Marlen Reusser recovers from long COVID spell

How do you bounce back after Covid-19, when exhaustion and recurring fevers bring you to your knees? Maren Rosser said hypnosis helped her.

Sabine Kuster/CH Media

Every report of a COVID-19 patient being cured is immediately circulated among those affected – even more so if it’s a celebrity: at the end of October, Swiss cyclist Marlen Reusser not only announced that she would move After joining the Spanish team Movistar, she also said she felt much better.

Reusser contracted Covid-19 in February. At the end of March, she participated in the Tour of Flanders and suffered a fractured jaw and ear canal, as well as eight damaged teeth. She gave up in May. She struggled with post-viral fatigue: When she exercised hard, her symptoms worsened, her fever returned, and she was so exhausted that she pretty much stayed home.

Rosser has been through a lot of pain this year.Image source: EPA ANP

She did not admit to herself for a long time that this was no longer possible, as she told SRF in an emotional conversation in September, almost in tears: “I thought: I am Maren, I can do this to. But every time you do something, you pay the price.” She thought she was healthy, but it didn't work. She knows this: Some people don't recover from long COVID. Her cycling career was in jeopardy.

Now Maren Russell is back. Speaking to the press on Monday, she announced that she is targeting all the major cycling events in 2025: the Vuelta a España, the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia and the World Cup in Rwanda. She's doing great and training hard. For a long time she didn't quite believe in her luck. You can categorize accidents and estimate what will happen next, but with this disease, it's different: “You don't know if things are going to be good. But now I'm back to my old life.”

It is said that a positive attitude can solve problems

Last November, Reusser posted a video on Instagram describing what helped her during her illness: active focus, meditation, hypnosis and yoga. And a certain Ph.D. Will Bostock, who works at a long-term COVID-19 clinic in the UK, introduced them. In an interview on YouTube, he compared the disease to a car whose oil light flickers even when the gas tank is full. The body can also produce many symptoms when it shouldn't. There is nothing wrong with the hardware, so the bug can be found at another level of the system. Systems need to be rebuilt and everyone's minds need to be restored.

After the post was published, more than a thousand people wrote to Marlene Reusser, wondering how to recover in this way. She revealed some secrets on Monday. As she lay in bed feeling excruciating pain, she searched online for hypnosis methods for Long Covid. Someone recommended this to her.

The internet is full of hypnotherapists who are also offering treatments for COVID-19. How helpful will this be to those affected? unknown. A new study published in specialist journal BMJ examines the success of a number of treatments, suggesting that improving mental health is worthwhile as it “may” improve long-term Covid symptoms.

Physician profiles of post-COVID-19 patients in Switzerland also mention hypnosis as a way to relieve symptoms: “A mind-body approach to treating fatigue through relaxation, mindfulness exercises, meditation techniques, yoga and hypnosis,” it said.

Reusser uses audio files for hypnosis

Maren Rosser says she feels improved after each session. Instead of seeing a therapist, she used audio files that she listened to over and over again. As a trained doctor, she actually had very reservations about hypnosis at first. “I had a medical condition and I asked myself, is my brain doing anything to my body?” The fact that it worked shook her world view of conventional medicine. She now sees that the boundaries between body and mind are no longer so clear.

Rosser used hypnosis to cure coronavirus.Image: trapezoid

She emphasized that this may not be suitable for everyone, and she did not rule out the possibility that this was just natural healing, as was the case with COVID-19 patients in the first six months.

This is confirmed by Chantal Britt, the president of Switzerland's long-term coronavirus crisis, who is aware of countless recoveries and attempts. Because there is a natural healing process, especially in the first six months, she would only talk about “growing COVID” afterward. «Time and rest heal many things. Many times you are just lucky. It also helps a lot if you can afford a luxury vacation, think positive, not worry about money, and have access to doctors and emergency treatments. “For many people, this is not the case. Long-COVID doctors confirm that social and economic security and low stress play a role in the further progression of the disease.

Russell realizes this; “I have every resource you can imagine,” she says. “Not everyone has that.” Things would be different if she had children at home or lived in a precarious environment . This means she can focus entirely on treatment.

Chantal Britt also said positive thoughts can help. “Strategies we recommend are autogenic training, mindfulness, or relaxation exercises like yoga,” Britt says. Hypnosis can help some people; the University Hospital of Geneva has good experience with this.

COVID-19 president critical

But: Britt says it's not serious to expect or promise a cure for the disease. “These strategies can improve well-being and resilience, but key symptoms of stress intolerance and fatigue often remain unchanged.” Positive reports of spontaneous healing after 12 months are rare. “We are equally critical of reports of people who have persisted symptoms a year later being cured by positive thinking or behavioral therapy, as we are of reports of being cured by physical exercise.”

Rosser dared to do this: contrary to advice, she abandoned rhythm therapy, the standard treatment for COVID-19, in which you learn to use your energy economically. “For most people, pacing is a survival strategy rather than a treatment option,” Britt responded. Stress often causes symptoms to worsen.

This year, Marlen Reusser wants to attack again.Picture: www.imago-images.de

She believes there are further risks with reports of treatments based on positive thoughts, hypnosis, brain retraining and activation. This suggests that those affected should take responsibility for not recovering or for not wanting to recover.

That's not what Reiser meant. Nor does she claim that hypnosis has been proven to be the cause of her recovery or that it works for everyone. To achieve this goal, research must be conducted. She also mentioned Swiss athlete Selina Büchel, who had to end her career in 2022 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Reusser emphasized that she took to Instagram to talk about her case because she heard a lot of pessimistic things. “I'm so happy for the positive encouragement out there. I wanted to convey that through the post because there are so many people affected.”

The professional cyclist is happy that her condition is being treated well. She doesn't want to think about everything she missed last year, including the World Cup in Switzerland and the Olympics. She will return at the end of January at a tournament in Mallorca.