in Brooklyn, New York. Thousands of people around the country join health clubs in the first week of the new year as part of their New Year's resolution. Many health clubs see a surge in business of 25 percent immediately after the new year, only to see those numbers level off by spring. While the World Health Organization has advised people with long Covid to avoid intense exercise, a recent study found that different types of exercise were not harmful for people diagnosed with long Covid.
Tryfonos and colleagues observed that patients with long Covid who opted for high-intensity interval training experienced more muscle pain than the control group. Whereas moderate-intensity continuous training was associated with concentration problems and 62% of the 31 long patients had myopathy or inflammation in the muscles.
People who suffer from long Covid experience debilitating symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, shortness of breath, headaches, sleep problems, dizziness, impaired sense of smell and taste, depression, and anxiety. These symptoms last for month than three months and in some cases, can continue for longer than one year. The WHO estimated that anywhere between 10% to 20% of people who have Covid-19 are affected by long Covid.
“This has led many healthcare professionals to be reluctant to incorporate exercise into rehabilitation programs for patients with post-Covid condition. However, there is ample evidence that physical inactivity negatively impacts health, including functional impairment within weeks and increased risk of cardiometabolic disease in the long term. The latter represents a significant burden on health care systems worldwide,” the researchers wrote in the study.