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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. During this membership drive, we are ending each show with a 10-ish minute explainer on how to take care of yourself now that our listening area is slowly emerging from the pandemic. We pick five different topics, based on what we've been hearing from you and seeing around the internet. On Monday, we'll tackle sunscreen, now that vaccinated people are going maskless outdoors just in time for summer when your nose hasn't seen a UV ray for more than a year. That'll be on Monday.

Now we'll turn to exercise, how to get back into it after the pandemic, including for the many of you who have had COVID and on managing your respiratory systems, or just those of you who haven't had COVID and been more sedate. Joining me now is Heather Moore, a physical therapist and member of the US Olympic Committee sports medicine team. Dr. Moore, welcome to WNYC.

Dr. Heather Moore: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with your patients who have recovered from COVID. What post-COVID symptoms do you find they are experiencing when it comes to working out?

Dr. Heather Moore: I think the most interesting thing we're finding is it doesn't matter whether you had symptoms during COVID, or not, everyone's experiencing a lot of the same post-COVID symptoms and one of them is respiratory, people are finding it very hard to get back to working out, going up the stairs can be a challenge, breathing is an issue. We're also seeing a lot of joint pain, unexplained joint pain, back pain, neck pain, knee pain.

Like I said, again, this is not for somebody who had severe symptoms. We're seeing this with people who had no symptoms whatsoever but went to go back to their normal lives and now are really having issues with breathing and things.

Brian Lehrer: Explain the knee pain and other joint pain because we think of COVID as more of a respiratory disease.

Dr. Heather Moore: Correct. That's one of the things that we're starting to study and starting to find out because everyone's studying the lungs, but what we're seeing is people have just come in never having, had a knee pain issue before, or a back pain issue before. They're about a month out of COVID, and they go to resume some normalcy to their lives, walking, what have you, and they're getting this sharp pain and the sharp pain becomes a dull pain when they're not moving, and then it gets sharper as they start to move.

There's nothing showing up on X-ray or MRI. There's nothing really wrong with the muscles, it's just for this joint pain that we're starting to see that is universal, it gets really bad with activity, and then when I rested, it's still there, but it's duller. This is a universal post-COVID symptom that we're seeing.

Brian Lehrer: If someone is having symptoms post-COVID, let's say some kind of long haul. I know it expresses differently in different people, but is one type of exercise safer or more restorative than another, like strength training versus cardio or anything like that?

Dr. Heather Moore: When you're resuming any type of workout, you want to just start off at a nice easy walk, whether it's riding a bike. I don't recommend doing high-intensity interval workouts when you're just getting back, but find the activity you like to do. It could be yoga, it can be a gentle strength training, but definitely take it back a notch and slow down and ease back into it. Otherwise, you're really risking serious complications, like going to the hospital or carrying something. You want to make sure that whatever you choose, it's just a nice, easy more for endurance, rather than really hitting it hard and doing a lot of strength.

Brian Lehrer: What about the people who have had respiratory problems from COVID, long haul, or if they just recently had COVID and they're recovering from their initial bout, how do you get back into cardiovascular, cardio exercise, if you've had a respiratory problem?

Dr. Heather Moore: This is something that you really want to have monitored by a medical professional because we are seeing actual damage to the lungs, and that can be very detrimental to you if you push it too much. If you are wanting to start something on your own, gentle walking, I usually say just start off with about 10 minutes and increase that weekly if you can, listen to your body. So many people ignore their body. So many people don't listen to it when it hurts or it's telling you to stop. This is a time where you have to listen to it.

If it's telling you you're doing too much, you're doing too much, but I always say 10 minutes of walking, 15 minutes of walking. Start there and slowly build up and then maybe you do like run-walk intervals if you are inclined to run. Otherwise, you just stick with a healthy walk, and that's about 30 minutes a day, at a good pace, not a stroll, but a good pace, but when you're just getting back into it, and you have had respiratory symptoms, you want to just start off at that stroll, just get outside and make sure you're getting those lungs working again.

Brian Lehrer: Dr. Moore, I mentioned at the beginning that you're a member of the US Olympic Committee sports medicine team. I want to ask you a question about that because, as some of our listeners may not know, the 2020 Olympics, which were canceled because of the pandemic last year, really postponed have been rescheduled to take place in July of this year in Japan. Now, CNN recently reported that Japan is battling its fourth wave of the pandemic, and its vaccination rate is very low.

I'm curious how the sports medicine team plans on keeping American athletes safe during the games. Will every athlete be required to have a vaccine, for example?

Dr. Heather Moore: They are in talks right now for all of this. I'm not sure where everything stands, quite frankly, because it changes every day. It's rapidly evolving. Everybody who works with the athletes is required to be vaccinated, that's a definite. In terms of what the athletes are actually going to be required to have, is not so known right now. Honestly, we're not even sure how everyone's going to get there, and who we're bringing over because of the fact that Japan is now going through yet another wave.

Unfortunately with this pandemic, it's changing daily, it's very hard to make decisions and you want to keep everybody safe, and you certainly just don't want to push it. We have been able to hold very high world-class events, most recently, and it kept everybody safe. Most likely we're going to follow the same protocol and that was not everybody being vaccinated, so we will see.

Brian Lehrer: Can you give us tips in 30 seconds for determining if the gym you want to go back to has good COVID safety protocols?

Dr. Heather Moore: Look for wipes, look for mask protocols, look for social distancing, even though they are saying you don't have to wear a mask anymore, make sure there are still social distancing. That is a must. Make sure that they have wipes and you're wiping down every piece of equipment. It is super important that we continue this cleanliness that evolved with COVID and make sure that your gym is participating in that, we are not back to normal yet by any means.

Brian Lehrer: Heather Moore, a physical therapist and member of the US Olympic Committee sports medicine team. Dr. Moore, thank you so much for your time and information.

Dr. Heather Moore: Thank you.

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