We all know that the COVID 19 causes a persistent cough and shortness of breath.
One of the most important thing to help minimise the impact of the virus on the lungs is to ensure that you are breathing properly.
Many of us are not breathing with our primary muscles of respiration and so may find that we suffer from additional muscular aches and pains when we do get a bad cough.
When you have a bad cough you will use additional muscles – known as accessory muscles to help the main respiratory muscles and to force a deep breath an exhalation or cough. The problem is that these muscles tire easily, and are therefore prone to fatigue injuries when you are coughing persistently.
Once muscles tire other muscles kick in to help move your body to suit the demands placed on it. Repeated coughing can result in chronic muscle pain due to the strain on these muscles, which will causing pain on breathing.
As you start to compensate for those tired muscles, and recruit other muscles to help you breathe (and cough) the change in function can result in injuries to joints that join the ribs to the spine or to the sternum, or joints, or soft tissues of the neck, thorax and lower back.
In normal breathing (respiration) there are 2 phases –
When you breathe deeply other muscles are involved to lift the ribs and sternum (chest plate) in inspiration and to depress the ribs on exhalation. The muscles involved are unlikely to fatigue and are controlled by voluntary and involuntary mechanisms.
Additional muscles (are recruited when the system is being challenged either due to an increase in the respiration rate or when the system is dysfunctioning – such as when you have asthma or a respiratory disorder – such as pneumonia.
I can help determine exactly what has been injured, give you advice on how to manage the pain, and to ease it through exercises, (and normally I would treat it through hands on treatment such as massage, joint mobilisation and manipulation)
Feel free to give me a call as I will be working from home as well, and I am offering free 10 min telephone advice chats, as well as 30 min Telehealth consultations for a more in depth assessment and advice and more specific exercises to try and keep you all pain free. 07474 521 329