This post on Long Covid is from Dr. Keith C. Ellis, our guest in episode 436. Keith is an Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, has researched the pathophysiological mechanisms behind Long Covid, and created a safe, accessible, and affordable over-the-counter remedy for Long Covid microclots. Watch the video, listen to the audio, or catch both on Spotify.
What is Long Covid? And how can you recover from it?
As we enter 2025, much of the world has moved on from the Covid pandemic. People are eager to congregate again in public, leave masks behind, and enjoy a world that feels like it has returned to “normal”.
But for some, the Covid pandemic and lock-downs were just the beginning of a continuous struggle, one that persists to this day. For people with Long Covid, the acute Covid infection is long gone, but they still have continuing symptoms that prevent them from functioning in everyday life.
What is Long Covid?
Long Covid is the common name for a disease state called post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC) by the scientific and medical communities. Long Covid is a new and separate disease that starts 3-6 months AFTER a person suffers from an acute Covid infection. When a person suffers from Long Covid, they fail to recover completely from the symptoms of the acute Covid infection and after getting better for a while, they acquire new symptoms and begin to get sick again 3-6 months after the initial Covid infection.
Studies are beginning to show that people have a 1 in 10 chance of coming down with Long Covid after every primary Covid infection. And worldwide, over 400 million people (cumulative) have been diagnosed with Long Covid as of 2024. Long Covid mainly affects people 30-65 years old and seems to affect women more than men.
What are the Symptoms of Long Covid?
Long Covid is a multi-system disease that presents differently in different people. The symptoms can be broken down into Core Symptoms and a larger Constellation of symptoms that affect different people in different ways,
Core Symptoms
The Core symptoms that affect almost every Long Covid patient are fatigue, brain fog, and cardiac symptoms like shortness of breath, irregular heart rate, and chest pain, tightness, or pressure.
Constellation of Symptoms
Long Covid presents differently in different people, which makes it a difficult disease for doctors to diagnose and treat. Along with the Core symptoms of fatigue, brain fog, and cardiac symptoms, people with Long Covid can also suffer from additional symptoms that affect multiple systems in the body. These can include more severe cardiac symptoms such as tachycardia, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), severe shortness of breath, and issues with blood pressure regulation, which can be collectively termed dysautonomia. Long Covid patients also report muscle pain, joint pain, and neuropathy in the extremities as well as neurological effects including severe brain fog (lack of mental clarity), anxiety, depression, and headaches. As Long Covid is a secondary condition following an acute viral infection, Long Covid sufferers also report multiple immune system symptoms including autoimmune and autoantibody responses, mast cell activation, and inability to fight off additional opportunistic infections. And some Long Covid patients can suffer from gastrointestinal symptoms including stomach pain, diarrhea, and/or constipation, as well as gut dysbiosis (often referred to as “leaky gut”). Many people with Long Covid report that their symptoms worsen after physical or mental activity, an effect known as post-exertional malaise (PEM).
What causes Long Covid?
While more research needs to be conducted to definitively prove what causes Long Covid, one candidate for this causative mechanism is Microclots.
The Microclots Hypothesis postulates that:
- the spike protein from Covid binds to a clotting protein in the blood called fibrinogen
- spike protein binding to fibrinogen causes the fibrinogen protein to change conformation and shift into an unnatural state
- the spike protein-fibrinogen complex in this unnatural conformation then polymerizes and becomes the microclot, which is “sticky” and also binds to platelets, other proteins, and signaling molecules in the bloodstream.
The formal scientific name for microclots is “amyloids of fibrinogen”. You might have recalled hearing the term amyloids, which refers to unnatural aggregates of mis-folded proteins, in the context of Alheimer’s Disease, which is caused by amyloids of the beta-protein (known as A-Beta).
When the Covid spike protein causes microclots in the blood, the unnatural protein aggregates then cause all the downstream symptoms of Long Covid, including:
- inflammation of the lining of the blood vessels,
- fatigue and brain fog (from impaired oxygen delivery to muscles and the brain),
- the cardiac symptoms,
- the immune response, and
- the neurological symptoms like headache, anxiety, and depression.
Mechanistically, all of these symptoms can be traced back to the microclots that are the causative mechanism for Long Covid.
What can help with Long Covid Microclots?
Unfortunately for patients, physicians can offer few options to treat Long Covid. Most Long Covid patients are utilizing or repurposing therapeutics or supplements that were not designed to address the underlying mechanisms of Long Covid. And many patients are having the frustrating experience of being bounced around from doctor to doctor, specialist to specialist, while receiving little help or guidance.
To address microclots in Long Covid, one small study was conducted on ~90 Long Covid patients using a pharmaceutical cocktail called Triple Anticoagulant Therapy. This drug regimen had great success in this study – ~80% of patients recovered from Long Covid – and further experiments showed that the microclots resolved in the patients that did recover. However, physicians have not widely adopted the use of pharmaceutical Triple Anticoagulant Therapy, mainly because the use of three powerful pharmaceutical anticoagulant drugs together creates a significant risk of bleeding as a serious side effect.
To offer people with Long Covid a safer and natural option to recover, I used my background in medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, and natural products to design a safe, accessible, and affordable natural version of Triple Anticoagulant Therapy, which I call CircuGuard. CircuGuard has natural components – turmeric, white willow, and Dan Shen extract – that possess the same mechanisms of action as the drugs in pharmaceutical Triple Anticoagulant Therapy. But these natural components are safer and do not carry the same bleeding risks as the pharmaceutical drug. And unlike pharmaceutical Triple Anticoagulant Therapy, which requires a prescription from a physician, CircuGuard is an all natural supplement that is available over-the-counter. Since its launch in 2024, hundreds of people have tried CircuGuard, gotten on the road to recovery from Long Covid, and returned to living a full and active life.
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Dr. Keith Ellis is a Scientist and Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry that is using his knowledge & expertise in medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, and natural products to research the biological mechanisms that cause Long Covid and create custom-formulated, over-the-counter solutions for Long Covid that are safe, inexpensive, accessible for everyone.
To learn more about Long Covid microclots and how CircuGuard was designed and formulated, please visit my Substack – Covid Q&A with Keith (keithcellisphd.substack.com).
To get on the road to recovery from Long Covid, order CircuGuard at circuguard.com.
Long Covid Research, Social Media Links, Email Address, and LinkedIn Profile can be found at www.keithcellisphd.com.
Social Media Links:
Tiktok (@KeithCEllisPHD): https://www.tiktok.com/@keithcellisphd
YouTube (@KeithCEllisPHD): https://www.youtube.com/@KeithCEllisPhD
X/Twitter (@KeithCEllisPHD): https://x.com/KeithCEllisPhD
Instagram (@KeithCEllisPHD): https://www.instagram.com/keithcellisphd/
DISCLAIMERS
– This is not medical advice. If you think you are sick, please seek the care of a physician.
– These claims have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
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