“Masking” Obesity?

*Disclaimer: I may be a bit biased to what I believe is the main issue plaguing the health of our country.

My wife and I were on vacation this past winter in beautiful Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic and we were blessed to meet this young couple from Switzerland. It was evident right away that they valued their health and fitness, because let’s be honest, on a beach, that becomes evident PDQ. “That’s pretty judgemental of you Brandon,” you may be thinking to yourself. No, that’s just being honest without the sugar.

As we spent some time with the couple we talked at length about many things; great conversations about life, family, culture, dreams, and of course, health and fitness. We got on the topic of obesity and I mentioned how much of an epidemic it is in our country. Here’s the interesting part, they said, “oh yeah, we already know that about America.

When we think of American health, we look at your country as the epitome of obesity.”

Having been an American for quite some time now, I was embarrassed for us.

Inevitably someone always reads an article like this, is quick to get offended, and says, “yeah but……”

Here’s my response to that person, “No, your butt.”

C’mon, that’s kind of funny.

I know there are exceptions to everything, but in this case, let’s focus on the majority.

If obesity isn’t serious enough, let’s tie in COVID-19 into the details, because apparently that’s more serious than obesity (insert sarcasm). Let’s put it this way, if COVID-19 was a bully, and it wanted to pick on somebody, it wants to pick on the fat kids. No seriously.

“If you’re younger than 65 years old and obese, COVID-19 poses a special danger to you. A new study reports that the more obese you are, the more likely you are to either die from infection with the new coronavirus or require lifesaving mechanical ventilation to survive. Morbidly obese COVID-19 patients are 60% more likely to die or require intubation, compared with people of normal weight, researchers found. Patients who were mildly obese were 10% more likely to die or need a breathing machine, while those who were moderately obese were 30% more likely, according to the study. “Increasing obesity was associated with an increased risk of lung failure or death in COVID-19,” said lead researcher Dr. Michaela Anderson, a pulmonologist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City.” – Annals of Internal Medicine (Link to article)

Does that grab your attention? Because it gets worse, COVID-19 isn’t even the deadliest health issue most Americans are facing, although everyone would sure like us to think it is right now. We tend to forget about these ones, which I’m sure you’ve heard of before. They are called heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

So, here’s a couple questions to ponder:

1. Are we masking the real issue?
2. If we were a healthy country, with 70% of its citizens with a healthy body composition rather than 70+% being overweight/obese, would we be as concerned as we are about COVID-19?
3. Do masks reduce caloric intake?

Let’s go America.