Mayo Clinic: 5 ‘early care tips’ for people with long COVID

Editor's Note

Greg Vanichkachorn, director of Mayo Clinic's COVID Activity Rehabilitation Program and a physician in Mayo’s Division of Public Health, Infectious Diseases, and Occupational Medicine, alongside other Mayo Clinic experts, has visited with hundreds of patients diagnosed with long COVID and shared his observations on early recovery steps, Healthcare Purchasing News (HPN) April 11 reports.

According to Vanichkachorn and HPN, here are five tips impacted individuals can act on in the early stages to start recovering from long COVID:

1. Allow time for recovery. “Patients who try to return to their normal lifestyle too quickly experience a flare of fatigue, shortness of breath and muscle aches that can last for hours or days,” the article noted.
2. Hydrate and eat healthy foods. “It is important to take in a good amount of hydration,” or about 2.7 to 3.7 liters per day, adhere to “a balanced, Mediterranean diet” that avoids processed and high-fat foods.
3. Focus on resistance activity. Instead of going for cardiovascular exercise, “the most difficult type of activity for patients” with long COVID, “start with resistance activities, such as working with a resistance band, light free weights, yoga, or Pilates,” Vanichkachorn said.
4. Optimize sleep. “Many patients with long COVID take naps, disrupting sleep schedules,” Vanichkachorn cautioned, urging patients to try some simple strategies to ensure their sleep area is ideal and find better sleep.
5. Olfactory retraining. This recommendation is for individuals experiencing “prolonged troubles with taste and smell after acute COVID infection” and wish to speed up recovery, which most often happens within 6 to 12 months.

The effects of long COVID are receiving renewed focus after the Biden administration tasked Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra to coordinate a “federal response to the long-term health effects of COVID-19” on April 5, OR Manager reported. The directive includes reporting “on federal services and supports available” and publishing a national research plan for long COVID-19 that builds on existing efforts to treat the condition.