Gwyneth Paltrow‘s health advice is being dragged in the U.K. and the U.S. The 48-year-old shared her trademark new-age advice on Goop after revealing that she got COVID and was left with “long-tail fatigue and brain fog.”
She claimed that fasting, doing saunas and eating kimchi helped her combat the side effects. Paltrow wrote: “After he functional medicine practitioner Dr. Will Cole saw all my labs, he explained that this was a case where the road to healing was going to be longer than usual. So we've been doing a version of a protocol he outlines in his forthcoming book, Intuitive Fasting. It's keto and plant-based but flexible (I've been having fish and a few other meats), and I fast until 11 a.m. every day.”
Professor Stephen Powis, the national medical director of England’s National Health Service, dragged the Oscar-winner to the BBC: “In the last few days I see Gwyneth Paltrow is unfortunately suffering from the effects of COVID. We wish her well, but some of the solutions she’s recommending are really not the solutions we’d recommend in the NHS. We need to take long COVID seriously and apply serious science. All influencers who use social media have a duty of responsibility and a duty of care around that.”
Dr. Christian Sandrock, a physician specializing in emerging infectious diseases and critical care medicine, told Yahoo Life that “fasting can reduce some levels of inflammation,” but added that there was no available data “specifically with acute post-COVID syndrome” and fasting.
It could be detrimental, he added. “You can have fatigue and dizziness from not eating. We don't recommend fasting for COVID-19 patients. We recommend not overeating and eating non-processed foods.”
Dr. Jane Orient from the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons told Newsweek: “Ms. Paltrow offers insufficient information to assess exactly what she is doing, or the rationale. Various dietary regimens and nutritional supplements are being tried, but I know of no systematic studies. Symptoms may persist after COVID-19, as they do for many viral illnesses, such as infectious mono. People do recover with time.”