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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."
Makes you wonder just how much this nations spends annually on corn and soy subsidies and just how much we will pay in the future as more and more people become sickly due to the low price of the poor nutrition that they are often offered. What if we got rid of those agricultural subsidies? How will that affect the cost of McDonalds', Wendys', etc. foods?
What isn't clear from TFA, and seems to be the crux of whether this is a story or not, is whether this particular flu is affecting obese people disproportionately as compared to similar influenzas. If all strains of flu have the same pattern and are more severe (by whatever measure) in obese people, then there's nothing interesting here. If, on the other hand, the correlation between BMI and severity is much higher for this H1N1, that's a potential clue, one that might tell us something about (a) how this particular virus works, which could be useful in developing treatments for everyone, and/or (b) how obesity affects immune response, which could be helpful in the treatment of other infectious diseases. But, alas, TFA gives only anecdotal evidence so we can't even speculate.
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So, in other words, you have a complete lack of self control and are unable to motivate yourself to keep yourself healthy.
Not at all.
Losing weight is stupidly easy: eat less, exercise more.
That completely ignores the fact that people feel hunger differently, people lose weight differently, and that even those that have the ability to lose weight can work their arses off and still lose nothing in a week. If weight loss were as easy for everyone as you make it out to be we wouldn't have a problem.
You do understand that the different hunger feeling comes from the fact how much people have got used to eat, right? And also from what kind of food you eat. Carbs burn *fast* in your body, so stay off from bread, rice, potatoes and such. Eat high-protein and high-fat foods like meat, fish and chicken. They often also contain way less calories than the high-carb foods. Start by eating when you feel like so, as you're quite possible taking way less calories in that way anyways. Lower your amounts a bit all the time and you'll notice you dont really need that much food.
I feel you in that theres sometimes reasons people cant get their motivation up for that, being it work or anything else. I'm myself around the ~30 in charts. But I know the reasons for it and I know that I could make it better, instead of lying to myself that it's somehow not possible.
The only couple of times I have lost weight in my life I lived on salad and lean meat/chicken in tiny portions and did AT LEAST 2 hours of heavy excercise a day. Anything short of that doesn't cut it.
See this? That is the answer that I've already said and you've even noticed yourself. Hamburgers, bread and other such high-carb food is bad. Meat and chicken and fish is good. It's there by nature. Google for "low carb diet", go by that atleats 2 weeks and you'll notice how great it is. Then make that your lifestyle.
You don't have to swim for 2 hours to get any weight-losing exercise, I think if you signed up for some night adult swimming classes you would learn a few things that would help, specifically: improving your form, breathing, flip-turns (maybe not an option with your ankle), different strokes, etc. In fact they have even invented weights specifically for water based exercising http://www.saveonpoolsupplies.com/shopping/product.aspx?productid=SKU1217&scode=I9SOPSST&e7=Y&e8=T3335&pcode=101&keyword=T3335 if you want to add variety. Eating less is a harder problem, some people find eating their meals slower helps, not wolfing it down. Don't expect to lose weight after a week either, it can takes months to see an actual measurable and continual change.
Losing fat comes down to a simple equation.
If calories in is less than calories burnt, you WILL lose weight. Its as simple as that.
No amount of "glandular" problem is going to make you put on weight if you are eating less calories than you use in your daily activites.
So you need to either eat less, or do more ecercise, or both. Exercise helps because as you get fitter and have more muscle, as just having more muscle makes you burn more energy - so in that respect it is easier for a fit person to stay slim, but there is no reason in the world that anyone needs to be fat, regardless of any "glandular" problem.
Getting more excercise is trivial too. It takes no more 5 minutes to do 30 pushups and 60 crunches - you can do them last thing at night before going to bed.
Likewise, you can get off the bus/train one stop earlier ( or walk to the next stop along from where you get on) and easily get a 15 to 30 min walk in a day. Losing weight doesnt have to mean hours and hours in the Gym - just a bit of self motivation to be a bit more active in your daily routine.
One other thing - Diet drinks - stay the hell away from them. Ever see slim people in the supermarket buying diet coke? no - its always the huge people. Diet drinks have less calories, but there's an interesting littlel experiment they did, where two groups of rats were allowed to eat as much as they wanted - one group was given diet drinks, and the other normal non diet drinks. The ones on diet drinks porked up. The theory: The sweetners give your body signals to get ready to deal with a lot of sugar. When the sugar doesnt arrive, your body goes "Holy crap - we're starving! better eat more!"
So diet drinks may actually make you fatter by making you have a bigger appetite. Here's a not very authoritive link http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/06/its_been_recognized_for_a.php to one article about this - Im sure with a more thorough search the actual paper would turn up somewhere.
Hopefully this latest news about swine flu will be that final bit of motivation a lot of people need to actually do something about their weight.