PT517 – Long COVID and Psychedelics, Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez, MD, Joel Castellanos, MD, & MaryAnn Welke Lesage

In this episode, special guest host Court Wing interviews Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez, MD: professor and chair of rehabilitation medicine at UT Health San Antonio; Joel Castellanos, MD: co-founder and associate medical director of the Center for Psychedelic Research at UC San Diego; and MaryAnn Welke Lesage: a long COVID survivor who reports experiencing drastic improvement in symptoms after MDMA and psilocybin therapy.

As the world slowly recovers from COVID, many people are seeing continued or new symptoms, and while much is still not understood, these symptoms are being categorized as long COVID: essentially a persistent viral inflammation causing brain fog, headaches, depression, and other hard-to-diagnose symptoms. With estimations of as many as 18% of people in the U.S. experiencing this at one point and 6.8% currently dealing with it, could psychedelics – which can decrease inflammation and reset neural networks – help alleviate these symptoms? 

They discuss: 

• How long COVID fits into what we already know about psychedelics, pain, and inflammatory medicine
• Why MDMA or psilocybin therapy, specifically, can help
• The importance of physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) and the myriad of tools these physicians have learned to work with
• Why anecdotal evidence matters towards future research

and more! 

For more info, read Lesage's article, "How Psychedelics Became Key to My Long COVID Recovery," as well as the official paper: "Long-COVID symptoms improved after MDMA and psilocybin therapy: A case report."

For more links, head to the show notes page.