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Swine Flu Kills Obese People Disproportionately

Posted by timothy on from the super-size-someone-else-please dept.

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."

30 of 661 comments (clear)

  1. Well... yeh. by yoursurrogategod · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Well... yeh. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't have a simple issue with self control. If I did she'd be dead and I'd be up on murder charges. On the other hand I have a huge problem eating small portions. If I do I literally walk around voraciously hungry.

      [snip]

      Combine this with a desk job and yeah I _could_ try to make time for the gym (which I hate with a passion) but keeping up an excercise routine is to say the least problematic.

      So, in other words, you have a complete lack of self control and are unable to motivate yourself to keep yourself healthy.

      Losing weight is stupidly easy: eat less, exercise more. So you have a bad ankle, talk to your doctor to come up with an exercise routine that doesn't involve massive amounts of walking.

      30 minutes a day. That's it. If you can't do that, then yes, it's a self control issue.

    2. Re:Well... yeh. by sopssa · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:Well... yeh. by Killer+Orca · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    4. Re:Well... yeh. by blahplusplus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "and that even those that have the ability to lose weight can work their arses off and still lose nothing in a week."

      I'm going to call bullshit on this, it's fucking impossible to NOT lose weight in a week if you are "working your ass off", you're certainly not working you ass off if you're not losing even half a pound or 1 pound in 7 days. Losing weight DOES require some amount of willpower and definitely requires a commitment hence (by and large) one is responsible for one's weight.

      One cannot just excuse oneself unless one has a serious medical condition, but even those that are sick (your arthritis in your leg/angle) can do other exercises. For instance when I was lifting free weights and benching you still burn and awful lot of fat without having to move around that much. What matters is expending energy.

      I walked at a leisurely pace 4hrs/day 7/days week and lost 10-12 lbs a month, it's a matter of *commitment* either you want to lose the weight or you dont, if you don't like high intensity you have to make up the lack of intensity with duration of time and distance for low intensity aerobics (like walking).

      The biggest thing is monitoring your appetite, no amount of exercise will help if you're over-eating and taking in more energy then you're burning off. The army did a study a long while back that showed just this: Taking in too much energy negates the weight loss benefits of exercise and you don't have to starve youself either, just limit yourself to 1500-1800 cals/day and keep track of it on a site like http://www.fitday.com/

      The truth is many people who are overweight have never been thin for most of their life and got fat fairly young and developed a victim psychology because of bullying/social prejudice.

      There's only so much you can do to excuse yourself from being overweight.. I agree there are many different body types and some of us store fat easily on the smallest amounts of food, but many of us that store easily barely exercise.

      The real issue though is not paying attention to how energy dense the food you're eating is, most people "wing it" when they eat they don't get rigorous ambout keeping track of the amount of food (see fitday.com), once you get rigorous and can see it on a chart, then you will realize that - yes, you are over eating!

      I realized this when I started tracking what I ate @ www.fitday.com (a great site btw) and it is handy because it will show you the evidence and you can't just deny it anymore.

      Most people live in the fog of their own mind never really looking hard at teh evidence in their own lives contradicting and lending support to the naysayers of "no willpower", the truth is it's more about being aware of your own bad/blind thinking on the matter of how you eat and live that is the root of the problem.

      I know I went through it.

    5. Re:Well... yeh. by torkus · · Score: 4, Informative

      Anyone who "can not" lose weight is, quite simply, doing something wrong. Sure, they could be part of the .001% of people with a gland problem but let's be serious and talk about the overwhelming majority.

      If you weight (far too many)lbs and restrict your dietary intake you WILL lose weight. It's pretty straight forward honestly. Exercise greatly helps of course. And for the 'my poor ankle' whining comes back around - there are people with NO LEGS that are still healthy. Clearly a bad ankle is not a barrier to avoiding obesity.

      There are a TON of other excuses and all of them are just that - excuses. If you want to be healthy, in shape, or just plain old 'not fat' then make it a priority. If catching the new episode of MTV Real Life Ethiopia or the taste of a big mac are more important than losing weight then, chances are, it will not work.

      As for the story - it's another amusing 'well duh'. Next thing they'll post that old and immunodeficient are more likely to die from the flu (oh, sorry...meant to specify swine flu even though it's nothing more than different strain of flu) and bla bla bla. Of COURSE less healthy people are higher risk. They're also higher risk for ... well most other things.

      Someone get back to me when the swine flu deaths are more than 5% of total flu deaths or when the evil swine flu increases the overall number of yearly flu deaths beyond the usual year-to-year variances. The whole swine flu nonsense is manufactured news.

      --
      You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
    6. Re:Well... yeh. by Lunzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you're serious about losing weight you should not take dietary advice from some random slashdot poster and see a dietitian i.e. a qualified professional. Low carb, high fat & protein diets are a recent fad. There are other diets which work, and are better for you. A professional will be able to pick something appropriate to your situation.

    7. Re:Well... yeh. by Rich0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Keep in mind that people are all different.

      Some people can maintain a light weight with no effort all.

      Some people can maintain a light weight with a moderate effort.

      Some people can work hard and maintain a light weight.

      Quite a few people have to put in a huge battle and really not get anywhere with it - or they make progress only to lose ground.

      Look, I suspect that most people, if they worked REALLY hard, could do as well in math as I do. I'm not a complete prodigy or anything. However, I don't consider people lazy if they end up getting 70s on tests that I score in the high 90s on - that's just how it has been for all of my life - I can cruise through tests that most normal people barely pass with a fair amount of study. However, why should they bother trying to reach my level of proficiency at math? They should just spend their time on something they're better at, and learn enough math to get by in normal life. (Yes - I realize that quite a few people who read this post could outperform me in math - that isn't my point.)

      I'm hardly morbidly obese, but I do struggle to keep my weight down. Maybe that means I'll live ten years less than my peers - I'm willing to accept that. I do try to control my diet, but the fact is that unless somebody comes out with some kind of medical advance I'm not going to be average in weight without a huge amount of effort. I'm not sure that effort is really worth it - I'd rather die happy at 70 than suffer until 80. :) And if somebody comes up with better healthy ways to lose weight that don't involve huge amounts of self-deprivation, then that is just a win-win for everybody. Sure, maybe in the meantime I'll statistically cost society more to keep alive than the "average" person, but last time I checked I was paying far more in taxes than the average person and that's just how things work. In the meantime I'll keep working on my health, but if I can refrain from taunting people who weren't developing software in multiple languages in middle school in the 80s perhaps we can get beyond taunting people for having trouble controlling their weight?

    8. Re:Well... yeh. by twostix · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You should submit yourself to the department of energy immediately.

      Your bodies ability to create matter out of thin air and somehow ignore the second law of thermodynamics by burning more energy than you ingest is nothing short of amazing!

      *Or* you're just making the same tired old excuses that those with some vice *always make*. You claim that your body is somehow special and refuses to burn the energy that you put in well guess what - that means you are going to have to eat 1/4 of what you do now for the rest of your life end of story (unless there's some medical "cure"). OR, you can be continue being fat and whinge about it on Slashdot for the rest of your (more than likely) short life...

      You need to expend more energy than you ingest per day, no amount of moral indignation can change the laws of physics.

      Otherwise if you already are ingesting less than you expend then you are a scientific marvel and for the good of human kind please get make yourself known to some scientists in the relevant field.

      On a side note you're at +5 which means that you've got a pretty general support from the people on here, it's kind of amusing how the basic laws of physics and "personal responsibility" ideals that are usually worshiped with religious fervor around here are kicked to the curb as soon as it's useful to do so.

      Glad to see the highly "logical" slashdot hordes - to borrow a clique, are just as prone to self delusion and excuses when it suits as the masses that are so often looked down upon here for doing exactly the same thing are.

    9. Re:Well... yeh. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Does anyone else find it kind of suspicious that a killer orca suggests people go swimming?

    10. Re:Well... yeh. by IrquiM · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There are some conditions that are based on lifestyle. You cannot say that these should not be blamed on the patient!

      --
      This is blinging
    11. Re:Well... yeh. by syousef · · Score: 4, Informative

      You do understand that the different hunger feeling comes from the fact how much people have got used to eat, right?

      No. It's not. When I lost weight and was having a large bowl of salad and a piece of lean chicken or steak (no bread or other carbs) I would always go around feeling hungry. ALL THE TIME. FOR MONTHS ON END. Now after a while your stomach can't take the food. If you eat a little more than you usually do, or if you eat anything with a tiny bit of fat or oil you feel ill the rest of the day. BUT YOU STILL FEEL HUNGRY. That's how it was for me. I kept that up for maybe 8 months. I took an extra day off work every week (Try working when you're hungry to the point of distraction).

      I'm tired of fools who automatically assume every fat person that's had trouble simply hasn't tried hard enough.

      Here are some long term stats for you:
      http://www.jacn.org/cgi/content/abstract/18/6/620

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
  2. Dammit, BMI != fat in all cases by EQ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    BMI is a bogus and misleading measure. Try percent body fat instead.

    --
    Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
    1. Re:Dammit, BMI != fat in all cases by hedwards · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually in this case it's a perfectly valid way of looking at it. BMI was created for statistical analysis. And that's what it's being used for.

      With the relatively small number of people that have died as a result of the H1N1 it's much easier to detect whether or not it's accurate for the group. But when doing models of how this is likely to shape out, the BMI is a perfectly legitimate way of doing it. The only other measure that's reasonable to consider is the waste to hip ratio, and that's not really designed for this.

  3. This is just wrong... by glitch23 · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Morbid obesity is one of the most common findings turning up in severely ill patients," said Nikki Shindo, who is leading the investigation of swine flu patients at the WHO in Geneva. "It's a huge problem."

    That is just wrong.

    --
    this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
  4. Re:Finally!! A Cure For Obesity!! by sopssa · · Score: 5, Funny

    Pig flu affects fat persons.. I didn't see that one coming!

  5. Oversensitive, in this case it works by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  6. Cost of subsidies by yoursurrogategod · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Cost of subsidies by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Funny

      Silence! Obesity is caused exclusively by poor character, and our gigantic farm subsidies are there to Protect America's Family Farms(tm), not Archer Daniels Midland.

      How dare you question America? Also, while I'm at it, corn is by far the most efficient source of ethanol, unlike sugar cane, which is for communists.

  7. The story title is wrong ... by tomhudson · · Score: 5, Funny

    It isn't killing them disproportionally - it's killing them in direct relationship to their proportions :-)

    1. Re:The story title is wrong ... by sopssa · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:The story title is wrong ... by vivian · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:The story title is wrong ... by vivian · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Of course the best action is to not drink sugary drinks at all - but if you absolutely have to have that Coke, then have one with real sugar in it - and be aware of the additional calories you are eating. At least it wont make you hungrier, as the artificially sweetened drinks do, according to that study I linked.

      The zero calorie drinks dont give you calories directly - but they apparently do make you hungrier, which in turn makes you want to eat more. Read the link.

    4. Re:The story title is wrong ... by Rob+the+Bold · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      This is widely accepted conventional wisdom about losing (or gaining) weight. And it does just seem right. After all, you're punishing two of the seven deadly sins (gluttony and laziness) in a most fitting manner. People who can't control their lust for food and their own laziness get what they deserve. It is just so.

      Science magazine reporter Gary Taubes published an article the New York Times Magazine titled: "What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?" He later expanded that article along with others he wrote (including an analysis of the science and politics that resulted in current U.S. Government dietary advice) in a book titled Good Calories, Bad Calories. 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.

      --
      I am not a crackpot.
    5. Re:The story title is wrong ... by orasio · · Score: 4, Informative

      Of course the best action is to not drink sugary drinks at all - but if you absolutely have to have that Coke, then have one with real sugar in it - and be aware of the additional calories you are eating. At least it wont make you hungrier, as the artificially sweetened drinks do, according to that study I linked.

      You have no idea.
      Lots of fat people suffer from insulin issues, so actually they (us) shouldn't eat sugar at all.
      In my case, I had dieted a lot, and tried exercising, but just reducing intake wasn't doing the trick.
      I started an Atkins-style diet, with a lot more calories than I was used to, and now I am 50 pounds under my original weight, and 40 pounds above my ideal weight.
      I also drank LOTS of diet coke.
      The thing is that fat people bodies work differently. You need to understand _why_ you are fat, and then fight it.
      In my case, it is high insulin production, and after losing 40 pounds I started medical treatment with metformine, which helps me a lot against rebounds.

      That idea of reducing calorie intake seems like a good idea in paper, but I don't think it works in practice.
      The human body is too complex. It doesn't respond well to uninformed direct manipulation. The best thing is to get an endocrinologist, and do as they say.

    6. Re:The story title is wrong ... by fractoid · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
  8. waste : hip by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "waste to hip ratio?" Is that measured in grams of feces per day over number of Apple products owned?

  9. Not all by AlpineR · · Score: 4, Informative

    Summary: "They are all fat."

    Article: "They are fat. [...] In Canada's Manitoba province, three out of five people treated for the new flu strain in intensive care units are obese."

    If this virus killed only fat people that would be astounding. If it kills more than it's share of fat people, that's still interesting (despite all the "being fat is bad duh!" comments here) but less flashy.

  10. Hold on a sec, Captain Obvious by brusk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    .sig withheld by request
  11. Genius! by jaypifer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Clearly this is a terrorist act targeting Americans!

    --
    Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three.