According to a study posted in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, Covid patients with an inactive lifestyle are more vulnerable to the disease. They are at a greater risk of developing severe symptoms.
The study was conducted on around 50,000 affected people by the coronavirus disease. It showed that the patients with a sedentary routine are prone to intense symptoms and higher death risk.
Researchers found that people with an inactive lifestyle for a minimum of two years before the pandemic, were in much greater need of intensive care and hospitalization, with higher percentile of death rates.
Inactivity is indeed the most dangerous modifiable risk among other factors. Smoking, obesity, hypertension and cancer, to name a few. Lifestyle is something that needs to be altered for meeting the general fitness standards.
The risk factors of this deadly infection include advanced age, cardiovascular diseases, obesity, diabetes, being male, etc. As of now, inactive lifestyle was not included in these factors, even though it is associated with many long-term conditions linked to the Coronavirus infection.
To understand the impact of sedentary lifestyle on this severe disease, outcomes such as hospitalization ratios, admission in intensive care units and deaths were taken into consideration. A group of 48,440 adults infected from January to October 2020 were chosen for the study.
The average age of the group was 47, with two third of them being women (62%) and an average BMI of 31, which falls under the obese category.
Various factors such as underlying medical conditions, race, age, etc. were taken into account by the researchers. It was found out that coronavirus infected people who were habitually inactive are twice as likely to be admitted to the hospitals than those who indulged in 150 minutes of activity per week.
These patients had a 73% greater requirement for intensive care and were 2.5 times at a greater risk of dying due to this disease.
Considering the severity of the medical conditions associated with physical inactivity, it becomes important to indulge in some sort of activity every day. Apart from social distancing and using masks and sanitizers, active lifestyle is another addition in the to-do-list in the fight against the pandemic.
“We recommend that public health authorities inform all populations that short of vaccination and following public health safety guidelines such as social distancing and mask use, engaging in regular (physical activity) may be the single most important action individuals can take to prevent severe COVID-19 and its complications, including death,” added the researchers.
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