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Covid fatigue is no joke. As an Elite Athlete I'm training 20-30 hours a week. I got covid last year (triple vaxed) and it wiped me out for a good 6 months. It
by thewizardofaus 4y ago
Covid fatigue is no joke.
As an Elite Athlete I'm training 20-30 hours a week. I got covid last year (triple vaxed) and it wiped me out for a good 6 months. It took me 3 weeks to be able to walk longer than a minute without needing to lay down for the rest of the day and sleep.
I have dealt with fatigue problems for 6 months and only just now, do I feel like I'm getting "back to normal".
The most frustrating thing is alot of people are dismissive of the symptoms and generally say, "Oh yeah, I get tired too" but fail to understand the severity of it as they haven't experienced it.
I have a fairly good understanding of my body and the associated symptoms of overtraining/fatigue in a heavy training cycle but covid fatigue was soemthing completely different.
- ribs 4y agoFrom my experience, this stuff isn’t limited to COVID-19, and I don’t mean that to minimize your experience with it. I just want to note that I had the flu in 2013; my temperature got up to 104F, and I was sub-par for about that same amount of time; it was about 6 months before I felt back to 100%.
- journey_16162 4y agoAre you back to training? Or do you still need to be careful? Could you share some tips about pacing / not triggerring PEMs?
- djtango 4y agoOuch that's a really serious and painful setback to your training! Sorry to hear about your struggles. Are you back to normal now? Any lingering issues eg cardio/breathing
- _kulang 4y agoSimilar experience — and interestingly it can be seen in my resting heart rate over time and VO2 inference on my watch. The acute fatigue was quite bad (and is what people seem to talk about) but the milder lingering fatigue reduced my running and lifting performance across the board and left me tired in the late afternoon rather than the evening. It’s not life altering per se, but it impacted my routines and productivity noticeably. Thankfully after 5 months I seem to have kicked it fully, and am ripe for another infection. Needless to say I got the bivalent booster before the holidays
- twawaaay 4y agoResting heart rate and HRV are super useful. In my case, I knew I was going to be sick before I felt symptoms just from the sleep data. On Garmin you can indicate you are sick and it will stop your poor training from disrupting your VO2 inference.
- zzzeek 4y agoI had very mild COVID in September and I totally have this problem . I have a constant urge to just go to sleep and have been afternoon napping fairly often, compared to my previous habits of never napping ever. I'm hopeful that most people talk about it lifting after six months
- twawaaay 4y agoI feel for you. This is such a strange virus. My whole family got covid so I expected to be next. But I only needed to take 2 days off at work and I paused my training for just 3 days and was almost back to my normal HR/pace in less than a week since I got first symptoms. It took me 3 more weeks before I started getting negative test results.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Izkata 4y ago> This is such a strange virus. This effect was previously known as post-viral fatigue. It's not unique to covid.
- dontlaugh 4y agoWhat is unusual is how long it lasts and, to some extent, how severe it can be.
- psychphysic 4y agoNot really it's just got various names. chronic fatigue syndrome, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, post viral fatigue... Even straight up depression. When billions of people catch the same virus unintuitive things happen. Maybe it's a strange virus (by what metric?) But it was definitely psychologically a very strange time.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- RandomWorker 4y agoThat sucks. My experience was to get back to training fairly soon (2 weeks after fever went away). After that training session I knew I should rest more and took an additional 2 weeks off. Then built back up my regular training starting at 10% volume and increasing at 10% increases each week. After 3 months I was back to regular volume. My suggestion is that everyone take at least two weeks off, and build up volume very conservatively. I’ve had lots of conversations with other people that love to train. It’s hard to take it easy and do less because we love training, but this protocol seems to work for many. Maybe it’s too conservative and everyone is different.
- spamizbad 4y agoThat's a very smart approach, and one my cyclist friend used when recovering from COVID in June of 2020. Took it easy for the rest of the year and put up some good numbers in 2021 and had his best year in 2022.
- jupp0r 4y agoIt's kind if important whether you develop long covid or not. If you don't then you don't need a long break, if you do, you could be out for months or forever.
- ggm 4y agoAnd, exercise makes it worse for some people. So "push through" is a possibly terrible idea.
- psychphysic 4y agoSeems like long COVID and CFS are being conflated here.
- dTal 4y agoNot really, they're basically the same thing. Except hopefully you (eventually) recover from long covid. If you don't recover, it's medically indistinguishable. Like CFS, "pushing through" can worsen symptoms - permanently.
- eismcc 4y agoSimilar situation. Did a 70.3 in June and then was laid out flat like I had never been before. My watch was telling me numbers that looked like I did a full Ironman every day. For months. I found that liver support supplements made a measurable impact.
- nradov 4y agoWhat are liver supper supplements? Is there any research on this?
- eismcc 4y agoI found popular ones on Amazon. I tried it because of doing research on my high numbers for Epstein-Barr (aka mono). I found via NIH papers that liver issues are common with mono patients so I figured I could be having that since there were no other obvious blood results. I had Covid beforehand and when I had extreme fatigue I had the mono tests done. The EBV numbers were off the charts and then I found some NIH paper talking about how it’s thought Covid can reactivate EBV. My biometrics jumped almost immediately up on my Garmin and stayed there. It was a life changer.
- nvahalik 4y agoIt's funny you mention that—I had Mono over a decade ago and it was a long ordeal for me. Multiple weeks of fatigue and feeling like crap. Mono was way worse than Covid in my instance—but they felt very similar.
- nradov 4y agoWhat is the active ingredient of that supplement?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- eismcc 4y agoLiver Cleanse Detox & Repair Formula - Herbal Liver Support Supplement with Milk Thistle Dandelion Root Organic Turmeric and Artichoke Extract for Liver Health - Silymarin Milk Thistle Detox Capsules https://a.co/d/i9QCiCV https://a.co/d/i9QCiCV
- TurkishPoptart 4y ago[flagged]
- textbookrental 4y agoOr very worth it I guess.
- Godel_unicode 4y agoHard to know that without knowing what would have happened otherwise, yeah? This was not the worst possible result.
- jchw 4y agoYou can't draw conclusions like this from one data point, because there's no baseline to compare it to. Not sure what kind of productive discussion you are expecting here.
- TillE 4y agoWorth what? The personal "cost" of the vaccine, outside of some extremely rare outliers, is a day or two of discomfort.
- carabiner 4y agoMy friend is in his 50s, pudgy and kinda athletic but not elite, and he just had mild symptoms for a week. I wonder if "athlete's heart" could be compounding effects in some way?
- chiefalchemist 4y agoHave you been tested for Epstein Barr by any chance?
- SnowHill9902 4y ago[flagged]
- TechBro8615 4y agoIf OP is located in Australia as his username suggests, then he likely didn't have much of a choice.
- SergeAx 4y ago> walk longer than a minute without needing to lay down for the rest of the day and sleep I'm sorry, do you mean it literally?
- Invictus0 4y agoNot OP but yes, literally. A friend of mine has long covid, used to run marathons. For a time he was unable to go up the stairs without crashing hard.
- SergeAx 4y agoI was asking beacause a friend of a friend has the similar condition after catastrophic motorbike crash. He spent a month on a medical bed and then had to learn walking again. During that, he had to rest a lot after a minute of walking. I can't believe that COVID can make the same near-death effect on a body. Note: I had mild-to-serious COVID myself with severe fever and 12% of lungs damaged, and was literally one day from rushing to the hospital. 0/10 will not recommend, had to fight with after effects, but nothing even near what you or OP described.
- switch007 4y agoI find it so bizarre that in almost every discussion of long COVID, an athlete who can no longer make it up a flight of stairs is invariably referenced or partakes in the discussion. I'm amazed how many people know athletes. And it's never just extra fatigue. It's can't walk for 60 seconds, or up a flight of stairs, or open a jar. N.B. I'm not denying post-viral fatigue. I've experienced it myself multiple times