Ask HN: Long Term Covid-19 Complications

Like most people that get nuked by Cipro, I hadn't properly understood how extraordinarily dangerous the drug is. I had taken antibiotics once or twice in my life, for trivial things, I assumed Cipro was no more risky than, say, Azithromycin.

Then one day, not long after the Cipro symptoms began (damaged my achilles tendons also), I noticed my fine motor skills in my fingers were acting weird. I could either fully squeeze eg a drink in my hand, or I'd almost drop it, the in-between fine grade nerve control was sort of missing. There was also some tingling sensation that went with it. So of course I freaked out a bit mentally, naturally, thinking the worst of what that might be the start of (ALS for example). Turns out, fortunately (how odd to say that), it was nerve damage caused by Cipro.

After a lot of research, I found R-Lipoic Acid (RLA or R-LA). Diabetics often use it to control their peripheral neuropathy, and it will also lower your blood sugar levels (which isn't something I needed in my case). Depending on the extent of the nerve damage you have to use more of it. Some diabetics use very high doses to control the tingling / nerve damage consequences that stem from their diabetes. In my case I was lucky, mostly the finger nerve twitchy'ness and low grade tingling is all I got and I was able to control that with a low dose 100mg of R-Lipoic Acid. I first tried Alpha-Lipoic Acid (ALA) and it didn't work very well, so I switched to the R-Lipoic form and that worked perfectly. From everything I read at the time, Alpha-Lipoic Acid doesn't seem to work as well compared to the R-Lipoic form when it comes to nerve damage. If I stop taking it for more than ~24-36 hours, the effects of the nerve damage return. I haven't seen any progression in the nerve damage in the last seven years, I take one 100mg capsule of R-Lipoic Acid per day, and everything is normal so long as I maintain that routine. As a programmer / developer I type all day long, so you can imagine how nerve damage consequences in the fingers could be threatening, however the R-Lipoic Acid has so far made it such that I don't see any of the nerve damage consequences and can function normally.

I no longer have any of the sources I used to find/research R-Lipoic Acid as a solution. I'm not surprised if there are not very many clinical trials though, it's an inexpensive over the counter solution. You can read a zillion reviews on Amazon and elsewhere from people that use it for this though, and you'll find it's not uncommon for doctors to recommend trying it for lighter cases of peripheral neuropathy. It's a very low risk potential solution. I recall one of the first things I read about the ALA form was that it had been in use in Germany for many years as a therapy for peripheral neuropathy.

Apparently body builders sometimes take Lipoic Acid as well. The process by which it lowers blood sugar and increases insulin sensitivity apparently involves increasing metabolism a bit. Lipoic Acid also binds with heavy metals, it can apparently pull heavy metals out of your body and crosses the blood brain barrier (you can find some studies on heavy metal detoxification that reference using ALA for that). ALA has been found to lower cholesterol levels. I don't take it for any of those reasons though. It's an interesting compound.

Here's a good article on Alpha-Lipoic Acid:

https://diabetesaction.org/article-alpha-lipoic-acid

Also:

http://pennstatehershey.adam.com&...