Posts Tagged ‘COVID-19’

As life comes back to a new sort of normalcy in some parts of the world, we are slowly coming to terms with the full effects of the pandemic. The deaths have been front and center – 3.5 million to date. Though that number is still growing in many places, it is slowing in others. […]

It sounds apocryphal. Yet it’s fresh and real. Da’Shaun Harrison, an author and activist, had just arrived at an Atlanta hospital with COVID-19, was lying on a stretcher, and terrified of dying. A male nurse approached and said, “Wow, you’re big. The first thing we need to do is get this weight off you.” Neither […]

As the UK variant (B.1.1.7) became dominant in the U.S., something else started to change. More young people started showing up in the hospital. In fact, COVID wards are filling up with younger patients in Michigan. This may simply be a result of more infections in young people. Teens in Michigan are testing positive at […]

Call us quaint. But we believe medical journals should publish research grounded in facts and evidence. Not speculation. Especially in the midst of a pandemic that has taken the lives of more than three million people around the world. BMJ, though, has a different approach. This week the BMJ group has a paper promoting magical […]

Perhaps you know this feeling: muddling, struggling, dragging. Neither depressed nor flourishing. After a year of this pandemic, many people find themselves in this COVID state of mind. In fact, a global study of mental health in the pandemic lockdown by Andrew Gloster et al found that fully half of the people studied had only […]

Does staying active reduce the risk of severe outcomes with COVID-19? A new study suggests this possibility. In fact, the authors of this study found that being inactive was a top risk factor for landing in the hospital or dying from COVID-19. Only advanced age or an organ transplant had higher risks. This makes sense. […]

It’s official. We seem to be in the early stages of a new denim cycle. Looser fitting jeans with a high waist or a flare at the bottom are in. The pandemic may have hastened the demise of skinny jeans, says Levi Straus CEO Chip Bergh: “This is not the first time we’ve seen this […]

About a year ago, Boris Johnson had an epiphany. He came uncomfortably close to death because of COVID-19. Obesity was the reason it was so bad for him, he decided. “I was too fat,” he said. So he launched the Better Health campaign to slim down the UK. But the UK is not alone in […]

When World Obesity Day rolled around this year, a popular and sensational factoid was that nine out of ten COVID deaths were in countries with high obesity rates. It served to grab attention, but we’re not big fans of the sensationalism in that factoid. Because obesity might be important, but it does not explain 90 […]

Anecdotal reports have been coming for some time. As early as June, research reports told us COVID-19 was changing the patterns of life for children in ways that could make obesity worse. Then it was speculation. But now, the data is coming in and it really does not look good. A new report in Pediatrics […]