Wearing N95, Cloth Masks is Safe During Exercise

Wearing N95 and cloth mask is safe and effective while peak exercising, suggested a new study. While there was discomfort exercising with a mask, it did not raise any health issues.

Wearing N95 and cloth mask is safe and effective while peak exercising, suggested a new study.

A team of researchers from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, US, tested whether mask wearing during exercise stress testing (EST) to peak exhaustion provokes clinically indicated safety concerns.

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Wearing a mask while at rest or during activities of daily living is recommended to be safe and effective for reducing the risk of person-to-person airborne transmission of SARS-Cov-2, the virus causing Covid-19.

The trial included 20 never-smoker, apparently healthy, recreationally active men (11) and women (9) in treadmill EST under each of the experimental conditions: no mask, N95 (3M, 8200, N95 respirator), and cloth mask (Boco Gear PM2.5 activated carbon filter).A

While there was discomfort exercising with a mask, it did not raise any health issues, revealed the study published online in JAMA Network Open.

"This crossover trial found that perceived breathing resistance at peak exercise is uniquely and significantly elevated when EST is performed while wearing a mask," Matthew Kampert, from the Center of Sports Medicine, Department of Orthopaedics, at Cleveland Clinic.

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Wearing face masks help reduce disease spread by blocking tiny, virus-laden droplets expelled through the nose and mouth when a person speaks, coughs or sneezes. The best masks for blocking droplets are the ones that had a hydrophilic inner layer of cotton or linen.

"Performing EST with a mask yielded lower peak VIO2 and heart rates as compared with no mask. However, each experimental condition resulted in peak exercise values that generally remained within normal limits, and no EST required termination due to clinically indicated safety concerns.

"Thus, although it is possible that wearing a mask exerted a physical limitation on exercise capacity, the clinical relevance of such a possibility is not supported by these data," he said.

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As the study did not include people with chronic disease or heart or lung problems, the researchers recommended that people with underlying health conditions talk to their doctor about exercising with or without a mask.

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Test your Knowledge on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Coronavirus is a large positive-strand RNA virus that is surrounded by a protein envelope. The virus obtains its name from the S protein spikes on its surface, which resemble a crown. The overall pattern of increasing coronavirus cases is shown to spike up with the “second wave” of COVID-19.

With spiking effects of the second wave of coronavirus, the best way to keep it at bay is to follow COVID-appropriate safety practices like wearing a mask, regularly cleaning your hands, and coughing into a bent elbow or tissue along with physical distancing (6 feet about 2 arm's length), that may help evade the severity of COVID-19 infection.