Long Covid - no appetite causing dramatic weight loss

[Everydays]

Name changed for this, but any similar experiences or advice would be so welcome.

A friend is suffering with Long Covid, most of the symptoms are currently managed with medication but their sense of taste has never come back. Seems like a minor thing but as a result they have lost interest in eating completely and their weight loss has been severe. They are very frail and it is a real battle to get them to eat anything at all, most of the time now.

Had this happened to anyone else?

I've got a similar problem. I'm living in very bland food which is keeping me fat enough. I slice potatoes very thinly and put them in the oven with olive oil driselled over. It basically makes home made crisps. I also eat salami, brussel sprouts and boiled rice. That is working for me just now.

Sorry to hear about your friend. It's a rubbish situation and I do sympathise.

btw, it got dramatically worse for me after my first vaccine, and I got a lot of the covid symptoms again after my first vaccine. I'm not sure why it is but clearly the spike protein is not my friend.

Do they have any other signs that could indicate an eating disorder. Anorexia can be triggered by initial weight loss, which can be unintentional such as because of illness. Will they eat calorific foods, such as porridge made with double cream in it, nutritional supplement drinks, puddings?

That's true actually. I've had this problem for years, even pre-covid and I find that if I accidentally have a shortage of something important in my diet, then that causes further loss of appetite and then it's really difficult to get my appetite back.

I found that thymine is really improtant. I get that from salami and there's also lots in ham and pork chops.

At one time I ate a lot of sardines to try to get plenty of iron and calcium. Sardines have thyminase in them though, so when I ate sardines every day I ended up with a thymine deficiency which really killed my appetite. Once I stopped eating sardines my appetite returned.

Eating is really tricky sometimes I think. It all started with my because I burned out from caring for an ill baby 24/7 for several years.

Part of the other problem is that I find talking about food really hard because the though of the flavours upsets my stomach. It makes visiting dieticians really hard. (and anyone who is liable to make helpful suggestions)

This website is really good:

nutritiondata.self.com/

It allows you to do a free nutritional analysis of your current diet to see what nutrients are missing. I often find that if I am struggling and I do the analysis, there will be one glaringly missing nutrient. If I can find a way to cram that into my diet, then things get a lot better.

The tracking function is under "My ND" then "My Tracking"

Thank you so much for these kind responses, @StrongLegs it really has been exacerbated by the vaccine (the second one in my friend’s case) as well, isn’t it weird? I will get her to check out that website, thank you.

I think it’s now difficult to understand what long covid symptoms she’s got left, as she’s feeling so weak and dizzy all the time but I’m convinced that’s because she’s not eating, and if she could solve that, she would start to make a better recovery.

Its sadly very common. I met a young woman at the COVID clinic who was in a terrible state - everything tasted bad/off to her so she could barely eat at all. Really pisses me off when people bang on about changes to smell and taste being "minor" problems.

No help on long Covid, but I lost taste/smell with a bug at Christmas 2019. It was probably February 2020 before I was back to normal. (Maybe it was early Covid?) I just couldn’t be bothered to eat, because everything tasted like polystyrene. What helped me was eating food that had texture and crunch to it, so even if I couldn’t taste it, I had the satisfaction of eating. Not sure if that even makes sense now I write it down. This is a bad example because obviously very low in calories, but celery sticks were good (with peanut butter), and another because nutritionally rubbish, also crisps/pretzels. We ate a lot of crunchy vegetable stir fries, even things like crackers and cheese.

I was in good health otherwise but came out of that period the lowest weight of my adult life and looking like a catwalk model!

That's reallly interesting. I like eating things that are a bit burnt, and definitely crunchy.

After I had my vaccine, meat tasted like playdoh for a while, which was really not good.

I also have catwalk model phases. When I get too thin, I don't like it though. I'm fairly packing in the crisps just now.

Would your friend drink high-energy protein drinks like Fortisip? They're designed for people who have difficulty eating - when I taught children with sensory issues who had a very limited diet they were sometimes prescribed Fortisip as way of keeping their weight and energy up. They're not very tasty but they're quick to drink and serve the purpose of topping up nutrients.

Has she spoke to a doctor about it?

@Everydays it's interesting to know that the second vaccine made things worse for your friend. I got worse when I had covid, and then worryingly much worse on my first vaccine.

I just this week made the very difficult decision not to go ahead with my second vaccine. I'm rampantly pro-vaccine always, but couldn't see that the risk was worth taking. I was really afraid of what it might do to me.

So many people said that the second one was "just a sore arm" so I've been in a real quandary. It's useful to know that the second one was a bigger problem for your friend.

I wish I could think of what might help your friend.

I have been struggling badly this last week and what I did in the end was to go our in the garden and walk slowly up and down, first for a short while, and then more or less all day in the garden. That has really helped set me right, in all sorts of ways. I haven't yet had the feeling that my sense of taste or appetite was getting materially better, but the walking makes many things feel a bit better.

I'm not sure if that is the right thing for your friend though, if she is very weak. She may just have to stay still and really rest a lot.

Would it be okay to ask what she is actually eating? Maybe if we had an idea of that, we could spot any obvious steps forwards.

Another thing that might help is this nutrition advice line at Biocare. They have huge expertise there, and the phone line is free:

www.biocare.co.uk/nutrition-team