Exercise is the Most Important Medicine for COVID-19

Abstract

COVID-19 infection and long COVID affect multiple organ systems, including the respiratory, cardiovascular, renal, digestive, neuroendocrine, musculoskeletal systems, and sensory organs. Exerkines, released during exercise, have a potent crosstalk effect between multiple body systems. This review describes the evidence of how exerkines can mitigate the effects of COVID-19 in each organ system that the virus affects. The evidence presented in the review suggests that exercise should be considered a first-line strategy in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 infection and long COVID disease.

Exercise capacity in COVID-19 surviving patients: impact of physical rehabilitation

“…At this moment, the exercise interventions of the rehabilitation programs prescribed for post-COVID-19 patients lacked detailed description of each exercise and how the starting levels and adherence to the programmers were assessed (Torres;Philippe, 2023). Other studies showed that resistance muscle training promotes physiological and structural changes in muscle fibers, such as an increase in the cross-sectional area of the muscle and a change from type I muscle fibers to type 2a muscle fibers (Mills et al, 2023).…”

“…The enhancement of the respiratory muscle is one of the main factors that increases exercise tolerance and promotes the improvement of lung function in COVID-19 patients, more specifically by increasing the strength of respiratory muscles, lung ventilation ability, as well as oxygen and alveoli combination (Bo;Xi;Tian, 2021). Different field tests have been studied to evaluate the exercise capacity of post-COVID19 patients and the response to physical rehabilitation programs (Del Valle et al, 2023;Visca et al, 2023;Torres;Philippe, 2023;Núñez-Cortés et al, 2022;Nopp et al, 2022;Peroy-Badal et al, 2022). We chose the 6MST because it is a stress test of easy application and low cost, easily performed in small spaces.…”