Long COVID and adrenal fatigue

It is very likely that you’ve heard of or even suffer(ed) from Long Covid – a constellation of symptoms, from fatigue to trouble with cognition, experienced by nearly a third of people weeks or even months after a symptomatic Covid infection.

Less likely you’ve heard of Post-Viral Fatigue Syndrome, a condition of physical and mental fatigue that has been known for decades and has been known to appear after other-but-Covid infectious diseases. 

Long Covid is a new name for a known condition, which luckily got much more attention from the media and scientists in times of the pandemic.

There must be a factor that causes some individuals to fall apart in the face of viral or other infection

There must be a factor that causes some individuals to fall apart in the face of viral or other infection (which represents a stress for the body!), and that factor may very well be adrenal dysfunction.

Adrenal fatigue is a term which is lately commonly appearing basically everywhere, from TV news to social media. Adrenal glands are responsible for production of a number of hormones, among others adrenaline and cortisol (the so-called stress hormones). The adrenal glands produce these hormones every time we face a stressful situation, because this is when we NEED them. Because of constant stress that comes in many forms, our adrenal glands are constantly producing stress hormones and as a result, they are tired. When yet another stressful situation in a form of infection appears, demanding an increase in the production of the stress hormones, our adrenals are likely to collapse. The symptoms of the collapsed adrenal glands are what we call “Long Covid”.