three persons took part in this program. Among them two people were helped. One of the patients is a long COVID patient who has been ill for three years. The main symptoms are fatigue and brain fog, but there are also other symptoms, such as drowsiness, dizziness, cold shin, cold hands, insomnia, and a sense of pressure on the head. After three months of treatment (oxygen therapy and herbal medicine), his dizziness, inability to lift his eyelids, cold legs and hands, and insomnia disappeared. But the fatigue and brain fog have not improved significantly yet. They are now seeing a neurologist instead to treat the pressure in their head. So the treatment had to be suspended.
Another patient was a POTS patient whose main symptoms were dizziness (and inability to drive), fast heart rate (heart rate 150 when brushing teeth), stuck in bed, and rib pain. After taking the herbal medicine, the pain in her ribs completely disappeared, she can drive now, and heart rate has dropped to below 100, so she may now start working. And she admitted while chatting with me that “I mean Chinese herbal medicine has helped me more than other stuff did so far”. After taking herbal medicine for a period of time, she experienced hot and cold symptoms. This could have been treated with herbal medicine, but she went to see a neurologist, and I did not contact her later.
As can be seen from the above description, two out of three patients’ conditions have been improved, so the effective rate is 66% so far(of course this figure is not precise since samples count is too small).
However, the treatment process is often interrupted because they believe that certain symptoms can be treated with Western medicine. This is one of the reasons why the current treatment effect is not perfect (In fact, this is also the reason why the third patient got no improvement since he changed back to Western medicine after taking herbs for only 2 weeks).
On the contrary, if the patient do have strong confidence in TCM, and treatment can be carried out in time, the effective rate may be much higher. For example, all possible long COVID symptoms (including dizziness, vomit, fatigue, chest tightness, head pressure, etc) have been cured by herbs in my family.