{"id":5688,"date":"2024-01-16T11:09:39","date_gmt":"2024-01-16T17:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=5688"},"modified":"2024-01-16T11:09:42","modified_gmt":"2024-01-16T17:09:42","slug":"the-dangers-of-exercise-therapy-to-treat-long-covid-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2024\/01\/16\/the-dangers-of-exercise-therapy-to-treat-long-covid-patients\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dangers of Exercise Therapy to Treat\u00a0Long Covid Patients"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/newsletters\/2024-01-15\/the-dangers-of-exercise-therapy-to-treat-long-covid-patients\">Bloomberg<\/a> The research compared responses to 8-12 minutes of high-intensity cycling in a group of long Covid patients and a group of healthy people. All 46 of the volunteers had blood and muscle biopsies taken before and after for analysis. All of the long Covid patients experienced a bout of debilitating fatigue known as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/me-cfs\/healthcare-providers\/clinical-care-patients-mecfs\/treating-most-disruptive-symptoms.html#:~:text=subsequent%20treatment%20plans.-,Post%2Dexertional%20malaise%20(PEM),by%20activity%20management%20(pacing).\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">post-exertional malaise<\/a>. Lab studies showed signs of severe tissue damage, including dying muscle fibers, inflammation, immune activation, and metabolic disturbances in the post-exercise biopsies of patients\u2019 upper leg muscle, but not in those of the healthy controls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After the exercise test, the energy-producing mitochondria of patients\u2019 muscle cells appeared impaired and there was also an increased accumulation of amyloid-containing deposits, which other studies have found in the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/cardiab.biomedcentral.com\/articles\/10.1186\/s12933-022-01579-5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">blood vessels<\/a>&nbsp;of long Covid sufferers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The findings indicate that in people for whom vigorous physical activity brings on post-exertional malaise, or \u201cPEM,\u201d exercise is far from beneficial \u2014 it risks causing harm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe pathology of PEM is completely different from being physically inactive,\u201d\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amsterdamumc.org\/en\/research\/researchers\/rob-wust.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Rob Wust<\/a>, an assistant professor in muscle physiology, who co-led the study, told me. Sufferers pushing themselves to improve their fitness could be making themselves sicker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/newsletters\/2024-01-15\/the-dangers-of-exercise-therapy-to-treat-long-covid-patients\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bloomberg The research compared responses to 8-12 minutes of high-intensity cycling in a group of long Covid patients and a group of healthy people. All 46 of the volunteers had blood and muscle biopsies taken before and after for analysis. All of the long Covid patients experienced a bout of debilitating fatigue known as\u00a0post-exertional malaise. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-long-covid"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5689,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5688\/revisions\/5689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}