"My experiences with the extremes of post-viral illness and brain retraining/mindbody work" by riceissa

Summary

• Following an intense viral infection in 2019, I became ill with a mysterious chronic illness, which became progressively worse until mid-2024 when I became partially bedbound with dozens of debilitating symptoms that normal humans only experience in the months/weeks/days leading up to death. Over my years of being ill, I saw over 30 doctors/therapists/health coaches and tried well over 100 different treatments and palliatives. Most of these did nothing or made things worse, or at best provided slight relief. I try to give a sense of what it is like to live with such an illness.
• In mid-2024 I began a treatment called brain retraining (also known by other names, such as the mindbody approach and mindbody work; I will use any of these terms throughout the blog post interchangeably), which cannot be explained in such a small space as this summary but which you can think of as a combination of meditation and exposure therapy, and which is widely considered to be a scam in the "complex chronic illness space" (a vague and spread-out space of people who suffer from illnesses such as ME/CFS, MCAS, mold illness, post-viral illness, long COVID, chronic Lyme disease [...]

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Outline:

(00:13) Summary

(04:20) Introduction

(08:11) A quick summary of my illness from 2019 to May 2024

(11:12) List of doctors and treatments I tried

(18:44) Back to my May 2024 post

(20:30) Nystatin withdrawal and crash (May and June 2024)

(22:31) Visiting the hell realms (what summer 2024 was like)

(35:07) What about post-exertional malaise (PEM)?

(40:41) Brain retraining

(44:46) An outline of the Gupta Program

(53:28) My experience with the Gupta Program

(55:18) Branching out: Dan Buglio, Miguel Bautista, and Helmut Koeckritz

(01:09:23) Is brain retraining the same thing as therapy or meditation?

(01:21:23) Legitimate scams, and the poor marketing of brain retraining

(01:24:13) How I almost figured out mindbody stuff several times in the past, and why I gave up on it each time

(01:32:27) Generalizing from my own experience

(01:35:46) Luck-based medicine? and medical miracles

(01:38:32) Being stuck in my head

(01:43:36) Why did I become so ill? Understanding the deeper reasons for mindbody conditions

(01:48:06) Where I am now, and what is next?

The original text contained 17 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
October 30th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FZ4iJvqmzxXFSz6JX/my-experiences-with-the-extremes-of-post-viral-illness-and

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.