If you haven't been yourself since COVID — brain fog, crushing fatigue, dizziness, a heart that races when you stand — the neurological and autonomic effects of long COVID are real, formally recognized, and measurable. MindForge provides screened, carefully paced evaluation and rehabilitation for them in Dallas. The first step: book a free 15-minute call.
MindForge doesn't bill insurance — by design. Direct-pay is what makes an individualized, intensive program possible rather than care shaped by billing codes. HSA/FSA and financing options exist, and a written Good Faith Estimate precedes any commitment.
Long-COVID care at MindForge
MindForge is the Dallas–Fort Worth home of Neurological Restoration — integrated, instrumented, brain-first neurorehabilitation. Long COVID's neurological aftermath is a natural fit for that model because it is never one thing: cognitive, autonomic, vestibular, and metabolic threads tangle together, and clinics built for one thread miss the knot. One evaluation. One plan. One continuum: Discovery → Intensive → maintenance. And one boundary stated up front: we do not treat COVID itself — we evaluate and rehabilitate the neurological and autonomic consequences that persist after infection.
What long COVID does to the nervous system
Long COVID — persistent symptoms months beyond infection — is common enough to be a public-health category of its own: U.S. survey data have found 6.9% of adults reporting long COVID at some point and 3.4% currently experiencing it [1]. The neurological cluster leads: pooled analyses put cognitive and mental-health symptoms — the "brain fog" cluster — at roughly one in five long-COVID patients, notably including people who were never hospitalized [2]. Risk runs higher in women and peaks in early middle age [3] — which is part of why so many high-functioning people in their 40s find themselves suddenly, bewilderingly impaired.
The dominant neurological threads:
- Brain fog — slowed processing, word-finding failures, attention that won't hold: measurable cognitive change, not laziness or aging.
- Autonomic dysfunction — racing heart on standing, exercise intolerance, temperature and blood-pressure weirdness. Post-viral autonomic dysfunction — including post-COVID POTS — is formally recognized in the autonomic-medicine literature [4]; when the pattern is POTS, it's managed here with our full POTS program lane.
- Fatigue and post-exertional crashes — effort that costs double and refunds nothing, sometimes with the day-later crash pattern (post-exertional malaise) that changes what safe rehabilitation looks like.
- Dizziness and visual strain — vestibular and oculomotor threads that standard workups rarely test.
If you were told your labs are fine and it's anxiety
The long-hauler's path is now so common it has a literature of its own: normal routine labs and imaging, a suggestion of stress or depression, "give it time" — the pattern patients call medical gaslighting, and researchers have documented under exactly that name [5]. Here is the structural problem: routine tests weren't designed to see what long COVID breaks. Cognitive throughput, autonomic regulation, oculomotor control — these show up on the instruments built to measure them, not on a CBC. You will not have to argue for your credibility here: measurement is where care begins.
Why pacing is not optional
One long-COVID mistake causes more harm than any other: unscreened exercise. For a subset of patients — those with true post-exertional malaise — conventional "graded exercise" advice can trigger multi-day crashes, which is why exertion screening comes before any reconditioning is even discussed here. Where the pattern is ME/CFS-predominant with severe PEM, intensity-based rehabilitation is the wrong tool, and we route to appropriate care instead of enrolling you. For the many whose screening supports it, reconditioning is recumbent-first, individually dosed, and paced beneath the crash threshold — reconditioning without the crash, the same discipline our POTS work is built on [6].
How we evaluate long COVID: the Discovery Day
The MindForge Discovery Day — a comprehensive neurological evaluation + report of findings + care plan, one diagnostic day.
For long COVID: a structured intake that maps onset and triggers, then objective testing of the involved systems — stand-test and orthostatic testing with beat-to-beat monitoring, submaximal exertion response where screening clears it, cognitive battery, oculomotor and balance testing, and functional-medicine labs chosen clinically (inflammatory, metabolic, nutrient status) — plus validated symptom instruments. Same-day report of findings: which threads are driving your presentation, what's trainable now versus what needs pacing first, a written Good Faith Estimate — and the route-out conversation if we're not the right place, including when the right answer is specialist care or pacing-first management.
Treatment: the Long-COVID Intensive
The failed generic advice comes in two flavors: "rest and wait" (a plan with no mechanism) and unscreened exercise (a plan with the wrong one). The counter-thesis: measure the systems involved, then rebuild capacity below the symptom threshold — a concentrated, individualized program built from your data:
- Functional-medicine workup and support — inflammation, sleep, nutrient and metabolic status addressed alongside training, not after it (FM at MindForge)
- Recumbent-first, individually dosed reconditioning — the Levine-lineage exercise approach applied to the post-COVID autonomic subset, paced to respect post-exertional limits [6]
- Autonomic retraining — orthostatic progression and monitored positional work where stand-test findings lead
- Breathing-paced vagal work — structured breathing training supporting autonomic regulation
- Vestibular/oculomotor rehabilitation — where dizziness and visual strain have measurable drivers
- Cognitive training — dosed from your cognitive-battery results, built for fog rather than around it
Dosing follows your data, and the crash threshold is the governing line — a flare is information for the plan, never a demand to push through. Programs are individualized — pricing is shared plainly on your free 15-minute call, and your exact quote comes with your Discovery Day results — and a Good Faith Estimate. Up front: post-viral recovery timelines vary widely, no one can promise a cure, and structured rehabilitation for these symptoms is an active research frontier — the NIH's RECOVER initiative is running treatment trials aimed at exactly the autonomic dysfunction and exercise intolerance we work with [7]. We cite that as context for why screened, measured care matters — never as proof of our program. Your proof is your own re-test data.
What treatment looks like: after your Discovery Day, a typical program runs concentrated sessions across consecutive weeks — paced reconditioning, autonomic and cognitive work, FM support — with measurement checkpoints throughout and re-testing at the end. Daily rhythm and the family role: what to expect.
What it costs
- Discovery Day — one fixed fee, the same for everyone, shared on your first call
- Programs — individualized; pricing shared on your free 15-minute call; exact quote + GFE at the wrap
- Superbills, HSA/FSA, financing, partial assistance — ways to pay
Long COVID has already cost many patients their work capacity — economists estimated millions of Americans out of work at its peak [8]. A measured evaluation is how you find out what's rebuildable.
How to schedule
- Free 15-minute call — book online or (214) 730-6463. Tell us your onset story and your crash pattern; both shape the evaluation.
- Discovery Day scheduled live on the call, on the day that works for you.
- Your program typically begins within days — often the very next day, as scheduling allows. Travelers welcome — long-COVID patients are among our most frequent drive-ins (one-trip planning).
Prefer to start without a call? Send your records — a clinician reviews what you already have and tells you what they see, for a fixed review fee shared up front.
Frequently asked questions
Educational content, not a diagnosis. New chest pain, severe shortness of breath, or stroke-like symptoms are emergencies — call 911.
Sources
[1] CDC NCHS Data Brief 480 (2023): 6.9% of U.S. adults ever, 3.4% currently experiencing long COVID; CDC Household Pulse Survey (ongoing).
[2] van der Feltz-Cornelis et al., General Hospital Psychiatry (2024): pooled brain-fog/mental-health burden ~20.4% of long-COVID patients; elevated in never-hospitalized.
[3] Shah et al., RECOVER cohort, JAMA Network Open (2025): female risk +31%; peak incidence ages 40–55.
[4] Raj et al. / American Autonomic Society statement, Clinical Autonomic Research (2021): post-COVID autonomic dysfunction incl. POTS formally recognized.
[5] Documented dismissal/"medical gaslighting" in long COVID: PMC9448633 (2022).
[6] Levine-lineage structured exercise rehabilitation for POTS (Fu/Levine, UT Southwestern provenance), applied to the post-COVID POTS subset; PEM pacing per CDC ME/CFS clinical guidance and NICE's removal of graded exercise therapy.
[7] NIH RECOVER treatment trials: RECOVER-AUTONOMIC and RECOVER-ENERGIZE (NIH announcements, 2024) — cited as research context, not as evidence for this program.
[8] Long-COVID workforce impact: Brookings Institution analysis (2022), 2–4M Americans out of work.