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Do Face Masks Hinder Breathing During Exercise?

Exercise performance and oxygen levels are not affected by wearing a face mask when you do strenuous physical activity.

Michael Hunter, MD
2 min readNov 10, 2020

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Photo by visuals on Unsplash

Today, I want to explore with you whether wearing a face mask during vigorous exercise affects your performance or oxygen levels. During the Covid-19 pandemic, most of us are wearing such masks in gyms open to the general public. We start with this premise: Exercise is good for you:

Do masks hurt our workouts: A new study

Might the face masks we wear (during the novel coronavirus infection era) compromise our oxygen levels? Or increase our rebreathing of carbon dioxide? Researchers from the University of Saskatchewan (Canada) evaluated the use of a three-layer cloth face mask.

The study included fourteen physically active and healthy men and women. Researchers attempted to control for the effects of diet, previous physical activity, and sleep during the 24 hours before…

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Michael Hunter, MD
Michael Hunter, MD

Written by Michael Hunter, MD

I have degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Penn. I am a radiation oncologist in the Seattle area. You may find me regularly posting at www.newcancerinfo.com

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