During your recovery from any illness, including coronavirus (COVID-19), you may experience fatigue. Fatigue is more than tiredness, it can be debilitating and affects what you are able and want to do. Please see resources for more detail on Fatigue.

Sometimes the smallest amount of physical, mental, emotional, or social activity can trigger post-exertional malaise (PEM), also known as Post Exertional Symptom Exacerbation (PESE), resulting in a worsening of symptoms, and leading to a decrease in day-to-day activity. The worsening of symptoms is often delayed by hours or days and relative improvement can take much longer to achieve. It is not always apparent when PEM might occur which makes it one of the more difficult symptoms to recognise and manage.

Despite exercise and activity being essential for health and wellbeing, if PEM is suspected a different approach is required. Please see Post-Exertional Symptom Exacerbation — Long COVID Physio

Graded exercise therapy should not be recommended for people with post-exertional symptom exacerbation.

 

Please see the resources below for more information on fatigue.

Long COVID: Fatigue | Long-term effects of COVID-19 (nhsinform.scot) 

long-covid-fatigue-essential-guide.pdf (chss.org.uk) 

Recovering from COVID-19: Post viral-fatigue and conserving energy - RCOT 

Fatigue - C19-YRS.me 

NHS Inform has information on dealing with crashes linked to Post Exertional Malaise this is a useful guide.

Long Covid & Me Podcast, Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland, Episode 1

 

Published: 02/05/2024 09:42