How NAC Helped Me Recover from Long COVID

In 2021, after having dodged COVID-19 for over a year, I was finally hit with the bug. For the ten days I quarantined myself, pretty much the only symptom I experienced was a loss of taste and smell. Other than that, I felt okay enough to wonder from time to time what the fuss was […]

Winter is here. Is COVID-19 getting ready to strike again?

The JAMA website, which is part of the Journal of the American Medical Association network, raised an alert on November 22nd that a novel variant of the SARS-CoV-2 had been detected and flagged as a “variant under monitoring” because it’s spreading very rapidly. Labeled the XEC variant, it has some unique features that make it […]

Enovid: Anti-viral Protection for a Healthy Winter Season

Looking to boost your immune system for winter? As winter nears, the chance of catching a cold goes up. The average American adult gets the common cold a few times a year, and it’s often believed that colder weather causes more people to stay indoors, making it easier for viruses to spread in close quarters. […]

The Curse of Long Covid

The first time I got infected by COVID-19 was in 2022. I had managed to get through the earlier waves of the pandemic in good shape, having followed all the advice for isolation, masking, and social distancing. By then, we thought we knew so much about the virus after three years into the pandemic that […]

More about the emergence of the COVID-19 variant JN.1

Since the beginning of 2024, there has been a wave of attention coming from major news media and health websites on the emergence of the COVID-19 variant JN.1 as the major form of the virus. Back at the beginning of December, we picked up on the fact that the CDC projected that the new JN.1 […]

Using an Antiviral Nasal Spray to Keep COVID-19 at Bay

As the winter months step up into high gear, COVID-19 continues to evolve, with new variants posing fresh challenges. Until recently here in the US, HV.1 was the variant responsible for most COVID-19 cases (followed by the variants labeled EG.5 and FL.1.5.1), but according to the Center for Disease Control, another variant has been identified […]

Infection with COVID-19 can endanger the heart

It was already known that people with pre-existing heart conditions such as hypertension (high blood pressure) were more likely to suffer more severe symptoms if they became infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. A recent analysis of electronic medical records for more than 45,000 people found that the converse may also be true. Infection with COVID-19 […]

To predict trends in COVID-19 infection rates, the devil is in the detail

By its nature, capturing the “big picture” about a universal health issue, like trends in COVID-19 infection rates, involves collecting, collating, and analyzing a lot of data from many sources. Sometimes, by the time it’s all put together, the predictions drawn already need an update; changes in the real world tend to move faster than […]

Marketing of NAC (N-acetylcysteine) and the bureaucratic time warp

It’s been just over a year since the US Food and Drug Agency (FDA) notified health supplement manufacturers that it was refusing their petition against the decision to block the marketing of NAC (N-acetyl-L-cysteine, aka n-acetylcysteine) as a food supplement. This decision has deep consequences for all of the parties involved in the supply chain […]

Keeping COVID-19 at bay in the Southern Hemisphere

TV, the internet chat pages, and newspapers have been packed lately about what’s being called a “fifth wave” – and they’re not talking about rollers crashing onto the beaches at Jeffrey’s Bay or on the Sunshine Coast. The COVID-19 virus has been lying quiet during autumn, but now, in the Southern Hemisphere, with people spending […]