Exercising after a COVID or flu shot can boost effectiveness, study says. Here’s why
Hitting the gym after getting your COVID-19 vaccine might make it more effective, according to new research from Iowa State University.
In the study, which will be published in the journal ”Brain, Behavior, and Immunity,” researchers found that partaking in physical exercise within 90 minutes of receiving the shot could increase the body’s immune response.
To collect the data, researchers randomly assigned participants to either complete 90 minutes of exercise or to avoid exercise the day of their first COVID-19 vaccination. Afterward, they observed that the participants who exercised for 90 minutes soon after receiving the vaccine had more antibodies in the following weeks than those who didn’t.
Researchers also conducted similar studies on participants who received the H1N1 vaccine and seasonal flu vaccine and found similar boosts in antibody responses among participants who exercised after receiving the vaccines, the study said.
Antibodies essentially function as the body’s “search and destroy” line of defense against infection, according to a news release from Iowa State University. In other words, antibodies are essential to attacking viruses like COVID-19 that try to invade the body.
“Our preliminary results are the first to demonstrate a specific amount of time can enhance the body’s antibody response to the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine and two vaccines for influenza,” Marian Kohut, a kinesiology professor at Iowa State and the lead author of the paper, said in a news release.
The findings are significant because they show that people may be able to boost their immune response without having to use specialized equipment or highly specific techniques, the study said.
“The exercise intervention is feasible for people who exercise regularly at light intensities such as walking, and persons with a range of health characteristics were able to complete the exercise,” the study said.
Participants in the study were also from a wide range of fitness levels, implying that the benefits don’t necessarily depend on how fit a person was beforehand, the study said.
Researchers noted that the amount of time spent exercising was critical, though – completing only 45 minutes of light-to-moderate exercise was insufficient in boosting antibody response, the study said. Researchers plan to conduct further studies to see if completing 60 minutes of exercise triggers a boost, the study said.
Kohut said there could be several reasons why exercise causes this boost, though more research is needed to know for sure. One potential reason is that the boost in blood and lymph flow caused by exercise helps cells move around the body and detect potential foreign invaders, triggering an antibody response, the news release said.
A similar experiment conducted on mice who ran on treadmills also suggested that “a type of protein produced during exercise helps generate virus-specific antibodies and T-cells,” another essential component of the immune system.
“There are so many changes that take place when we exercise – metabolic, biochemical, neuroendocrine, circulatory,” Kohut said in the release. “So, there’s probably a combination of factors that contribute to the antibody response we found in our study.”
The researchers plan to keep track of participants’ immune responses for six months post-immunization and have begun another study on people who have received booster shots, the release said.
This story was originally published February 16, 2022 at 10:22 AM with the headline "Exercising after a COVID or flu shot can boost effectiveness, study says. Here’s why."