Understanding symptoms of pre-existing conditions during your COVID-19 recovery

Discover nutritional information and resources to help understand and improve symptoms of pre-existing conditions related to COVID-19

<p>Pre-existing conditions<br></p>

Pre-existing symptoms

  • Obesity
  • Diabetes
  • High blood pressure
  • Heart disease

What do these symptoms have to do with my diet?

  • What you eat can influence a condition that you may already have.
  • You may need to follow a particular dietary pattern to manage an existing condition.
  • It is important to consider these existing conditions when making changes to your diet to help manage the symptoms of COVID-19.

Resources

The British Dietetic Association Critical Care Specialist group provides eating recommendations after critical illness – Nutrition at Home after Critical Illness [PDF], which may include similar symptoms. 

This includes:

  • tips to lose weight
  • ideas for recipes for heart problems, diabetes or healthy diets.
The Malnutrition Pathway's Managing Adult Malnutrition online resource offers tips for people with:
  • Diabetes
  • Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
  • Lung cancer
  • COVID-19.
Other tips may be applicable if you scored yourself in the Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST) tool:

Histamine intolerance
The Swansea Bay University Health Board has a Covid and Long Covid recovery – therapy information pack which provides ideas for:
  • weight loss
  • moving and exercise.
Heart Matters provides a 5 steps to sustainable weight loss online resource.

The British Heart Foundation provides advice on weight management and other useful healthy eating information.

Contact us

This knowledge hub is constantly being reviewed and updated. We welcome your comments or feedback about it.

Please contact abigail.troncohernandez@plymouth.ac.uk and we will get back to you promptly.