[dangwhy]

If you don't mind me asking, are you overweight and/or sedentary or prediabetic ( fasting > 100) ?

My doctor told me that being metabolically unhealthy weakens immune system and excersing and eating healthy will protect from frequent infections.

I don't know what to make of this.

[nico]

No one in my family is overweight or has any sort of health issues

As you are aware, it is kind of a rude question, but also a weird one

Not sure why you’d ask that given my anecdote

Pretty much all parents I know describe the same situation of not getting sick very often before kids, and that completely changing once their kids start going to daycare/school

[Izkata]

> No one in my family is overweight or has any sort of health issues

> As you are aware, it is kind of a rude question, but also a weird one

The (US) media drilled into us for years that being overweight/obese may as well be a covid death sentence, doing things like stating how many covid hospitalizations/deaths were overweight/obese without context. So it's become very easy for people to jump on that.

The missing context was that if you actually compared like-for-like, using the real rates in the general US population... overweight/obesity has (almost) no effect. They just left that part out so the number sounded high, or compared "obese" in the population to "overweight or obese" in hospitalizations.

[dangwhy]

> overweight/obesity has (almost) no effect.

do you have any reference to this by any chance? I want to search for this but wasn't sure what ' like -for-like' means in this context.

[Izkata]

Here's an example of the reporting from 2021 that's missing context: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/78-of-co...

> 78% of COVID-19 patients hospitalized in the US overweight or obese, CDC finds

> Among 71,491 U.S. adults who were hospitalized with COVID-19, 27.8 percent were overweight and 50.2 were obese, according to the CDC's latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published March 8.

And here's the population statistics (which you'll note aren't in the reporting above): https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm

> Percent of adults aged 20 and over with obesity: 41.9% (2017-March 2020)

> Percent of adults aged 20 and over with overweight, including obesity: 73.6% (2017-2018)

It's not no effect at all, but the effect is pretty small. It definitely doesn't deserve as much attention as it's gotten, especially relative to other risks like age. I think I vaguely remember diabetes was another risk factor barely talked about that has a higher effect than weight.

---

> but wasn't sure what ' like -for-like' means in this context

Some of the reporting would include the population context, but would say "78% of hospitalized patients were overweight or obese" and compare it directly to "41% of the US population is obese". It's technically correct but extremely misleading, since the reader will compare those two numbers directly even though they're not the same thing.

[dangwhy]

> Not sure why you’d ask that given my anecdote

Sorry didn't mean to offend. I have prediabtes and dr told me that it could lower my immunity. That was his response when i asked him if there is anything i could do to stop getting sick.

> No one in my family is overweight or has any sort of health issues

same here. I am not obese or have any visible health issues but have high fasting glucose and prediabetes a1c. Even prediabetes can impair the immune system.

This doesn't contradict your anecdote though. Its totally possible that you and your friends are getting more sick now given increased exposure and high rates of prediabetes in the country ( 41% of men , 1/3 overall population)

[nico]

Thank you for the reply

Wasn’t really offended, just confused about where your were coming from

Your explanation makes a lot of sense and provides a good reference for others who could be wondering about it in the same line

[nitwit005]

It's well known that parents get sick more often. It's fairly obvious, and there have been studies showing the same effect. See figure 1: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/61/8/1217/376653