Positive Health Online

COVID-19 is going to be with us a long time and people are still being infected with it daily. I had it for the second time three weeks ago. The vaccination is supposed to help prevent long-Covid (WHO podcast 2021), but this is not always the case. As complementary therapists we are uniquely positioned to help our clients recover from its physical, cognitive, psychological, and social effects. Let’s start by looking at the symptoms of long Covid using a chart from the BMJ from 2021:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/10/oxford-university-study-long-covid-symptoms/

According to NICE (2020), Long Covid is complex and often presents with clusters of symptoms, which can change and reoccur unpredictably, affecting people in different ways at different times, which makes the need for a detailed consultation very important. We do have the luxury of time with our clients for listening and observation. The symptoms are experienced for more than 4-12 weeks after being infected. Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) indicates that Long Covid is most prevalent in people of working age, females, people living in the most deprived areas, those working in social care and those with another activity-limiting health condition or disability (ONS 2022). As there is so much complexity involved, I have devised a chart for the most common long-covid symptoms we might see in practice and linked them to the two most common complementary therapies people tend to seek out. It is interesting to note that the medical profession has made comment on how strikingly similar these long-covid symptoms are to that of ME/CFS (Goldberg et al., 2022) and within CAM, we have been supporting clients diagnosed with these conditions for many years.

Massage is the most sought after therapy although actual statistics on this is hard to come by as massage is unregulated in the UK and many people visit a beauty therapist for spa style massage treatments rather than a massage therapist trained to work alongside mainstream medicine. In the US and Canada, where the industry is regulated, we can see increases in use of massage therapy up 36% and here it is a serious medical treatment. The other more common therapy is aromatherapy, where an aromatherapist will blend a bespoke blend of essential oils for your specific needs and either offer this in a massage and/or offer products made up that you can also use to support yourself at home. I will therefore explore these two therapies for long-covid support.

Table 1: Long-Covid Symptoms: Fatigue and Pain

Table 2: Anxiety and Depression and Sleep Disturbances 500x623px.jpg

Table 3: Loss of Sense of Smell and Brain Fog

What we need to remember is that this is a multi-disciplinary approach is needed and your clients may also be getting support from their GP either with medication or referrals to psychologists or local mental health support groups. However, it is clear that both massage therapy and aromatherapy/essential oil therapy can be beneficial in supporting people who are recovering from COVID-19 and could help save the NHS money if these therapies were more widely used in healthcare.

Below is a mindmap that I created to show which essential oils I feel would be useful:

Mind Map: Essential Oils for Long Covid

References

CHEN, Mei-Ling; CHEN, Yueh-Er^∗; LEE, Hui-Fang. The Effect of Bergamot Essential Oil Aromatherapy on Improving Depressive Mood and Sleep Quality in Postpartum Women: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Journal of Nursing Research 30(2): p e201, April 2022. Available at: https://journals.lww.com/jnr-twna/fulltext/2022/04000/the_effect_of_bergamot_essential_oil_aromatherapy.8.aspx

Crook H, Raza S, Nowell J, Young M, Edison P. Long covid—mechanisms, risk factors, and management BMJ 2021; 374: n1648 Available at: https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1648

Davis et al., (2020) Characterizing Long COVID in an International Cohort: 7 Months of Symptoms and Their Impact  Available at: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.24.20248802v2

Donelli D, Antonelli M, Valussi M. Olfactory training with essential oils for patients with post-COVID-19 smell dysfunction: A case series. Eur J Integr Med. 2023 Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10102705/

Field T. PhD., Morrow C., Valdeon C>B>S>, Larson S., PhD., Kuhn C. PhD., Schanberg S., MD., PhD., (1992) Massage Reduces Anxiety in Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Patients Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Volume 31, Issue 1, January 1992, Pages 125-131

Goldberg N., et al., (2022) A new clinical challenge: supporting patients coping with the long-term effects of COVID-19, Fatigue: Biomedicine, Health & Behavior, 10:4, 212-230 Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21641846.2022.2128576?scroll=top&needAccess=true

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Haroon S, Nirantharakumar K, Hughes SE, et al Therapies for Long COVID in non-hospitalised individuals: from symptoms, patient-reported outcomes and immunology to targeted therapies (The TLC Study) BMJ Open 2022;12:e060413 Available at: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/12/4/e060413

Her J., Cho M., (2021) Effect of aromatherapy on sleep quality of adults and elderly people: A systematic literature review and meta-analysis Complementary Therapies in Medicine Volume 60, August 2021, 102739 Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965229921000807

Hou, Wen-Hsuan & Chiang, Pai-Tsung & Hsu, Tun-Yen & Chiu, Su-Ying & Yen, Yc. (2010). Treatment Effects of Massage Therapy in Depressed People: A Meta-Analysis. The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. 71. 894-901. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/42973801_Treatment_Effects_of_Massage_Therapy_in_Depressed_People_A_Meta-Analysis

Lakhan SE, Sheafer H, Tepper D. The Effectiveness of Aromatherapy in Reducing Pain: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Pain Res Treat. 2016; 2016:8158693. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5192342/

NIH COVID-19 Research (2023) Understanding Sleep Problems and Long COVID Available at: https://covid19.nih.gov/news-and-stories/understanding-sleep-problems-long-covid#:~:text=But%20for%20some%20people%20with,feeling%20refreshed%20in%20the%20morning.

Nadal-Nicolas Y. et al., (2020) Effects of Manual Therapy on Fatigue, Pain, and Psychological Aspects in Women with Fibromyalgia Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17(12), 4611 Available at: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/12/4611

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE (2020, updated 2021) COVID-19 rapid guideline: managing the long-term effects of COVID-19. Available at: https:// www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng188

Okuda M, Fujita Y, Takada-Takatori Y, Sugimoto H, Urakami K. Aromatherapy improves cognitive dysfunction in senescence-accelerated mouse prone 8 by reducing the level of amyloid beta and tau phosphorylation. PLoS One. 2020 Oct 14;15(10). Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7556469/#:~:text=In%20the%20current%20study%2C%20the,BDNF%20levels%20were%20somewhat%20higher.

Raiesifar, Z., Molavynejad, S., Raiesifar, A., Maraghi, E., Vaismoradi, M., & Helalat, A. (2021). The effect of slow-stroke back massage on fatigue and sleep quality in hemodialysis patients: A clinical trial study. HAYAT, 27(1), 59-71. https://hayat.tums.ac.ir/article-1-3978-en.html

Salarvand S, Heidari ME, Farahi K, Teymuri E, Almasian M, Bitaraf S. Effectiveness of massage therapy on fatigue and pain in patients with multiple sclerosis: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Mult Scler J Exp Transl Clin. 2021 Jun 14;7(2) Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8209836/

World Health Organization (2022) Clinical management of COVID-19. Available at: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/362783/WHO-2019-nCoVClinical-2022.2-eng.pdf

Zidan S., et al., (2023) Effect of aromatherapy massage on fatigue and perceived stress of multiple sclerosis patients Available at: https://sciencescholar.us/journal/index.php/ijhs/article/view/11515