Cardiorespiratory fitness attenuates severe COVID-19 symptoms
I was reading a study over the weekend (because that's what everyone does on their weekends, right?) about cardiorespiratory fitness and COVID-19. Turns out that if you have fairly good cardiorespiratory fitness then you are less likely to have severe COVID-19 symptoms. In the study they pulled the data from hundreds of different people that had COVID and found strong associations of several lifestyle-related risk factors, including cardiorespiratory fitness, overweight/obesity, perceived stress, and high blood pressure, with severe COVID-19, even after adjustments for sociodemographic factors and previous diseases. People with severe COVID-19 (death vs intensive care or hospitalisation, and intensive care vs hospitalisation) had lower cardiorespiratory fitness. Even when people were overweight or had high blood pressure, as long as they had solid cardiorespiratory fitness, some of the risks that would normally be increased with COVID-19 were reduced.
So, great news if you already have fairly good cardiorespiratory fitness. If you don’t, then it is time to get started. Even if you have already had COVID-19, it turns out you can get it twice, it is worth getting into a bit of cardiorespiratory fitness, even if you have other health issues.
You probably won’t hear any of this type of positive information in the media because they just seem to want doom and gloom. I also wish this type of information would make it into some of the press conferences that the politicians were doing. Just imagine if the health minister started the conference with some actual new and positive health information that could really help reduce hospitalisation, reduce the risk of permanent issues related to COVID-19 and reduce deaths. Anyway, enough of me ranting.
It really doesn’t take too long to see some positive changes and you really don’t need to spend hours pounding the pavement. I challenge you to start by going for two 30 minute walks this week. Then on two other days, find an exercise bike (or go for a ride on your push bike if you have one), and ride as fast as you possibly can for 30 seconds. Have a 3 minute rest (or slow ride) and then do another 30 seconds as fast as you can. That is a total of 4 minutes of exercise. You can do the same thing running if you want. Remember though, the 30 seconds needs to be super hard. Your legs should be burning at the end of the 30 seconds and you should really be puffing hard.
To measure your improvements, on day one, take your heart rate when you wake in the morning. Then do it everyday for 6 weeks (while you are continuing to do the 2 walks and 2 hard sessions). You should begin to see your resting heart rate come down. That is a perfect way to see your cardiorespiratory fitness improving.
If you do have any injury or illness, or you are taking some sort of medication then let us know. It is important to make sure your medications or illnesses are not going to create a problem when starting a new fitness regime. We can create a personalised plan that will prevent any adverse reactions to exercise.
Tell us, do you think you have a fit cardiorespiratory system?
