COVID-19 changes the lifestyle of the population and subtly reduces the incidence of metabolic disease.

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed significant restrictions on people's daily activities and even change their eating habits, yet it has inadvertently allowed people to benefit potentially from this restriction for certain diseases. The COVID-19 outbreak has had the positive effect of changing the nutritional status of some populations. From this point of view, the COVID-19 pandemic is cleverly beneficial.

Dear editor,

We read with great interest an article in your journal about potential beneficial effects of exercise on COVID-19 [1]. In this sense, once again, exercise is good for health, including COVID-19. It is clear that COVID-19 infection causes not only common respiratory problems, but also subtle changes in the gastrointestinal tract. The COVID-19 outbreak has caused great inconvenience and suffering to the whole society, thus changing many aspects of people's life habits, including daily activities and dietary habits. However, as clinicians, we notice that people may benefit from the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic. There is no doubt that COVID-19 is forcing people to stay at home and reduce their outdoor activities and frequency of eating and drinking together. On the other hand, we should be thankful that the changes in behavior also reduce the risk of metabolic related diseases.

There is evidence that hospitalization rates for multiple groups of acute abdomens, including acute cholecystitis, have declined significantly during the outbreak [2]. In addition, we subtly observed the hospitalization rate of some metabolic related diseases, such as hyperlipidemia, hyperlipidemia acute pancreatitis and alcoholic acute pancreatitis were significantly decreased in our clinical practice in the midst of COVID-19. These diseases are often associated with overeating or excessive alcohol consumption. It is obvious that the COVID-19 outbreak has led to reduced access to dinner parties and alcohol. However, the change in habits allows us clinicians to see a significant reduction in the incidence of these diseases, and therefore benefits the population. From this perspective, the COVID-19 pandemic is a double-edged sword. Furthermore we have also seen a sharp drop in pediatric respiratory patients in many Chinese hospitals, which may benefit from children's reduced outdoor activities during the pandemic, thus avoiding cross-infection of other respiratory infectious diseases.

The continuous spread of COVID-19 brings much trouble and pain to the society, which in turn subtly protects people from other diseases. However, we should promote proper outdoor exercise with good self-protection during the COVID-19 outbreak. To be sure, metabolic diseases are not only related to diet, moderate exercise can also change the incidence of these diseases. Perhaps the outbreak is a reminder that we should control diet whenever possible, especially among people at risk for metabolic diseases.

Declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Funding

Scholarship of Southeast University (Project No. 189351).

Authors' contributions

Xianqiang Yu completed the design and writing of the article all the content.