until now there really haven't been any good studies directly looking at the link
between exercise and severity of covid illness i'm doctor mike hansen and in this video i'm going
to show you a new study in the british medical journal of sports medicine that did exactly that
we already have a ton of research that shows us that exercise helps us feel better mentally and
physically it prevents or improves many medical conditions like heart disease type 2 diabetes
high blood pressure obesity certain types of cancer dementia and it can extend our lives that's
why the us physical activity guidelines and the american heart association recommend at least
150 minutes of moderate physical activity every week so now let's get to the study that was just done
at kaiser permanente in california now in order to understand this study you have to know about
something that they were already doing before the pandemic health care workers there routinely
asked all their patients two simple questions about their physical activity they would refer
to this as the exercise vital sign the questions were one on average how many days per week do you
engage in moderate to strenuous exercise for example like a brisk walk the answer choices
are zero to seven days now the second question was on average how many minutes do you engage
in exercise at this level the answer choices were 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 90 120 or 150 or more minutes
now based on previous research it turns out these two questions are a good measure of
people's activity levels not only that but these two questions predict some medical problems like
high blood pressure and high blood sugar now most people already know that there are a
lot of health conditions that are strongly correlated with a lack of physical activity
like the ones i just mentioned a lot of them are also risk factors for having severe illness
or death when it comes to getting covid 19 this includes obesity high blood pressure and diabetes
so in this study they enrolled 40 000 adults over the age of 18 who had confirmed covid 19
that was diagnosed between january and october of 2020 which was before anyone was vaccinated
all of them were patients at kaiser permanente for at least six months before testing positive
for covid 19 when they looked in their chart meaning in their electronic medical record
each patient had at least three of these exercise vital sign measurements in their record within
this health system link 43 of patients were latino or latinx 34 were white 11 percent
were black and 10 were asian or pacific islander the breakdown of groups who had covid 19 were
65 latin 18 whites seven percent blacks and six percent asian or pacific islander
the entire group was divided into three categories one those who consistently met activity guidelines
of over 150 minutes per week at all three measurements let's call this group a now the
second group was those who are consistently inactive with only 0 to 10 minutes per week
at all three measurements let's call this group c then there is the third group those who are active
in the range of 11 to 149 minutes per week or who had variability in their three measurements we'll
call this group b the researchers also looked at other important characteristics of these
48000+ patients how old were they were they male or female did they smoke or have emphysema
did they have obesity diabetes high blood pressure cardiovascular disease kidney disease and they
looked at other factors as well so they collected and analyzed a ton of data then they calculated
the risk and correlated that with different outcomes the big takeaways from the study
is that people who were consistently inactive had a significantly higher risk of hospitalization
icu admission and death after getting covid 19 compared with those who were active for at least
150 minutes per week also what they found was that for those who were active over 10 minutes per week
meaning group b they did have some protection against severe illness or death from covid 19
but not as much as group A now this was one study looking at the direct correlation between exercise
and severity of covid illness more studies would be needed to confirm these findings but based on
what we have it's one more reason to encourage and promote physical activity for everyone ideally a
minimum of 150 minutes per week certain types of exercise can give more health benefits than others
but they all have overlap so for example resistance training or strength training
which includes lifting weights and doing calisthenics that's especially great
not just for adding muscle and staying strong but especially great to prevent
osteoporosis
then you have high intensity interval training which is especially great for shedding fat
then you have aerobic training or cardio which is especially great not just for shedding fat but
increasing stamina all of these types of exercises have overlap when it comes to health benefits
now i know some people are going to bring up this question how does exercise along with healthy
eating and getting good sleep etc how does that compare to getting the covid vaccine let's say
you work out 150 minutes or more per week and you don't have the vaccine does that give you the same
level of protection well we don't have any studies comparing the two head-on all i can tell you is
that with the mrna vaccines made by pfizer and moderna they're 95 effective against severe covid
and i seriously doubt that exercising 150 plus minutes per week will get you that same level
of protection so in order to do that study you would need to do a randomized clinical trial that
consists of four groups comparing vaccine vaccine plus exercise exercise but no vaccine and then no
vaccine or exercise but that's a study that will likely never be done for multiple reasons and on
that note this new delta variant of covid which is the worst covid strain yet it's rising in the
u.s and it's soon going to be the dominant strain which i talked more about in this video right here
and if you want to know more about the top 10 benefits of exercise check out this short and
sweet video right here if you know what's good for you that's all for this one thank you for watching
and if you liked it don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe and bell notification see you