COVID-19 survivors have a high chance of developing cardiovascular conditions, according to studies. Here are concrete tips from the experts to minimize risk.
Before Jennifer Fagan contracted ‘1, she considered herself a fitness enthusiast. She used to go running two or three times a week and almost every other day she took yoga classes with heat, a vigorous exercise. But several weeks after recovering from the early stages of the illness, she continued to experience excruciating chest pain and felt powerless all the time. In June, she started having palpitations. “I told my doctor that I felt like I was in the body of a 70- or 80-year-old person,” Fagan recalled.
She went to a cardiologist and a pulmonologist, but the specialists could not find any health problems in the initial tests carried out on this 48-year-old woman. So Fagan went back to his running routine. Then, in December 2020, she went into cardiac arrest after returning from a slow two-mile walk.
At first, neither her husband nor the EMS workers could figure out what had gone wrong. She was taken to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed her with a rare inflammation of the heart muscle known as myocarditis and implanted a defibrillator to stabilize her heart. But her heart problems did not end there. While she was in the hospital, Fagan started having bouts of extreme dizziness. And she has since experienced a host of covid symptoms ranging from fatigue to shortness of breath to rapid or irregular heartbeats.
Studies estimate that 10% to 30% of people infected with the coronavirus may develop long-term symptoms . And in a recent analysis of Department of Veterans Affairs health records of more than 150,000 people who contracted COVID-19, researchers found that Covid survivors were at “substantial” risk of developing cardiovascular disease.up to a year after their initial illness, even if their infections never brought them to the hospital. Compared to millions of other patients who were never infected, Covid survivors were 63 percent more likely to have a heart attack and 52 percent more likely to have a stroke. They also had a higher risk of heart failure, irregular heart rhythms, blood clots, and inflammatory disorders such as pericarditis and myocarditis.
The problem is that traditional medical tests to diagnose heart disease — such as EKGs, ultrasounds and other functional tests of the heart — often show that people who have had COVID-19 have no obvious heart damage. “When we do all those tests, they actually look pretty good,” says Ruwanthi Titano, a cardiologist at the Post-Covid Care Center at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. As a result, doctors have had to reimagine how they diagnose and treat people with heart problems that persist long after a coronavirus infection.
If you have heart-related symptoms, whether it’s chest tightness or pain, shortness of breath, fast or skipped heartbeat, dizziness, or extreme fatigue, your healthcare provider may want to perform these basic tests to rule out any abnormalities or damage in the cardiovascular system, Titano said. But new studies suggest the culprit may be damage to nerve fibers that help control circulation. And this damage has a name: small fiber neuropathy.
Fortunately, the tools already exist to treat many types of post-Covid neuropathy. “People are not going to have to live with this for the rest of their lives,” said Salim Hayek, a cardiologist and co-director of the Persistent COVID-19 Clinic at Michigan Medicine in Ann Arbor. “The vast majority of the time, these symptoms, which range from palpitations to dizziness, resolve within six months of treatment.”
According to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most people who recover from COVID-19 get better when they receive personalized physical and mental rehabilitation services .
Breathing exercises
Amy Ridgway, a physical therapist and manager of Emory Outpatient Rehabilitation in Partnership with Select Physical Therapy, said many persistent Covid patients can begin to see immediate improvement with a few simple breathing exercises. “One of the first she said. Practicing deep abdominal breathing every day allows your lungs to absorb
much-needed oxygen and is known to help reduce pain and anxiety . “It’s a great
technique for anyone,” says Ridgway.
manage energy
If you experience flare-ups of symptoms after any type of exertion, a therapist may recommend that you manage your daily activity levels or keep a diary to help you anticipate which activities may be too mentally or physically taxing. This self-monitoring technique, often used by those who suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome (also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis), assumes that people have a certain amount of energy that they can expend each day. So small tasks like showering or getting dressed can use less energy, while vacuuming or walking to the end of your driveway can drain your energy much faster, leading to something called post- exercise malaise .
Conserving energy throughout the day can help reduce post-Covid fatigue as patients recover, Ridgway said. “It’s a little bit of a different approach to treatment than a lot of other physical therapies, but we want to make sure we’re really doing everything we can to empower these patients.”
Strength and aerobic exercises while sitting
Doctors and therapists agree that people with persistent COVID need to return to exercising at a very slow pace, often starting with relearning basic aerobic conditioning and doing recumbent strength exercises before progressing to more intense upright movements. vertical. This may include trying to engage your core in a supine or lateral position, performing balance exercises, or doing seated cardio on a recumbent bike or rowing machine. Your doctor will likely monitor your heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen levels while you do these exercises and make sure you don’t have skipping heartbeats or any other cardiovascular symptoms, Titano explains.
Walking and other aerobic exercises in an upright position
Over time, you may get comfortable trying an elliptical or walking on a treadmill. Your doctor or physical therapist may also ask you to count your steps or try to climb the stairs in your house a certain number of times a day. One of the goals Fagan’s cardiologist set was to walk 5,000 steps a day, a goal Fagan suggested in October 2021. “We’re now in March and I just hit it,” he said.
