I received this article from a friend, and thought it worth sharing. This is from the Medscape.com article (for those who would like to read it in its entirety, here’s the link: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/928531?src=soc_fb_200412_mscpedt_news_mdscp_obesity&faf=1):
“The patients aged 65 years and older also were the most likely to have one or more underlying conditions, at 94.4%, compared with 86.4% of those aged 50-64 years and 85.4% of individuals who were aged 18-44 years, the investigators reported.
Hypertension was the most common comorbidity among the oldest patients, with a prevalence of 72.6%, followed by cardiovascular disease at 50.8% and obesity at 41%. In the two younger groups, obesity was the condition most often seen in COVID-19 patients, with prevalences of 49% in 50- to 64-year-olds and 59% in those aged 18-49, Dr. Garg and associates wrote.”
It underscores what physicians have been telling people since time immemorial – age is an important factor, but not the only factor in determining how your body deals with a medical crisis. Your biological age – in large part determined by your overall health that includes good lab work, being near an ideal body weight, low fasting insulin level (< 10) and the lack of habits that affect your body badly (smoking, excessive sugar intake, inactivity) plays a huge factor in this.** In other words, there are 50 year olds out there who have the physiology of a health 32 year old, and there are 32 year olds who are biologically 60.
The numbers of children and teens who have succumbed to COVID-19 are, thankfully, astonishingly low, ditto for young adults. But the devil, as always, is in the details. Take a look at the particulars in these cases; when you see the alarming news of a 27 year old dying of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) from viral infection, and you later learn that said patient was a smoker, morbidly obese and prediabetic, it starts to make sense.
You can’t do anything about your chronological age, but it’s within your power to work on improving your biological age. And it just might save your life.
John E. Stavrakos MS, MD
Owner/Medical Director, Heritage Regenerative Medicine
“Misery is comfortable. That’s why so many people prefer it. Happiness takes effort.” – David Wong
**What I found interesting in a webinar I just listened to from a national expert was that patients with chronic lung disease are actually underreported in the data for having severe to critical COVID-19 infections compared to the general population, when we would assume the opposite. Some of the ideas being postulated that having a chronic respiratory ailment protects the body against COVID-19 through an as yet unidentified immune response, or perhaps the lack the same number of ACE2 receptors on the cells in their lung tissues (the receptor that the “spike” or S-protein, of the virus attaches to), even the idea that their treatments (corticosteroids, nebulizers, interleukin inhibitors) provide protection against the virus.
