In one of the latest reports of the Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) North American, which reports data collected by the COVID-NET, a hospital surveillance network between the American states, highlights an unpredictable data, but to be taken into consideration. While for the adults it is confirmed that the pathologies underlying hospitalizations of adult subjects affected by Covid 19 disease are, in order, arterial hypertension, obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, with percentages ranging from almost 40% of the latter to almost 60% of the former, in the pediatric patientsthe age-related chronic diseases obviously disappeared, in almost 50% of cases no underlying pathology was found, while the percentage of patients hospitalized for complications from viral infection, suffering from obesity.
«The data is very suggestive – explains the Professor Giovanni SperaEndocrinologist and President of the Italian Society for the Study of Eating Disorders (SISDCA) -, because it confirms that in childhood obesity, which unfortunately is prodromal to obesity even as an adult, a series of pathogenetic mechanisms are already activated which are the assumption of the most frequent and serious complications of obesity, such as fatty liver and diabetesbut also and above all generalized inflammation, the so-called systemic inflammation“.
For greater clarity, hepatic steatosis means an abnormal accumulation of fat (triglycerides) in the liver, while inflammation means a state of chronic inflammation. “This condition is somewhat underlying all the complications of obesity and in this case it is certainly responsible, even in children, for the greater vulnerability to the aggression of Covid 19”. Let’s not forget that well before Covid was declared a pandemic, there was another that still afflicts the world population and for which a cure has not yet been found: obesity, in fact. “It appears increasingly evident that the already known, now chronic and widespread pandemic of modernity, which is obesity, functions as the main substrate for the spread of the other dramatic pandemic, the current viral one and that the primary prevention of both another must act on many levels, but mainly on common behavioral, environmental and above all food levels ».
Numerous epidemiological studies have shown how obesity, especially if associated with excess accumulation of visceral fat, also predisposes less elderly adults to the aggravation of Covid 19 disease. It can do so even more than pre-existing lung diseases. “Now the American CDC report is a timely confirmation that even children, so far more resistant to Coronavirus infection and disease, are dramatically involved, especially if obese, like adults. All this coincides with what is reported by JAMA, the most widely read scientific journal of Medicine in the USA, ie that during the pandemic the already seriously high Body Mass Index (indicator of obesity) of the infant population was further increased “.
But more specifically, what are the physiological mechanisms that predispose an obese subject to infection?
“The Covid 19 disease becomes complicated, compared to the simple flu-like syndrome, when, together with the immune response, the inflammatory reaction. Inflammation, the so-called systemic inflammation which would have restorative and protective purposes, paradoxically becomes aggressive towards tissues, organs and systems, as a sort of unstoppable autoimmune disease. Logically it finds more fertile support in organisms already prey to a chronic state of inflammation as is notoriously the case of subjects suffering from obesity, with excess visceral fat (which is not subcutaneous), worse if already complicated by the initial or manifest Diabetes Mellitus “.
We know that the American infant population is already predisposed to obesity given the diet they follow …
“The main causes that lead children to be overweight or obese are a diet that is too rich in sugars and unhealthy fats … The predominant food habit, the so-called Western Dietoriginates from media suggestions induced by the large mass food production very often aimed at the child population.
The problem, however – attention – does not concern Americans only: despite massive educational campaigns, regulations (often equivocal …), political debates at world level, the usual nutrition of the child population, Also in Italy, it is very often vitiated by a caloric excess represented mostly, in fact, by saturated fats (of direct or indirect animal origin) and by glycides, so-called simple sugars and refined cereals. These are the main cause not only of obesity and the triggering of diabetes and steatosis (infiltration of fats) of the liver, but also of compulsive disorders, that irrepressible habit of eating certain foods, which actually prevent its inversion trendy”.
On a scientific level, is the medical community already identifying some solutions to address this negative combination between obesity and Covid?
«Any strategy capable of rapidly and stably reducing fat deposits, especially visceral ones, will be successful in the long term, but also very effective in the short term, on individual cases. An illuminating example is given by the study conducted by Dr. Samir Giuseppe Sukkar and by professor Matteo Bassetti published in the prestigious US magazine ‘Nutrition’ where the authors demonstrated the direct efficacy of nutritional induction to ketosis which, by reducing systemic inflammation with visceral fat, is able to reduce the aggravation rate of Covid 19 disease in a good percentage of treated adults “.
Returning to the “nutritional” education of children, what should parents do in this case? Some advice?
“I have gods very practical and common sense advice. First of all, try to establish healthy eating habits in the whole family, based on rules now well known to all, such as those based on Mediterranean diet. Then induce children and adolescents to one regular recreational and sporting activity supporting their choices. Discreetly monitor the weight of the children and only if anomalies are detected, implement strategies agreed with the more experienced extra-family educators and the pediatrician. Finally, without improvising, dealing with competence, but also with simplicity and naturalness, a possible finding of childhood obesity, doing a lot beware of the insidious risk of unintentionally triggering a stigma problem“.
Other stories of Vanity Fair that may interest you are:
The ketogenic diet: what it consists of and why you can’t follow it alone
The 5 basic rules to avoid the risk of becoming obese
Source: Vanity Fair
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