3 Keys to Overcome Long Covid and Live a Beautiful Life
Dr. Becca Kennedy uses the mind-body model to treat patients with Long Covid and other neuroplastic symptoms.
Becca Kennedy enjoyed her work as a family medicine physician but felt frustrated that modern medicine couldn’t help a large subset of patients. Tests often came back normal for people with chronic pain, fatigue, headaches and a wide range of so-called medically unexplained symptoms. Then came 2018 and this new virus called COVID-19.
As the global disaster ensued, Kennedy saw throngs of patients with post-Covid symptoms. An odd pattern emerged: many never had a serious case of Covid-19 and some never had an infection at all. In most patients, there was no heart or lung damage to explain their symptoms—everything from shortness of breath to heart palpitations, brain fog to exhaustion. The Portland physician continued her quest to help the endless string of patients in her Long Covid clinic at Kaiser Permanente Northwest.
Before the pandemic was over, she found the answer she’d long been seeking: new neuroscience showing how the brain and nervous system can cause a dizzying array of chronic symptoms during and after a period of heightened stress. Stress-related syndromes are well demonstrated with veterans or war and other traumatized populations. Some studies show that healthcare workers caring for Covid patients experienced symptoms, like insomnia and GI upset, even when they didn’t have an infection.
“Some patients had the same symptoms prior to the pandemic happening, and those same symptoms worsened,” says Dr. Becca Kennedy of Resilience Health Care. “When we step back and look at all of these pieces, from my perspective as a family medicine physician, the unifying diagnosis that makes the most sense is that it's happening because of brain signaling and the messages from the brain to the body. The cherry on top is that many, many, many people actually get better.”
Dr. Becca Kennedy and Rebecca Tolin discuss mind-body medicine.
Although many physicians understand the pivotal role of stress in chronic symptoms, they aren’t given a treatment model to address it. Thankfully, Kennedy discovered the work of Dr. Howard Schubiner, an internal medical physician and researcher who explains how the brain’s danger alarm signal is responsible for chronic symptoms without a structural or pathological cause. In books and research studies, Schubiner explains that emotional stress activates the fear centers of the brain, which develops learned neural pathways for chronic symptoms.
Kennedy trained with Schubiner and began having remarkable success with Long Covid and other neuroplastic symptoms in which the brain can rewire itself. She explains that our danger detection system evolved for physical harm, like a sabertooth tiger or a broken bone. But our conscious and unconscious thoughts also trigger the same emotional brain centers.
“The nervous system and the brain get stuck in the ‘on’ position of hypervigilance and fear, and it showers down warning signals into the body,” says Kennedy. “The brain controls absolutely everything. It tells the heart how to beat. It tells digestion how to digest. It literally tells the muscles on the inside of the blood vessels if they should open up or close down, and what our hormone level should be. So it makes sense that these 200-plus symptoms are happening because of the brain.”
New studies show that the brain’s perception of danger is pivotal in overcoming chronic pain and other mind-body symptoms. Initially, illness, injury, trauma or a pile-up of daily life stressors can activate our threat physiology. These triggers have an emotional root, which is significant since emotions cue the subconscious brain to safety or danger. If we grew up in an environment where anger was explosive, feelings of anger can be perceived as unsafe for the subconscious mind. If we feel hopeless about our life circumstances or grief-stricken about what we’ve lost, the subconscious brain can communicate through symptoms.
As patients become “medicalized” and increasingly fearful of their symptoms, danger signals are relayed back to the subconscious brain. This can perpetuate the stress-symptom loop—until a person realizes that the symptoms aren’t a sign of harm or disease. Rather, they are coming from changeable signals from the brain.
Often, clinicians tell patients with Long Covid, ME/CFS and other post-viral syndromes that symptoms are caused by inflammation, cytokines, mitochondrial changes, immune system dysfunction or spike proteins. Kennedy explains that many of these physiological changes happen in a state of chronic stress. When our nervous system is stuck in flight, fight or freeze, our immune system isn’t working optimally.
In this treatment model, it’s important to first rule out a structural or pathological disease with a doctor. After that, mind-body symptoms are treated distinctly, with an emphasis on dialing down the danger alarm response. Kennedy lays out three distinct steps to recovery.
01. Understand the science 🧬
Symptoms in the body don’t necessarily mean damage in the body, even though brains are evolutionarily hardwired to believe that.
02. Accept diagnosis for yourself 🕵🏻♀️
If you’re still afraid that there’s damage in your body, it’s hard to dial down fear in your brain. Gather evidence that your symptoms are generated by the brain rather than structural damage in the body.
03. calm nervous system 🧘🏾♂️
There are a host of tools that we use in this model, including somatic tracking, expressive writing and breathwork.
Initially, Kennedy focused mostly on the knowledge but she realized that expressing emotions in a healthy way is key for many patients. All emotions are created evolutionarily to protect us. Challenging emotions like fear, anger, sadness and shame signal that we have unmet needs. Kennedy emphasizes that we deserve to feel our emotions and get our needs met.
In essence, we must learn to interpret the messages that our brain is sending us. With a broken ankle, pain is a signal to allow to allow our body to rest and heal. With neuroplastic symptoms, we need to challenge the brain’s mistaken perception of danger and engage with life activities. We also have the opportunity to glean a deeper message: perhaps that’s standing up to fear, setting a boundary, taking better care of ourself or cultivating joy.
“It's not just about turning off symptoms and restoring your health and life to where it was,” says Kennedy. “It’s about learning a new way to live your life that I find incredibly beautiful and powerful. It’s about processing emotions that developed because of our past, finding a new way to communicate with people that's authentic and loving, standing up for yourself and allowing yourself to feel and release emotions in a safe way. It's about going forward in your life in this new, glorious way.”
Focusing solely on our suffering feeds fear, which fuels mind-body symptoms. Although it seems counterintuitive, we must reclaim movement, meaning and joy in order to recover. She says this can be as simple as listening to the birds out your window or watching a funny movie.
John Sarno originally developed this treatment model as a professor at New York University School of Medicine and wrote best-selling books on the mind-body connection. Many people have reported a “book cure” from reading Sarno’s work, which explains that the brain creates symptoms due to repressed emotions. He described a personality type subject to mind-body symptoms: people who criticize or pressure themselves, strive for perfectionism, work to please others at their own expense and stuff their emotions.
Kennedy finds this rings true for her patients. She encourages self-compassion as an antidote. This invites a kinder existence and sends safety signals to the subconscious brain, the crux of mind-body healing.
Kennedy recounts how one patient came in with a walker and is now back to riding her horse. Others report a partial or full recovery from post-Covid symptoms. Many patients find missing pieces to their overall wellbeing, just as Kennedy has found in her medical practice.
“It has been the most amazing part of my 25-year career in medicine: working with patients with any sort of neuroplastic symptom, and specifically Long Covid, because it's so profound right now,” says Kennedy. “I have patients that had dizziness and chest pain, shortness of breath and brain fog that put the tools in place, some of whom are back to work, and made life changes and realized they needed to make those life changes.”
Looking for support in your own recovery? I walk you through the steps to overcome mind-body symptoms in my Be Your Own Medicine course, in which Becca Kennedy is a presenter!
Want to learn more about mind-body healing? Check out these blog posts:
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: My 13-Year Crash to Cure Story
Strong, Fearless and in Love with Life After Long Covid
Promising Mind-Body Study Offers Hope for Long Covid Patients