Here’s another reason to get back into your usual exercise habit if you’ve put yourself in quarantine 15.
An observational study of nearly 50,000 adults found that those who met the recommended 150 minutes of moderate physical activity each week were less likely to enter or die due to COVID-19 compared to more sedentary people who almost never sweated.
The Kaiser Permanente study published this Tuesday in the British Journal of Sports Medicine was based on the anonymized records of 48,440 adult Californians who used the Kaiser health care system in the two years before the 2020 pandemic. Kaiser’s data is that he has asked patients to include their exercise habits as a vital sign since 2009, so that researchers were able to group men and women for their physical self-activity. The less active group reported exercising for ten minutes or less a week, and the more active group reported receiving 150 minutes or more of moderate-intensity aerobic activity from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The researchers analyzed the data to see if there was any correlation between the amount of regular exercise they did and whether they were diagnosed with COVID-19 last year, as well as the severity of their illness. And they found that adults who were constantly inactive for less than 10 minutes a week had a higher risk of hospitalization, admission to the intensive care unit (ICU), and death from COVID-19 than people who followed them. patterns of physical activity constantly. . Specifically, the least active group was hospitalized almost twice as much as the more active group. And the least active group was about two and a half times more likely to die from COVID-19 than the more active group.
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“Constant compliance with physical activity guidelines was strongly associated with a reduced risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes in infected adults.”
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Even patients who did not reach this mark of 150 minutes per week (exercise between 11 and 149 minutes per week) performed better than those who almost never exercised, although their results were not yet clear. as older as more active adults who receive 150 minutes or more of physical activity weekly.
The researchers also examined the underlying health conditions and risk factors of the subjects, such as age, weight, and whether they smoked. And they found that, apart from advanced age and a history of organ transplantation, physical inactivity was the strongest risk factor for severe COVID-19 outcomes among nearly 50,000 patients.
Some caveats in this study include the fact that patients reported to themselves how much they exercised, as well as how vigorous their workouts were. And, as an observational study, it does not demonstrate that people who work less will have worse COVID-19 than those who are more active. But it does find a correlation between regular exercise and better health outcomes, which has also been observed in multiple chronic diseases, including those such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, which are associated with severe COVID-19. For example, getting 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a day, such as cycling, can reduce the risk of cancer death by 31%, according to a study published in JAMA Oncology last summer.
“Constant compliance with physical activity guidelines was strongly associated with a reduced risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes in infected adults,” the researchers concluded in the new Kaiser study, which recommended health agencies prioritize efforts to promote physical activity while the pandemic continues.
But researchers also acknowledged that staying active has become even more difficult during the pandemic than before, as people have been asked to stay home for the past year and many gyms and wellness centers they were forced to close to stop the spread of the coronavirus. In fact, more than two out of five adults surveyed (42%) revealed they gained more weight than they had expected in the past twelve months, averaging £ 29, according to a recent American Psychological Association (APA) survey. of more than 3,000 people. And one in ten said they earned more than £ 50.
Read more: “The Covid 15?” Even so, it is the weight that the average person really gained during the pandemic
Related: Gyms are pushing to help Washington, saying they are “part of our health and fitness infrastructure.”
Before the pandemic, sedentary jobs that saw workers sitting at desks or crouching at computers all day have risen 83 percent since 1950, according to the American Heart Association. Johns Hopkins reports that physically active jobs now account for less than 20% of the U.S. workforce, which is less than about half of the jobs in 1960. The average office worker spends up to 15 hours a day sitting.
Therefore, doing two and a half hours of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise each week, such as brisk walking or dancing fast, can seem daunting. But it is doable.
It can help divide the 150 minutes into smaller blocks; this reaches less than 22 minutes a day, or 30 minutes for five days, which can be broken down into ten-minute bursts several times a day. In addition, health officials point out that any physical activity is better than none, so it’s okay to start small and move on. Start by taking a brisk 10-minute walk five times a week, perhaps at rest or after dinner, which will add up to 50 minutes of weekly activity. Once this becomes a regular habit, you can extend the duration of these walks to 150 minutes a week. And extra physical activity can have the added benefit of increasing your mental health if last year left you feeling burned out.
Or, you can park your car further away when you place orders or get off the bus or subway one stop earlier than you would normally in a few extra steps. We have more tips on how to exercise and find healthier ways to eat and control weight here.