Transcript
Dr. Sanjay Gupta (0:02)
Welcome to Paging Dr. Gupta. This is the podcast where your health questions become the conversation, they drive the conversation, and you've been sending in some great questions. So today we're diving into some interesting topics that you've sent our way. And one of our producers, Kira, who, by the way, is from the Midwest, like me, she has the first question ready, Kira?
Kira (0:26)
Hey, Sanjay. So since Last week marked five years since the World Health Organization declared COVID 19 as a global pandemic, we've actually had a lot of listeners asking questions about COVID So this one's coming from Candy in Oregon, and she wants to know what are the stats for people who have had breathing problems long after having COVID 19?
Dr. Sanjay Gupta (0:48)
All right, Kira, thanks for bringing that one in. And it's a timely question for the reason you pointed out. It's been five years since we first declared Covid a pandemic. Okay, Candy, what you're describing is long Covid. You may remember in the beginning, it was referred to as long haulers, but it is long Covid, and it is an entirely new disease class driven by a novel virus, the COVID virus. The strict definition, long Covid are symptoms that persist at least three months after infection. For some people, they say at least six months. But, Candy, as you know, as I think you're alluding to, the symptoms can last years as well, and they can range from mild to severe. Some of these symptoms, like fatigue and brain fog and dizziness and sleep problems, we've heard a lot about those things, taste and smell issues as well, that can be something that lingers and has been more directly linked to Covid. So these are significant issues, and they can really interfere with. With someone's way of life. There does seem to be some correlation with the overall degree of illness initially and the likelihood of developing long Covid, meaning that if you were sicker, long Covid may be likelier. If you had some sort of underlying condition, including immune compromise or even older than the age of 65, long Covid might be more likely as well. But there were plenty of young people and plenty of people who had mild infections initially whose symptoms simply just didn't go away. So they have long Covid as well. And, you know, it's interesting because I don't think we talk about long Covid a lot. I talk about it on this podcast. I've done a lot of reporting on it. But interestingly, as a society, given that this is an entirely new disease class, we really haven't discussed long Covid a lot. And I think that should change, and hopefully it does change. You should also know that even if you don't have some of the classic symptoms of long Covid, what we're starting to learn is that if you had other conditions, such as migraines or lung disease or autoimmune disease or chronic kidney disease, some of those could be worsened as well by a COVID infection. Okay, so you could have developed brand new symptoms that you never had before or a worsening of existing symptoms. Now, Candy, to your question, let me give you some numbers. And this is based on survey data, which is only as good as how well people actually answer these surveys. But about 30% of COVID infections will result in long Covid, according to that survey data. In the latest survey, which was from mid August through mid September, about 30% of adults said that they had Covid symptoms lasting three months or longer. So this 30% number seems to be quite stable. It looked like it was 30% a couple of years into the pandemic. And now five years into the pandemic, 30% of people do seem to have these lingering symptoms. I will say that when it comes to breathing problems, specifically, if you take that 30%, up to 40% of them seem to have some sort of persistent breathing symptoms. And it could be, you know, simply becoming more exercise intolerant, not being able to exercise as long, two quite severe, not even being able to take a few steps without losing your breath. What seems to be happening, Candy, is that there is scarring or thickening of tissues in the lung after a COVID infection, and that probably is driving some of the symptoms that you're talking about. Now, I don't want to minimize this problem, and I don't want what I'm about to say to sound overly simplistic. But when you look at the data, really engaging diligently in breathing exercises seems to have benefit, not for everybody, but for a lot of people, it seems to allow them to return to baseline lung capacity and hopefully get them back to their way of life. So that's one thing. And the second thing, Candy, very important, do not get another infection, because the impact of that could be more exponential than linear. So you really compound the degree of that scarring or thickening of the lung tissue if you get another infection. So be careful. Thanks for sending in the question and let's keep going. Should you ditch your regular deodorant for a natural one? Amazing how many questions we got about this. We're gonna look at the facts right after the break.