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If you were wondering about the long-term side effects of having COVID, new data from Fitbit is proving they are definitely real.
Fitbit released data that showed that COVID survivors had elevated heart rates for months after their diagnosis and recovery from the highly infectious virus.
People have been saying for months that there are expected long term side effects from getting the virus, but we haven't known much about it throughout the entire pandemic.
Researchers in California and Michigan monitored the Fitbit data of hundreds of people who tested positive for COVID-19, and found that they had an elevated heart rate for, on average, 79 days, about three months after their initial diagnosis. A smaller portion of the patients continued to have the elevated heart rate for more than four and a half months.
COVID patients data also showed they slept more, walked less and saw their resting heart rate go up after the start of the infection.
In addition, people with COVID versus people with other respiratory infections took longer to return to normal levels of sleep and heart rate after exercise.
As the pandemic winds down and more and more people get vaccinated, we obviously have to worry about these things less, but if you had COVID you definitely may want to pay attention to your body and these side effects.
Have you experienced any of these side effects?! If you have, hope you're feeling so much better and are back to normal sleep and heart rate levels.
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Photo: Getty Images