Losing Weight May Lower Your COVID-19 Risk

Like the flu, SARS-CoV-2 is likely here to stay, which means we have to learn to live with it. Does that mean that we’ll be wearing masks and social distancing for the rest of our lives in order to be ‘safe?’ Considering that masks will not even necessarily prevent you from contracting the common cold, it’s time to look at underlying conditions that you can address to help improve your chances of staying healthy – or restoring your health more quickly, starting with those few extra pounds – or more – that you’ve been forever promising yourself to get rid of. Considering that obesity dramatically increases your risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19, your best bet is to focus on losing that weight and improve your general health through healthy diet and exercise.

Here are the risks that patients with even mild obesity face:

• 2.5 times greater risk of respiratory failure
• 5 times greater risk of being admitted to an ICU compared to non-obese patients.
• Threefold greater risk of pulmonary embolism (blood clots in the lungs)
• Doubles the risk of being hospitalized for COVID-19
• Dysregulated lipid synthesis triggered by obesity may aggravate inflammation in the lungs, contributing to increased disease severity during respiratory viral infections

Easier said than done, so here are some suggestions to help you achieve ideal-weight goal:

Processed foods, junk snacks and soft drinks are key culprits in the rise of obesity and chronic diseases that also inflate the risk of death from COVID-19; they should be the first to be eliminated from your diet. Highly processed foods and those with long shelf lives are usually high in salt, sugar, and saturated fat. Excess body weight and fat deposition around the internal organs put pressure on your diaphragm, which makes it more difficult to breathe when you have a respiratory infection.

To optimize your weight loss, consider a time-restricted eating or intermittent fasting strategy, a powerful intervention to reduce insulin resistance and restore metabolic flexibility as well. This requires that you restrict your eating window to six to eight hours each day, making sure to eat your last meal at least three hours before bedtime. For example, have your meals between noon and six or eight pm, or 10 am until 4 or 6 pm, making sure to have your last meal of the day at least three hours prior to bedtime. A cyclical ketogenic diet can also be highly effective in restoring metabolic flexibility and reduce insulin resistance. This involves radically limiting carbs, replacing them with healthy fats and moderate amounts of protein, until you’re close to or at your ideal weight, which will allow your body to start burning fat as its primary fuel and to increase the sensitivity of your insulin receptors.

Equally important:

• Exercise regularly; increase physical movement throughout your waking hours, with the goal of sitting less than three hours a day. If this is difficult, given your lifestyle, at least take regular breaks and walk around to get your blood flowing.
• Make use to get sufficient sleep (typically eight hours for most adults)
• Tend to your emotional health, which can influence your weight, general health and immune function. Chronic stress, for instance, may increase your risk for visceral fat gain over time,27which means addressing your stress levels is imperative for maintaining your ideal weight.

Taking steps towards a healthy lifestyle will have a snowball effect, helping you to reach a healthy weight while bolstering your resilience against infection and disease. It’s time to focus on you – and not the time to simply hide behind a mask.

Read Full Article at: Mercola Health