I caught real covid (not vaccine side reaction) and stayed in bed for 10 days. Finally the antigen tests turned negative for this past 48 hours, which means I am no longer contagious, according to CDC.
I am feeling better and getting up.
Today is 12/21/2023. Following is my Facebook post on 12/14/2023.
"Covid is no joke. Be careful.
I thought it was sore from the dance event. Then thought it was a cold. Next day I thought it was the flu, with covid test negative but sores everywhere. Then the test turned positive.
This one's rough. I appreciate vaccines I took. For now, got to stay in bed and wait for the test turns negative."
Covid felt similar to the flu, coming fast and rough with lots of sores. It also turned out to be very draining. I lost about 10lb in the past week, mostly because I was not eating much, although I had stockpile of food and medicine at home just in case like this.
Now my weight is temporarily at the same as in my university days. Talk about successfully shedding extra pounds accumulated over many years.
For the 10 days I used sick leave from work. As my work site is going into winter break, I am going to use the winter break for my recovery time.
During the bed stay, I used some Traditional Chinese Medicine for respiratory infections that are purported to be anti-inflammatory and antipyretic.
This covid was very tiring. I am still feeling somewhat weak, similar to the time after I got a bad flu.
There is a concern for so called "long covid", which is lingering sense of fatigue and/or other lasting neuronal or inflammation-related symptoms that can occur in some of former covid patients.
Surely I don't want long covid. There are a few hypotheses on cause(s) of long covid, including lasting inflammation, immuno-modulation, and increased senescent cells generated during the viral infection.
For upcoming covid recovery, I'll use energy-restoring type of Chinese Medicine and test Senolytics supplements.
Senolytics are a type of chemicals that are said to cause targeted cell death in senescent cells. On 2017 I wrote a review article on senescence and cancer relations, and have kept an eye of the aging research field. A lot of progress has been made in this past several years in the geroscience research field.
A textbook view is that senescent cells can secrete various inflammatory cytokines and other molecules into neighboring tissue, and that works detrimental to the functions of the neighbor cells. And that "detrimental effect" is regarded as "aging" in molecular terms.
As such, it was predicted that if you remove senescent cells, overall functions of the neighbor tissue can be restored.
In fact, some animal-based experiments support the scenario. And if long covid is really caused by senescent cells, senolytics should be able to prevent long covid as well.
Preventing and/or reversing some aspects of aging is no longer a fairly tale, but is a subject of testable scientific approach.
Some senolytics are sold as supplements. I'll take Fisetin, Quercetin and Taurine for a few weeks and see what happens on my dulled sense of smell and on sense of fatigue (you need parameters to measure in order to test something.). Another N=1 experiment with $80 investment. I might even come out "younger" from this covid, haha.
But overall, I am happy about and thankful for surviving this covid.
I'll focus on recovery during this winter break.
[As of Dec 2023, the US government still sends out free covid test kits. I ordered two kits. Many thanks.]
