Anti-Histamines for Long Covid?
My own experience, prompted by a scientific paper on the subject suggests it's a possible treatment to try
Regular readers of Seeby’s Rumination’s will be aware that two months ago I was very sick with Influenza-A, and then Pneumonia, resulting in a hospital stay.
A couple of weeks out of hospital, I was feeling essentially back to normal, however the month after that, I was randomly suffering bouts of extreme tiredness.
In addition to the Influenza event above, I’ve also had COVID half a dozen times due to the fact that I used to be a frequent overseas traveller - and every time I’d hop on a 12hr flight, I’d seem to get COVID again.
After my fifth time having COVID (each one seems to come with slightly different symptoms), I ended up with full-blown Chronic Fatigue for a couple of months, which thankfully abated in severity after a couple of months.
The long and the short of it is that I had been feeling extremely tired on random days throughout most of October, and unsure of whether it was Post-Pneumonia tiredness, Long COVID tiredness, Generalised Chronic Fatigue tiredness, or just Old-Age tiredness.
As it happens, I also suffer from occasional bouts of hay-fever, and in October my nose started flaring up.
Other regular victims of hay fever, also known as allergic rhinitis, will know that the symptoms include:
Sneezing: Frequent sneezing
Runny or blocked nose: Congestion, which can lead to mouth breathing and snoring
Itchy, red, or watery eyes: Allergic conjunctivitis
Itchy throat, mouth, nose, and ears: Itching in the roof of the mouth
Cough: Caused by postnasal drip, which is mucus dripping down the throat from the back of the nose
Swollen, bruised-appearing skin under the eyes: Known as allergic shiners
Extreme tiredness and fatigue: Sometimes due to poor sleep, but also due to general inflammation of the autonomic nervous system.
It is the last symptom of hay-fever that we will pay particular attention to here: “Extreme tiredness and fatigue”. As I started taking anti-histamines for my runny nose, I noticed that I felt like I had more energy than I had had in weeks. I stopped taking antihistamines and not only did the runny nose come back, but also the tiredness.
As a result of this, I’m now on a permanent dose of 10-20mg of Anti-Histamines daily, and the last couple of weeks I seem to feel much more like my old self, although of course health and energy levels are pretty subjective.
It’s not just me that’s tired all the time these days. I seem to have many friends who are suffering from general feelings of fatigue, and one of them is my flatmate, who has been a bit of a walking zombie the last couple of months and also said she is extremely tied.
Although my flat mate doesn’t suffer from hay-fever, I decided to experiment with giving her a daily dose of antihistamines, and much to our mutual surprise, her symptoms of fatigue decreased markedly as well.
This lead me to think about researching the subject more, when out of the blue, in one of those strange co-incidences life throws up occasionally, another one of my friends (Thanks Alli F) sent me a recent case study1 which talked about exactly what I wanted to research, and which showed that for some patients POTS2 and Long COVID went into complete remission by using a histamine blocker.
This, combined with my recent positive personal experience on the subject seems like information that Seeby’s Rumination’s readers need to know!
If you can’t be bothered reading the sceienfitic paper, the summary is this:
In some patients Long COVID and/or POTS like symptoms can potentially be rooted in overactive mast cells that are dumping excessive histamines into the body3.
Certain viruses that trigger mast cells to dump excessive histamine into close proximity of never endings, which dysregulates the automatic and central nervous system.
This causes symptoms like4:
Fatigue
Brain Fog
Tachycardia
Feeling faint
GI tract irritation
Mast cells can be “calmed down” by taking Anti-histamine drugs.
Note that I am not a doctor, so please get independent advice if you wish to try this, and my recommendation is always to occasionally come off long term daily medicines to give your body a chance to reset, but also to gauge whether you actually feel better taking them or not.
If you don’t notice any difference taking a medicine vs not, then it’s better to take none!
If you try taking antihistamines as a result of this article, and you feel that it’s improved your long COVID symptoms I’d love to hear from you!
Summary
A recent study has shown that in some people, Long Covid symptoms can be relieved by taking antihistamines
This is backed up by myself and my flatmate who seem to feel more energetic taking antihistamines daily, which we now do.
As always, consult your doctor
Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome POTS, is a blood circulation disorder that causes a rapid heart rate increase upon standing
Lawrence B Afrin et al. In J Infect Dis. 2020 Nov and Kohno et al. Journal of the American Heart Association 2021 Aug.
Doherty et al. Autonomic Neuroscience 2018 Dec.