Find out about the latest episodes, and listen here:

Emily Kate Stephens Emily Kate Stephens

Episode 69: Prof. Tim Henrich - Viral persistence and T cell dysregulation

“We are seeing viral persistence in tissues over many years after initial infection and the immune system is not able to completely clear this out. And so now we have to figure out how either we a) can get the immune system to clear this all out, or can we use other modalities - antivirals, monoclonal antibodies, immune-boosting modification, things like that, that will actually help purge these kind of persistent infected cells that we're observing in tissue.”

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Emily Kate Stephens Emily Kate Stephens

Episode 64: Michael Peluso, M.D. – Viral reservoirs & MAB trial

“The first year of this was recognising the problem and getting people to buy into that... The second year of this was describing who was most likely to get this condition. The third year of this was laying out potential biology. The current era of this now needs to be proving that each of those mechanisms is or is not driving this and… you actually have to intervene on those pathways to see if you can change either a biological measurement or change how people feel. What that means to us is doing trying to do these intense proof of concept, experimental medicine type studies, where we identify a target pathway that we think it is contributing, then we try to alter it by giving an investigational treatment and we see what happens and whether our hypothesis was correct.”

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Emily Kate Stephens Emily Kate Stephens

Episode 62: Prof. Harlan Krumholz - Vibrations, LISTEN, and Paxlovid studies

“Our reward system is - how many papers, how many citations, how many grants… and what enamoured me as I got started in my career was the idea that none of that really matters if you haven't made a difference in people's lives. So the question really is - what's the value of the information you're producing? And how can you do it in a way that that makes a difference?”

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Emily Kate Stephens Emily Kate Stephens

Episode 61: Dr Leo Galland – A functional approach

“The conventional model is trying to identify what disease does this person have, and then you treat the disease. Well, that may work in some situations… but there are many situations involving chronic illness in which that doesn't work. And I've evolved and taught other approaches to diagnosis, something that I call person-centred diagnosis.”

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Emily Kate Stephens Emily Kate Stephens

Episode 60: Research-Aid Networks – all about the acid-base

“We’re trying to develop clinical trials ourselves, to look at this combination of clinical point testing, where we can actually do that very robust analysis of saying, what's going on in terms of blood gases, what's going on in terms of bicarbonate, what's going on in terms of pH? How is that affecting patients at rest and in movement, and how does that correlate with symptoms?”

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Emily Kate Stephens Emily Kate Stephens

Episode 59: Dr Wes Ely - Treating with humanity

“I would word this as a massive public health problem… crisis that most of the world is yawning through and sleepwalking through. I think people are sleepwalking through this because it's too invisible.”

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Noreen Jameel Noreen Jameel

Episode 57: Lavanya Visvabharathy - Publishing the science

Publishing in scientific journals is a challenging process due to fierce competition, limited resources, lack of networks and mentorship, bias and subjectivity in peer review, leading to high rejection rates. Addressing these obstacles requires collective efforts to foster inclusivity, collaboration, and support systems for all researchers.

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#health #covid #longcovid #brain Noreen Jameel #health #covid #longcovid #brain Noreen Jameel

Episode 56: Dr Jim Jackson - Clearing the Fog

Dr Jim Jackson, research professor of Medicine and Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University Medical Centre, does not believe that Long Covid is all in your mind, but he has found that treating the brain, as if it has a brain injury, can help Long Covid recovery. In this week’s episode Dr Jackson explains his clinical experience of the neurological impact of Long Covid from brain fog to anxiety, PTSD to OCD. He discusses the power of cognitive rehabilitation (which should be viewed as physiotherapy for the brain) and tells us about his book “Clearing the Fog: A practical guide to surviving and thriving with Long Covid”. And he talks us through the power of talking to others within the community: his support groups have been a hugely impactful for sufferers enabling them to learn from each other, learn how to advocate for themselves, and give them hope.

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Emily Kate Stephens Emily Kate Stephens

Episode 54: Dr Bhupesh Prusty – Molecular Virologist

“We have always been focusing to find something which is detectable and when we talk about something detectable we are actually talking about something which is produced more - this is called as gain of function. But…sometimes loss of function is also important.. there is one switch which is where we are actually losing something from ourselves.”

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Noreen Jameel Noreen Jameel

Episode 53: Prof. Jack Lambert – LDN and the Lambert protocol

“when people say what's the magic recipe for treating people well, there is no magic recipe you actually have to individualise you know, because Because Because one treatment for one person will actually totally backfire for the other person. So I do think it's, it's, you know, we're learning a lot about this is a very complex condition.”

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Emily Kate Stephens Emily Kate Stephens

Episode 51: Akiko Iwasaki – Immunobiologist

“There are so many questions that are unanswered about Long Covid. We're just scratching the surface of this disease.. that's why it's dangerous to come to a conclusion at this stage - because we know so little. It doesn't mean that we aren't looking. We're looking very hard. I'm obsessed about trying to understand this disease, and many scientists are, so hopefully will chip away at this disease. But we need to be open minded and humble about what's going on.”

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Emily Kate Stephens Emily Kate Stephens

Episode 50: Ziyad Al-Aly – Clinical Epidemiologist

“So what's really very different about it is its novelty. And I definitely feel that that one of the things that this pandemic taught us is that viruses can lead to long term manifestations.”

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Noreen Jameel Noreen Jameel

Episode 48: Harry Leeming – founder of Visible

“We're tracking heart rate variability, heart rates, and we're also tracking posture as well. It's a really important one. We know that underlying these conditions is some level of dysautonomia, I think 70% or so people with Long Covid would qualify, or would fail the NASA lean test.”

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Noreen Jameel Noreen Jameel

Episode 47: Dr David Putrino - The Putrino Lab

“There are still people out there trying to pitch their one supplement or their one medicinal or their one device that is curing all Long Covid. There’s at least 10 or 15 mechanisms that we're chasing right now. And each one needs a precision approach.”

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Emily Kate Stephens Emily Kate Stephens

Episode 45: Amiad Abrahams – Mindfulness

“Mindfulness is one of the things we do. Basically, the idea is to allow people to feel like themselves and not to allow this painful, unsettling reality to divert from that. Because even when we suffer, and we do suffer - all human beings, or listeners of this podcast - it's never really perfect, and sometimes it's really horrendous… We are still ourselves.”

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