'Dealing with obesity is key to ongoing fight against Covid-19', warn North health professionals
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TACKLING obesity is a key factor in the fight against Covid, two North East health experts have warned.
Recent research has highlighted that patients suffering from obesity run a higher risk of death if they become infected with the virus due to links with cardiovascular morbidity.
Dr Sam Robson and Professor John Eagles of Temple Clinic in Aberdeen say there needs to be a focus on supporting overweight people with rapid weight loss programmes as we prepare to face subsequent waves of Covid-19 infections.
The pair recently had a paper published in an international peer reviewed medical journal, Obesity Medicine, highlighting the links between obesity and Covid, whilst revealing the results of a weight management and lifestyle programme they have developed.
It has been well reported that people with obesity are more likely to have other diseases which pose a risk factor, including heart disease, lung disease, and diabetes, as well as unhealthy sugar and fat levels and high blood pressure.
An audit of Dr Robson and Prof. Eagles’ medically supervised programme, Temple Vie, which focusses on weight loss, body contouring, nutritional education, exercise promotion and psychological support, resulted in an average weight loss of 13.3kg, a drop in BMI by an average of 4.7 points and a 7.5 per cent reduction in percentage body fat
over a 12 week period. Findings also revealed improvements in blood pressure and cholesterol.
Dr Robson said: “The rate of weight loss on this programme was encouraging and this is especially positive when we have continually seen a poorer outcome amongst patients with obesity, hypertension and cardiovascular disease who contract Covid-19.
“The results also revealed that patients who took part in our programme achieved a weight loss three times higher than one of the UK’s most popular commercial diet programmes over a 12-week period.
“As we enter the winter months with a warning of more waves of the infection, we hope that our findings will add impetus at a societal and individual level to address obesity and its health consequences, however, we urge people to ensure that they follow a medically supervised rapid weight loss programme which will lead to a more long-term solution to a better lifestyle.”
Throughout all the stages of the overall two year Temple Vie programme,there is a focus on exercise and physical activity, education and psychological support to help address dysfunctional relationships with food.
With the UK government already ploughing billions into the health service to support the NHS as we continue to battle the pandemic and those with underlying conditions requiring to shield for months to protect their health, Dr Robson and Prof. Eagles hope their paper and programme results will encourage people with obesity to start focussing on weight loss to improve their overall health and wellbeing.
