Long coronavirus could erase 10 years of fitness gains, athleticism

Matthew Durstenfeld, a cardiologist at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and a cardiologist at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, said the findings, both from experiments and from people’s experience, suggest that exercise can be difficult or inconvenient. Adding evidence, if not possible, that ‘something is going on’ with many people who develop long coronaviruses. Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who led the new research.

That likelihood will affect how long covid is defined and the health and well-being of covid patients months or years from now.

Long covid, the name for the lingering and even worsening symptoms of a disease that lasts for months after covid-19 infection, afflicts millions of Americans and people around the world. published research Earlier this week, it showed that at least 1 in 20 people infected with coronavirus will develop long-term covid.

While covid is accelerating the revolution in medical research

A long covid is usually diagnosed based on a set of symptoms that include headaches, fatigue, brain fog, joint pain, etc. Also, many people with a long covid have not been able to exercise in the wind without feeling tired. or even walk around the block.

But this inability to move, known as exercise intolerance, is not generally considered a formal symptom of long-term COVID-19, Durstenfeld said. In other words, I thought that while I was bedridden with the new coronavirus infection, my stamina would decrease, and when I woke up and started moving, my stamina would recover.

But anecdotally, many people with prolonged COVID-19 have not recovered their fitness. During exercise tests, their heart, breathing, muscles, and other biological systems struggled far more than healthy people.

However, most of these studies were small, sometimes single-patient, and usually focused on patients who had been hospitalized for more than a few weeks, allowing researchers to assess the effects of bedriddenness and inactivity. It is difficult to distinguish from long-term effects. COVID.

Therefore, Durstenfeld and his colleagues aggregated and reanalyzed data from all relevant recent studies for a new study and included as many patients as possible to give greater impact to any findings. I decided to.

To accomplish this, they pinpointed nine experiments and compared exercise tolerance in people with long covid with those who were infected but recovered. yielded results of 464 with long covid and 359 without. These groups were similar in age from his age of 39 to his age of 56 and had completed clinical tests of aerobic capacity and heart rate on a treadmill or stationary bike, as well as several additional medical tests. I was.

However, their results were quite different. In general, those who survived COVID-19 displayed normal athletic performance for their age. However, long-term COVID-19 patients had stamina 10 years older. According to Durstenfeld, the 40-year-old was jogging and cycling like “someone in their 50s.”

Abnormal response to exercise

Previous studies have shown that they also had many abnormal internal reactions to exercise. It interferes with the ability to contract. People’s heart rates also often did not rise as much as expected during exercise, slowing blood flow throughout the body and causing some people to hyperventilate.

According to Durstenfeld, these aren’t typical physiological reactions after feeling unwell due to illness or being bedridden.

Other scientists agree. “What’s important and true about this review is that deconditioning isn’t the only cause,” said David Systrom, a respiratory physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a professor at Harvard Medical School. Said.Medical College. Although he was not involved in any new research, he has long studied and treated patients with covid.

People who have had COVID-19 for a long time probably have molecular changes in their muscles and some nerves and blood vessels that show how well their bodies cope with the physical demands of exercise. He said it could affect how well it works. These changes and challenges occur even though most people with prolonged COVID-19 have no obvious lung or heart abnormalities.

New symptoms of long covid

Complicating things even more, few long-term COVID-19 patients showed exactly the same pattern of physiological changes.

Still, one takeaway from the new study is that exercise intolerance “should be viewed as a symptom” of long-term covid, Durstenfeld said.

There’s another reason people with prolonged COVID-19 might want to consider exercise testing, said Steven J. Carter, a cardiovascular physiologist at the Indiana University Bloomington School of Public Health. rice field.

“If an individual is having trouble exercising, talking to their doctor about cardiopulmonary exercise testing would be an important starting point.” It offers an invasive method.”

Durstenfeld says it’s also worth visiting a clinic that specializes in long-term COVID-19 and is familiar with exercise intolerance.

“The trajectory of the long-term novel coronavirus and exercise intolerance is still unknown,” he continued, noting how long the condition will last, whether it can be treated, or whether it will resolve slowly on its own. ‘s long-term goal is to help people with prolonged COVID-19 eventually find ways to be active again, he said.

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