receiving either the flu or COVID shot, relative to the comparison group. Those who worked out for only 45 minutes showed no such advantage.
“This finding is a very interesting one, with potential clinical impact,” says Dr. Aaron Glatt, chief of infectious diseases at Mount Sinai South Nassau in Oceanside, N.Y.
But like Kohut, he says the big question is whether the antibody boost makes a difference in infection risk.
At the very least, there was no harm from exercising right after vaccination, Glatt notes. People in the exercise groups reported no additional vaccine side effects.
The study participants were not especially athletic, and about half were overweight or obese, Kohut shares. However, all had been regularly active before participating in the trial — getting moderate to vigorous exercise at least twice a week.
Kohut says aid she would not recommend a 90-minute burst of post-vaccination activity to anyone who is sedentary.
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A sedentary lifestyle is a risk factor for COVID
“These findings don’t surprise me at all,” says Dr. Robert Sallis, a family and sports medicine physician at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Fontana, Calif.
That’s because many studies have now linked physical activity to a lesser risk of severe COVID-19. Sallis led one of those studies, which tracked almost 50,000 Kaiser Permanente patients.
It found that being sedentary was one of the main risk factors for severe COVID-19 — with only older age and a history of organ transplant having a stronger impact.
On average, inactive people were over twice as likely to be hospitalized or die of COVID-19, compared with people who’d been getting the recommended amount of exercise pre-pandemic. (That meant 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise a week.)
Lesser amounts of exercise were also linked to a lower risk of severe COVID-19, Sallis says— even after