BREAKTHROUGH COVID-19  INFECTION and LONG-COVID

Breakthrough COVID is the reappearance of COVID-19 illness after having overcome an initial infection. Long-COVID is the debilitating symptoms that persists after resolution of the disease. Fatigue, cognitive impairment, and pain are typical complaints associated with these and other “after-illness.”   

Victims wonder: “How did I get sick? I had my vaccine and booster shots!”

Immunization by itself is not the complete answer. People get influenza despite having been fully vaccinated. The illness is generally less severe, but some do get very sick. What is wrong with the shots?

Nothing is wrong. They are functioning as expected. Chronic maladies inhibit the antibody response from the vaccine. Furthermore, the antibody activity deteriorates over time. Maintaining optimal health requires a lot of work over a lifetime. Absent this effort, subclinical insufficiencies develop, increasing susceptibility to infections. 

A heightened and targeted immune system is not the only factor in creating disease resistance. All of the body’s systems work together to protect the health of the organism. They battle forces that are attacking our wellness. The attackers take their toll.  A healthy body is a bulwark against the attackers in life. 

Ah, life. 

Forces constantly act to weaken our defenses. Aging, chronic illness, and injury are some of the attackers that wear us down. Others include infections, environmental stresses (like heat, gravity, and toxins), and inflammation. 

The burden of these and other assailants promotes an insidious process that depletes cellular vigor, impairing cellular health and resistance. An important aspect of this decay is the loss of intracellular micronutrients. These vitamins and minerals are the foundation for proper and vigorous cellular function. As more cells are lost to nutritional deficiency, subclinical organ dysfunction ensues. This means that blood test results are normal, while susceptibility to disease increases.  

Within the context of depleted cellular nutrients, Breakthrough COVID appears in patients who survived an earlier COVID infection. The same underlying defects also predispose to the development of the Long-COVID Syndrome, characterized by fatigue, cognitive impairment, pain, and breathing difficulties.        

Can we measure the intracellular micronutrients? There are no simple, readily available diagnostic tools to quantify most intracellular vitamin and mineral levels.The only one we can easily assess is bone calcium levels, using bone density imaging techniques. 

Osteoporosis is the model for cellular losses of micronutrients. Studying this disease, we learn important truths about our bodies:

• There is no correlation between the blood and tissue levels of micronutrients. 
• Very high doses of vitamins and minerals are needed to maintain adequate intracellular concentrations.
• This maintenance therapy must continue throughout life. 

Why doesn’t our available food provide adequate micronutrients to sustain cellular vigor? The evolutionary imperative of “Survival of the Species” indicates that the environment provides just what is needed to accomplish this survival goal. We evolved amidst established plant and animal sources to support our dietary needs. From an evolutionary perspective, those “needs” are to satisfy individual survival until the next generation has become self-sufficient. The food requirement was only enough to assure that most people lived about 40 years.

The natural food supply is inadequate to maintain optimal cellular micronutrient concentrations, even to age 40. Endurance of the human species is about children becoming independent. It is not about preventing disease and deterioration in adults. To ingest the quantity of vitamins and minerals needed to avoid cellular deficiency, the amount of food one would have to eat would be massive. Health consequences from the resultant obesity would more than offset the benefit. 

That the body deteriorates is recognized. Deterioration leading to impairment is seen in everything we observe. It is a fundamental pattern of being. 

Unfortunately, degradation of our underlying health is accepted as inevitable. Fortunately, it is not inevitable. There are things we can do for ourselves.  

Human inventiveness expanded opportunities to live longer. It has also created the means to assure good health throughout life. Taking high doses of supplemental calcium and Vitamin D is the accepted prescription to prevent and treat osteoporosis. Similar large quantities of all the vitamins and minerals are needed to maintain optimal cellular vigor.  

In my medical practice, high dose vitamin and mineral supplementation helped to heal patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Taking a six-a-day multivitamin pill in divided doses is a successful means of preventing and treating cellular inadequacy. (Taking 6 of a one-a-day pill is contraindicated because it would cause Vitamin A toxicity.) The package of your chosen supplement should recommend taking 6 a day. There are many brands. The one I use is “Basic Preventive 5 Without Iron” from Douglas Laboratories. 

Returning the cellular milieu to its ideal state will fortify these organelles and tissues. In this way, resistance to disease is increased and immune responsiveness is heightened. The benefits extend to mitigation or prevention of Breakthrough COVID and other chronic “after-illnesses,” like Long-Covid, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), and Chronic Lyme Disease. The fatigue and weakness experienced after trauma, surgery, childbirth, and other illnesses will also be lessened. These syndromes share the problem of cellular micronutrient deficiency.

Maintaining and replacing these substances in the cells is effective prevention. It requires long-term commitment to daily ingestion of high doses. Sporadic prevention is not prevention at all.

Significantly, micronutrient therapy promotes healing of these diseases.

Taking relatively high dose vitamin and mineral supplements seems to be a simple formula to help stay healthy. Too simple. How can small deficiencies of such commonly available nutrients be a cause of serious illness like Breakthrough COVID and Long-COVID? How can they heal a debilitating after-illness? Surely, the answer must be more complex.

The fact is that micronutrients are not a simple therapy. Because of their wide availability and the bad press given them by the medical community, we perceive them as unimportant. How can B-Vitamins be a potent treatment on a par as the most recent anti-Lupus therapy? The fact is that minor imbalances of micronutrients predispose to significant symptoms. 

Severe deficiencies of vitamins are historic causes of disease and death. Think scurvy, a severe Vitamin C depletion, diagnosed by serum testing. Much less extreme deficiencies lead to organ malfunction with normal blood levels. Our ability to diagnose inadequacies is limited to measuring blood levels. The study of osteoporosis reveals that intracellular micronutrient levels fall dramatically, contrasting with the normal blood values. Global micronutrient inadequacy sets the stage for the appearance of Breakthrough COVID. This depletion predisposes to symptoms of fatigue, cognitive impairment, pain, and other symptoms characteristic of Long-COVID and other after-illnesses.

When cells are deficient in micronutrients, they are more susceptible to inflammatory and autoimmune attack. These attackers are observed to some degree in a wide variety of maladies. Their activity promotes and prolongs the symptoms of chronic illnesses like Long-COVID. 

COVID vaccination and COVID infection stimulate the production of appropriate antibodies, whose presence we can measure in the blood. However, there is a limit to our ability to measure the functionality of these antibodies. Antibody vitality and effectiveness are also dependent upon healthy levels of micronutrients. Vitamin and mineral deficiencies in the white blood cells that manufacture these protective proteins produce sluggish antibodies. The mild levels of malfunction may not be detectable, but are enough to account for functional impairment.  

Acute and chronic medical problems add to the likelihood and severity of both Breakthrough COVID and Long-COVID. Reinvigorating cells with necessary micronutrients is an important component to effectively treat both syndromes.

“After-illnesses,” like Breakthrough COVID, Long-COVID, and CFS, develop because of micronutrient deficiencies. Laboratory testing is normal in these conditions. Signs of inflammation result from the intracellular micronutrient insufficiencies. Resolving the fatigue, cognitive difficulties, and pain that characterize “after-illnesses” means prescribing high dose vitamin and mineral supplements. This therapy should begin immediately.