If you’ve been putting off whipping yourself into shape, it’s time to get serious.
According to a renowned cardiologist at Johns Hopkins, fatty tissue has a high amount of the “docking” protein that COVID uses to break into cells — allowing fat to “serve as a viral refuge and replication site, thus prolonging virus shedding.”
It was already obvious that COVID has an affinity for fat, but a recent study has proven that obesity is a dominant risk factor for COVID-19 mortality.
Healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente, using information from their insured patients, gathered very good data on the health characteristics of 6,916 COVID-infected people (KP’s paper, incidentally, is published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, a first-class, peer-reviewed journal).
Findings showed that persons with a BMI below 39 ran a minimal risk of death. Over that line, however, the added risk took off like a jet. In the 40-44 BMI range, mortality rose 168%, while the 45+ group saw a 318% spike.
Bottom line: the confluence of poor cardiovascular conditioning, subpar nutrition, and widespread depression is making us more vulnerable to this opportunistic virus.
So enough is enough. Time to make a stand. Start by making healthier decisions, little by little, beginning today.
