Exercise and Immunity (COVID-19 series)

I was on a real roll there for a while, wasn’t I? Well, I’m not sure if what I have to say at this point is enough for an entire blog post or not.

San Antonio is, like most of the rest of the country, encouraging people to stay home as much as possible. “As much as possible” gives one quite a bit of wiggle room, however. Acquiring food, for example, is one of the things one can leave one’s home for. That includes both grocery shopping and going to restaurants. Restaurants are allowed to have drive-through and curbside service. Getting one’s car fixed is included, as is medical care, and, of course, one is allowed to go out if one is an essential worker.

Then there is outdoor exercise and recreation. They have closed the places where people have to be close together, like playgrounds and basketball courts, but the walking paths and greenways are open, and if you’ve been on my blog very long at all, you know that I spend a lot of time on the walking paths and greenways. I have *never* seen as many people there as I have in these last couple of weeks. We’re able to keep a proper social distance from one another (I admit that I had to step off the path a couple of times to get six feet from family groups a few times during my most recent walk), so this is wonderful to see. And when I drive to and from work, I see people jogging, riding their bicycles,* walking their dogs, riding skateboards, I’m really impressed. It is, as the man said, an ill wind that blows no one any good. Hopefully and the people of San Antonio will end up healthier than they used to be.

And there are proven links between exercise and immune response. My oncologist told me that I should exercise for at least half an hour at least five days a week in order to benefit from this connection. If all goes as planned. I should be cancer-free for a long time on this plan. While pondering this post, I even found that there is a journal specifically dedicated to the connection between exercise and the immune system — Exercise Immunology Review. I’m tempted to subscribe. And my mom said that I’d find scientific writing to be dry and boring. (I literally rolled my eyes as I typed that.)

Well, I guess I had enough in me to write a short blog post. I’m thinking about branching out into a medical blog and/or a book blog. If I could get my brain together enough to alternate among travel, medical, book, every day, I’d get 10 posts per month. I’m not sure what I’d do for the Gratuitous Amazon Link for each.

Speaking of Gratuitous Amazon Links, where was I? I completely missed the last post. I was starting on Ally Carter, so here’s the first book in her Heist Society series, called um, well, Heist Society. This is Carter’s international art thieves series and it’s awesome. There are three books in the series and I certainly hope she’ll keep going on that series.

*One of my coworkers was riding her bicycle last week and she fell off and broke her foot. She is now having to take a three-week leave of absence.