A Breakthrough in Understanding Long COVID

Dr. Joseph Mercola - Take Control of Your Health

Briana Mercola

Health & Fitness, Alternative Health

4.6 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

People with long COVID experience persistent fatigue, breathlessness, and brain fog. Research links these effects to fibrin microclots intertwined with neutrophil extracellular traps that obstruct microvessels and impair oxygen delivery
SARS-CoV-2 pushes blood into a hypercoagulable state, damaging endothelium, activating platelets, and inflammatory cytokines. This causes clot risk to persist for months, even after mild infections and hospital discharge
Long COVID essentially boils down to mitochondrial dysfunction. Management includes proteolytic enzymes to help clear spike protein, while the I-RECOVER protocol guides detoxification, inflammation control, and mitochondrial repair to restore overall function
Protecting cardiolipin, the mitochondrial membrane fat, requires limiting easily oxidized linoleic acid (LA) from seed oils, processed foods, nuts, seeds, and grain-fed meats
Methylene blue may enhance mitochondrial respiration at low doses. Additionally, correcting copper deficiency and lowering excess iron through blood donation support energy production

Transcript

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0:00.0	Are you still fighting fatigue, breathlessness, or brain fog months after recovering from COVID,
0:06.3	and wondering why your energy never fully came back?
0:09.7	Welcome to Dr. Mercola's cellular wisdom.
0:12.4	Stay informed with quick, easy-to-listen summaries of our latest articles, perfect for when you're on the go.
0:17.8	No reading required.
0:18.8	Subscribe for free at Mercola.com for the latest
0:21.7	health insights. Hello, and welcome to Dr. Mercola's cellular wisdom. I'm Ethan Foster.
0:28.3	Today we're examining new evidence that long COVID is driven by persistent fibrin microclots
0:33.8	intertwined with immune debris that clog microvessels, restrict oxygen delivery, and push
0:40.0	your system toward lasting dysfunction.
0:42.6	I'm Alara Sky.
0:44.2	We'll walk through what these microclots are, why they resist normal breakdown, how they
0:49.4	connect to mitochondrial problems, and the concrete steps you can take, drawn directly from the latest analysis
0:55.6	and protocols, to start reclaiming your energy. The study at the center of this discussion
1:01.5	used advanced imaging to compare blood from people with long COVID to healthy controls. What
1:07.2	stood out were larger, denser, and more complex microclots.
1:11.3	These weren't superficial threads.
1:13.3	Neutrophil extracellular traps, NETS, were woven deeply through the fibrin,
1:18.7	creating compact structures that standard fibrinolysis struggles to dissolve.
1:23.8	Nets matter because they're sticky webs of DNA and enzymes released during immune activation.
1:30.5	When they bind with fibrin, the result is a reinforced scaffold that lingers in small vessels.
1:37.2	That lingering means poorer microcirculation and reduced oxygen transfer, which tracks closely
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