Therapeutic Effects of Thermal Water on Respiratory Syndromes from Long COVID

A brief contribution from Dr. Gianfranco Calfapietra, Medical Director at the Thermae AbanoRitz Hotel, specialist in anesthesia and intensive care, metabolic and liver diseases, and pain therapy physician.

Since the end of 2019, the world has been shaken by the COVID-19 pandemic. The infection spread through the air and was easily transmitted from person to person, entering the oral cavity and causing inflammation in the upper airways (nose and throat), eventually reaching the bronchi and lungs, sometimes leading to fatal outcomes due to severe interstitial pneumonia, especially in the elderly and vulnerable individuals. Science mobilized rapidly, deploying significant resources and producing a vaccine in a few months to combat the infection. This vaccine was an RNA modulator aimed at fighting the virus with the hope of achieving immunity or at least mitigating the most severe effects. Every virus has a common characteristic: it mutates, and when this happens, vaccines lose their strength and effectiveness. New vaccines targeting the mutations are sought, but the virus’s rapid mutation rate often outpaces scientific progress. Fortunately, COVID-19 mutations have weakened the virus itself.

Those who have dealt with a bad cold and its symptoms, including the annoying side effects like loss of smell and/or taste, know that fortunately everything returns to normal within a few days. This was not the case with COVID-19, where anosmia (loss of smell) and ageusia (loss of taste) can persist for a long time even after the virus itself has disappeared, a condition referred to as “long COVID.” The virus penetrates through the olfactory nerve endings, reaching the orbital frontal centers, causing anosmia and indirectly ageusia. Today, various studies confirm that good results have been achieved with thermal water nebulizations and aerosols. Sulfurous thermal water has a significant decongestant effect on the olfactory cells, while salsobromoiodic thermal water stimulates the immune system and helps hydrate the olfactory cells, thus restoring their normal homeostasis. Based on direct experience, we can affirm that a cycle of thermal aerosols with salsobromoiodic water can provide beneficial effects in the treatment of post-COVID-19 anosmia.