A short time ago a lady came to me at the Los Alamos Farmer’s Market with a question about her son. He lives in another state, had COVID-19 in the spring, and has not completely recovered. His left-over symptoms are cough, shortness of breath, nasal congestion, and fatigue. He is a physician of endocrinology and diabetes. These symptoms persisted after trying many suggestions from his colleagues.
In medical terms, we call this a sequela which is any abnormal bodily condition or disease related to or arising from a pre-existing disease. In this case, it seems allergies may follow COVID-19. The question is does the former cause the latter?
The answer is a definite yes.
I also want to say this is not unique to COVID-19. Other diseases, mostly infections, such as flu and pneumonia can cause the same after-effects. Chinese traditional medicine recorded similar conditions as lung deficiency (肺气虚，Fei4 Qi4 Xu1). This traditional condition usually happened after a long-lasting illness with combined symptoms of common allergies and asthma.
How?
Airway infections collapse the microbiota in the respiratory tract, which frees the immune system. This mechanism is a necessity to fight airway infections. In most cases, the bacteria community will recover with sufficient beneficial bacteria. However, some people may not recover properly afterward. The probiotics become insufficient to calm down the immune system after the virus or other pathogens are cleared. This is the major reason why a small percentage of people developed allergies before we had antibiotics and modern oral hygiene. Please read the theory on how bacteria interact with our immune system here, which describes how we develop allergies.
The new COVID-19 causes an old problem if we can remember the days before modern hygiene. A prebiotic supplement such as AlleerPops helps oral probiotics to recover after the infection and may avoid the after-effects to occur.
The lady bought a box of AllerPops and I hope it will serve her son well.