Doctor here, asking for honest input on energy and crashes
Hi all. I'm Karoline, a general physician. I'm posting with the mods' permission.
Writing here because a close friend has been dealing with a post viral chronic condition (not yet diagnosed with Long COVID) for over a year. Watching him navigate it with normal tests, dismissive doctors, money spent on things that didn’t help and frequent energy crashes is what brought us to try to find ways to support people going through the same.
Over the past few months, we’ve been talking with around 200 people across multiple countries living with Long COVID. Whether someone's a few months in or several years into Long COVID, energy is a universal struggle. The constant cycles of ups and downs, pushing through a good day and ending up with several bad days and not knowing if anything you're trying is helping you move forward.
As we continue learning, I’d love to ask here if people could share how energy shows up in day-to-day life:
- How do you manage your energy right now? How often do you crash, and can you usually tell what caused it?
- Have you discovered things that drain or recharge your energy that you didn't expect?
For full transparency: my friend and I are building a free Long COVID companion app focused first on energy, pacing, and helping people see patterns over time. Easy and simple, to support you day to day, and help you see your progress over time. You can learn more here: longcovid.haviohealth.com . If you leave your email there, I'll personally keep you posted on our progress and launch of the free app.
Note: We're not collecting data to publish or sell. The aim is to build something that actually helps people in this community, and to do that we need to learn from the people living with it.
I'll be in the comments today and tomorrow, happy to answer anything. If you prefer DMs, feel free to reach out there too.