Can a Healthy Lifestyle Lower Your Risk of Long Covid?
People who have a healthy lifestyle before Covid-19 infection may have a lower risk of long Covid than their peers, a new study says. The study, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, looked at almost 2,000 women who reported a positive Covid-19 test between April 2020 and November 2021. The participants were enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study II, which has been surveying more than 100,000 US nurses since 1989.
The researchers looked at six modifiable lifestyle factors that they defined as healthy: a body-mass index between 18.5 and 24.7, never smoking, moderate alcohol consumption, a high-quality diet, seven to nine hours of sleep per night and at least 150 minutes per week of moderate to vigorous physical activity.
They found that a healthy pre-infection lifestyle was associated with a lower risk of Covid-19 symptoms that lasted four weeks or longer. Women who met five or six of the criteria for a healthy lifestyle had almost half the risk of long Covid as women who met none of the criteria.
Excerpted from CNN
