Back on the GAINZZZ TRAINZZZ

Just some short items about health generally.

Yesterday, rd recommended that everyone take their Vitamin D, vitamin K2, and zinc. I was doing that, but then stopped. With winter here (and no more free vitamin D through sunlight), it's time to Get Some D again. Small Dead Animals has a video discussing the importance of the three for fighting off illness, including covid.

"Biggest cancer catastrophe ever," as up to 740,000 cancer cases potentially went undetected due to covid lockdowns.

College students show declining physical and mental health after the lockdowns -- and they're not recovering even after the (partial) reopenings.

Following research about college students from before COVID-19 with a survey at the pandemic's Year I mark, an international team of scientists detected no improvement in the students' mental well-being even after the introduction of vaccines and the easing of social distancing methods, let alone a return to campuses in many instances.

In fact, the researchers in spring 2021 found marked declines in both physical and emotional health--students sustained a 35% decline in their number of daily steps and a 36% increase in the number at risk of clinical depression, or roughly half of the total students surveyed.

...

"We were surprised when the data showed us that some of the initial disruptions to lifestyle and mental health that occurred in the spring of 2020 persisted through spring 2021 while restrictions were being lifted," said Osea Giuntella, an expert in labor and health economics and an assistant professor in the Department of Economics in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences.

I wonder why young people are suffering such dire mental health problems.

Via John "Pro-Norms" Ekdahl:

Bad habits are far more habit-forming that good habits. Trust me on that. I am very much an expert on the ease with which one may become habituated to bad habits.

Do you guys do the 10,000 steps? Or 8,000 steps, or 5,000 steps, whatever?

Get some STEPZZZ. I stopped getting my walks in for about three weeks, just started getting them again.

Also touched DOGZZZ. Always touch DOGZZZ.

So hey, people didn't check up on their health and we missed cancer diagnoses, and people became physically unhealthy and depressed, but it was totally rational and right to turn public health policy into a single-variable consideration, right? At least we got rid of Trump -- and that was the real goal of our "covid policy," wasn't it?

Genius. I just want to listen to The Experts all the more now.

A Stanford study finds that covid may affect the obese more because it infects fat cells.

In this report, we demonstrate that human adipose tissue from multiple depots is permissive to SARS-CoV-2 infection and that infection elicits an inflammatory response, including the secretion of known inflammatory mediators of severe COVID-19.

So I'm not a Doctor of Covid like AllahPundit and Dr. Guy P. Benson, Ph.D., but I think what it's saying is that covid infects fat cells and then causes them to pump out the very inflammatory mediators -- chemicals -- which then wreak havoc in other parts of the body. "Inflammatory" refers to anything that causes your tissues to swell, produce mucous, attract platelets to heal and patch holes, stuff like that -- as your nasal passages do, as your throat does when they're inflamed. Though every tissue of the body has a different way of behaving when inflamed, but what they all have in common is that they're under stress from an external provocation and trying to reduce the inflammation.

Sometimes they'll say "inflammation is good" but they mean that in the sense that inflammation shows your body is fighting off something. It's a defensive response to an attack. Of course, it would be better if the body wasn't in the position of having to defend itself in the first place.

This paper has been submitted but not yet peer reviewed.

Here's the NYT article.

Now researchers have found that the coronavirus infects both fat cells and certain immune cells within body fat, prompting a damaging defensive response in the body.

"The bottom line is, 'Oh my god, indeed, the virus can infect fat cells directly,'" said Dr. Philipp Scherer, a scientist who studies fat cells at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who was not involved in the research.

"Whatever happens in fat doesn’t stay in fat," he added. "It affects the neighboring tissues as well."

The research has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal, but it was posted online in October. If the findings hold up, they may shed light not just on why patients with excess pounds are vulnerable to the virus, but also on why certain younger adults with no other risks become so ill.

The study’s authors suggested the evidence could point to new Covid treatments that target body fat.

"Maybe that’s the Achilles' heel that the virus utilizes to evade our protective immune responses -- by hiding in this place," Dr. Vishwa Deep Dixit, a professor of comparative medicine and immunology at Yale School of Medicine, said.

So: Covid attacks fat cells and causes them to produce the inflammatory agents that attack the tissues of the lungs and heart.

And our Experts' response...? Shut down the gyms. Lock everyone in their homes. Force people to sit on their asses all day long binging Netflix, "going to work" via Zoom, and ordering food via Uber Eats all day long.

Cause most people in an already very overweight society to pack on an additional ten to fifteen pounds of fat -- more for those who were already obese.

Perfect, perfect.

I say we listen more to The Experts.

So I had no GAINZZZ for a while. I stopped working out after the Thanksgiving vacation.

I made myself a low-carb Thanksgiving. Low carb pumpkin pie (almond flour for the crust, erythritol for sweetener), low carb stuffing with low-carb bread from Whole Food.

Otherwise, it was just regular Thanksgiving food. Ate a lot. Ate three pumpkin pies over ten days.

Weight gain: One pound.

One (1).

Not bad.

And I mean: Turkey and stuffing sandwiches twice a day (on Aldi's low-carb bread -- lighter bread than the Whole Foods bread I used in the stuffing). I was pretty much begging for weight gain.

But just a pound.

So I think the Aldi's and Whole Foods low-carb breads are legit, and the low carb pumpkin pie recipes are legit too.

I just started walking/running again.

What about yo' GAINZZZ?

Any PLANZZZ? PROJEXXX?

BOOXXX?

Some INSPIRATIONZZZ -- a thank you from your future SELVEZZZ.

posted by Ace at 04:45 PM

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