MEDICAL MATTERS
COVID 19WORRIES INCLUDE BEING OVERWEIGHT? PILE IT ON! (NO… TAKE IT OFF.WEIGHT, THAT IS)
Everyone knows by now that the unprecedented effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are here to stay, and will take a long time to disappear. The constant financial worries surrounding lack of work, ‘cabin fever’ owing to families being thrown together during lockdown and self-isolation, and of course the constant dread of possibly contracting the virus… it all adds up to a pretty stressful time for us all. We ran a Medi- cal Matters feature about this last month, as you know.
A fact that has hit the headlines in recentweeks – andwhich is substantiat- ed by no less than six prominent medical studies worldwide – is that the trend for being susceptible to catching this coronavirus leans towards people who are seriously overweight or obese. And of course the two major manifesta- tions of this condition are high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
We’ve looked this pair of physical draw- backs on a few occasions in PHTM: Everybody knows that hypertension – high blood pressure – is a risk to your health. And everybody knows also that high cholesterol doesn’t do you any favours either. The latter has received the most adverse publicity in recent times, and has resulted in the medical profession coming out with a raft of medication to help lower cholesterol, mostly statins.
But what about the “double-whammy”: if you are suffering with both high blood pressure and high cholesterol? What is the connection between the two? Having one risk factor for heart disease means you need to be careful. Having two means you need to make some significant lifestyle changes.
And now there is substantial evidence to prove that obesity – which is the current state of a largemajority of peoplewho have this package of drawbacks, plus type 2 dia- betes – creates a weakness which not only leaves the person more likely to contract Covid 19, but also less able to fight its crip- pling effects on the lungs and ultimately other organs.
100 IT ALL ADDS UP...
Scientists have found that when people have more than one risk factor, such as high blood pressure and raised cholesterol levels, these factors work together to make the risk of heart disease much worse.
Even if your cholesterol and blood pressure levels are only mildly elevated, when they are both present in your body they can interact with each other to more quickly damage your blood vessels and your heart. If not controlled, they eventually set the stage for heart attack and stroke, as well as other problems such as kidney malfunction and vision loss.
If you’re diagnosed with high cholesterol, it means that the level of cholesterol in your blood is higher than what is believed to be healthy. Cholesterol is a type of fatty sub- stance that your body uses to make certain hormones, produce vitamin D, and build healthy cells.We manufacture some of it in our bodies and get some of it from the foods we eat.
Too much cholesterol in your blood, though, may increase risk of cardiovascu- lar disease, heart attack and stroke. The concern is that if your cholesterol is high, the excess oily stuff will stick to the walls of your arteries. Over time, this excess can create a fatty build-up, much like dirt and grime can build up inside a garden hose. The fatty substance eventually hardens, forming a type of inflexible plaque that damages the arteries. They become stiff and narrowed, and your blood no longer flows through themas easily as it once did.
The ultimate danger is that your arterieswill become so narrowed that a blood clot will
block blood flow, causing a severe cardio- vascular event. Throw into the equation the dreaded term Body Mass Index (BMI) and this is where one’s weight can really tip the balance.
A study of nearly 17,000 hospital patients with Covid 19 in the UK found that those patients who have been treated for the virus with a BMI over 30 had a 33 per cent greater risk of dying than those who were not obese.
WHY BEING OBESE IS A RISK
Weight is so much a factor in all these situ- ations, and particularly in the ability to avoid this coronavirus. Getting technical for a moment, scientists have discovered that an enzyme called ACE2, present in cells, is the main way for the virus to enter the body. Higher levels of this molecule are thought to be found in adipose tissue, or fatty tissue, which people who are obese have more of – under the skin and around their organs. That could be one reason why they have a higher risk of catching the dis- ease and a higher risk of being ill with it.
Then there is the factor of a person’s actual fitness level overall: the more weight you’re carrying, the less fit you are and the lower your lung capacity. Overweight people have a demand for more oxygen, as it’s a struggle to get oxygen into the blood and around the body – impacting on both blood pressure and cholesterol, if high cholesterol had narrowed the arteries.
As has been widely publicised, one of the most common symptoms of Covid-19 is continuous coughing and difficulty breath- ing. During an infection such as Covid-19, the reduced lung capacity of an obese per- son can be a serious drawback. This is one reason why overweight and obese people in intensive care are more likely to need assistance with breathing and support with kidney functions.
On top of everything else, the ability of the body to fight off the virus – its immune response – is lowered in people who are obese. This is due to inflammation driven by immune cells called macrophages which invade our fat tissue, and which interfere with the way our cells respond to infection.
JULY 2020
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