Many people have started to exercise at home to avoid the consequences of a sedentary lifestyle. Our lives have changed, and because of covid-19 restrictions, we don't move around as we did a year ago. We have reduced mobility, we now telecommute, and we are likely to exercise less given the circumstances and new time constraints.
"The reduction in mobility across the population due to Covid-19 prevention measures is taking its toll on the musculoskeletal system. The consequences of the lack of movement affect almost all age groups, but in different ways," says Dr José Tabuenca, head of the Department of Traumatology at the Hospital Universitario Quirónsalud Madrid.
One of the main groups affected by these new conditions are older people who, predictably, used to engage in light physical activity to maintain health and now, faced with limitations, have stopped doing so and stay at home most of the day for fear of infection when leaving the house.
"Many older people do not dare to leave the house and get into a dynamic of muscular deterioration. Even if they walk indoors, they do not do so sufficiently. This stagnation has led to more atrophy in them, less ability to mobilise muscle groups and an increase in falls. This group comes to us in the consultation and reports problems with walking, but also vague pain," admits Dr Tabuenca.
As he acknowledges, in many cases it is difficult for professionals to measure the degree of atrophy because they do not know the previous mobility scores. "We have also observed nutritional problems in this group," warns the specialist from Quirónsalud Madrid.
In his opinion, patients who have undergone prosthesis implantation (hip or knee) deserve a chapter of their own, related to this group, where recovery is "slower than in the period before the operation", mainly due to the lack of mobility.
The problem of teleworking
On the other hand, this expert draws attention to people who telework. "Confinement has caused a very abrupt change in work habits for many people who have moved from working in an office to working at home. This change has resulted in many of them doing their daily work in places with inadequate ergonomic measures. Neither is the computer at the right height, nor is their chair the recommended one, nor do they move enough," Tabuenca explains.
As a result of these new work habits, the orthopaedic surgeon from Quirónsalud often sees patients in his practice with shoulder, elbow and hand tendon injuries, as well as hip injuries (trochanteritis or contractures in the gluteus medius) caused by posture problems due to long working hours in front of the computer and lack of sleep.
"This group of patients is not helped by the fact that they have eliminated from their daily lives much of the mobility they used to do on the way to and from work. They have stopped walking, stopped climbing stairs, if only for a short time. This immobility affects their musculoskeletal system," he warns.
To avoid the occurrence of injuries in this segment of the population, Dr Tabuenca recommends dressing appropriately for work, walking around for a while before starting work as if we were going to work, and trying to respect ergonomic measures at our home offices as much as possible. He also says that it helps to walk while talking on the phone at home and also not to sit for a long time.
The danger of not exercising at home
Another group of injuries that are appearing frequently are those of people who, for fear of returning to the gym or exercising outdoors because of the pandemic, exercise at home: "These are people who have not returned to gyms because they are still afraid of them and who do Cross-Fit or Tabata tables following video tutorials which, on most occasions, are not adapted to their physical condition, or who do them without the appropriate material (using milk packets as weights or buckets of water) or in much smaller environments".
The Quirónsalud specialist warns that it is common for these people to carry out a more aggressive activity than they did previously and not follow the process of warming up, strengthening, intense training and stretching, so that these patients often suffer muscular injuries, generally in the large muscles of the body, such as the hamstrings or the quadriceps of the lower limbs, as well as shoulder injuries.
Ultimately, Dr. José Tabuenca, head of the Traumatology Service at the Hospital Universitario Quirónsalud Madrid, points to all those people who have injured themselves while trying to recover the rhythm of physical activity they were doing before confinement and in a very short time.
"In these people we have observed stress fractures, mainly in the foot and ankle. These people put their lower limbs under excessive stress when they had been stationary for a long time. Meniscus and shoulder injuries are also common in this group," adds the orthopaedic surgeon.
In the event of any symptoms of injury, the specialist encourages people to go to the clinic despite the pandemic, since, as he points out, hospital centres are now safe from covid-19 infection, as they have designed circuits free of this virus.
Libertad Digital - 9. May 2021
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