Obesity is a high risk factor and there seems to be a direct association between the disease and the worsening of Covid 19 infection, largely due to other related pathologies such as hypertension and/or diabetes. Obesity is now known to be the most frequent comorbidity in hospitalized patients at a younger age.
"At the moment what we're seeing, despite everything, is a younger age group, we have patients from 40 or 50 to 70, and also, once in a while, younger patients. The main comorbidity we've seen in this wave is obesity. That's what we see most often, obese patients. And they don't even need to be very obese, they just need to be overweight or obese to grade 1″. These words from the Director of Intensive Care Medicine at Hospital de Santa Maria leave no room for doubt about the risk of excess weight associated with worsening and recovery from Covid 19.
According to the first study to associate Covid 19 with excess weight, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the 24th Portuguese Congress on Obesity, 85% of obese patients required mechanical ventilation and 62% died. The percentage of non-obese patients who required mechanical ventilation was 62% and 34% died.
It's important to note that people with obesity usually have other pathologies such as hypertension and diabetes, which individually have a detrimental influence on recovery from this disease. Obesity is the most common comorbidity in patients hospitalized with Covid-19 at a younger age. Thus, the disease seems to play a unifying role in a severe course of Covid 19 infection, justified by its association with the other diseases mentioned, but also because it is associated with compromised respiratory mechanisms, gas exchange disorders, low lung volume and low muscle volume, among other alterations.
The role of diet and exercise
These studies have also shown that these people had a diet lacking in fruit and vegetable foods, practiced little physical activity and ate highly processed and caloric foods. The accumulation of ectopic fat involving the lungs compromises forced vital capacity, reduces maximum expiratory volume and decreases diaphragmatic contractility, making breathing difficult.
According to these studies and others carried out since, physical activity aimed at preventing and controlling weight and its important role as an anti-inflammatory becomes essential as a preventive measure in recovering from this infectious disease. A diet rich in unprocessed plant products and low in high-calorie and processed foods is also a very important preventative strategy in recovering from Covid 19.
It should be emphasized that good weight management, eating a diet specific to each metabolism, without inflammatory foods, good control of your hormonal, vitamin and mineral profile, as well as physical activity and good stress management are fundamental to managing the inflammatory process related to this infection.
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