Pilar Serra, vice-dean of the Faculty of Physiotherapy, warns that physical activity due to the confinement for the COVID-19 crisis may aggravate the symptoms of people with physical ailments.

The global pandemic of coronavirus has been the cause of the confinement of the Spanish population with the aim at stopping the spread of coronavirus. This has caused that a great part of the population decide to physical activity at home. Nevertheless, as the Faculty of Physiotherapy warns, people with pain or in the process of recovering from a physical ailment or injury must be careful with the exercises that they do.

As the professor Pilar Serra explains, this kind of people should not do physical exercise that is not adapted to their clinical condition, as otherwise their symptoms may be aggravated. 'But it is very important that they have home therapy programmes to try to regain mobility and to reduce pain', says Serra.

'When a person experiences a long-term pain, and with the foresight we have, it seems that the situation will not be quickly overcome, it is not only physically felt, but also psychological consequences derive from it, such as the catastrophizing of pain, a specific psychosocial construction of pain, which leads to pessimism about one's own pain and its evolution, and in turn, it is considered as a risk factor for its chronification,' asserts the vice-dean of the Faculty of Physiotherapy.

Pilar Serra affirms that 'it has an impact on the physical condition, since it has been proved that the higher the level of catastrophism, the less muscle resistance and therefore the more fatigue there is.' Parallel to neuromuscular affection, it also has a negative impact on the cardiovascular, immune and neuroendocrine systems. All this, according to the professor, causes an alteration in the functional capacity or, in other words, a reduction in the capacity to perform basic activities of daily life.

To try to counteract these problems, the Faculty of Physiotherapy has developed a therapeutic exercise programme and will continue to do so during the confinement, with written and audiovisual documents to provide some specific home exercises for certain pathologies or injuries. 'It is important to realise them with great care, since it would be ideal the supervision of a physiotherapist that, in this situation, is not possible,' recalls Pilar Serra.

The vice-dean concludes that it is necessary to keep being active, but it case of injury or ailment, the plans should be adapted to the clinical profile of the patients to avoid undesirable secondary effects.