I spent the first two weeks of January in bed, isolating myself in my room because I had tested positive for covid. On the 11th, I put on my sneakers and decided to celebrate my newfound freedom with a jog through my local park.
Before Christmas, I had been building my stamina through the NHS’s trusted Couch to 5k app. But on my first post-Covid jog, I was out of breath within 10 minutes and more than a little tempted to say goodbye and go home. All my progress, it seemed, had vanished.
“You decondition much faster than you think.explains Dr. David Salman, Clinical Academic Fellow in Primary Care at Imperial College. Also, exercising too much after bed rest can affect his breathing and musculoskeletal system, making him more likely to sprain, for example.
That’s part of the reason experts recommend a “staged” return to exercise after Covid-19, suggesting that you literally walk before you can run. However, this is not just to protect you from a sprained ankle. “This approach is to make sure the body’s immune system isn’t too challenged too early,” says Dr Manoj Sivan, clinical associate professor in rehabilitation medicine at the University of Leeds.
If you had symptoms while you had Covid, “that means your immune system has had a little bit of a hard time controlling this infection,” says Dr. Sivan. He must keep this in mind during recovery, even if he feels fine now. “Even if the person no longer shows symptoms, we don’t know if the immune system is fully restored or not,” explains Dr. Sivan. He recommends gradually increasing your activity level.
If you overdo it too soon, you could delay your recovery. “When a person immediately puts effort into that [pre-Covid] activity level, they are at risk of new symptoms and worsening of existing symptoms,” says Dr. Sivan. “We think it’s because their immune system isn’t ready for that kind of challenge yet.”
Returning to your usual exercise regimen before a full recovery also increases your risk of developing more serious conditions such as “post-exertional malaise” (PEM), according to advice published by the World Health Organization. PEM can affect your energy levels, concentration, sleep, and memory and can cause muscle and joint pain. If you experience it, you should avoid strenuous activity and try to conserve your energy.
Continuing to push yourself too hard has other risks as well. “After illness, there’s a period where you have to be very careful not to challenge your immune system too much because if you continue to do that and it keeps failing, it could become permanently dysfunctional, and that’s what can lead to long-term problems like chronic fatigue syndrome,” says Dr. Sivan.
How should we exercise safely after Covid-19?
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