Does Natural Salt-Air Therapy (‘Speleotherapy’ & ‘Halotherapy’) have a place in the treatment of ‘Long Covid’ experiencers? As a primary care physician, selecting the correct hospital-or-clinic-based specialist, for your patients, is important for the treatment of their illnesses. When writing prescriptions for medications needs to be augmented by a visit, by that patient, to a specialist...your practice will help to book-in a patient to said specialist.
Pre-Covid era, the diagnosis of illness in a patient, & targeting the optimum course of action for that patient, was key to efficiency for your office-practice, and doing the right thing by your patient.
Also, pre-Covid, there was a strong measure of control & predictability regarding numbers of patients coming in your practice's doors: the age-range, the illness-profile, and how much time you & colleagues could devote to patients.
Covid-19 has changed the world, and presented doctors & practice managers with new challenges.
Cardiac patients, pulmonary/respiratory patients, chronic tiredness syndrome patients, are presenting more - and at a younger age - than in previous years, to doctors’ surgeries in the western world, because of Covid Longhaul Syndromes. These post-viral illnesses are very real, and afflict a young & old cohort of people, many of whom had been previously physically fit, and on no medications, with no comorbidities.
Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), chest-tightness syndrome, post-pneumonia & post-pleurisy short-breath syndrome, anosmia...are amongst 220+ all-body symptoms which people who are suffering Long Covid, are mentioning to their doctors.
From mid-2020 onwards, it emerged that a great many post-Covid sufferers were being told by lung specialists that, 'Your charts appear to be clear', or 'We can't see any abnormality', once an x-ray, MRI, CAT-scan, or other imaging test had been completed, & report written.
This hugely frustrates the specialists, the primary care doctor...and the patient. The patient knows they're suffering, and that it's not all 'in their head'. The physicians are at a loss as to what medication or vitamins or lifestyle changes can be made, to try to improve the health of such patients who continue to experience daily cardio-pulmonary symptoms.
Such symptoms are defining, ruling & even ruining the lives of some previously-fit people. By Spring of 2021, formal & anecdotal appraisals of the world's long-haul post-Covid sufferers, found that a female grouping in the age range of 30 - 50, was disproportionately overrepresented.
Women in this age group, who were previously fit, even athletic, were anxious that their illness not be categorised as ONLY Lupus, Fibromyalgia, ME, Guillain-Barre syndrome...but as definitely an illness which was, and is, a direct result of having suffered from a Covid variant, or variants. However, the door is definitely open to the very possibility that Covid was & is the trigger for latent, low-level Guillain-Barre & POTS viral infections which had existed undetected in that patient. Covid, therefore, is the catalyst & amplification & exacerbator of a previously-undiagnosed viral illness.
Underlying these illnesses, appears to be an elusive inflammation syndrome...but one which evades visual capture on current imaging devices. Many authoritative journals now point to a 'filopodia' action which takes place between cells in the body. A cell infected with Covid-19 acts in an aberrant way, by punching pronged filaments into an adjacent cell. This chain reaction sets off a pathology whereby the cell does not die or become necrotic: it is still viable but is affecting the autonomic nervous system of the patient. Hence, the breathing difficulties & racing heart.
Add to this, the challenges presented by cytokine storms of an overreacting immune system, and the bradykinin blood clot action, and 'megakaryocyte' bone-marrow cells migrating to tiny blood vessels in the brain which is leading to many instances of 'brain-fog'...and one can see that it is a bewildering & frightening new world for patients & doctors alike.
There are many global social media sites which host Long Covid sufferers. The vast majority of these sufferers are there to try to find real information to improve their lives, even as they claim that 'my doctor has given up on me'. Such patients do not arrive into such sites with an axe to grind: they just want to get better, and they perceive that the medical profession has, in part, abandoned them.
But, it is NOT the case that the medical profession has abandoned Covid Longhaulers: it's just that the doctors are learning, themselves, this new lexicon of medicine, this new landscape of ill people, and the needs of the latter. Does a doctor prescribe 'rest', or 'rest, & light exercise', or 'go back to work, definitely, and get moderate exercise by walking to work'.
On social media, too, the anecdotal stories are bewildering. In one instance, a person who was on a new daily regimen of vitamin supplements to try to improve Covid symptoms, found herself getting more ill. She then says she found that many of the supplemental vitamins contained a dairy element...and that she was lactose-intolerant.
Many thousands of doctors & nurses around the world are, themselves, Covid Longhaulers, and some of the stories that they relate, regarding colleagues' dismissal of their illness, to outright, 'Get back to work, the hospital roster is depleted, you can't be as sick as you say you are' being said firmly to their faces.
When it comes to therapies to help Covid Longhaulers, doctors themselves are awaiting guidance from peer-reviewed medical journals, and their professional bodies advisory boards. So, the BMJ & Lancet journals, in addition to Public Health England, have their work cut out in leading the way for better post-viral treatment protocols, which traditionally very much involve the pharmaceutical industry designing new medications to ease pain & symptoms, and maybe even tackle the root causes, as the try to control inflammations & scar-tissue problems.
Gut-health & intestinal ‘good bacteria’ microbiome diversity, is very important for overall general health & wellbeing. And it has been found that probiotic foods & fluids help gut health to a high degree...even as some medical doctors are adamant, even militant, that people never confuse food with medicine. Such doctors say that diet as disease prophylaxis, is a myth, and food must only be viewed in a nutritional non-medical sense.
It is found that some 130,000 people, mainly women, suffer from POTS, in the UK. In Rep. Ireland, the figure is around 9,500. Specialists in POTS in the UK, now, recommend that additional salt should augment the diets of such sufferers, so as to alleviate the dizziness & racing heart syndrome which POTS causes. It has been found that a salt-deficiency is at the heart of most POTS sufferers' worst symptoms. The main POTS charity in Great Britain, ‘PoTS UK’ is headed by a medical doctor, Dr. Leslie Kavi..and she is adamant that additional salt in sufferers diets is important for easing the disease’s effects. Covid-caused POTS is on her charity’s radar, and she is a proponent of upped salt intake for such Long Covid sufferers.
There is a place, so, for natural time-honoured therapies to be incorporated into the matrix for helping Covid Longhaulers.
Covid-19's entry into the body is primarily via the nostrils & buccal-oral route. Here, Covid-19 asserts a domination, as best it can, over the nasopharynx & posterior throat. From here, it strives to infect cells further into the throat, bronchial tubes & lobes of the lung.
Breathing difficulties ensue, in the majority of instances. It had been determined in early 2021, that even patients whose initial Covid-positive diagnosis was asymptomatic, or very mildly symptomatic, it is the case that Long Covid syndrome developed weeks or months later. And that very real breathing problems which mimic asthma, or bronchial spasm, characterised many such sufferers’ illness.
Destroying Covid infection with antivirals or other medications, has proved to be very difficult. There are many patients who claim that they are starting to feel better, breathe better...only to be knocked back when symptoms return with a vengeance.
This dis-regulation, or dysautonomia, of the nervous system, whereby the patient has to 'think', of their breathing, all the time, and 'think' about their heart-pulse rate, is absolutely an aberration. Life should not be like that.
Salt-air Inhalation Therapy may have a therapeutic answer.
In Poland, there is a 700-years-old salt mine, called the Wieliczka Salt Mine. It is one of the most astonishing natural wonders of the world. But its special status in the world of complementary therapy is because the Salt Mines complex beneath that town, has been hewn by human hand, into a subterranean mecca for those who wish to 'learn to breathe', again.
Located just 18 kms from Krakow city, Wieliczka Salt Mines contains hundreds of astonishing ornate 'galleries' & 'theatres'. These cavernous rooms, fashioned pain-stakingly by hand over a period of centuries, play host to tourists from around the world, who gaze in awe at the salt-rock formations & sculptures.
The overseers of Wieliczka knew, many years ago, that the salty air of the caverns had a therapeutic effect upon those sufferers with respiratory illnesses. This was an early forerunner of 'Halotherapy' or 'Speleotherapy'.
Karl Herrman Spannagel was a medical doctor in rural Germany in the early years of WW2. He made note that during heavy aerial bombing from the British, his town's people would hide out in local salt caves. He found that, in a short space of time...the respiratory health of these cave-visitors was significantly improved.
About a hundred years earlier, in 1843, Dr. Feliks Boczkowski of Poland made note that salt miners had virtually no pulmonary diseases, which was in stark contrast to coal miners, and other mineral miners, who presented with badly congested lungs, accompanied by serious breathing difficulties.
One of the most senior advisors to the American Lung Association is Dr. Norman Edelman. He is very wary of denigrating Halotherapy, or Speleotherapy, as many conventional doctors are wont to do. Edelman believes that there is serious room for consideration that inhalation of fine salt particulates is very beneficial to the human lungs. "Salt caves are allergen-free, and are a good environment for those suffering from COPD & asthma", he says.Lung.org is the best USA resource for respiratory health. It is an authoritative website on illnesses of the lung. The editorial team of lung.org has stated, unequivocally, in recent years, that, if you're suffering with breathing difficulties & lung problems, "Salt therapy should definitely be discussed with your doctor."
That's right: medical doctors are being importuned not to take salt-air breathing therapies off the table, when it comes to advising patients. Halotherapy definitely has a good place for aiding in the treatment of lung diseases.
The chambers & galleries of the Wieliczka Salt Mines have this primary advantage over artificial 'salt rooms': The constant temperature of the Wieliczka Salt Mines is cool, which means that bacterial growth is near impossible: the patient in Wieliczka breathes naturally cool air.
Medical Poland Health & The Wieliczka Salt Mines would like to invite you to very much consider encouraging your respiratory patients who are Long Covid survivors & experiencers, to visit the unique Wieliczka Salt Mines of Poland, and specifically the complex’s Therapy Suite there, for a 1-, 2-, or 3-weeks’ therapy & recuperation stay.
Please contact us for further information.
Health@medicalpoland.pl
www.Medicalpoland.pl