- What you eat can affect a condition you may already have such as diabetes, high blood pressure or obesity
- It is important to follow the dietary advice for pre-existing conditions provided by your healthcare professional
- If you decide to make changes to your diet to help manage COVID-19 symptoms, you need to consider how this affects your diet for pre-existing conditions. You may need advice from your healthcare professional or nutrition expert, such as a dietitian, on how to safely make any changes
Resources to support pre-existing conditions
Weight loss and healthy eating
- 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-step sustainable weight loss online resource
- The British Heart Foundation provides advice on weight management and other useful healthy eating information
- The BDA Critical Care Specialist group provides eating recommendations after critical illness – Nutrition at Home after Critical Illness [PDF]. This includes sections on:
- tips to lose weight
- ideas for recipes for heart problems, diabetes or healthy diets
Malnutrition
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 are at risk of malnutrition according to the Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST) tool:
Histamine intolerance
Whilst there is not enough evidence to recommend a low histamine diet, some people with long COVID are interested in low histamine diets. These are restrictive diets, and so advice from a registered nutrition expert is recommended to make sure you have the right nutrition.
A freelance dietitian provides an article on histamine intolerance and post-COVID [PDF], which may be helpful.
CAUTION: Seek advice and support from your healthcare professional or GP if you are worried about your nutrition or plan to make significant dietary changes.