Fricke-Comellas, Hermann, Heredia-Rizo, Alberto Marcos, Casuso-Holgado, María Jesús et al. · Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024 · DOI
This review looked at 13 studies testing whether qigong, tai chi, and yoga help reduce fatigue in people with ME/CFS and long COVID. Overall, these gentle movement practices appeared to help reduce fatigue and improve mood and sleep compared to doing nothing. However, the studies had various quality issues that make it hard to know how much we can trust these results.
Fatigue management remains a major challenge in ME/CFS and long COVID with limited evidence-based pharmaceutical options. This systematic review synthesizes current evidence on accessible, low-risk movement-based interventions, providing patients and clinicians with a comprehensive overview of what the research currently supports.
This review does not prove that qigong, tai chi, or yoga are definitively effective treatments for ME/CFS or long COVID. The low-to-very-low certainty of evidence means findings may not reflect true clinical benefit, and methodological limitations prevent firm causal claims. Individual study quality issues, including potential bias and heterogeneous outcome measures, mean results should be interpreted cautiously.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Fricke-Comellas, Hermann, Heredia-Rizo, Alberto Marcos, Casuso-Holgado, María Jesús, Salas-González, Jesús, & Fernández-Seguín, Lourdes María (2024). Exploring the Effects of Qigong, Tai Chi, and Yoga on Fatigue, Mental Health, and Sleep Quality in Chronic Fatigue and Post-COVID Syndromes: A Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis.. Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland). https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare12202020
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-fricke-comellas-2024-exploring-effects,
author = {Fricke-Comellas, Hermann and Heredia-Rizo, Alberto Marcos and Casuso-Holgado, María Jesús and Salas-González, Jesús and Fernández-Seguín, Lourdes María},
title = {Exploring the Effects of Qigong, Tai Chi, and Yoga on Fatigue, Mental Health, and Sleep Quality in Chronic Fatigue and Post-COVID Syndromes: A Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis.},
journal = {Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland)},
year = {2024},
doi = {10.3390/healthcare12202020},
note = {PubMed: 39451436},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/fricke-comellas-2024-exploring-effects},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-25. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/fricke-comellas-2024-exploring-effects
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