Stellate ganglion block reduces symptoms of Long COVID: A case series (2021) Liu et al

Highlights

Long COVID symptoms include fatigue, brain fog, anosmia, dysgeusia, orthostatic intolerance

Long COVId symptoms overlap with those of chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and POTS.

Reduced cerebral blood flow is a feature of dysautonomia in ME/CFS and POTS.

Stellate ganglion block increases cerebral blood flow and alleviates Long COVID symptoms.

The interaction between nervous and immune systems is involved in Long COVID.


Abstract
After recovering from COVID-19, a significant proportion of symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals develop Long COVID.

Fatigue, orthostatic intolerance, brain fog, anosmia, and ageusia/dysgeusia in Long COVID resemble “sickness behavior,” the autonomic nervous system response to pro-inflammatory cytokines (Dantzer et al., 2008).

Aberrant network adaptation to sympathetic/parasympathetic imbalance is expected to produce long-standing dysautonomia.

Cervical sympathetic chain activity can be blocked with local anesthetic, allowing the regional autonomic nervous system to “reboot.”

In this case series, we successfully treated two Long COVID patients using stellate ganglion block, implicating dysautonomia in the pathophysiology of Long COVID and suggesting a novel treatment

link to article here

 

Could anesthesia during neck surgery have this effect as well?

 

I had one recently. Didn’t do anything. Seems like a big fad tbqh

 

Once I saw a website where the doc with his dubious therapy was said to have been nominated for the Nobel Prize for his work and it even gave a specific year when this happened.

Fun fact: the names of the Nobel Prize nominees are sealed for 50 years, so no one knows who was really nominated. Anyone can walk around claiming to be a nominee, even you or me and no one can disprove it.

 

Moved from the long covid in the media thread

Says nothing about a study, trial, or any evidence. Not sure if they really are going to just offer this treatment without any evidence, but it sure looks like it.


Stella and RTHM Partner to Treat Long COVID
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/stella-and-rthm-partner-to-treat-long-covid-301561432.html

Stella ( www.stellacenter.com ), the leader in Stellate Ganglion Block (SGB) treatment for emotional trauma and mental health management, and RTHM ( www.rthm.com ), a Long COVID clinic with expert clinicians, a research arm, and a patented treatment and diagnosis algorithm, have partnered to provide RTHM's Long COVID patients with access to Stella's Stellate Ganglion Block (SGB) treatment.​

Or that's the evidence they're citing anyway, a case study:

SGB has been shown to help return the sympathetic nervous system to a healthier state after a biological trigger alters its function. Recently, Stella partners published a case study in the Journal of Neuroimmunology that showed how SGB treatment reduced symptoms of Long COVID.​

Yup, they're straight up offering it:

The SGB treatment offers promising results and will be administered by a board-certified anesthesiologist trained by Stella at locations convenient to patients. "Stella's SGB is one of the options within our individualized treatment plans, but it's an important one," says RTHM's co-founder, Dr. Jennifer Curtin. "The collaboration between RTHM and Stella provides our patients with a unique and potentially helpful treatment."​

About the company:

Long COVID affects up to 30% of those who have contracted COVID-19. Yet few clinicians have the background in post-viral disease or can access all the tools required to treat these challenging conditions. RTHM is unpacking the knowledge gained from other, often post-viral diseases like ME/CFS and leveraging that wisdom for those suffering with Long COVID. "Where others see Long COVID as 'uncharted waters'," Dr. Curtin says, "we already have a partial map from navigating other post-viral diseases."
...
MORE ABOUT STELLA: Stella's team of medical doctors, psychologists, patient care coordinators, and tireless advocates are on a mission to create a world where no person needlessly suffers from symptoms following trauma. Stella offers effective, peer-reviewed, breakthrough trauma and PTSD treatments. Stella innovates like lives depend on it – because they do. www.stellacenter.com
​

 

Not sure how you return something to a healthier state by stopping it working with a block?

 

The qualifications to be a nominator for the Nobel Peace Prize include:

• University professors, professors emeriti and associate professors of history, social sciences, law, philosophy, theology, and religion; university rectors and university directors (or their equivalents); directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes.

So, if you happen to have a friend who's an associate history professor at a university, you can ask them to nominate you for the Nobel Peace Prize. Then you can more vaguely claim that you've been "nominated" for a "Nobel Prize." I once saw a news report on someone who had done this just for fun.