The doctor advised doing yoga inside homes or in an open park yoga without any crowding. (Representational)
PGI Doctors from the Advanced Cardiac Centre advised against jogging or running outside during these times, especially when it is imperative to wear masks.
Many people in Chandigarh go to the Sukhna lake to run or jog with masks on, which doctors said should not be done.
Head of Department of Advanced Cardiac Centre, PGIMER, Dr Yash Paul Sharma, said that heavy exercise while wearing masks creates a situation of hypoxia, as the oxygen flow to body is already less while wearing a mask.
Thus, only yoga or light to moderate walk is advised only upto a point before it causes heavy exertion.
“While one is jogging or running, the body requires more oxygen as during exercise, metabolic rate increases and oxygen demand is more. Mask stops the inflow of oxygen. And since it is important to wear a mask also, heavy
exercise is risky. One tends to lower the mask a bit to inhale, which can spread infection too as one can be asymptomatic,” he said.
“Those who think that they are increasing immunity by running, are mistaken. When you reach a stage where you are gasping for breath, you are lowering your immunity and that is the time when this virus attacks. There are chances that one can be asymptomatic initially and after exertion, one first becomes mild then moderate and then severe,” added the doctor.
The doctor advised doing yoga inside homes or in an open park yoga without any crowding. They added that house surfaces should be cleaned with hypochloride solution.
“For everyone, be it shopkeeper or journalist or office goer, no one should exert as mild symptoms can deteriorate,” he said.
This advisory is of utmost importance for cardiac patients with coronary artery disease, all sorts of symptomatic and asympatomatic people, people with hypertension, heart failure, elderly, diabetics with coronary artery disease who can decompensate and have chest pain, acute coronary syndrome breathlessness VT/VF and cardiac arrest, said the doctor.
Cardiac patients, those with hypertension or those who have had history of heart failures, should particularly exercise control, he said.