Exercise

Spending time in hospital or being ill at home with COVID-19 can result in a significant reduction in muscle strength, particularly in your legs. This can be for a number of reasons, but mainly due to inactivity.

It’s not harmful to get out of breath when doing physical activity, this is a normal response. When you are doing physical activity, it is ok to feel moderately breathless (able to say five words before taking a breath), however, if you are too breathless to speak, slow down until your breathing improves.

Try not to get so breathless that you have to stop immediately.

Remember to pace your activities. You might have been given some exercises to do in hospital or in the community by a physiotherapist.

Make sure you keep doing these regularly, however, if you are unsure contact your physiotherapist, GP or healthcare professional.

Do not overdo it, try to increase your activity levels slowly.

Social life and hobbies

When you’ve been seriously ill, you may feel differently about things and you may not want to do things you used to enjoy. You may:

• not feel like seeing lots of people at once
• find it difficult to concentrate
• find it hard to follow a TV programme.

Your concentration will get better and your memory will usually improve.

Go to leaflet…

• Long Covid
• Managing your breathing
• Managing your cough and clearing your chest
• Tiredness and fatigue
• Emotional impact
• Communication and changes to your voice
• Food and diet
• Quit smoking
• Getting active

Contact us