This shutdown has been hurting people, including their health. But there is at least ONE way that it could be putting people at greater risk… of the virus itself.
Unless you’ve already got a home gym or some kind of exercise tech, it’s been a lot harder to work up a sweat, or even ‘get your steps in’, with everyone holed up in our homes for weeks.
There is really one key reason this virus is causing so much more anxiety than the others: The horror stories about people having massive loss of lung function… often with lethal results.
THAT’s the real ‘fear factor’ at the root of what is otherwise, in most cases, a comparatively survivable illness.
Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is one of the major complications caused by COVID-19. Even though only a small percentage of coronavirus patients develop ARDS, the majority of those cases end up in the intensive care unit. According to a researcher at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, regular exercise could hold the key to keeping patients from developing deadly complications like ARDS.
Dr. Zhen Yan says his research found a powerful antioxidant that helps protect against disease and can be produced through exercise. Yan’s study shows ARDS affects between three and 17 percent of COVID-19 patients. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adds that about 20 to 42 percent of hospitalized coronavirus cases will develop ARDS. Prior to the global pandemic, researchers said nearly half of severe ARDS cases turn fatal.
There is a common thread in the 80% or so of (known) infected people who don’t develop serious symptoms requiring hospitalization.
Yan explains that the antioxidant extracellular superoxide dismutase (EcSOD) could have a lot to do with keeping the majority of coronavirus cases mild.
The study says EcSOD hunts down free radicals and protects the body’s tissue from disease. Our muscles naturally make EcSOD, but the study adds that its production is increased by cardiovascular exercise.
“We cannot live in isolation forever,” Yan said. “Regular exercise has far more health benefits than we know. The protection against this severe respiratory disease condition is just one of the many examples.”
He goes on to remind us all of the expression, ‘exercise is medicine’.
You know what? He’s right.
Maybe the super-snitches looking to narc out their neighbors for playing catch with their kids or hitting the beach should go home and rethink their lives.
THEY could be the ones that are, ultimately, ‘endangering society’.
