Flu and Obesity Linked

Here is another reason to try harder to keep your New Year’s resolution if you are a fatty like me and your resolution includes fitness or the reduction of fat like so many resolutions do. Overall, this year's flu strain seems to be hitting younger people, pregnant women, people with chronic disease, and the obese hardest. That’s my category and one reason for this is that both obesity and pregnancy are known to alter the immune response. With the flu, both groups tend to end up with respiratory restrictions, the most common complication sending people with the flu to the hospital being pneumonia. Some patients eventually find themselves in intensive care on a ventilator. The most commonly reported underlying medical conditions among adults hospitalized with the flu were obesity, metabolic disorders, cardiovascular disease and asthma, according to CDC.

One member of our family has already survived the H1N1 strain that is working its way around this season and fortunately I got a pass, and by that I mean despite coming in contact with a family member diagnosed with it, the swine flu passed me by. Maybe the flu shot I got when my mother was still alive protected me. I just remember that the only way she was going to get one was if I got one too. Maybe I should add a New Year’s resolution to stop making excuses for avoiding a flu shot in 2014.