A woman has revealed how she alleviated her long Covid symptoms with a £200 pain zapper designed for horses.
Alice Smellie wrote about her experiences after catching coronavirus back in October.
Having initially experienced a fever, insomnia and a loss of taste and smell, and despite being fully vaccinated, Alice says her symptoms progressed to a severe headache and fatigue so extreme she was unable to carry out basic housework without needing to lie down.
After collapsing while dropping one of her children off at a friend's house she was taken to hospital by ambulance, but claims the only advice she received was to stay hydrated.
Her GP then advised her to do nothing and rest.
Fearing that her days as an active mum-of-three with a career were behind her, Alice spoke to a friend who told her about a machine that was being used to potentially restore smell and taste after Covid and which appeared to be achieving impressive results.
The Arc4Health, which retails at around £200, “has regulatory approval as a Class IIa medical device in the areas of pain management and tissue repair in 33 countries,” according to a statement on the company website.
Described as “remarkably small” and “non-invasive”, it delivers electronic micro-pulses as the user wears it in a velcro cuff.
Alice says that by wearing it for three hours a day her long Covid symptoms rescinded within a week.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Alice said: “At that point I was desperate – I didn’t really look into it any further. I would have tried anything to feel normal again.
“After just five days of using it, something remarkable happened: I had enough energy to cook dinner for the first time in almost two months.
“Over the following week, gradually, I could do more and more – being able to tidy the children’s bedrooms and put the washing away was, I’ll admit, a surprisingly joyous experience.”
After completing a six-week programme of wearing the device for three hours a day, Alice says many small aches she had been experiencing pre-Covid have also vanished.
According to the Office of National Statistics, around 1.8million people in the UK are living with long Covid – although there is a long way to go before devices like Arc4Health are used as official treatment options, with no clinical trials having yet taken place.
ARC Microtech, the company behind Arc4Health, claim that because minute pulses of electricity passing through cells powers human activity, the device's external electric source “simply reboots or restores those pathways”.
