Field Notes #34: One of the most powerful tools for managing Long COVID
And introducing a new 1-2-3 format to Field Notes
Hello, friends! I’m going to try something different with Field Notes. Instead of 3 long-ish notes, this edition has 1 health insight, 2 tweets, 3 links. (This format was inspired by James Clear’s terrific 3-2-1 newsletter.) I’m hoping this will be quicker to digest and more interesting to read. Please let me know what you think.
1 health insight
Rest is “one of the most powerful tools for managing, and potentially even preventing, Long COVID.”
This TIME magazine article details the emerging guidance that you really need to rest, rest, rest, to fully recover from COVID-19, rest as much as your life allows. There isn’t a lot of research yet, but some experts are starting to say that you shouldn’t try to power through — that could make it worse.
“Rest is incredibly important to give your body and your immune system a chance to fight off the acute infection,” says Dr. Janna Friedly, a post-COVID rehabilitation specialist at the University of Washington who recovered from Long COVID herself. “People are sort of fighting through it and thinking it’ll go away in a few days and they’ll get better, and that doesn’t really work with COVID.”
“Pacing” activities, with plenty of breaks, may be helpful for Long COVID (symptoms lasting more than a month after diagnosis), which follows similar guidance for people with manging myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) — studies have shown that gradually increasing their physical activity was not only ineffective but actually harmful.
2 tweets


(He lists several more masks; if you click on the top tweet, you can see the thread.)
3 links
Whatever Happened to the Starter Home? (New York Times; gift link). Housing is the foundation of health. Many modern forces have created conditions in which affordable little homes are no longer being built.
When Private Equity Takes Over a Nursing Home (New Yorker) Fascinating, unforgettable, troubling story of one nursing home in Richmond in the context of a larger industry shift. The long investigation is worth the read.
Gate 4-B, a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye (Poets.org) “This
is the world I want to live in. The shared world.”
I hope you have a restful week ahead in our shared world.
To our journeys,
Brianne