Long COVID Shared Medical Appointments: Lifestyle and Mind-Body Medicine With Peer Support, 2022,

[Andy]

THE INNOVATION

Long COVID is a new rising health concern with no clear treatment guidelines.1,2 Patients have multiple distressing symptoms which are difficult to address in time-restricted clinic visits.1,3,4 Early evidence indicates a role of cytokines and chronic inflammatory processes in developing long COVID.5 Healthy lifestyle behaviors and modifying stress responses reduce chronic systemic inflammation.6,7 We created a novel shared medical appointment (SMA) program to provide healthy lifestyle education, mindfulness training, and group peer support for patients with long COVID symptoms.

Open access, https://www.annfammed.org/content/early/2022/04/15/afm.2817

 

[Arnie Pye]

This sounds just like a public lecture in which the audience won't talk. This isn't my idea of what medicine is supposed to be. I realise that the patient gets a private long appointment first, but I still wouldn't want to discuss my health later on with an audience. If doctors want to give me information I'd rather get a pamphlet.

We share information on the role of lifestyle factors in causing systemic inflammation. Every session includes mindfulness practice and nutrition advice. We assign daily homework consisting of lifestyle modification goals and mindfulness practices. Each appointment includes time for peer support during which participants share their progress, setbacks, experiences, and successes.

Weeks 1 and 2: We share information about the effect of diet on physical health. Patients are encouraged to remove pro-inflammatory foods (sugar, processed food) and introduce anti-inflammatory foods such as the Mediterranean diet.8,9 Week 3: We review how emotional stress contributes to chronic disease and share mindfulness practices to reduce the stress responses. Week 4: We teach the importance of sleep for regeneration and recovery with practical tools to maintain good sleep hygiene (Supplemental Appendix).10 Week 5: We review the benefits of exercise on mental and physical health. Patients are encouraged to add some form of movement into their daily living, being mindful of their physical limitations post COVID. Patients are led through a chair yoga practice. Week 6: The final session includes a review of all materials and progress made by the participants.

This sounds to me just like a long patient-blaming session. [Patients don't think right, eat right, sleep right, exercise enough, blah, blah, blah...]

And mindfulness can be harmful for some people :

https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/can-mindfulness-and-meditation-be-harmful/

https://www.verywellhealth.com/mindfulness-can-be-harmful-researchers-say-5186740

I have tried mindfulness and meditation myself but it didn't do me any good at all, it just made me rather depressed.

 

[Mithriel]

So you have a disease with PEM and you are expected to put lots of effort into changing everything about your life. I have tried that sort of thing so often but I've always ended up sicker with a worse diet and less exercise than before I tried.

A healthy diet with lots of veg is great and I would love it but some days I did not have the strength to open a carton of yoghurt never mind getting to the fridge to get one. A biscuit you can suck is much easier and can live by the bed for months.

 

[Midnattsol]

A healthy diet with lots of veg is great and I would love it but some days I did not have the strength to open a carton of yoghurt never mind getting to the fridge to get one. A biscuit you can suck is much easier and can live by the bed for months.

A very important point.

 

[rvallee]

The most annoying thing about this is that this is all stuff the patient community figured out and essentially taught to medical professionals. All this stuff was discussed in patient forums within the first months, mostly because of fellow chronically ill folks jumping in to help. All this is stuff patients brought to medical consults, never read, usually not even glimpsed at.

And none of this stuff is actually effective. It's not a workable solution to tell people "just try stuff and hope it works". This not medicine, this is anti-medicine, unprofessional, what a bunch of amateurs can do all on their own, literally. It's also literally what's already mostly out there, the "you're on your own" part anyway. Healthcare standards are absurdly low that this is something anyone can show and think "my job here is done".