230 - How to Beat Long-haul COVID with Dr. Melissa Mondala & Dr. Micah Yu

Episode • May 17, 2023 • 1h 3m

Today’s guests are on a mission to empower patients and accelerate change in the way medicine is practiced. They are husband and wife practitioners of functional and integrative medicine and experienced huge improvements in their own health by switching to a whole-food, plant-based diet. Dr. Micah Yu is an integrative rheumatologist and he has a unique perspective as both a physician and a patient because he was diagnosed with gout—a form of inflammatory arthritis that’s extremely painful—at the age of 17. Dr. Melissa Mondala is a triple specialist in family medicine, lifestyle medicine, and primary care psychiatry. She’s one of the first and youngest nationally recognized lifestyle medicine fellows and has devoted decades of volunteer work in underserved communities throughout the world.

With the firm belief that lifestyle medicine should be the foundation for healthcare, this dynamic duo combined their experience and passion for opening their Newport Beach private practice called Dr. Lifestyle, where they’ve seen patients improve and even reverse disease. “Patients can get random rashes in long-haul COVID, shortness of breath, micro clots in their lungs causing shortness of breath. So I have patients in their twenties and thirties who are high functioning and doing very well but are now barely able to walk out of the house because they’re so fatigued from their issues and short of breath. So there are a whole host of different symptoms of long-haul COVID, and COVID itself can spark different autoimmune diseases as well. I’ve seen this spark rheumatoid arthritis and other diseases. So, we can have a long discussion on COVID and long-haul COVID today.” - Dr. Micah Yu

What we discuss in this episode:

How Dr. Mondala and Dr. Yu began their plant-based diet journey and how it profoundly impacted both of their lives.
What a Blue Zone is and the requirements and characteristics of a Blue Zone.
How Dr. Yu developed gout and how a plant-based diet and lifestyle changes put his gout in remission.
The symptoms of long-haul COVID.
How the human body fights viruses.
How Dr. Mondala and Dr. Yu have treated patients with long-haul COVID.
Long-haul COVID and depression.
Recommendations for a healthy gut.
Recommendations to recover from COVID.