Health

Coronavirus’s era is expected to increase the obesity rate

Coronavirus pandemic is expected to contribute greatly to the increasing of obesity and overweight in the world; as the current crisis and the need to self-isolation is prompting many to rely on processed food with longer shelf life and canned food with higher quantities of sodium instead of fresh produced; says the world obesity federation.

According to the world obesity federation, the global pandemic is also quickly becoming a global economic crisis, which will disproportionately affect the world’s most vulnerable population. In many countries, this same segment of population is also the one at higher risk of obesity and it might worsen the crisis in the future.

In addition to that, the weight loss programs which are often delivered in groups and interventions such as surgery are being severely curtailed at present, and this is likely to go on for a long period of time. Also, the measures introduced in some countries for not leaving home for several weeks even for those who are not sick, will have an impact on mobility and enforced physical inactivity even for short periods of time, which increases the risk of metabolic disease.

Given the extremely high rates of obesity around the globe, persons with obesity who become ill and require intensive care present challenges in patient management as it is more difficult to intubate patients with obesity, it can be more challenging to obtain diagnostic imaging as there are weight limits on imaging machines.

The World Health Organization says that when the body mass index (BMI) or height index is equal to or greater than 25, that person is overweight. The BMI equal or greater than 30 is obesity. BMI is a simple index of weight-for-height that is commonly used to classify overweight and obesity in adults. It is defined as a person’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of his height in meters (kg/m2).

In poor countries, the problem of obesity is compounded by many other factors. Most of these countries are struggling to cope with the problem of hunger and malnutrition, as well as low-level medical care, obesity-related diseases are also on the rise and are also killing many, especially children.

World obesity federation promises to regularly release information regarding any new discovered associations between COVID-19 and obesity and its commodities on its website www.worldobesity.org.

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