Why You Shouldn’t Exercise Immediately After Having COVID

Photo by Jenny Hill on Unsplash

COVID-19 is usually seen as respiratory disease, but the truth is that it affects many other organs aside from your lungs. Depending on the individual severity, it can also affect the heart, brain, and blood vessels. Because of this, here’s what you need to know about exercising after having COVID-19.

After a virus attacks your body, your immune system goes into attack mode and causes inflammation. It’s important to rest while the illness lasts so that the inflammation can go away during recovery. This will then leads to heart muscle healing and recovery.

However, if you engage in physical activity before that happens, you can suffer from leg swelling, dizziness, and sometimes even more serious conditions like cardiac arrest.

Competitive athletes are at bigger risk here because when they return to activities they immediately engage their bodies a lot. Other people should be careful, too, as one German study showed that 78 out of 100 former COVID-19 patients had lingering heart inflammation and other abnormalities.

If you know you had COVID or you feel symptoms of illness, take a few weeks off and then consider slowly starting to train again—but make sure to do it gradually and pay close attention to the signals your body is sending you.