Usefulness of labs given there are no apparent symptoms

Medical Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hello

Male/ Age 28/ 230 pounds / 6ft 3in / live in the EU
A bit of backround info: following my recovery from COVID I wanted to return to my regular fitness schedule which consisted of twice per week of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and at least twice per week of resistance training (a stripped-down weightlifting program). However, I developed some minor chest pain during COVID (among other symptoms) that persisted and made me turn to my general practitioner. She did an electrocardiogram that didn’t show any abnormalities and a blood pressure test which was within normal range.
She recommended me to turn to a sports doctor to get labs done, however not recommending any specific test, rather the general complex study, which consists of:

  1. Cardiopulmonary exercise test
  2. ECG x2
  3. Pulmonary function test or spirography
  4. Body composition test
  5. Blood analysis Following my visit I have resumed my training schedule and my chest pains have disappeared.

Since listening to your podcasts I have developed certain skepticism for random testing and while I will most probably comply with my GP-s recommendation, I have a couple of questions: 1. What will these tests potentially reveal to me?
2. If there is anything abnormal, will it change the way I train/eat/sleep in any way? From my understanding this is a regular test done on youth athletes (I even had it done when I was in high school), however if I already know that I eat relatively OK, sleep well and have moderately OK cardiovascular fitness level (I leisurely paced 2:08 for the 10k row with average bpm of 150), can these tests provide me any benefit (especially since I no longer have chest pains)?

Thanks in advance

2

Hi there,

Unfortunately it’s hard to provide specific individualized advice without getting more information about your symptoms. I will say the following (obvious caveats that I am not your doctor and this is working off of limited information):

-If you’ve already had a normal electrocardiogram, I’m not sure what doing two more is going to accomplish, particularly if your symptoms have resolved.
-It’s not clear why you would need to undergo pulmonary function testing if you do not have significant respiratory symptoms.
-I do not see any reason for a body composition test at all.
-“Blood analysis” is unfortunately not specific enough; we would need to know which specific blood tests are being checked/recommended.

If I had a young, healthy individual with covid complaining of chest symptoms I’d want to be confident they did not have something that would significantly change the management recommendations, such as peri/myocarditis, pneumonia, a blood clot (pulmonary embolism), among other things. If your symptoms have resolved and you are feeling back to normal that is generally reassuring, and would not prompt me to pursue aggressive, broad testing in most situations. However, your doctor may have information that I do not have and may have generated a different clinical impression than I have based on what’s available here.