Sports medicine doctor Florian Egger explains how much stress is good after infections – and when it can become dangerous.
Dr. Egger, if you have a cough or fever, doctors like to prescribe a break from sports. Why actually?
On the one hand, load tolerance plays a role here. In short: Anyone who is sick cannot exercise to their full potential and also finds the exertion unpleasant. Another point: Infections often affect multiple organ systems, and there is a risk that the infection will not heal well if the body does not get enough rest. Rarely, complications such as myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, can occur. Viruses are usually the trigger, as well as bacteria or other pathogens.
Athletes in particular fear inflammation of the heart muscle. What does “rare” mean in numbers?
Basically it can be said: Anyone who recovers well from an infection can assume that their risk is low. Recently, Covid-19 sufferers have been researched quite well; for example, there is an interesting study with 145 sports-loving students. All were examined after the acute phase of the disease – two of them showed signs of myocarditis. This corresponds to 1.4 percent and roughly corresponds to the frequency that we also know from other viral infections. Here it is also in the low single-digit percentage range.
What does this mean for recreational athletes? Certainly very few of them go after one A cold go to the doctor and have your blood taken.