By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2025-03-25 17:26:48 | Updated at 2025-03-26 05:20:43
12 hours ago
Dr Matthew Light was at peak health leading up to the global Covid pandemic, consistently riding his stationary bike and playing with his kids.
The lung doctor spent three years caring for Covid patients at the UCHealth hospital system in Colorado, bearing witness to the damage the coronavirus could cause and its devastating lasting effects, especially in old and vulnerable people.
But Dr Light, 39, never thought he’d get severely ill himself.
After his infection, Dr Light developed severe breathing trouble, likening it to a belt squeezing his chest, and needed days to recover from performing even minor activities, striking him with crippling fatigue.
Meanwhile, fellow Colorado native Levi Henry, 35, was an avid CrossFit enthusiast until he developed Covid in December 2021.
Since then, his life has become exceedingly difficult. Like Dr Light, he developed severe fatigue and breathing trouble, as well as brain fog and anxiety.
Both have spent years searching high and low for viable treatments for long Covid symptoms, estimated to affect around seven percent of Americans, from hyperbaric oxygen chambers to red light therapy and low-dose medication typically used to treat opioid addiction.
Long Covid research began in earnest around three years ago, soon after the US government formally named it a disability. Since then, scientists have identified treatments that don’t work – hydroxychloroquine, an antidepressant called fluvoxamine, the diabetes drug Metformin, and nicotine patches.
But they've still not found one that does give sufferers relief.
Dr Light, who spent three years treating covid patients and witnessing its long-term effects, never expected to fall severely ill himself—yet after infection, he developed crushing chest tightness, debilitating fatigue, severe brain fog
Dr Light said he tries ‘not to get too excited about any studies, and I always assume that they’re wrong or that it’s not going to work.’ For now, he added, he and millions more are ‘grasping at straws.’
Dr Light told Men's Health that he thought he would be spared from Covid infection.
He regularly burned more than a thousand calories on his Peloton, had no underlying chronic conditions, and was one of the first medical professionals to get vaccinated.
Shortly after he recovered from infection in February 2023, he still felt he couldn’t breathe normally and was constantly short of breath. He had trouble concentrating, and wasn't sleeping well.
Emergency room doctors repeatedly sent him home, finding nothing alarming on his chest X-rays, nor anything troubling about his oxygen levels.
Dr Light said: ‘Your whole body betrays you. But to everyone else, you look okay.’
The experience, he added, counted as gaslighting.
He questioned his own perception of what was happening in his body and his expertise as a pulmonologist.
‘At one point, I asked myself, “Am I the problem? Did I just take care of a lot of COVID patients and see a lot of people die, and now that I have COVID, it just scares the crap out of me?”’
In May 2023, he met with a doctor specializing in long Covid, who concluded that Dr Light’s symptoms are ‘typical Long Covid.’
Levi Henry - once extremely fit - saw his life transformed after catching covid in December 2021. He lost his sense of taste and smell, struggled to breathe, and was left so exhausted that even reading to his kids became impossible
Dr Light tried an array of treatments, including Naltrexone, a drug used to treat opioid and alcohol dependence. Its effectiveness in treating long COVID remains thin, but it is also affordable, safe, and well tolerated by patients, Dr Light said.
‘By blocking your opiate receptors just a little bit, it stimulates your body to make its own endogenous opiates, or feel-good hormones, so it can really help with fatigue and brain fog.’
He also replaced cycling on his Peloton to swimming, which was gentler on his body and didn’t bring those same post-exertional crashes.
He drank plenty of water to stay constantly hydrated, avoided alcohol, and carried around protein bars to keep himself from passing out.
Meanwhile, Mr Henry was struggling with his own symptoms just a few minutes away from Dr Light’s home in Colorado.
A former medical school student-turned-actuary, he was extremely fit and treated his body well. But his Covid infection in December 2021 changed everything.
He lost his senses of taste and smell and had trouble breathing, comparing it to trying to run in a corset.
He felt so wiped out at the end of the day that he could no longer read stories to his kids. Every errand or exercise felt like running a marathon and would collapse on the couch for hours.
Ice baths were among the many treatments he tried to alleviate long Covid symptoms. For 84 days in the winter, Mr Henry submerged himself in 33-degree water, a practice that caused his energy levels to improve temporarily
Like Dr Light’s, Mr Henry felt as though doctors were dismissing his symptoms. They told him, ‘Well, you have young kids. Aren’t all parents wiped out?’
He matched his symptoms with those of long Covid and concluded that this was the opponent he was facing.
He became a citizen scientist, conducting hours of research to find any inkling of hope.
Mr Henry said: ‘I tend to go more of the Eastern medicine approach…vegan, herbs, supplements, traditional Chinese medicine.’
He tried hyperbaric oxygen therapy - chambers that administer oxygen at air pressure three times higher than a person would breathe normally. It’s commonly used for muscle recovery but is also helpful for dissolving air bubbles in the lungs following a scuba excursion.
He noticed some improvement in his breathing after the treatments, but they came at a steep price—around $200 per session. Because hyperbaric oxygen therapy isn't an approved treatment for long COVID, his insurance refused to cover the costs, so he kept looking for other potential solutions to his ongoing symptoms.
Then he tried red light therapy, even buying a $1,200 light panel for the treatments in his home. In theory, red light therapy may alleviate long Covid symptoms by targeting mitochondria – the power plants of cells.
The light gets absorbed by a key enzyme in the mitochondria, potentially helping cells produce more energy and reducing stress.
Research has yet to prove this effective, though, with small studies returning mixed results.
He then tried the carnivore diet, spending around $1,000 per month on meat from his local butcher, as well as a long list of supplements, including ashwagandha, magnesium, L-carnitine, omega-3, vitamin D, zinc, black seed oil, spirulina, and many more.
Ice baths came next. For 84 days in the winter, Mr Henry submerged himself in 33-degree water, a practice that caused his energy levels to improve. But this, too, proved too expensive to do regularly. It was back to the drawing board.
A short drive away, Dr Light, was growing increasingly frustrated by the dismissive doctors. He started a support group for fellow long Covid sufferers.
Based out of UCHealth Medical Center of the Rockies, the group consisted of virtual and in-person attendees nationwide.
Mr Henry was immediately charmed by Dr Light’s vulnerability. ‘This guys is just cool,’ he thought. Dr Light was a relatable neighbor, a guitar player, and, most notable, a long-covid sufferer himself.
‘I feel like I’ve always thought of doctors as...I don’t want to say not human, but just not coming down to my level,’ he said.
During a support group session, Dr. Light used a clever analogy to explain long COVID symptoms - he likened them to the knobs on a guitar amplifier that control different sound levels.
The comparison instantly clicked with Levi, who plays guitar himself. It helped him visualize how his symptoms could fluctuate in intensity, much like adjusting volume or tone controls on an amp.
Both men still exercise – Mr Henry runs and gets 10,000 steps a day, and Dr Light still swims – pushing themselves to the extent they did before they got sick is impossible.
Mr Henry has less faith in the medical system and its ability to find a cure for what ails them.
‘I don’t think doctors are going to be the ones in a lab solving long Covid,’ he said.
‘I think it’s going to be people just trying things on themselves and figuring things out—with some of the people who are doing research finding key pieces of the puzzle, but not all of it.’
