Covid: Risk of severe complications could be reduced with a simple lifestyle change

Obesity: UK 'going down road of America' says David Lammy

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Obesity was identified in the early pandemic as a major risk factor for COVID-19.
A new study has found that weight loss surgery can slash a person’s risk of severe Covid by 60 percent.
The study, published in JAMA surgery, found that people who had had weight loss surgery were just as likely to catch Covid but half as likely to be hospitalised or need oxygen therapy.
The study suggests that while obesity is a risk factor for Covid, it can be controlled with weight loss.

The study compared obese people who had metabolic surgery to obese people who did not undergo surgery.

The people who had surgery demonstrated better weight loss and health markers before the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.

The researchers did not compare outcomes to people with an original BMI below 35.

Additionally, the time at which people had surgery varied greatly, ranging from January 1 2004 to December 31 2017.

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By comparing patients by their weight before surgery the researchers are able to more clearly establish the role of weight loss in reducing risk.

The researchers believe that promoting weight loss as a public health measure could help in the current and future pandemics.

A total of 20,212 patients were examined in the study, a quarter of whom had undergone surgery.

Certain factors, such as diagnosis with cancer, alcohol abuse or death excluded people from being included in the study.

Obesity is a risk factor for a large number of conditions, including COVID-19.

It weakens the immune system and increases inflammation throughout the body.

This increases susceptibility to related conditions, such as other lung infections and heart conditions that make you more likely to die from Covid.

Other comorbidities that are worsened by obesity include diabetes and high blood pressure.

Weight loss surgery, also called metabolic surgery is a surgical intervention that is used in obesity cases where exercise therapies and dietary changes are unable to achieve weight loss.

It can lead to significant weight loss and improves many weight related conditions such as blood pressure and diabetes.

There are several types of weight loss surgery, only some of which were examined in this study.

The two the researchers looked at were sleeve gastrostomies and gastric bypasses.

A gastric bypass creates a small partition in the stomach and connects it directly to the small intestine.

This causes food you eat to bypass most of the stomach, causing less food to be digested and absorbed.

A sleeve gastrectomy surgery reduces the size of the stomach by about 80 percent.

This reduces the amount of food you are able to eat and produces hormonal changes that help the weight loss process.

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