Scientists from the University of Leeds found that patients experiencing long COVID are receiving “inconsistent advice” on how to resume physical activities.
They found that some health care professionals were recommending patients should gradually increase their physical activity levels, but the researchers warn this could result in symptoms getting worse.
Instead, they say patients should be encouraged to “pace” their return to exercise, doing enough to stay within their energy reserves so as not to cause a flare-up of symptoms.
The research is published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and was conducted by Dr. Manoj Sivan et al.
In the paper, the team said physical activity is likely to play a part in helping people to recover from long COVID, but a delicate balance had to be found between doing too much and not enough.
They tested nearly 500 people with long COVID. On average, these people had been living with the condition for more than a year.
The vast majority (75%) reported that physical activity made their symptoms worse, 20% said physical activity sometimes improved symptoms and sometimes made symptoms worse, 1% noted it improved them, with the remainder noting it had no effect on symptoms.
Many of the respondents said when they were able to be active, it helped improve their mental health and well-being.
The survey also looked at the sources of information long COVID patients received about resuming physical activity. Just under half (46%) received advice from a health care professional.
The second most popular form of advice was for patients to follow graded exercise therapy, where activity is incrementally increased to improve exercise tolerance. The researchers say graded exercise therapy risks some patients doing too much, too soon.
A paced return to exercise, which is the recommended form of therapy in most long COVID cases, was the fourth most popular form of advice.
The team says the link between physical activity and the long COVID condition is not similar to other long-term health problems—in that pushing for more activity is not always good in long COVID, and there needs to be careful planning and a structured tailor-made program to become active again.
People with long COVID who are inactive have the risk of other chronic health problems such as cardiovascular disease, depression, and reduced quality of life.
These people urgently need to find the best way to manage the growing numbers of people now living with long COVID.
If you care about COVID, please read studies about drug duo that may cure COVID-19, and new antiviral drug to treat COVID-19, flu, other viral infection.
For more information about COVID, please see recent studies that some antibodies may cause severe COVID-19, and results showing this new drug can block multiple COVID-19 variants.
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