I know two people who have basically the same story.

One was a runner a Marathon was nothing for him and now almost a year later he can do a half Marathon.

The other one was a natural body builder. They know the weights they can push. He told me that 8 Months after Covid he was down 20% in weights.

This isn't really specific to COVID though, any serious illness can do a real number on you.

Anecdote: I'm an avid runner and cyclist, but after I had dengue fever, it took me months to regain my fitness. I used to run 10K's before breakfast, but the first time I attempted a 5 km walk afterwards, I was basically comatose for the rest of the day.

I was never an avid runner, but I would jog in the morning sometimes. It was supposed to be a habit, but never was.

I noticed a huge difference in performance before and after getting sick with Epstein Barr in 2017. Even years later I've never returned to the same performance. Maybe related, maybe not, but that's how it looks to me with my sample size of one.

It would be interesting (to at least one person) to have good rehab plans. How long did it take for you to go back to easy 10Ks

When I got dengue I was really bad for a few days but quickly recovered and actually improved my fitness/health due to changing lifestyle (so it's biased). Wasn't it chikungunya?

Nope, confirmed with blood test. Dengue is quite weird though, it's asymptomatic for most people who get it, under a percent get hemorrhagic shock and end up in hospital, and the rest like me are anywhere in between.

Post-viral conditions happen, yeah, but the percentages coming out of long COVID studies as well as the sheer number of anecdotes everyone has seems fairly novel. At the very least, even if there's a similar prevalence of these issues for COVID, the sheer amount of infections is going to mean this is a larger concern for COVID than other viruses.

People talk about NEVER recovering their previous cardio performance after a COVID infection. No one expects anyone to be seriously sick, and then have anything resembling their previous performance levels when they first start back.

> People talk about NEVER recovering their previous cardio performance after a COVID infection.

And how would they know, really?

Because it's been years since their infection and they haven't recovered it yet.

When I went to the gym when I was in my 20s and 30 I could notice the difference after a cold and flu. I'm by no means a body builder but I got to a comfortable point of weights for me.

If I had a cold it would set me back a day or two sometimes not at all but I didn't go to the gym when sick. If I had the flu even with a flu shot it knocked me off my weight routine for months. The effects of having the flu was very noticeable on me it set me back six months. I can't imagine what covid would be like.

I exercise 1.5 hours a day 6 days a week for long time now..agree colds/flu would knock me down, though i don't get them that often. I had covid a few times already and did not see any difference from just regular colds, well except i lost taste and smell which was a travesty not being able to taste all that bland chicken going down the chute :D But I am not seeing any effects in my performance or new gains. I guess everyone's different

I had Covid and hit a new all time high deadlift (515 lbs) at a lower body weight a few months later.

Congrats, I’m trying to get into squats. Do you recommend the starting strength program or something else for a lifting noob?

Yeah for sure! It’s a great starter program that I did as well. Honestly most programs are decent - treat lifting like programming (constantly leaning) and you’ll do great. The good news is with lifting showing up and working hard can get you really far even with a bad program.

Thanks, I tried it before and kept going up in weight and injured myself in college. Guess I need to know my limits and not increase with every week, rather focus on form and strength then weight in the order!

I lost 20 pounds of fat/muscle in a month from Covid. I don’t doubt the bodybuilder having serious reductions there. It messed with my whole body in a way I still haven’t fully recovered from and that I can’t accurately describe to people.

I lost 20% my max lifts after the second jab, but gained out back in a couple of months.

Adding to this, I'm not sure I had COVID, but 1) I had cardiac troubles before the pandemic, 2) did many months of bike to gain back some average cardiovascular health 3) I got vaccinated in Jan, and now my heart is doing different things (less fatigue but more and larger skipped beats). It's hard to know what's causing what now. I assume a lot of people are in the same case.

Similar to me. I am (was?) a healthy mid-fifties life-long cyclist and the first dose (Moderna) caused 10+% PVCs that I'm now on beta blockers to try and manage. Both my doctor and now cardiologist have advised me against receiving the second shot.

I guess covid is gonna make a lot of us cardiovascular specialists ..

I wish you a good recovery (as much as possible)

Like you I was a 50km/30 mile wake up and go person regardless of baseline health before the pandemic. Since I got the original strain in March 2020, I struggle to break 10.

>The heart is unable to regenerate heart muscle after a heart attack and lost cardiac muscle is replaced by scar tissue.

https://www.uclahealth.org/heart/cardiac-repair-regeneration

Professional triathlete Lucy Charles-Barclay had Covid in November 2020 and then won the Ironman 70.3 world championship 10 months later. Everyone is different.

Absolutely true. I only have weird smells sometimes, while my wife still suffers loss of appetite and a reduction of energy levels. It's been 6 months since we recovered.

> nothing else has changed in my life

Except that you got a year older.

Endurance typically improves with age into the mid/late 30s even at the elite level.

Lockdowns have also broken everyone’s regular exercise and healthy habits. On charts we all assign this to Covid, but lockdowns were an artificial, additional decision.

I experienced the opposite effect described here, and I ascribe the positive effects to lockdown. Before COVID, I ran about 5km once a month, and I was pretty slow.

I got COVID early on in February 2020, and while it initially seemed mild, the tail end was severe. Pain that made me worry I might have been having a mini-stroke, and after that lung issues making it painful to take a shallow breath. After a week or so, it was just painful to breathe deeply but otherwise OK.

I started doing low heart-rate running, trying to keep my HR below 132. Initially, this was really hard, and even jogging slightly too fast could cause my HR to spike to 180 and stay there for 5 minutes. But over the next couple of weeks as my lungs improved again, it got better and better. Within a few months, I was doing at least 5km every time I went for a run, and running 3 or 4 times a week. I've got faster and faster as a result, and I've knocked a third off my 5km PB time from pre-COVID.

My health hasn't been better for many years, and that's only because the lockdown conditions meant that I was working from home so could take a long break at lunchtime, we were allowed out for exercise, but otherwise the streets were deserted. I think lockdown was the best thing that's ever happened to me in terms of exercise opportunities.

"knocked a third off my 5km PB..."

Wow. Congratulations, that's got to feel good.

There certainly was some disruption in gyms as workout places, but I'd be cautious about systematic conclusions like "broken everyone's regular exercise and healthy habits" given observable factors like:

* increased personal time for workouts for anyone working remotely (or forgoing employment entirely)

* dramatically increased demand & prices for home exercise equipment

* shifts to cooking at home

March / April 2020 seemed to be marked by a lot of people going outside and running. Personally, I shed over 35 lbs of bodyfat in 2020 and have had few comparable periods where I hiked as often or ate as cleanly, and I'm far from alone in my circle of acquaintances.

Absolutely. Sales of bike exercise equipment (plus Peloton’s share price), and outdoor sports gear went parabolic in 2020 and remain at record highs. The idea that “lockdowns” inhibited exercise while in many countries exercising outdoors is laughable.

Not nitpicking, because I hope you're correct. That said, sales doesn't equal actual sustained usage.

Anecdotal: I run almost every day. Don't get excited, only 2 to 4 miles :) Early in the pandemic I saw plenty of new faces - often couples - out exercising. Some running, mostly walking. I don't see many of those faces any more.

> That said, sales doesn't equal actual sustained usage.

Neither do open gyms. :)

Though post-holiday covid peaks may have slightly altered the long-running wry observations about January in the gym.

In fact, I'd guess most gyms are profitable because of those who pay who but rarely show up.

No doubt there were high sales of home exercise equipment - and running became more popular.

But there were some very cautious times during lockdown. Events like Parkrun were cancelled for months on end. Loads of races were cancelled. Gyms were closed. Indoor fitness activities like dance, yoga, pilates, and aerobics were cancelled (and their online alternatives much more sparsely attended). If the place you were doing swimming/squash/tennis/golf is closed, you're out of luck. Football, hockey and basketball aren't compatible with social distancing. Neither is boxing, judo or MMA. People who commuted by foot or bike started working from home.

Running and cycling were certainly winners, but I'm certain there were a lot of losers as well.

I ride a bike 3k+ miles a year, every year for the past 15 years, on the various trails near me and I can say with absolute certainty that the volume of people running, biking, walking, ... on those same trails more than tripled at the beginning of the pandemic and have yet to decrease back to baseline. I don't know about those individuals exercise habits prior to the pandemic, but they certainly weren't on the trails.

I think on a macro scale you're right, attitudes and disciplines are also somewhat to blame.

Sweden, though, did not lock down, and I hear (and experience) the same issue as the parent.

The first day back after COVID and I reached my max heart rate in 60s of moderate jogging.

> attitudes and disciplines are also somewhat to blame.

This is how the disease will be dismissed. Why bother researching it when you can just blame the victim? It works for ME and endometriosis, and it's far cheaper than diagnosing and treating people.

Not sure it is accurate to say Sweden did not lock down. Afaik they had some measures in place, and were counting on people to behave sensibly in other aspects. So even though there were perhaps less lockdown rules, most people might still have adjusted their behavior.

As mentioned I think this really only applies on a macro scale.

Individual anecdotes (such as my personal friends who did not change behaviour), while unscientific, paint a similar picture to what is being presented as evidence, so it's an additional data point to consider.

So, at least there is some correlation with the sentiment, and by people whom I know have not adjusted their behaviour. (including myself)

Sweden's restrictions were excessively light, by the way, 8pm closing of restaurants and gyms is not exactly a big deal to people going to the gym after work.

Both my gym and pool were closed for almost half a year in Sweden.

In Göteborg SATS nor Friskis&Svettis were never closed during the pandemic. I also knew that Fitness24 was open all the way too. Which gym are you talking about?

My gym and pool area in the same building, run by the same company (medley). The pool was closed by the city and the gym was closed by proxy.

Fitness24/7 in town was so small that it was impossible to get in due to covid retrictions. Something like a maximum of 9 people which meant that it was impossible to get in during popular hours.

What, really? SATS closed for like 2 months at the start of the pandemic and has been open since then.

My girlfriend is the manager of one of the Malmo branches.

> "Lockdowns have also broken everyone’s regular exercise and healthy habits."

If anything, I think I actually got a bit healthier because of lockdown. Eating healthier due to fewer restaurant meals, drinking less due to not being able to go to pubs and parties etc.

Probably got more exercise too because for a while it was one of the few valid excuses to get out of the house!

Citation needed. Anecdotally a lot of people in my country took up exercise for something to do in lockdown.

No citations on that though.

> Lockdowns have also broken everyone’s regular exercise and healthy habits.

Why do you make assumptions about "everyone"? I'm sure there are as many diverse experiences during 'lockdowns' as there are people who experienced them. Obviously if you include the rare cases where people were actually kept indoors (how long did those actually last?), then healthy exercise might have been more difficult.

In my case, my health has improved immeasurably, as I no longer need to sit in an office all day, eat an unhealthy lunch and eat office-supplied snacks the way I did before.

I eat more healthily, get more fresh air, walk and cycle at lunchtimes - and even get more work done in fewer hours.

Lockdown was also in place for the control group so its effects should be accounted for. You could try to show a negative health effect of people in quarantine, but this is not possible if all infected are placed in quarantine.

All of the replies to this completely ignore those of us who have families, and especially young families. Good for you if the sudden removal of responsibilities gave you the freedom to get outside for long periods every day. However, frankly people like this were the main reason I had to quit Strava. While my wife and I struggled to hold our lives and jobs together when it became illegal to have anyone else look after our kids, I had to watch everyone else enjoy day-long rides and runs in the hills.

And before you come out with the usual "you just need to use more imagination and take your kids with you" - for a start, the situation I described above drained more energy and life than I care to remember. Also, there's only so much a 1 year old will put up with, when I am used to rides of up to 100 miles.

Personally, I am deeply embittered by the whole experience.

Childcare is definitely an issue in so many contexts, can definitely recognize that. Hopefully that's something more people are thinking about going forward with an eye towards the social value of it and the problems of people facing it in even non-epidemic situations.

But gains from no-commute / remote setups weren't limited to single/childless people. Some of the people I know who were taking rides / runs in the hills were couples with kids working schedules out with their partners, and I can think of families who demonstrated that reproduction doesn't bar one from buying home exercise equipment.

And "it became illegal to have anyone else look after our kids" -- I get that it's frustrating to have a service that you rely on closed. I can see that'd be especially hard with group daycare. I saw that frustration play out. I also saw people continue babysitting or au pair arrangements with whatever behavioral stipulations for epidemic-safety made sense to them, and that got easier as lots of people pulled out of service/retail labor force. Childcare was different but illegal seems like hyperbole.

I'm sure your experience was difficult or stressful; lots of people found adapting difficult in various ways (nor were single/childless people exempt, though the challenges might be different). But the idea that the parent poster forwarded that somehow civil policies generally "broke" people's health/exercise habits is a poor generalization... and whatever the truth about the difficulty of your particular situation, the idea that adapting was just impossible for people with kids and additionally that anyone pushing back on criticism of restrictions just isn't thinking about that doesn't hold up as a generalization either.

>I also saw people continue babysitting or au pair arrangements

I mean what I said. Where I live (Wales, UK), it was illegal to have people in your house (and obviously, that meant you also couldn't go into anyone else's house) until mid-2021. Obviously, we did not follow that law, as it was absurd and would have caused significant harm to me and those close to me.

Do not patronise me, by suggesting I should have "planned better" or "adjusted quicker". Saying such things is incredibly demeaning to the effort we did have to go to, to do our best as a family. Trust me, once I realised that no-one else was looking out for us, I did plenty to ensure that those closest to me would be ok (and mostly, that consisted of breaking newly-passed Covid laws, including the one I already mentioned. It was also illegal for me to go to our nearby woodland, because we were not allowed to leave the county we live in and I live in a city that is its own county.). I am proud to say that my two young kids will probably have no memory of Covid, and am very proud to say that we have also not succumbed to the new parenting norm of allowing kids of almost any age to spend as much time as they like staring at screens. In doing so, selfish pursuits like my cycling and other hobbies have had to take a back seat.

> Where I live (Wales, UK), it was illegal to have anyone in your house (and obviously, that meant you also couldn't go into anyone else's house) until mid-2021.

Maybe lead with that specific, then. You know, the idea that people weren't properly accounting for Wales, rather than what you said, which was that people weren't properly accounting for those with children.

Though if we're accounting for Wales, my understanding is that like the rest of the UK (and similar to many other western countries) it had established "alert levels" as described here:

https://gov.wales/covid-19-alert-levels

with restrictions that varied over time. Looking at the alert levels for early 2021 via the wayback machine, it seems like up through Alert Level 3 [0], it's hard to read the restrictions as "illegal to have anyone in your house" so I don't know what to make of that. Even if we're saying Alert Level 4 [1] was simply constant from 2020 onset through mid 2021, the language under that seems to have some wiggle room in it.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20210309231028/https://gov.wales...

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210302230652/https://gov.wales...

> Do not patronise me

If acknowledgement that there were genuine struggles alongside examining the shortcomings in generalizations within your comment feels patronizing, I can drop the empathy. Would that be better for you, or would you like us to stick with politely allowing that regrettable difficulty and acceptable adaptation could actually overlap?

Thank you for quickly googling my lived experience. Yes, we had "Alert Levels". The actual laws and guidelines in place at any one time also did not bear much resemblance to the supposed "Alert Level". FYI, it was June 7th 2021 when we were allowed to have other people inside our houses.

I appreciate that I have lived through a particularly draconian and frankly absurd set of restrictions since 2020. However, my comments on being a parent over this time are still valid. It has been especially tough, and I doubt that anyone I referenced in my original comment has kids of their own.

Hopefully people have had their eyes opened about the dangers of allowing too much government control over our lives.

I wish it were true, but I doubt it. The main thing I have learned is that people really don't care, until it affects them.

Count me with the "more healthy" crowd. Work from home has made it much easier to keep a healthy lifestyle. Eating at home with food I cook. No time commuting to work. No temptation to go out to some restaurant for tasty, but horrible for me, food and a couple of cocktails.

I have a good deal of empathy for those who don't get to work from home, but I'm the opposite of "healthy habits got worse."

Oh no. I have created a new exercise habit thanks to lockdown. I got on the "get exercise equipment" train early. I'm MUCH healthier now thanks to lockdown; lost about 5 kg, can do 13 pull-ups, lift weights 5 days a week, etc.

The US lock down was a joke. Most places barely shut down gyms and that still leaves exercising at home and outdoor recreation as an option. We know that these people contracted a disease that damages the cardiovascular system. It stretches credibility past the breaking point to surmise that lock downs resulted in a meaningful portion of this mortality or morbidity.

Presumably they are using non-infected people as a control.

Unfortunately they didn't perform any tests to verify that the control group had not had COVID (it's in the article).

How bad were your symptoms?

Did you take the vaccine?

Are you vaccinated?

How old are you?

I'm in my early 30s

Did you take the vaccine?

Yes, I did. I have both shots and a booster. That said, this all started before the vaccines. The day before I got COVID I returned from a 30 mile trip with my buddy. I had COVID in January, and vaccines were available until months later, so I don't think it's really vaccine related.

Better question: were they treated in any way?

What treatments do you mean?

Anything. There seems to be this (unproven) belief that the drugs and methods used to treat Covid do no harm, and that it must be the virus, and only the virus.

The fact is, this is the first time in a long time that we've had a substantial sample size of infected humans, as well as a spotlight on the topic. The point being, there could be previous history with regard to treatment / solutions used for Covid and we've never bothered to look and see. That's not being critical. We had no reason to look. People survived and that we moved on.

But now we have a significant amount of data, yet we seem to be presuming - again, without proof - that the cause of "long Covid" is exclusively due to the virus. Simply put, that assumption isn't supported with science. It's based on assumption and narrative.

Considering hospitals have basically banned or obfuscated all treatments other than prevention, good questions.

Hospitals are frequently using anti-viral and mono-clonal antibody treatments for severe cases. They are not using drugs that have been shown ineffective.

The federal government yanked access to monoclonal antibodies citing they were made for a different strain when omicron came around.

Problem is plenty of people were still getting delta and they still worked, with lesser efficacy, against omicron

And the antivirals they're handing, you're better off fighting covid without them

remdesivir is a garbage drug

It's not a question of ineffectivrness. It's a question of treating a large number of people, with a spot light on them, and then blaming the illness for "long Covid". Maybe it is the virus? But maybe it's the treatment? Or a combo of both? Or a combo plus some other factor?

Two examples that might help frame things:

1) Chemo. It's toxic.

2) A couple of yrs ago a family member was hospitalized from a stroke. They needed to be put on assisted breathing. Well that helped, but it also led to a lung infection. And then that required treatment. Fair enough, it prevented death.

The point is, not every treatment is without sidside effects. But with Covid, evidently there are no longer comorbidies, and the treatments have no side effects.

Many of the treatments listed in the official NIH guidelines have significant negative side effects. Those are clearly acknowledged so I don't understand why you seem to think they're being hidden? In fact some of the treatments are only recommended for more severe cases partly due to the risk of side effects.

https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/

Mechanical ventilation was overused early in the pandemic and likely killed quite a few patients. Now less invasive therapies are preferred and ventilators are only used as a salvage therapy when all else has failed.

I didn't say nor imply they are being hidden. What I'm questioning is the attribution of so called long Covid strictly to the virus and not to any of the treatments and/or people's general state of health prior to getting sick. It's the mono-lens. It's the thumb on the scale narrative.

Sure there are outliers (i.e., people in very good health getting long Covid) and the media is great in highlighting them. It makes for profitable "news." But the typical American doesn't exercise enough, and doesn't eat particularly well. These things impact health. They impact recovery (from any illness or injury). Yet we continue to be stuck with leadership and a narrative that is afraid to discuss such things.

That's all I'm questioning.

A year later means it's probably permanent.

I don't think there's any tissue that takes longer than a year to regenerate.

Back in my 40s I broke my leg: a simple tib-fib fracture. Without any artificial fixation it took 3 years to recover. There's plenty of tissues in a human body that can take more than 1 year to fully regenerate.

> There's plenty of tissues in a human body that can take more than 1 year to fully regenerate.

Nerves, for instance[0].

[0] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/peripheral-ne...

Heart muscle doesn't though.

From what I remember from a family members heart attack ... the heart doesn't really heal.

Hence pace makers for a lifetime.

>The heart is unable to regenerate heart muscle after a heart attack and lost cardiac muscle is replaced by scar tissue.

https://www.uclahealth.org/heart/cardiac-repair-regeneration

>The heart is unable to regenerate heart muscle after a heart attack and lost cardiac muscle is replaced by scar tissue.

https://www.uclahealth.org/heart/cardiac-repair-regeneration

Reference link, please.

>The heart is unable to regenerate heart muscle after a heart attack and lost cardiac muscle is replaced by scar tissue.

https://www.uclahealth.org/heart/cardiac-repair-regeneration