Sat, Apr-18-20, 11:10
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Plan: P:E/DDF
Stats: 225/150/169
BF:45%/28%/25%
Progress: 134%
Location: NC
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NPR back on the the weight question.
Who's Hit Hardest By COVID-19? Why Obesity, Stress And Race All Matter
https://www.npr.org/sections/health...race-all-matter
Quote:
As data emerges on the spectrum of symptoms caused by COVID-19, it's clear that people with chronic health conditions are being hit harder.
While many people experience mild illness, 89% of people with COVID-19 who were sick enough to be hospitalized had at least one chronic condition. About half had high blood pressure and obesity, according to data from the CDC. And about a third had diabetes and a third had cardiovascular disease. So, what explains this?
"Obesity is a marker for a number of other problems," explains Dr. Aaron Carroll, a public health researcher at the Indiana University School of Medicine. It's increasingly common for those who develop obesity to develop diabetes and other conditions, as well. So, one reason COVID-19 is taking its toll on people who have obesity is that their overall health is often compromised.
But does obesity specifically affect the immune system? Perhaps.
Prior research has shown that people with obesity are less protected by the flu vaccine. They tend to get sicker from the respiratory disease even if they've been immunized. In fact, researchers have found that as people gain excess weight, their metabolism changes and this shift can make the immune system less effective at fighting off viruses.
"What we see with obesity is that these [immune] cells don't function as well,' says Melinda Beck, a health researcher at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Basically, she explains, obesity throws off the fuel sources that immune cells need to function. "The [immune cells] are not using the right kinds of fuels," Beck says. And, as a result, the condition of obesity seems to "impair that critical immune response [needed] to deal with either the virus infection or [the ability] to make a robust response to a vaccine."......more at link
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