I would never have imagined that I would be treating case after case after case of COVID-19 long haulers. But here we are. My practice is located in the heart of Manhattan and I live less than a mile from Elmhurst in Queens - the epicenter of where the pandemic was first being catalogued in the early months of the epidemic. I closed the office on March 13th, 2020 as directed by New York State - but I was able to reopen on May 25th, 2020 when Acupuncture was deemed an essential service.
That means the aftermath of COVID-19 started showing up in my office months before we had an official name for them: Long Haulers.
In May of 2021, I was invited by Pacific College of Health Sciences to speak along with Dr Clayton Shiu about our experiences treating long haulers with Chinese medicine. There is nothing that surprises me about long haul syndrome; however, Chinese medicine is uniquely qualified to address it. Schools of thought and learning were birthed in previous pandemics over the centuries such as the Shan Han Lun and Weng Bing approaches. You can watch the full talk below which touches on symptoms, approaches, methods, and ideas on how to start unraveling the health complications we’re seeing in clinical practice that are a direct consequence of COVID-19. This information will continue to evolve as we learn more over the coming years, but this is a good start.