Few of the 23 million Americans with lingering symptoms are getting answers – and in this dangerous void, alternative providers and wellness companies have created a cottage industry
obert McCann, a 44-year-old political strategist from Lansing, Michigan, sleeps for 15 hours – and when he wakes up, he still finds it impossible to get out of bed. Sometimes he wakes up so confused that he’s unsure of what day it is.
Long Covid is not yet widely understood, but already has the dubious distinction of being a so-called “contested” condition – a scarlet letter often applied to long-term illnesses wherein the physical evidence of patients’ reported symptoms is not yet measurable by allopathic medicine . While I don’t have long Covid, I received a diagnosis of a contested condition in 2015 after a similarly disheartening experience of being left to fend for myself.
With the help of a “doctor friend”, he’s even had stem cells shipped to him from Mexico and inserted into his body by IV. None of it has helped. It isn’t just supplements that have been touted as cures; some doctors have prescribed existing FDA-approved drugs like Azithromycin and Ivermectin for off-label uses – even when the benefit of such use has been anecdotal at best, and handily disproven but buoyed by political conspiracies at worst.
I was told repeatedly that nothing was wrong. My test results were normal. As one doctor at the Mayo Clinic told me, “We’ve told you before that we don’t have anything else for you here. And I think you need to put a period at the end of that sentence.” In early 2022, I turned on my radio in the middle of a local news story about a beloved doctor who had practiced alternative medicine. This doctor, fit and only 71, had died the week prior of Covid-19, the reporter said. He was unvaccinated. And in the months before his death, he used his medical practice to push dangerous falsehoods about masks and vaccines. I left Dr Foley’s practice in late 2016, but before the reporter could even say the name of the doctor, I knew it was him.
When people have been let down by the healthcare system … alternative routes may provide hope and comfortAccording to Dr Jessica Jaiswal, assistant professor of Health Science at the University of Alabama, medical falsehoods may be particularly dangerous coming from alternative medicine doctors, who may hold trusted esteem in the eyes of sometimes-desperate patients.