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| LETTER TO EDITOR |
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| Year : 2021 | Volume
: 10
| Issue : 2 | Page : 184-185 |
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Obesity, COVID-19 severity, and yoga
Prasanna Kumar Santhekadur
Department of Biochemistry, Center of Excellence in Molecular Biology and Regenerative Medicine, JSS Medical College, JSS Academy of Higher Education and Research, Mysore, Karnataka, India
| Date of Submission | 28-Sep-2020 |
| Date of Decision | 28-Oct-2020 |
| Date of Acceptance | 30-Oct-2020 |
| Date of Web Publication | 18-May-2021 |
Correspondence Address:
Dr. Prasanna Kumar Santhekadur
Department of Biochemistry, Center of Excellence in Molecular Biology and Regenerative Medicine, JSS Medical College, JSS Academy of Higher Education and Research, Sri Shivarathreeshwara Nagar, Mysore - 570 015, Karnataka
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/ijhas.IJHAS_241_20
How to cite this article:
Santhekadur PK. Obesity, COVID-19 severity, and yoga. Int J Health Allied Sci 2021;10:184-5 |
Sir,
Obesity has emerged as a master mediator of almost all the inflammation-associated diseases including metabolic syndrome and cancer. Advanced and sedentary lifestyle and the global impact of Western dietary habit created the huge amount of obese population each and every corner of the world. Therefore, obesity is the most common health problem of the 21st century. The sudden resurgence of the global pandemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-COVID-2 and associated COVID-19-related panickiness has led to overnight increase in depression and depression-associated obesity.[1] Depreobesity has already creating huge disturbances in health status of the normal population as well as already suffering obese population. Home confinement and quarantine have led to frustration, several psychobehavioral problems mainly depression and depression associated over eating habit, consumption of high-calorie diet, which led to further increase in obesity cases.[2] This post-COVID-19 depreobesity as well as pre-COVID-19 obesity both have a negative impact on SARS-COV-2-infected COVID-19-positive patients health status at this point of time. Many of the recently published studies have clearly established a strong link between overweight, obesity, and risk of COVID-19-associated deaths.[3],[4],[5] These studies distinctly highlighted the global epidemiological information and have provided useful insights into the relationship between overweight/individuals with obesity and their more susceptibility to the SARS-COV-2 infection as well as the severity of COVID-19 disease using meta-analyses of number of published data. All these studies clearly and directly correlated obesity with the increased mortality rate COVID-19 populations.
It is very well-established fact that obesity is the main cause for metabolic syndrome, and in a recent distinguished study, they have established a strong association with metabolic syndrome and COVID-19-associated mortality.[6] Therefore, metabolic syndrome is a major risk factor of mortality or disease's severity among COVID-19 patients.[7] Obesity induces various growth factors, cytokines, and inflammatory markers and cytokine storm is one of the major symptoms of SARS-COV-2 infections during CVOID-19 severity [Figure 1]. This cytokine storm involves an uncontrolled release of pro-inflammatory cytokines during the disease and it triggers various cellular signaling pathways and immune mediators simultaneously, leading to many series of pathological events.[8],[9] Proper and healthy lifestyle, healthy dietary habit with good amount of exercise may have beneficial effects on COVID-19 associated deleterious effects. Staying very active, adequate sleeping time, self-health care, coping up with stress and anxiety are very important. Routine meditation and yoga may have additional beneficial effects.[10] Yoga and meditation have shown huge anti-inflammatory effects and these inflammatory effects are mediated via the downregulation of the nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) transcription factor, which is the master regulator of cellular inflammation and associated signaling pathways.[11],[12] Yoga and meditation not only suppress the NF-κB transcription factor activity but also suppress the cytokine storm, which is triggered by SARS-COV-2 infection.[13] Therefore, practicing yoga and meditation with other physical activity and exercise may aid during the COVID-19 and also protect every human being from the harmful effects of obesity-associated diseases including this global pandemic of COVID-19. | Figure 1: Effect of severe acute respiratory syndrome-COV-2 infection on obese population
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Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
| References | |  |
| 1. | Medicine M, Kaczor-Urbanowicz KE, Madiouni R. Future epidemic: Depreobesity. Obes Med 2020;19:100240.  |
| 2. | Mediouni M, Madiouni R, Kaczor-Urbanowicz KE. COVID-19: How the quarantine could lead to the depreobesity. Obes Med 2020;19:100255. |
| 3. | Hamer M, Gale CR, Kivimäki M, Batty GD. Overweight, obesity, and risk of hospitalization for COVID-19: A community-based cohort study of adults in the United Kingdom. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2020;117:21011-3. |
| 4. | Popkin BM, Du S, Green WD, Beck MA, Algaith T, Herbst CH, et al. Individuals with obesity and COVID-19: A global perspective on the epidemiology and biological relationships. Obes Rev 2020;21:e13128. |
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| 6. | Xie J, Zu Y, Alkhatib A, Pham TT, Gill F, Jang A, et al. Metabolic syndrome and COVID-19 mortality among adult black patients in New Orleans. Diabetes Care 2020. |
| 7. | De Lucena TM, Da Silva Santos AF, De Lima BR, De Albuquerque Borborema ME, De Azevêdo Silva J. Mechanism of inflammatory response in associated comorbidities in COVID-19. Diabetes Metab Syndr 2020;14:597-600. |
| 8. | Zhang W, Zhao Y, Zhang F, Wang Q, Li T, Liu Z, et al. The use of anti-inflammatory drugs in the treatment of people with severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): the experience of clinical immunologists from China. Clin Immunol 2020;214:108393. |
| 9. | Channappanavar R, Perlman S. Pathogenic human coronavirus infections: causes and consequences of cytokine storm and immunopathology. Semin Immunopathol 2017;39:529-39. |
| 10. | Bushell W, Castle R, Williams MA, Brouwer KC, Tanzi RE, Chopra D, et al. Meditation and yoga practices as potential adjunctive treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19: A brief overview of key subjects. J Altern Complement Med 2020;26:547-56. |
| 11. | Cahn BR, Goodman MS, Peterson CT, Maturi R, Mills PJ. Yoga, meditation and mind-body health: Increased BDNF, cortisol awakening response, and altered inflammatory marker expression after a 3-month yoga and meditation retreat. Front Hum Neurosci 2017;11:315. |
| 12. | Black DS, Cole SW, Irwin MR, Breen E, St Cyr NM, Nazarian N, et al. Yogic meditation reverses NF-κB and IRF-related transcriptome dynamics in leukocytes of family dementia caregivers in a randomized controlled trial. Psychoneuroendocrinology 2013;38:348-55. |
| 13. | Nagendra HR. Yoga for COVID-19. Int J Yoga 2020;13:87-8. [Full text] |
[Figure 1]
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