Recovering from coronavirus
Written for Broadway Magazine in 2022
We can’t seem to get away from coronavirus in the news at the moment and for some people who contract it they may struggle to get away from the symptoms too. It is apparent that more people are suffering from the longer term effects of covid, ‘long covid’, and are in need of advice and support to know how to help their bodies recover and return to normal. Approximately 10% of people experience prolonged illness after covid and there is very little research on the longer term impact and effect of it but in observational studies approximately one in ten people who test positive remain unwell beyond 3 weeks with recovery delayed beyond 12 weeks for a smaller number.
Long-covid appears to be systemic by which I mean it can give you ongoing issues in almost any part of the body. The most common symptoms appear to be cough, fever and fatigue alongside a host of others including breathlessness, mood swings, brain fog, muscle pains, anxiety, palpitations, gastrointestinal upset, skin rashes to name a few. With many people not having been tested and some of those tested receiving a false negative, a positive covid test result is not a prerequisite for long covid and neither is having had a hospital admission.
If you haven’t had covid, even if you’ve had the vaccination, improving diet and exercise are as ever key tools to improve your health and boost your immune system. Public Health England guidelines recommend aiming for 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise per week and should include 2 sessions of strength training per week. That equates to approximately 20 minutes a day but this doesn’t need to be done in one go. It can be daunting and difficult to achieve but something is better than nothing. There are a host of exercise professionals including physiotherapists, physiologists and personal trainers out there to help you if you don’t know where to start. My advice would be to gradually build up, do something you enjoy and don’t worry about form, research has shown that technique is not as important as we once thought.
If you have already contracted covid and you suffer with persistent breathlessness then you could try some techniques such as pacing, breathing out through pursed lips, extending your breath out or positions of ease to relieve these symptoms. Daily pulse oximetry where you measure your oxygen levels may be useful but there are mixed views on this with some clinicians having concerns about whether the tool is used properly and whether people are correctly able to interpret the results. Ensure you know how to use and interpret one before considering it.
Exercise tolerance is very specific to each individual and this is one of the rare occasions you may find a physiotherapist encouraging rest. You should have a discussion with your healthcare professional to ensure it is safe to begin exercising after covid, pushing through is not always the right thing. Any exercise should be paced and increased only gradually as tolerated. Listen to your body’s response and avoid overdoing it. The British Medical Journal are advising to only start exercising after 7 days being free of symptoms and gradually building up over a period of weeks. Other self management tips would be to ensure you are getting enough sleep, eating well, drinking plenty of water, not smoking and limiting alcohol and caffeine intake. These may seem obvious but little changes can make a big difference to your physical and mental health.
If you are finding that you are having persistent symptoms after contracting covid do get in touch with your healthcare professional for quality advice. In the meantime you can find some useful resources here: https://www.yourcovidrecovery.nhs.uk
As yet there is not a huge amount of research on long covid due to the duration of the pandemic as well as most of the focus being on critical and acute care. But research, as ever, continues and as the picture broadens over time we can hope and expect that our understanding of long covid will continue to improve. If you would like to get involved in research around long covid there are a variety of avenues, perhaps the simplest of which is to download the ZOE COVID symptom study app and/or joining this facebook support group “Covid 19 - Patient Recovery & Rehab Forum”.
Sian Midwinter MSc MCSP
Chartered Physiotherapist in Respiratory Care – The Lung Physio
Midwinter Physiotherapy
References.
https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3026
https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/long-covid