The findings add to mounting evidence, from both experiments and people’s experiences, that “something is going on” in many people who develop long covid that makes exercise challenging, if not impossible, said Matthew Durstenfeld, a cardiologist at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and professor at the University of California at San Francisco Department of Medicine, who led the new study.
Typically, long covid is diagnosed based on a constellation of symptoms that includes headaches, fatigue, brain fog, joint pain and others. Many people with long covid also anecdotally report they cannot exercise or even walk around the block without feeling winded and exhausted.
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In general, those who had gotten over covid showed normal exercise capacity for their age. But those with long covid had the stamina of someone 10 years older. Forty-year-olds would jog or cycle like “someone in their fifties,” Durstenfeld said.
