"Oregon's 2,463rd death was a 67-year-old. . . He had underlying conditions.
Oregon’s 2,464th death was a 42-year-old . . . He had underlying conditions.
No one wants to say this aloud. Me either. Obesity is a co-morbidity.
Approximately 90% of hospitalized patients identified through COVID-NET had one or more underlying conditions, the most common being obesity, hypertension, chronic lung disease, diabetes mellitus, and cardiovascular disease.
We don't hear much about it. Weight is taboo.
In America it is profoundly impolite to mention a person's weight, especially if a person is, objectively, obese. We don't want to "fat shame." We want to avoid the fight over "body acceptance" or "fat and healthy." We don't want to talk about weight when some people hearing us--perhaps even people on the cable TV panel alongside one, is obese. Or overweight. Or stout. Or thick. Or big. Or solid.
Or--almost the equivalent of the "N-word" in taboo-ness: "Fat."
Weight has entered the zone of workplace danger previously occupied solely by sex. References to weight are hostile and offensive per se, a potential cause of a career-ending complaint. It is as dangerous to mention an employee's weight as it would be to mention an employee's breasts. Weight is a characteristic of a person too dangerous to acknowledge, even indirectly. We have willful blindness, but are conscious not to say things which might imply that we noticed anything.
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| LA Times: "Cancer" taboo |
Not so different.
Notice the giant silence here in the USA. We are not talking about people taking action on something that could make a significant difference between surviving or dying from COVID. Americans have, in their own hands, without any government compulsion, with little or no cost, the tool to greatly improve their risks from dying of COVID: Don't be obese.
The media mostly avoids it and certainly avoids saying its readers or viewers have any agency or power to change. The CDC and Dr. Fauci don't make a direct appeal. Goodness knows politicians do not say it. The subject is toxic. The media does not want to offend its audience. Better for Fox to praise Joe Biden for a solid election victory than to say aloud that its viewers would be more likely to survive COVID if they weren't overweight and that they could do something about it. Politicians don't want to offend voters by alluding, however indirectly, that they might be overweight. It might be "blaming the victim." It would be taking responsibility. Better to blame China.
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| Obesity, Hypertension, Diabetes, |
There is something absurd about our COVID protocol. The American economy has been partially shuttered, businesses closed or put on limited operation, people wear masks and stand six feet apart in stores, grocery store employees staff the entrances and wipe the handles of shopping carts with disinfectant wipes. All this is to reduce the potential for vulnerable people getting very sick, being hospitalized, and dying. Those protocols make some sense. They probably move the needle on COVID death a tiny bit.
The big thing that would move the needle is reducing the co-morbidities. We have seen the enemy and it is us.
8 comments:
Obesity is also a mental health issue.
Eating triggers endorphins and in that sense is a drug. If one becomes addicted to overeating it can be a sign of neurosis, very often anxiety, depression and poor self esteem. I think it's a mistake to call food addicted people "weak-willed"; the obesity is a symptom of a bigger issue.
I'd also note that the medical profession is well aware of this but have pretty much given up trying to treat it.
This is also to acknowledge that some people have genetic predispositions that make weight control difficult. In those cases people often have a perfect storm of physiology and environments that lead to morbid obesity. Many are poor.
Republicans routinely oppose measures to improve the condition of poor people, and pander to those with anti-science, anti-public health attitudes.
Good food is a pleasure, and for many a luxury. As we age controlling weight is harder and does require will power, even if one isn't struggling in other ways.
Obesity wasn't very common when I was growing up. A few kids stood out and were different. Kids often picked on them, as they did the disabled child and those with different skin color or strange hair. That was nearly 70 years ago. We rode bikes to school. Got "kicked out of the house" to go play OUTSIDE. Meals were prepared at home. In the sixties, almost none of my friends were 4F'd by the Selective Service because they were too fat. Yes, we called people fat because they were.
Today for variety of reasons, we eat take-out and processed foods to a much greater extent. In many cases it is the sole source of daily calories. We spend most of our time sitting during "screen time" which starts as early as one can hold a device. Food science has mastered the art of making high fat, high sugar and high starch foods using artificial colors and favoring agents that makes the person want to eat and eat. Storability, packaging and advertising drive demand for these food products that have almost no place in a healthy diet.
Fresh, unprocessed foods are not readily available when we think we're hungry for something. The result is weight gain at an early age that follows you through life often filled with health events that make living supported by pills and shots and maybe an early death.
Based on reading that I do that it appears likely that once a body becomes fat it's very difficult to lose fat on a permanent basis. Again based on reading it's likely that fat functions as an organ in that it excretes estrogen and other chemical signals in the body. Fat may, following on these metabolic changes create an internal environment more hospitable for cancers as well as hypertension and diabetes. This shell of fat after all is encasing and surrounding muscle and internal tissues. Meanwhile, without anthropomorphizing the fat itself, fat seems to take on a life of its own in that once a person reaches obesity getting rid of it through diet and exercise and sheer force of will is rarely successful over time. It must be miserable and tiring to carry even ten pounds extra. Perhaps as the comment above suggests, there is an addictive component to this kind of eating, or perhaps a positive feedback loop to the physical symptoms of being overweight and the emotional comfort of eating. In our population many people who gave up smoking gained weight, so it suggests that apart from nicotine and high blood sugar there may be an anal, to use a Freudian term, need in a person's makeup to use the mouth. So much we don't know!
Clearly better health that produces lean adults with a chance of maintaining healthy weights through middle and old age has to begin in childhood with high nutritional values everyday food and very little consumption of simple sugars. Exercise in the form of active play has to enter the picture as it boosts metabolism, and probably so does exposure to sunlight and clean air. We see the results of ad campaigns designed to increase consumption of poor quality food as well as the difficulties communities of color and rural areas have accessing fresh or lightly processed food of high nutritional content.
I am stoked to see newly reworked proposals for cash payouts to parents, serious environmental standards resets, support for care givers and many other broad brush approachers to the overall health of our nation. Now if we could manage to craft and pass legislation that at a minimum taxes poor quality manufactured so-called food items in smaller rather than ever larger packages, servings, commercial access to children, and blah blah blah -- I know we've heard it all before -- we might start with the youngest building their health while continuing the research into adult obesity in all it's crazy aspects
Based on reading that I do that it appears likely that once a body becomes fat it's very difficult to lose fat on a permanent basis. Again based on reading it's likely that fat functions as an organ in that it excretes estrogen and other chemical signals in the body. Fat may, following on these metabolic changes create an internal environment more hospitable for cancers as well as hypertension and diabetes. This shell of fat after all is encasing and surrounding muscle and internal tissues. Meanwhile, without anthropomorphizing the fat itself, fat seems to take on a life of its own in that once a person reaches obesity getting rid of it through diet and exercise and sheer force of will is rarely successful over time. It must be miserable and tiring to carry even ten pounds extra. Perhaps as the comment above suggests, there is an addictive component to this kind of eating, or perhaps a positive feedback loop to the physical symptoms of being overweight and the emotional comfort of eating. In our population many people who gave up smoking gained weight, so it suggests that apart from nicotine and high blood sugar there may be an anal, to use a Freudian term, need in a person's makeup to use the mouth. So much we don't know!
Clearly better health that produces lean adults with a chance of maintaining healthy weights through middle and old age has to begin in childhood with high nutritional values everyday food and very little consumption of simple sugars. Exercise in the form of active play has to enter the picture as it boosts metabolism, and probably so does exposure to sunlight and clean air. We see the results of ad campaigns designed to increase consumption of poor quality food as well as the difficulties communities of color and rural areas have accessing fresh or lightly processed food of high nutritional content.
I am stoked to see newly reworked proposals for cash payouts to parents, serious environmental standards resets, support for care givers and many other broad brush approachers to the overall health of our nation. Now if we could manage to craft and pass legislation that at a minimum taxes poor quality manufactured so-called food items in smaller rather than ever larger packages, servings, commercial access to children, and blah blah blah -- I know we've heard it all before -- we might start with the youngest building their health while continuing the research into adult obesity in all it's crazy aspects
Stuff happens. Here is my personal story with weight.
I was even underweight as a teenager, was a model, and in our earliest years saw lots of outdoors and exercise. Then I got asthma as a late teen. Also, my parents struggled with weight. We were fed a healthy diet until my parent's divorce, then my mom took us to the hamburger and fish and chips places. A neighbor wrote about us as the quintessential dysfunctional family.
Weight crept up as I aged. I am fully 100 pounds heavier than in high school. Food is a comfort, and cravings seem to point to the way to get that comfort. Call it psychological, but it is now physical.
My athletic youth, with backpacking and hiking well into my 50's, kept the diabetes away til I was in my late 60's, whereas my sedentary brother and sister are both gone in their early 70's from diabetes complications and heart failure. So, nature and nurture play a part here.
Now, all of the sitting and also the insulin are keeping me eating and not exercising. Other things adding to the problem are kidney failure and pulmonary hypertension. It adds up. Genetics is a part.
Will-power" is so very difficult, especially without a buddy to keep an eye on or participate in exercising with me.
I am glad I got the shots, as I was given a 92% chance of dying of the Covid if I got it!
In a recent conversation with a friend about this issue, she observed tha a couple of weeks ago, while watching a Documentary about Woodstock one the Teens in the group was astonished by the fact that there were no fat people, as in none. A trip through any large grocery store will usually find people using the electric carts, because they have too much weight to travel up and down the aisles. I personally have gained quite a bit since turning 60, partially as a result of becoming a long haul trucker about then, and now find myself toying. Dropped 40 pounds, diet and exercise, have my Type Two well controlled, and after my brother died in October, I've gained back about 25, and finding it really hard to get rid of. Rick's comments, I think are right on point, as to the Medical Industry pretty much having given up on sustainable treatments for morbid obesity. IMHO, Its because there isn't a quick enough turnaround time, and effective treatment probably requires mental health counseling, as well as other kinds of treatment, perhaps with Pharmaceuticals ?
Visit wealthy zip codes. Then visit poverty stricken ones. Visit zip codes with high percentage of college grads. Then visit those with low hs graduation rates. The relationship between, poverty & ignorance AND obesity in the USA will become obvious. Yes there are exceptions - our previous fearless leader Exhibit #1 - but on the whole, the causality cannot be disputed.
Visit wealthy zip codes. Then visit poverty stricken ones. Visit zip codes with high percentage of college grads. Then visit those with low hs graduation rates. The relationship between, poverty & ignorance AND obesity in the USA will become obvious. Yes there are exceptions - our previous fearless leader Exhibit #1 - but on the whole, the causality cannot be disputed.
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