Approximately 40% of American adults suffer from obesity and recent studies show that it is serious and fatal for COVID-19, even in young adults.
Obesity can cause metabolic, immune and blood clotting abnormalities that would possibly worsen the effects of COVID-19, but this means that a giant component of the population, coupled with others in its early years, is in a particularly serious situation. be very careful, stay home if possible and remain your little social “bubble”. However, being safe can discourage weight loss activities such as walking and going to the gym, while expanding isolation, depression, frustration and overeating. .
“With COVID-19, it’s transparent that they’re a vulnerable group,” said Rohit Soans, director of bariatric surgery at Temple University Hospital. “But it’s hard to say at 30 or 40, ‘You have to be treated like your 80-year-old grandmother. ‘”
It is also difficult to formulate the message in a way that does not reinforce cultural prejudices that assume that being too heavy is just an ethical failure, not a chronic disease. Other obese people internalize these negative stereotypes.
Internalized weight bias “is a fairly significant barrier for others in treatment,” said dietitian Colleen Tewksbury, principal investigator and director of the bariatric program at the University of Pennsylvania.
It’s no wonder that older adults are vulnerable to severe COVID-19, a disease that can wreak havoc on virtually all biological systems. Many other people over the age of 65 already have chronic age-related diseases that have ruptured their lungs. hearts, blood vessels and kidneys.
But obesity, explained as a body mass index of 30 or more (174 pounds for a 5-foot- and 4-inch woman), is an age-transcending threat. A French examination of COVID-19 patients in extensive care found that those with a BMI greater than 35 were seven times more likely to require mechanical ventilation than those with a healthy BMI. An examination of patients under the age of 60 with COVID-19 hospitalized in New York found that a BMI of more than 35 nearly quadrupled the threat of extensive care.
The precise explanation of why it is clear, however, the virus appears to exploit a number of w8-related anomalies, as explained in an 8-study review published this month in the journal Endocrinology, Diabetes
First, obesity puts extra pressure on the chest and abdomen, limiting breathing; second, other obese people expand chronic diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension, which increase the threat of severe COVID-19; Third, obesity increases the formation of blood clots that can block vessels, as does coronavirus.
Blood clotting “is inherent in obesity,” Tewksbury said.
Two other explanations for why obesity can aggravate COVID-19 involve unique characteristics of the disease.
Fat (fat) acts almost as a separate organ; can alter metabolism by reducing sensitivity to insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar, and cause constant inflammation. Inflammation is usually the transient healing reaction of the immune formula to an injury. a severe COVID-19 can cause a potentially fatal immune formula, called a cytokine storm, that destroys healthy tissue.
“We don’t fully perceive it,” Tewksbury told Penn, “but obesity leads to an immunosuppressed state. “
The coronavirus also uses a mobile surface protein ACE2 to penetrate mobiles, where it replicates and emerges to infect adjacent mobiles.
”Although the lung is the main access point for COVID-19, there is an accumulation of ACE2 (production) in adipose tissue, making it a more vulnerable target for COVID-19 infection,’ the journal’s authors said, through researchers. at the University of Leicester, United Kingdom, he wrote.
Prior to the pandemic, the global increase in obesity was a primary public aptitude problem and COVID-19 is only intensifying it.