Couch potatoes beware! Being sedentary more than doubles your risk of dying from COVID-19, according to new research.
A study of the effect of exercise on 48,440 patients diagnosed between January 1 and October 21, 2020 concluded that inactivity was the third greatest risk factor for serious illness – worse than heart disease, diabetes or smoking, eurekalert.org reports.
The results, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, showed that coronavirus patients who were consistently inactive were 1.73 times more likely to be admitted to IC than those who were consistently active.
The risk of death was even higher – with consistently inactive patients 2.49 times more likely to die from COVID-19 compared to patients who were consistently active.
“This is a wake-up call to the importance of a healthy lifestyle and especially physical activity,” says Dr. Robert Sallis, a physician at the Kaiser Permanente Fontana Medical Center.
“Kaiser Permanente’s motivation is to keep people healthy, and this study really shows how important that is during this pandemic and beyond. People who exercise regularly were most likely to beat COVID-19, while people who were inactive fared much worse, ”he added.
The study, led by researchers at Kaiser Permanente Southern California, also found that even patients who were inconsistently active were less likely to become seriously ill – suggesting that any amount of activity is beneficial.
To arrive at their conclusions, researchers collected data on the number of days that the study subjects did moderate to vigorous physical activity each week and, on average, how many minutes they exercised at that level.
The subjects – 62 percent of whom were female and whose mean age was 47 – reflected the diverse racial makeup of the Southern California population.
Of the total, 6.4 percent were consistently active and 14.4 percent consistently inactive, while the rest fell into the inconsistently active category.
Of all patients, 8.6 percent were hospitalized, 2.4 percent admitted to the ICU and 1.6 percent died.
“What surprised me most about this study was the strength of the association between inactivity and poor outcomes from COVID-19,” said study co-author Deborah Rohm Young, PhD, of the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research & Evaluation.
“Even after we included variables such as obesity and smoking in the analysis, we still saw that inactivity was strongly associated with a much higher risk of hospitalization, ICU admission and death compared to moderate physical activity or any activity,” she added.
Sallis offered a simple recipe.
“Walk at a moderate pace for 30 minutes a day, five days a week and that gives you a tremendous protective effect against COVID-19,” he said.
“I continue to believe that exercise is a drug everyone should be taking, especially in this era of COVID-19.”
