COVID-19 Heart Damage

Ben Garves Podcast: Fitness, Nutrition, and Activism

When it comes to COVID-19, we talk a lot about the lung symptoms - the way the lungs inflame and fill with fluid, preventing oxygen from being passed into your blood system. What’s talked less about and has been found to be a huge problem in our bodies is how the virus impacts our hearts. Even in young, healthy athletes, we’re finding heart damage persists in the form of scarring and blood clots.

First, the virus can directly infect the heart, damaging and destroying heart cells. You can also see a vicious cycle where the inability to process oxygen through the lungs forces the heart to work harder, increasing its need for oxygen it won’t receive. The effect can be similar to a heart attack - with the cells in the heart dying from lack of oxygen. A study from the American Medical Association’s Cardiology Journal found that, in a group of 100 mostly-healthy people diagnosed with COVID-19, 78 of them had heart abnormalities even 10 weeks after their initial diagnosis.

In case you needed another reason to take care of your cardiovascular system, put this one on the pile.

Thanks for listening this morning. Please be sure like, rate, review, and subscribe. It’s free to you and means the world to me. I’m Ben Garves, and we’ll chat tomorrow.