Healthy lifestyle habits significantly reduces the long-term risks associated with COVID-19: Study

In a recent study published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers investigated the association between alterable lifestyle factors and complications after having coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Long COVID affects a range of systemic diseases or symptoms across 10 organ systems, including cardiovascular, coagulation, metabolic, gastrointestinal, kidney, mental health, musculoskeletal, neurologic, and respiratory disorders, as well as general symptoms of fatigue and malaise, severely impacting the quality of life and daily life.

Researchers aimed to fill a critical knowledge gap by examining how a combination of healthy lifestyle factors, particularly regular physical activity, a healthy diet, and avoiding smoking, might reduce the risk of developing long COVID symptoms across various organ systems. The study considered factors like infection severity, vaccination status, and different COVID-19 variants.

The study examined 68,896 participants from the UK Biobank project who tested positive for COVID-19 between 2020 and 2022. The participants had an average age of 66.6 years, with 53.4% being male and 82.1% identifying as White.

The study reveals that maintaining a healthy lifestyle prior to contracting COVID-19 significantly reduces the risk of severe outcomes, such as multisystem complications, hospitalization, and death, during both the acute and post-acute phases of the disease.

The findings showed that maintaining a healthy lifestyle before the pandemic was linked to a significantly reduced risk of long-term health issues, death, and hospitalization after COVID-19. This benefit was consistent across different phases of infection, vaccination statuses, test settings, and SARS-CoV-2 variants, and was independent of existing comorbidities.