Tips for optimising your COVID recovery

COVID Recovery

Many people are falling ill with COVID.

When you test positive for COVID, you are told to stay at home, isolate, and rest for a period of time (in Western Australia it’s a minimum of 7 days of isolation or until you are symptom free).

But is there anything you can do to optimise your recovery?

The good news is there is a lot you can do.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has developed a brilliant resource called Support for Rehabilitation Self-Management after COVID-19-Related Illness.

WHO-COVID-Rehabilitation-Leaflet

The WHO produced the leaflet for adults who have been severely unwell and admitted to hospital with COVID. But personally, I think this resource contains a lot of good practical advice for anyone who gets COVID.

Below I share a few ideas and strategies from this resource.

1. Lower your expectations

When you have COVID, everything feels harder to do. For this reason, you can’t expect to keep working at the same intensity that you usually would. The WHO recommends setting the bar low. It states:

“Adjust your expectations for what you can do in a day. Set realistic goals based on how you are feeling. When you are very tired, breathless, or weak, even getting out of bed, washing, and dressing can be achievements.”

2. Look for ways to conserve your energy

Are there any tools, services, or people that can make your life a little easier? You’re going to feel low in energy (remember, your body is busy fighting a virus!), so you need to conserve the remaining energy you have.

The WHO recommends:

• Doing tasks sitting down when you can
• Avoiding tasks that require you to stand, bend down, reach high, or squat for long periods
• Factoring in time to rest during the day
• Getting people to bring you healthy meals and/or help with shopping
• Doing light tasks between heavier ones

If you haven’t got COVID yet, think about what you can do now (while you are healthy and well) to make life easier for your future self. It’s best to do whatever you can to minimise the risk of catching COVID in first place.

Keep wearing a mask. This is simple, easy, and effective. Even if you don’t have to weak a mask and no one else is wearing one, studies show wearing a mask makes a big difference in protecting you from the virus.

But let’s say you still end up catching COVID. What would make life easier for a sick version of you? Perhaps a few healthy homemade meals in the freezer would do the trick. Or having a stash of items that make you feel good and lift your spirits (e.g., nice music, healthy snacks, and good books).

3. Give your brain a break

Use post-it note reminders

COVID can mess with your memory, attention, and ability to think clearly. Instead of feeling frustrated with yourself (“What’s wrong with my brain?”), there are simple things you can do to take the pressure off and ease the mental load. The WHO suggests the following practical strategies:

• Engage in gentle physical activity (more on this below).
• Challenge your brain (e.g., read, start a new hobby, or do a puzzle)
• Set up prompts to remind you to do certain activities (e.g., write a list and notes to yourself)
• Break down activities into baby steps

4. Stay connected

We are social creatures. We are wired for connection. During your COVID recovery, it’s important to reach out to friends and family members. The WHO states:

“Talking with others can help to reduce the stress and may also help you in finding solutions for challenges in your recovery journey.”

Chatting can be an uplifting activity, but it also takes energy to do. If you find yourself feeling a bit tired and out of breath, let the person you’re talking with know that you need to wrap things up or take a little break.

Remember, your top priority is to conserve your energy and rest so you recover well.

5. Engage in gentle exercises

The WHO stresses that exercise is an important part of your COVID recovery. Engaging in physical activity is going to help you rebuild your strength, boost your brainpower and improve your mood and energy levels.

But one thing is clear . . .

If you feel sick, dizzy, and/or light headed, you shouldn’t be exercising.

In this article, senior lecturer Clarice Tang recommends returning to exercise only if you have not experienced any COVID-related symptoms for at least seven days.

When you do feel ready to get back into exercising, don’t overexert yourself. Ease into it by creating some tiny exercise habits. The WHO recommends a number of simple exercises you can do, such as bicep curls, squats against a wall, and step-ups.

6. Boost your fruit and vegetable consumption

Eat the rainbow

The WHO states “Eating well and drinking water/juice are important to your recovery” and “Eating sufficiently and healthily is important to your overall wellbeing”.

For these reasons, resist the urge to order fish and chips or a pizza from Uber Eats. If you have the energy, prepare a simple healthy meal. Every meal you eat that is packed full of nutrients is likely to take you one step further to making a full recovery.

Research suggests certain nutrients (particularly vitamin C and D and Zinc), which you get through consuming plant and whole foods, can improve your immune function.

7. Get good quality sleep

The WHO recommends sticking to a regular sleeping and waking up time. If you’re not sure what an optimal sleep and wake time is, use an online sleep calculator to work this out.

The WHO also acknowledges that stress can negatively impact on your ability to get restorative sleep. For this reason, it suggests adding some simple relaxation activities before bed time.

8. Decrease stress

Having COVID can be stressful. It can bring up a lot of fear and anxiety (“Will I get better? What if I get long COVID?”). The WHO suggests engaging in “relaxing activities that do not make you too tired”. Why not try listening to music or a podcast, reading, or doing a guided meditation?

To sum up

There’s a lot you can do to optimise your COVID recovery. If you follow the WHO’s recovery recommendations and you’re still not feeling 100% come day 8 (when isolation ends), don’t panic. Dr Norman Swann states on the recent Coronacast episode that Omicron tends to knock you about for 3-4 weeks.

So, go easy on yourself. Be patient. Healing from COVID takes time.

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What activities help you get through tough times?

Over the years, I’ve experimented with a range of weird and wonderful stress-busting activities, including yoga, pilates, meditation classes, floatation tanks, massages, acupuncture, and sound healings (to name a few).

I’ll be the first to admit that cash-grabbing wellness gurus and advertisers have sucked me in.

In our capitalist culture, we’re sold this idea that in order to relax, we need to spend big dollars. But I now realise that the best relaxation experiences are cheap or free.

In this blog, I want to share one of my favourite relaxation practices: cooking.

I’ve created rituals around cooking that help me stay calm, grounded, and focused throughout the day.

These days, cooking is my number one way to relax. My kitchen is my happy place, and it can be your happy place, too.

Perhaps this sounds a bit strange. But hear me out.

I haven’t always found cooking to be relaxing or particularly enjoyable.

Being half Italian, I used to get involved with the occasional food tradition, such as tomato sauce-making day. But it wasn’t like I grew up with the delicious smells of homecooked food wafting through the house.

My teenage years and early twenties were filled with processed junk foods: a dizzying array of Hungry Jacks combos, greasy fish and chips, and takeaway meat lovers pizzas.

Cooking was a relaxation practice I stumbled upon much later in life.

Since upping my kitchen game and trading the expensive wellness activities for a sharp knife, solid chopping board, and fresh vegetables, my savings and confidence have grown.

How does one cultivate calm in the kitchen?

To emerge from the kitchen in a calm and tranquil state, a few conditions have to be in place:

1. You cannot feel rushed
2. Your kitchen counter must be clean and clutter-free
3. You need a sharp knife to chop with
4. Your phone must be out of sight (like most things in life, it’s best not to multitask)

If these conditions are met, cooking can feel like a meditation or an empowering yoga class.

I’m not the only person who feels this way.

In the book ‘Uncook Yourself: A Ratbag’s Rules for Life’, Nat’s What I Reckon shares how he cooks his way through tough times. He writes:

“I reckon getting in the kitchen and un-cooking yourself from the tough moments in your head every now and then is a way better self-help routine than throwing five grand at some short-lived back pat from a cash grabbing blowhard at a self-help seminar just to tell you you’re not doing life right.”

How does cooking lead to a sense of calm? What are the underlying mechanisms?

One reason is you need to focus your mind.

When chopping with a sharp knife, you must pay attention to what you’re doing. If you get distracted, and I have (many times), you might pay the price with a cut to the finger.

Chopping is also a repetitive activity that delivers an immediate outcome. One minute, the bok choy is on the chopping board in full form; the next, it has been chopped and is ready for tonight’s stir-fry.

Cooking also requires you to slow down.

When you’re online, you tend to jump around in a frenzy. But when you’re cooking, you have to follow a recipe step-by-step. This requires focus. This focus helps to clear your mind.

Cooking also gives you a sense of control, power, and agency. As food journalist Michael Pollan says:

“Eating out breeds helplessness, dependence and ignorance, and eventually, it undermines any sense of responsibility.”

When you cook, you’re in control of the process (not some big corporate fast food company). Plus, compared to that commodified wellness experience, cooking is super cheap (all it costs is the price of a few ingredients).

It also produces a nourishing meal at the end. That meal will give you energy, help regulate your mood, and keep you calm and steady.

Food impacts your brain

In the book ‘The Food Mood Connection’, Uma Naidoo argues that to decrease anxiety, you should pay attention to what you’re eating. She writes:

“A crucial part of battling anxiety is making sure your diet is full of foods that are calming and free of foods that put you on edge.”

What foods could put you on edge?

Fast foods and highly processed foods. These foods (e.g., greasy hot chips and baked goods) are problematic because they lack fibre and the fragile micronutrients and phytochemicals needed for good brain health.

Naidoo recommends increasing your fibre intake by consuming more plants and whole foods, such as beans, brown rice, baked potatoes with the skin on, broccoli, pears, apples, and oats.

“But isn’t it easier and cheaper to buy takeaway?”

A few years ago, I delivered a talk called ‘Rediscovering the Ancient Art of Thrift’ at a local library. In my presentation, I shared the thrifty practice of avoiding eating out and cooking meals at home.

At this point in the presentation, an elderly gentleman put up his hand and said:

“But vegetables are expensive. Why not just get McDonald’s? It’s cheap, and there’s no cleaning up at the end.”

I immediately thought of a friend who, at the time, ate only McDonald’s (for breakfast, lunch, and dinner). His housemates had confided in me that his feet had developed a pungent odour.

Although my diet was far from perfect, I was concerned. If my friend kept going down this path, I could see him heading for serious trouble.

Fast forward a year: How was my friend doing?

He was not well.

He had put on a significant amount of weight and seemed depressed, rarely leaving his room except to get his next McDonald’s meal (back in those days, there was no Uber Eats).

I explained to this elderly gentleman in the library workshop:

“Maybe you’ll save a bit of time and money in the short term [buying the fast food], but eating processed food will cost you down the track. It will cost you in medical bills and poor health. Your quality of life will suffer.”

He nodded, but I could tell he wasn’t entirely convinced.

Cultivating calm and confidence in the kitchen

Until you’ve cut out the processed junk food, allowed a couple of weeks for your tastebuds to readjust, and developed the habit of home cooking, it’s easy to be sceptical. After all, we live in a world that values convenience. Opening an app, pressing a button, and having dinner delivered to your door in less than 20 minutes has some definite appeal.

But every time you order Uber Eats, you miss out on a valuable opportunity to practice slowing down and calming your mind. You also undermine your cooking skills.

If you haven’t developed the habit of cooking or cooking makes you feel anxious, there are a few simple things you can do to cultivate calm and confidence in the kitchen:

1. Give yourself permission to make a mess

Cooking is a messy process. While I may start with a clean kitchen bench, it quickly becomes a mess. That’s how the process goes (I try to clean as I go).

It’s also okay to mess up a meal. Not every meal is going to be an absolute winner. In ‘The Four Hour Chef’, Tim Ferris encourages the reader to see meals that don’t work out as cheap cooking classes. Learn the lesson and move on.

2. Break down the process

When you think of cooking as one activity, it can feel overwhelming. I divide the cooking process into two stages:

1) Preparing the mise en place: chopping vegetables, taking out utensils, etc, and
2) Pulling it all together: cooking the dish.

In the morning, I take out all the ingredients for a dish so they are ready to go when I need to take a break from my work. I chop earlier in the day and cook the dish in the afternoon/early evening.

If I’m overwhelmed by the idea of chopping vegetables, I break it down to chopping just one vegetable at a time. I’ll say to myself:

“Just chop the capsicum. That’s all you need to do.”

3. Invest in good tools

It’s not fun chopping with a knife with a dull blade. A sharp knife combined with a lovely chopping board makes all the difference.

4. Learn how to chop

Learning basic chopping skills is a game changer. With the proper technique and a sharp knife, there’s no need to worry about cutting yourself. You can chop with ease.

I took a chopping skills course with the online cooking school Rouxbe, but you can find YouTube videos teaching you good chopping techniques.

5. Take your time

You’re not running a restaurant. You don’t have to rush to get meals out to hungry customers. Take your time and enjoy the process of chopping each vegetable.

To sum up

If approached with the right mindset, cooking can deliver a sense of calm and ground you in the present moment. You also get to experience the mental and physical benefits of a nourishing home-cooked meal. The bonus extra is saving a bit of money.

So, what are you waiting for? Pull out some ingredients and start cooking today.

Your brain is your most precious asset.

It goes without saying that your brain is the reason you can speak, learn, and think.

With this in mind, your brain is worth protecting from anything that may cause it harm.

There is a growing body of evidence that shows COVID can cause cognitive impairment, even in ‘mild’ cases.

In this blog, I want to share with you some important information and science-based tools that you can use to protect yourself from this novel virus as well as other viruses.

Whilst I’m not a medical doctor, I have a research background. I’m able to access and stay up to date with the latest scientific studies.

I’ve found following the latest research has helped me to move from feeling overwhelmed by the pandemic to empowered. It’s my hope the information in this article will help you feel empowered too.

What COVID does to the brain

If you care about learning and cognition, it’s important to understand how COVID can impact the brain.

A study published in the Lancet Medical Journal found people who had recovered from COVID experienced cognitive impairments in a range of areas. These areas included executive function (e.g., planning and problem solving), focused attention, memory, and language functions.

The researchers pointed out that these cognitive impairments were found in people who had remained at home with just mild symptoms and did not need to be hospitalised.

Other studies have found being reinfected with COVID increases your risk of getting long COVID. Long COVID can leave you with a cluster of health problems such as brain fog, fatigue, anxiety, depression, chest pain, and loss of taste and smell.

As one long COVID sufferer said:

“You can lose your quality of life and everything that makes you “you” faster than you dreamed possible.”

COVID is an airborne virus

When COVID first came on the scene back in 2020, public health campaigns focused primarily on encouraging people to wash their hands and socially distance.

But since then, we’ve learnt a lot more about how this virus works. We now know that COVID is an airborne virus. It travels like cigarette smoke and the virus particles can remain in the air for hours.

It can be hard to imagine how a person’s breath (potentially containing virus particles) occupies an indoor space. This is why a group of Aerosol research scientists started an art project called #WeAddAerosols. They created a number of images to help people visualise shared breath in an indoor space (see example below from Dr Amy Tan’s Twitter feed).

#WeAddAerosols

We also now know that vaccinations are not enough on their own. As Professor Quentin Grafton and a team of health experts stated in their excellent submission to the long COVID inquiry in Australia:

“Data show that being fully vaccinated with three (or more) doses in the recent past provides ~90% protection against severe COVID infection, hospitalisation, and death. Data also show from large studies that vaccine protection against long COVID syndrome is substantially lower and much more variable, between 15-66%”

This is why it’s really important to adopt a number of protective measures, especially if your government has weakened public health measures.

What can you do to protect yourself from COVID?

A really simple thing you can do is keep an eye on indoor carbon dioxide (CO2) levels.

CO2 is a proxy for indoor air quality.

Dr David Berger at CO2 Radical explains it like this:

“We all breathe in oxygen and breathe out CO2, which means CO2 level in an indoor space increases over time, depending how many people there are in the room and how well it is ventilated.

That means the CO2 level in an indoor space gives an idea of how fresh or stale the air is. If the CO2 level is too high, it means the air is stale and the space needs more ventilation. The more stale the air is, the greater the number of germs, such as coronaviruses, in each breath you take, so the more likely you are to get infected.”

Monitoring CO2 can alert you to COVID risks indoors but it can also prevent sleepiness and poor concentration.

If you’ve ever found yourself falling asleep or struggling to concentrate in a class, meeting, or on long car drive, this may have been due to excessively high CO2 levels.

One study looked at the impact CO2 had on office workers’ cognitive function. The researchers created a simulated office environment and changed the CO2 levels in the office space. They then made the office workers perform various cognitive tasks under the different CO2 conditions.

What did they find in this study?

When CO2 levels were higher, people’s cognitive function decreased. But when they opened a window to bring in fresh air (and subsequently, lowered the CO2 level in the office) people’s cognitive function improved.

Some countries already monitor indoor air quality (i.e., CO2 levels). For example, Belgium enforces mandatory CO2 monitors in public places such as restaurants, gyms, and movie theatres. In these venues CO2 levels need to be made visible to the public. Businesses can also receive fines if CO2 is found to be excessively high.

But what if you don’t live in Belgium? What can you do?

You can purchase a CO2 monitor. These nifty, portable little devices will measure CO2 concentrations for you.

Seeing is believing. The numbers will alert you to potentially dangerous situations. You can then decide to either open a window and/or doors or leave the building.

What’s a safe CO2 level? And what’s not?

The chart below will help you make sense of the numbers.

Table from CO2 Radical: www.co2radical.com.au

If the reading is below 700ppm, this means the room has less than 1% of people’s air. At 500ppm, you are down to only 0.2% of people’s air.

But when CO2 gets to 3000ppm or higher (which has been found in some classrooms), 9-10% of each breath you take was recently exhaled by someone else. As Dr Berger states:

“It’s like drinking water that’s just been swirled round someone else’s mouth.”

What CO2 monitor should you buy?

There are different CO2 monitors on the market that vary in price and quality.

First up, there is the Aranet4.

Aranet4 CO2 Monitor

This is considered the gold standard as far as CO2 monitors go. The Aranet comes with an app that allows you to program the device to beep and alert you if CO2 goes above 1400ppm. But this device is not cheap (I paid $380AUD for mine).

How could I justify spending this kind of money?

It was easy. I figured this device could stop me from getting really sick. And if I get sick, I can’t work or do any of the things I really enjoy. It was a no-brainer.

Before you race off and buy an Aranet, there is a much cheaper option I only just recently discovered: The mini carbon dioxide monitor supplied by Theatre Caps.

This CO2 monitor retails for just $80AUD (that’s a whopping saving of $300AUD).

This device reminds me of a Tamagotchi (i.e., a digital pet). It’s small, portable, and can be attached to your keys.

What else can you do to protect yourself from COVID?

Mask up.

Protecting yourself from COVID

Wearing a mask is one of the most effective ways to avoid getting COVID and long COVID.

Personally, I love wearing a mask when I go out. Not only does it provide an extra layer of protection but it makes me feel like a scientist.

Some masks are better than others. I use a well fitted KN95 mask (3M Aura 9320A+). According to research, these offer the best protection due to their tight seal. I’ve been told by doctors I can use these masks multiple times until the seal becomes loose or the bands snap.

Unfortunately, cloth masks don’t cut it. I realise this isn’t good news for the environment. But in order to be able to protect the environment, you need to protect yourself first.

Another thing you can do is organise social gatherings outdoors. As I write this, my husband is catching up with two of his friends outside on our back verandah.

If you’re going to socialise indoors, here are a few things to consider:

• Use a HEPA air filter
• Limit the duration of the gathering
• Limit the number of people at your gathering (the bigger the crowd, the greater the risk)
• Wear KN95 masks
• Open windows and doors for increased air flow

To sum up

This idea of ‘living with COVID’ shouldn’t mean ignoring it. It should mean adopting protective measures to avoid infection and reinfection.

The science is clear: there are a number of simple and effective things you can do to protect yourself. Why not become a citizen scientist by investing in your own CO2 monitor and a well fitted KN95? It will be money well spent.

Image Credit: “Tamagotchi” by LonelyBob is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Do you find yourself getting distracted when you study?

Here’s a simple thing you can do to help you focus better and improve your study sessions . . .

Take regular exercise breaks.

A study titled Sweat so you don’t forget found that engaging in regular five minute exercise breaks reduced mind wandering, improved focus, and enhanced learning.


In this study the researchers wanted to know if engaging in short exercise breaks could help with learning.

They took a group of 75 psychology students and split them into three groups.

Group 1: Exercise breaks group
Group 2: Non-exercise breaks group
Group 3: No breaks group

All the students had to watch the same 50 minute psychology lecture. But the difference between the groups was this . . .

The exercise breaks group performed five minutes of exercise every 17 minutes. The non-exercise breaks group played a simple video game for five minutes every 17 minutes. The no breaks group had to watch the entire lecture without getting a single break.

What did the researchers find?

The students in the exercise breaks group could focus better and they retained more information. They also found the lecturer easier to understand.

The researchers said:

“The exercise breaks buffered against declines in attention resulting in superior engagement during the latter part of the lecture compared to the other two groups.”

What about the people who had the computer game breaks?

One would think they would show some improvements in attention and memory since they were getting breaks. But they didn’t show any significant improvements.

In fact, they performed just as well as the no breaks group in terms of attention and memory.

The researchers concluded:

“One possibility is that the computer game played during the non-exercise break may have acted as a second cognitive task as opposed to a cognitive break. Switching between two cognitive tasks can deplete attention and impair performance for both tasks.”

This shows the type of activity you engage in on a study break is really important. It pays to get out of your head and move your body!

What exercises were the exercise break group doing?

It was a series of exercises performed for 50 seconds each followed by a rest break:

1) Jumping jacks (50 seconds) + Rest (10 seconds)
2) Heeltaps (50 seconds) + Rest (10 seconds)
3) High knees (50 seconds) + Rest (10 seconds)
4) Split jumps (50 seconds) + Rest (10 seconds)
5) Hamstring kickers (50 seconds) = The End

Since reading this study, I’ve started to incorporate more exercise breaks into my day and I’m noticing a big difference.

Personally, I’m not a fan of some of the exercises the researchers made the participants do in this study. So, I have replaced them with other cardio exercises I enjoy doing, such as punching a boxing bag and using a skipping rope.

I also find doing 50 seconds of non stop exercise pretty exhausting. For this reason, I’ve reduced my exercise time down to 40 seconds followed by a 20 second rest break. I find it helps to time my exercise sprints/rest breaks using an interval timer on my phone instead of a kitchen timer (which can feel a little clunky).

Feel free to experiment with different exercise/rest ratios. Make it work for you. As your fitness levels improve, you can increase the period of time you exercise for.

So, here’s my challenge to you . . .

After working for 20 or 30 minutes, get up and take a five minute exercise break.

Exercise break challenge

You don’t have to do jumping jacks or hamstring kickers. Select simple exercises you want to do.

Notice how you feel before and after your exercise break.

After experimenting with this simple strategy, I can say with confidence that I feel more energised and mentally sharper throughout the day. Try it and let me know how you go!