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Swine Flu Kills Obese People Disproportionately
Philip K Dickhead writes "Bloomberg is reporting that the World Health Organization discovered a single, surprising characteristic that's emerged among swine flu victims who become severely ill: They are all fat. Infected people with a body mass index greater than 40 suffer respiratory complications that are harder to treat and can be fatal. The virus appears to be on a collision course with the obesity epidemic. WHO officials are gathering statistics to confirm and understand this development. 'It's very likely that if we went back retrospectively and looked at people who did poorly during seasonal flu, what would shake out is that obesity would be one of the risks.' Fat cells secrete chemicals that cause chronic, low-level inflammation that can hamper the body's immune response and narrow the airways, says Tim Armstrong, a doctor working in the WHO's chronic diseases department in Geneva."
Being obese is pretty much an invitation for all sorts of problems. I love my steak, fries, chocolate, soda and burgers, I just eat them once every other week in small quantities. It helps when I think of baby carrots and apples as snacks.
BMI is a bogus and misleading measure. Try percent body fat instead.
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This surprises me not at all - people who are overweight generally are not eating that well, and also not exercising a lot.
I've been lucky to have a good metabolism and never really had weight issues. But I used to drink a ton of soda, and not eat that great... I was having combing down with the cold and flu multiple times per year.
Now I'm eating much better, drinking mostly water, and exercising a few times a week. I get at most about one cold a year now, and even that is not as bad as the worst of the colds I used to get.
One aspect of the flu I did think was odd was how so many cases were in Mexico... when I feel like I'm perhaps going to get a cold, I often eat spicy food and it seems to knock it out of me. I would think they have a lot spicier stuff in most Mexican's diets than elsewhere.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Come on, the BMI they are recording is over 40 - categorized as "morbidly obese". The only people not actually very overweight that would hit that would be professional weight lifters...
For just seeing if someone is a touch overweight it's not a great tool. But in this case the observation is perfectly valid.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Perhaps it's not so much that H1N1 affects obese people more than others, but that obesity is a sign of bad health generally?
If so, then the correlation would be "unhealthy people more likely to develop respiratory complications that are harder to treat and can be fatal".
Doesn't roll off the tongue like "swine flu kills fatties" though.
A Human Right
I would be going to be very politically incorrect here, but people that are medically obese suffer a wide variety of ailments. If swine flu is what finally motivates these people to seek and complete treatment, why is this a bad thing? Or shall we continue to scream about the oppression of our right to be fat, forgetting that the virus doesn't give two sh--s either way.
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Obesity is something you *can* fix. It's not like cancer or something else where you have little to nothing control over it. You can just do it, if you really want to.
Not in all cases, just most. Former athletes and cheerleader types can be hit with the glandular problem. It's very sad for those afflicted with it, there's nothing that can be done. Still, 99.999% of fat sods are troffers, so don't hold back.
the term itself is misleading, the virus strand might have originated from swine, but the current flu has nothing to do with pigs. The proper term should be Influenza A (H1N1)
Right, and manic depressives should just cheer up, 'cos they could if they wanted to.
The Spanish Flu of 1918, which was a H1N1 strain as well and killed more people than WWI, came in two waves, the first starting in spring with a low lethality and the second bad one in August.
If this one evolves in a similar pattern the worst might be yet to come, I however think that even in that case modern medicine and communication will save us from the worst.
Parent might be a troll, but depression is anything but off-topic. Depression is a major risk factor for obesity. It has often been observed that depressed people are more likely to fall victim to binge eating, which is a major cause of obesity. Depression can also be a symptom of hypothyroidism, IIRC, which causes low metabolism and can lead to obesity. The links between depression and obesity are not completely understood, but it is quite likely that reducing the incidence of depression will also reduce obesity.
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Everything kills obese people disproportionately. Heart attacks, liver disease, cancer, pneumonia, you name it. Flu is just one more thing, and Swine Flu is just one more flu.
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I don't know if these "beliefs" are true (the whole brain scenario sounds like hand-waving speculation to me), but if they are his claim that "Its as simple as that" is wrong.
Some people just don't want to believe any explanation that doesn't allow them to feel morally superior.
Spoiler Alert: According to the book, the calorie balance hypothesis is wrong. Numerous studies over the years failed to link high-calorie diet with weight gain, but this fact was overlooked because it challenged nutritional and medical orthodoxy. The real culprit, as the title suggests, is the composition of the diet, not the absolute calories it contains. It's a fascinating read, well researched, and worth the trip to the library.
Uhh... I'm pretty sure if you can burn more calories than you consume, while still gaining/maintaining weight, then you could quite comfortably claim the Randi Challenge prize. And then you could sell your body to science for billions.
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Really. Did anyone, even the submitter, read the article? Stupid question in these parts, but come on - this is science. We're nerds. Where's the critical thinking people? First off, they are not all fat. The only numbers they quote in the article is 3 of 5 seriously ill people in Manitoba who are obese. 60% != 100%. Not by a long shot. The article goes on to say that the evidence is anecdotal and cites the very specious fact that the first two people to die of swine flu in Europe were from Scotland and Scotland is the most obese country in Europe. Lovely. That evidence can also be used to support my theory, which is that swine flu only affects peoples with difficult to understand accents. Manitobans, Mexicans, the Scottish and children from New York. And while I'm at it correllation does not imply causation. Although they mention it briefly in the article they downplay it as much as possible. To say nothing about stuff like sample size. But hey, what the hell. Who needs stuff like science! What's that ever done for us?
eat less
exercise more
that's it. that's the magic. everything else is bloviating
everything else is a giant game of rationalization, victimization, and other psychological manipulations, internal and external
again: eat less, exercise more. end of story
cut the fat, in your thinking as well as on your body
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You are clearly understating the size of the portion you are eating (willingly or unconsciously). Conservation of energy (and therefor conservation of mass since no nuclear process is involved) tells me that the fat/weight you accumulate is directly linked by the amount of nutriment you are extracting from food, minus what you use up during the day and/or exhale and execrate. So yes, if you are eating what people call MODERATE portion, and have even a sedentary life, maybe you would take on weight but very slowly. Over 6 months for example I took in the last 10 years in average half a Kg to a Kg. So yeah over ten years I became slightly overweight (90Kg instead of my preferred ~80Kg). But after losing weight, getting back the same or more than that over 6 month with moderate portion is not possible. Once can only guess that what you call moderate is not what the average person would call moderate.
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And use a non-motorized means of transport to fetch food.
Walk around New York City, and you'll eventually realize that the only truly obese people you see are tourists. This despite a culture highly reliant on high-calorie restaurant meals.
Certainly it helps that the culture here is not very accepting of fat, but I think it is more related to the fact that most people don't have a car.
As for the Atkins low-carb hypothesis... I want to know why Dr. Atkins thought that human evolution suddenly stopped at the introduction of agriculture? The ability to digest lactose is just one adaptation that I can point to off the top of my head.
I suspect the success of people on Atkins diets is due to the fact that they've cut all their "empty" calories from things like sugar and white flour. Our great great grandparents knew that sugar isn't good for you - it's not exactly groundbreaking that people who restrict their sugar intake lose weight.
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One of the things I've found is that reducing your calories too much is counter-productive. Remember that our bodies evolved over millions of years where food supplies weren't constant. The body has to be able to deal with lack of food without completely failing. So, when you radically cut your calorie intake, your body senses this as a famine. It then reduces your metabolism to conserve energy. You burn less calories and retain more fat. During an actual famine, this is a good thing. You certainly don't want to burn off that one meal quickly if it is the only meal you can scrounge together for the whole day. During a modern times diet, however, it is a bad thing. It means that you will need to work out harder, and diet more just to drop a few more pounds.
This is one of the reasons why people find themselves yo-yo dieting. They go on a diet and lose some weight. The body senses the weight loss as an impending famine and reduces the metabolism. The dieter then goes off their diet and resumes their normal eating patterns. Unfortunately for them, the increased calories in coupled with the decreased calories burned results in rapid weight gain.
I lost about 80 pounds a few years back and one of my secrets was completely revamping how I looked at/considered food. I went on an "unofficial Weight Watchers" program. (Unofficial in that I did all the calculations/tracking myself and didn't join up with Weight Watchers.) Food was no longer just some tasty thing that I stuffed in my mouth. It had a number value ("points") attached to it representing how much Calories, Fat and Fiber were in it. Calculating this number turned out to be a perfect fit for my inner math nerd. Eventually, I would see at a tasty looking donut and not think of how delicious it would taste, but of how many points it was. Sure that donut would be tasty, but it just wasn't worth the huge points hit when other treats would suffice for much less. I didn't stop eating food, I just changed what foods I was eating. This shift in thinking helped me keep off my weight even after I stopped actively tracking my points. Yes, I still gain weight from time to time and go back on the program to take the weight back off, but my weight gains are much slower (30 pounds in a year, if that) and are much easier to catch early on.
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