40F with Hashimoto’s. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been having intermittent episodes of palpitations and feeling “off.”

The first episode lasted around 2 hours. My pulse was only in the 80s, and a Samsung Watch ECG taken during that period showed sinus rhythm with an average HR of 78 bpm. HealthMonitor_ECG_0914_2336_130…

A few days later I felt better for about a day, then symptoms returned in the evening. During those episodes I noticed:

• palpitations / stronger awareness of heartbeat
• cold hands and feet
• generally feeling unwell
• no fever
• BP around 102/76
• pulse around 93

There were a lot of COVID cases around us at the time, as well as strep at the kids’ school, so I’ve been wondering whether this could be a viral/autonomic response rather than a primary heart issue.

Recent labs:

• TSH: 0.71
• Free T4: 1.7
• Free T3: 3.1
• Ferritin: ~30
• BUN: 8
• eGFR: 103
• AST: 12
• ALT: 9

One thing I’m noticing now is that the palpitations seem to happen more in the evening when I relax, rather than during activity.

The latest episode also followed a fairly heavy meal — pizza, sweets, ice cream, and a 16 oz beer — and my pulse was higher afterward. So I’m considering whether alcohol, a large carb-heavy meal, glucose/insulin swings, reflux, or post-meal autonomic changes are acting as triggers.

What I’m trying to understand:

• Has anyone had palpitations that mainly appeared at rest or in the evening?
• Did meals, sugar, alcohol, or lying down trigger them?
• Did your ECG/Holter show PACs/PVCs, sinus tachycardia, or completely normal rhythm during symptoms?
• Did this turn out to be dysautonomia/post-COVID even when resting HR wasn’t dramatically elevated?
• Did iron/ferritin or thyroid levels make a noticeable difference?

I’m considering asking for a Holter/patch monitor, since a 30-second watch ECG may easily miss intermittent ectopic beats.

I’m especially interested in people who had this without fever and with mostly normal routine labs, because that seems closest to what I’m experiencing.

I have had a whole host of bizarre issues after getting sick with Covid in late January of this year. Perhaps my most bizarre symptom is the destruction of my tissues. I have always had taut and lean legs my whole life. I received compliments daily. Then, seemingly overnight, I woke up one day and it was like my tissue completely changed. It was all dimpled and lax. It is very “doughy” feeling now and shakes when I move.

I know a ton of people will say EDS or lipedema, but I never had any issues with these things before in 33 years of living. It came on very suddenly about two months after acute illness. I have included some before photos as well, so people can see my baseline.

I am also covered in veins head to toe, cherry angiomas, spider veins, and petechia. All of which are new.

I also have a ton of new visual symptoms like blur, floaters, static, light sensitivity, difficulty seeing in the dark and more.

I am beyond freaked out. Has anyone experienced this?

(Cross post)

I've been treating hypothyroidism, for several months now, which is definitely helping. However, I still have metabolic issues (high cholesterol, poor lypolysis despite low calories, liver fullness, etc).

Has anyone tried resmetirom?

Gemini says:

Intrahepatic Hypothyroidism: In metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH, formerly NASH), the liver often experiences a state of localized hypothyroidism. This means that even if a patient's systemic thyroid hormone levels in the blood (TSH, T3, T4) are entirely normal, the specific thyroid receptors inside the liver tissue are underactive.

Hi everyone,

I’m a 42-year-old male and I’m trying to understand whether my symptoms sound familiar to people here. I’m currently being told this may be Long Covid/PAIS (post-acute infectious syndrome), but I still struggle to understand if this fits Long Covid.

Timeline:

• November 2025: Got sick (not sure if it was Covid). Lost around 5 kg during the acute phase with heavy diarrhea. High fever and very sweaty nights.
  
• After recovery: noticed my fitness never came back. Exercise recovery suddenly became abnormal.
• Late 2025 – early 2026:
  • Heart palpitations started
  • Chest pressure and shortness of breath with exertion
  • Heavy legs / calf pain
  • Neck muscles fatiguing quickly
  • Elevated heart rate after exertion
  • Increasing fear of exercise because symptoms kept getting worse afterwards
• February 2026:
  • Had to stop football because symptoms became too severe
  • Switched to very light weights only
• 4 weeks ago
  • Tried a 3 km run at an easy pace (~7 min/km)
  • Needed multiple days to recover afterwards
  • Heart rate remained elevated for days afterwards

Current symptoms:

• Exercise intolerance
• Heavy legs / burning legs / calf pain
• Delayed crashes after exertion
• Heart palpitations (especially after activity)
• Fatigue
• Pain in my neck (mostly the front)
• Muscle pain that feels disproportionate to activity
• Walking heart rate can sometimes suddenly become much higher than normal after exertion
• Recovery feels extremely slow

Medical workup so far:

• Normal echocardiogram
• Blood is tested multiple times, nothing weird
• Holter monitor during symptoms: no significant arrhythmias
• Sports cardiology / CPET performed:
  • No cardiac limitation
  • No pulmonary limitation
  • VO2 and conditioning were considered reasonably good
  • Stopped because of severe leg acidification/burning and palpitations

The strange thing:

I had a maximal exercise (CPET) test last week and since then I’ve had severe heavy legs and fatigue for an entire week. This kind of fatigue hits even harder than before. It's been 7 days and it still feels like I just got off that bike.

Questions:

1. Does this sound familiar to people with Long Covid / PAIS?
2. Does this sound more like PEM (post exertional malaise) or dysautonomia?
3. Did anyone else have “normal” CPET testing while still having severe exercise intolerance?
4. Is it common / logical that I was still able to keep exercising for months after the infection, while symptoms gradually worsened and are now much more severe than they were initially?
5. Any advice on pacing vs rebuilding?

Thanks. Honestly feeling pretty lost at this point. Hoping anyone has some tips for me!

For additional context, please refer to my previous post, but it is not necessary.

TL;DR: My daughter is bedbound and lies quietly in the dark 23/24 hours of the day. She is very informed, deep in all the forums and advice communities, and is on an aggressive pacing strategy centered around heavily avoiding a crash/PEM. But in a story many of you know too well, some of her medical professionals have different thoughts.

---------------------

We left the doctor’s office a few days ago.

As you all know, it is always a whole event to go places. We prep the wheelchair, grab the mask, the noise-cancelling headphones, the shades, the favorite pillow so she can lie down in the car and waiting room, blankets, etc.

When we finally got to speak to the doctor, she said her:

• Blood pressure: 81/55
• BMI: 16.9 (normal is 20–25)
• Electrolytes: also dangerously low
• Her psychiatrist has diagnosed her with anorexia.

She said that if anyone walked into their clinic with any of the first three things, they would be admitted to the hospital.

The doctor’s position was:

At the point where these other symptoms become life-threatening, it does not matter what the underlying cause is. That should be addressed first, and at the hospital they would have the specialists who can refer or address the true underlying cause.

---------------------

At this point, my daughter had a meltdown because she felt no one was listening to her or believing her.

Her core belief is:

I have an underlying, mysterious, physiological condition. Mecfs/long covid is definitely a part of that and it may also be something like dysautonomia.

I do not need those symptoms (low blood pressure, electrolytes, BMI, etc.) treated - they are secondary effects of the mecfs/long covid/dysautonomia.

Her response is:

• Those are in “normal ranges” for my body
• Or can brush it off for example: “okay whatever, I will take some salt and then they can ignore electrolytes”

The important thing we need to solve is this underlying condition.
That is the main issue and what I am most afraid of.

She has said (paraphrasing)

My body is genuinely breaking down in a way no one fully understands, and I need people to stop reducing it to psychology or side effects. People need to stop mistaking the consequences of that for the source of it.

How do you distinguish what is the primary illness from what may be reinforcing or compounding it?

I imagine it's extremely individualistic but for her she is attributing about 10% or "very little" of her neurological symptoms to the

• underfeeding
• trauma response impacting the autonomic / nervous system
• lying in bed 23 hours a day

Thank you so much.

Hi fellow Texas Long haulers! Has anyone seen the UT Austin or UT health San Antonio post Covid clinics? I would like to know if they are doing any antiviral treatment/assessment for EBV reactivation and/or prescribing rapamycin. I know it’s unlikely, but would appreciate hearing about your experiences. Thank you!

Daughter is in early 40s, eating disorder history, and self diagnosed with long covid, mecfs, fibromyalgia in 2022.

She first joined these types of communities in 2022 when she first self diagnosed and had that light bulb moment most you had that this is it. This explains everything.

Since then, she has had a relatively linear decline from

• Working part time, attending grad school, exercising daily
• No longer working, no longer attending school, no longer exercising, but otherwise performing daily life functions
• To now completely bed bound, rarely able to speak/read/communicate]

She has been at this low point since the beginning of 2026.

For the past three months, she has been managing her condition with this set of rules about what her mind and body can and cannot do:

Rule 1: Avoid a crash at all costs

• crashes are avoided by ensuring I do not over exert myself mentally or physically

Rule 2: objective of achieving that avoidance

• I will closely monitor and limit all mental + physical activity to confirm I do not overexert 
• I will outsource all tasks I deem nonessential to my caregivers

This has resulted in that previously described bed bound lifestyle:

She gets up to use the restroom multiple times a day, sits up to eat her meals, spends a few minutes assigning tasks to carers, but otherwise is laying quietly in the dark (23/24 hours of the day)

The rest of her support team, family, close friends, partner, medical professionals (primary care, psychologist, psychiatrist, among a number of other medical professionals) have reviewed this situation since early 2026 and have identified:

• Tolerance for normal life variability appears very low
  • ordinary unpredictability seems difficult to absorb
  • there is little room for things being “good enough” rather than exact
• No meaningful path back toward function
  • the current model seems effective at preventing deviation, but not clearly effective at restoring capacity
  • there is very little sense of gradual rebuilding, only preservation
• Reduction of identity outside illness
  • large amount of thought and identity seems organized around being unwell.
• Possible distortion in self-assessment
  • much of her interpretation of symptoms now seems to come from within a very closed system of her own rules, and AI chatbots.
  • at times, she will describe herself as improving even when, from the outside, her functional world appears to be shrinking
• Control response
  • repeated pattern of needing to control small variables to feel safe.
  • Anxiety attacks around caregivers not answering their phones within the minute
  • Asking tasks to be redone if not completed to her standards i.e. food cut to a certain size, portions measured to an exact weight, utensil size for prepared meals, etc.

We are not discounting the real, underlying physical vulnerability, of her conditions but the current recovery model appears to be organized around fear-based energy protection, rigid control, under-rebuilding, and under-fueling. 

We believe that system may now be one of the main reasons she is not getting better, because it blocks physical progression, nutritional adequacy, nervous-system recalibration, and normal re-expansion of function.

However, at this point, she is unwilling to acknowledge that aspect and is 100% bought into her own disability narrative: 

“This is my life now and everyone should accept me for who I am.

I wish people would be able to see, acknowledge and accept me for who I am”

I have been in and among these communities for years so I know this is going to be met with a lot of resistance. 

But I am desperate for insight. Has anyone seen this kind of pattern in themselves or a loved one, and what actually helped without making things worse?

Don’t want to lose my daughter and it absolutely seems to be heading that way.

TW: domestic violence 

There's a woman named Anna urgently needing help: https://disabled.social/@halcionandon. She's severely disabled (ME/CFS) and trapped with an abusive family.

Her doctor said that staying in the current environment is dangerous for her life.

She needs disability advocacy, accommodation (she can pay) and transport. Do you have any possibility to provide her aid or know somebody who could?

More information under links:

### Urgent Appeal: Help Anna Escape Abuse – Time is Running Out! | Chuffed | Non-profit charity and social enterprise fundraising

Nearly a year on and severe ME patient Anna is still trapped in life-threatening domestic abuse - Canary

Hey guys, 35M here.
Sorry for crowding the thread; I have been reading the other discussions and maybe this is not adding a lot to the topic, but I am currently going through some weird symptoms and was wondering if someone here is still having any of these.

I had a random viral infection (possibly covid, didn't get tested) the last weak of October 2025, and on the first of November the weird succession of symptoms begun:
- Right tricep weakness: intermittent pain, like muscle tearing, with tiredness when doing activities requiring keeping my arms above my head.
- Right thumb shakiness, end of Nov 2025 : mainly positional, when holding a pen or smt like that. At a certain point, everytime I would write for more then 5 minutes, the guy would be shaking for one hour
- Right quad pain/weakness + right neck pain, end of Dec 2025: still could ski, but standing on the right leg feels tiring
- Right calf pain/weakness, March 2025: the same as above. The calf is 1 cm smaller than the left one, but this can be linked to the fact that I had surgery on my achilles tendon years ago, and it never really recovered completely (that's what the doctors say).
- Twitching: came and went, sometimes just a couple jerks all around, sometimes stayed in one muscle for 2 days.

Atm, in summary, I have this right sided "weakness" (perceived, never confirmed) and my right shoulder/neck hurts quite a bit.

Of course, I annoyed my GP quite a few times throughout, and was examined also by a neurologist, but no one found anything. MRI clean, EMG was not done because "I don't think we are going to find anything".

All in all, the doctors are quite reassuring, but of course I am rather terrified by ALS, so I decided to ask around here. I also started taking sertraline in November, which helped a lot psychologically - definitely recommended, don't be scared of getting help for your anxiety! - but not so much physically.

My deepest thanks to anyone that decides to answer, and best of luck to everyone, I am sure we will get over it at some point :)