Useful hack: drinking tonic water (with quinine) reduced my breathing difficulty
The night before the shelter-in-place order was to go into effect at midnight, I went to return a library book and fill my gas tank (despite getting an amazing thing: an email from the library asking me not to return my library book on time). I think I got it from a gas station pump handle. I used hand sanitizer right after pumping the gas, but I think I missed some of the virus. When I got home, I felt a tickle in my right lymph node under my right jaw. The next day the same lymph node was sore to the touch and stayed that way for 2 days and I had a slight sore throat. The doctor on my phone consult said it did not sound like COVID-19.
After that, day before yesterday, I started getting a dry cough and I started having difficulty feeling like I could get a full deep breath, but no fever. The only other time I have felt like I could not get a full deep breath was when I (likely) had the H1N1 flu years ago. I did not feel like I was going to not get enough air, but it did not feel very comfortable.
Yesterday it was worse. On the second phone consult with a doctor, said she could not get a test for me because the tests were too scarce. She said they would not even test a pregnant woman who thought she had it unless she was about to deliver. I doubted she would prescribe any quinine for me, so I did not even bother to ask.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 45.2 ms ] threadI talked a few friends of mine into hunting down some sugar-free tonic water for me. One of my friends brought me 2 liters, dropping them and running away when I opened the door :-). I started drinking it, not really thinking it would help. I drank a liter over a few hours while reading about the world coming to and end and watching serene videos of the earth from the space station set to calming music. A few hours later, still noodling around on the web, I suddenly noticed that my breathing difficulty was almost completely gone, as well as my desire to cough.
Today it is still better and I am on my second liter of tonic, so drinking tonic water when you get COVID-19 seems to be a useful hack. I am only one data point, so we cannot be sure this works. If it works for someone else, we will have a trick. If it works for lots of people, we will have a well-established technique :-). NOTE: you can poison yourself with quinine, so do not drink liter after liter of it: https://www.finanzen.ch/nachrichten/aktien/the-quinism-found...
NOTE: you can poison yourself with quinine, so do not drink liter after liter of it: https://www.finanzen.ch/nachrichten/aktien/the-quinism-found...
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Dr. Nevin noted his concern that members of the public may even attempt to obtain therapeutic quantities of quinine through questionable channels. "Tonic water, whose bitter taste is produced by the addition of quinine or related naturally-occurring quinolines, is limited by U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations to 83 mg per liter of quinine and related cinchona alkaloids," said Dr. Nevin. "However, drinking several bottles of tonic water will result in consuming pharmaceutical quantities, and therefore potentially harmful, amounts of these drugs", said Dr. Nevin. "Tonic water is a prescription medication masquerading as a cocktail mixer."
Dr. Nevin emphasized the importance of recognizing and properly reporting adverse effects from these medications to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "While it may be tempting to attribute anxiety, depression, paranoia, or other mental health symptoms to the psychological effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, " said Dr. Nevin, "these symptoms may be an early warning sign of idiosyncratic neurotoxicity, and must be taken seriously."
Dr. Nevin noted that adverse effects from chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, mefloquine, quinine, and even tonic water may be reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's MedWatch program, at https://www.fda.gov/safety/medwatch-fda-safety-information-a....
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Should be an interesting year ahead of us.
Simply drinking too much water can kill you. From drowning if I recall. The real issue is common sense is now uncommon.
As a doctor friend said to me years ago, everything can kill you given the wrong dose. Tonic water could have a warning if thats a real concern but honestly if you're drinking huge bottles of it you're likely trying to qualify for a Darwin award after some point. I've heard anecdotes of people drinking litres of the stuff. Multiple bottles.
Be aware that a lot of the coronavirus tests are questionable anyway due to them being faulty or worse don't work. Yet another vector for uncertainty.
Good luck with your journey.
A. Covid takes at least a week or two before being symptomatic. 2 hrs is way too fast.
B. 2L of Tonic water has just 150mg (max) of Quinine. That’s not a therapeutic dose in any shape or form.
You would need to drink about 5L a day for 7 days for a therapeutic dose - safe to say that’s not realistic.
Hope you feel better - this is either cold or seasonal allergy / flu.
If you have the symptoms, you have evidence of the virus. The sore throat may be a red-herring, but I never get symptoms like this from normal flu or a cold, except the H1N1 flu years ago, so that is definitely not it. I am very familiar with how my body get sick.
Again, as I pointed out, the notion of a "therapeutic dose" is not discrete: it is not the case that a small amount does absolutely nothing and then suddenly when you get to the "therapeutic dose" suddenly it does something. Drugs and the body generally do not work like that. If your body is hurting for a molecule and you give it the amount biomedical researchers have concluded will have an effect, it will likely have an effect, but if you give it a bit less, it still might help. Think of any time you have needed anything: even getting one thing was a lot more than getting zero. If you listen to how doctors talk, they say such things all the time: they basically guess how much to give you and then they move the amount up and down by factors of like 2 depending on the results they get.