In identifying those at high risk for the COVID-19 virus, the initial focus was on age and comorbidities such as hypertension (high blood pressure), diabetes and hyperlipidemia (e.g. high cholesterol). Early data supported that these were the big threats for someone that had the virus.

With more data, some are concluding that age and obesity are the two main concerns.

This makes sense as obesity can lead to several of the other comorbidities. It also makes sense when someone that is apparently “young and healthy” dies with the virus. It is possible they had the underlying condition of being obese.

There are a few ways to determine if you are obese. Your doctor will look at a Body Mass Index chart like this one to determine if you’re obese. (I intentionally used this article indicating how bogus BMI charts are.) An easier way to better determine if you are obese is to measure your waist. If your waist circumference is under 34.5″ as a woman and under 40″ as a man, you’re likely not obese.

The best way in my book to determine if you are at a healthy weight is to measure your body fat. This particularly applies to those that strength train as part of their exercise, as they may weigh more than the average person because of the higher muscle percentage of their body. The difficulty lies in that many people don’t have the tools to measure body fat (calipers or an electronic device). If you hae the tools, you can use this to help find what percentage is healthy.

A comment to an article I was reading about getting our economy back on line was particularly interesting: “We should isolate people based on their comorbidity, general health and nutrition profile”.

Though comorbidity and general health would be easy to determine, how would someone go about measuring a “nutrition profile”? It seems that it would be cumbersome and subjective. Subsequently, I doubt we’ll ever get to the point of collecting any useful data.

But just as we know obesity can lead to hypertension and diabetes, we know poor nutrition can lead to obesity. We also know there are certain foods that support a strong immune response which will help in fighting the Coronavirus. We may not know how to measure it, but good nutrition during this crisis is something we all can and should do.

Barb and I have been having our share of comfort food lately and that is coming to an end. Join us in putting up our best defense against COVID-19.

Ron