Shortly after the pandemic began, more than a year ago, Americans began to joke about the dreaded “quarantine 15”, worried that they might gain weight while locked up in houses with food stores, glued to computer screens and watching Netflix.
The concern is real, but assessing the scope of the problem has been a challenge. Research that simply asks people about their weight is notoriously unreliable, and many medical appointments have been virtual.
Now, a small study using objective measures – weight measurements of smart scales connected via Bluetooth – suggests that adults under shelter requests at the site have gained more than half a kilo every 10 days.
That translates to almost a pound a month, said Dr. Gregory M. Marcus, senior author of the research letter, published on Monday in the journal JAMA Network Open. Americans who maintained their blocking habits could easily gain 10 pounds over the course of a year, he added.
“We know that weight gain is already a public health problem in the United States, so anything that makes it worse is definitely worrying, and requests for shelters on site are so ubiquitous that the sheer number of people affected by it makes it so. extremely relevant ”. said Dr. Marcus, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
While it is almost impossible to make generalizations based on the study – which included less than 300 people across the United States – all participants were monitoring their weight on a regular basis.
Many of these people were losing weight before shelter orders on the spot were issued in their states, noted Dr. Marcus. “It is reasonable to assume that these individuals are more engaged with their health in general and more disciplined and on top of things,” he said. “This suggests that we may be underestimating – that this is the tip of the iceberg.”
Overweight has been linked to an increased risk of developing the most severe Covid-19 disease, and the United States already has one of the highest rates of overweight and obesity in the world. About 42% of American adults over the age of 20 are obese, as defined by their body mass index, while another 32% of Americans are simply overweight.
The risk of serious illness has also been documented among overweight or obese young adults. Many states are prioritizing overweight or obese people for vaccination, along with those who have other chronic illnesses, such as diabetes or hypertension.
The new study analyzed data obtained from 269 participants who were involved in an ongoing cardiology study, the Health eHeart Study. They offered to report weight measurements on smart scales connected via Bluetooth and weighed themselves regularly; the researchers collected 7,444 weight measurements over a four-month period, an average of 28 weight measurements from each participant.
The group was not nationally representative at all, so the results are not generalizable: about three quarters were white and only 3.5% were identified as black or African-American; about 3 percent identified as Asian Americans. The average age was 51 and they were divided almost equally between men and women.
Participants were from 37 states and the District of Columbia. The researchers analyzed the weight measurements taken between February 1, 2020 and June 1, 2020, in order to observe changes in weight before and after the issuance of shelter orders on site for each state.
Although most participants lost pounds before orders were issued, their weights continually increased at a rate of about six tenths of a pound every 10 days after orders were issued, regardless of where they were in the country and regardless of condition chronic medical conditions.
Blockages have certainly had an effect on eating patterns, what people eat and how often they eat. But the restrictions also reduced the monotonous physical activity that is an integral part of daily life, the researchers said.
“If you think about people commuting, even running to the subway or bus stop, or going into the mail to send a letter, or stopping at the store – we burn a lot of calories in daily activities without exercise,” said Leanne Redman, professor of clinical physiology at Pennington Biomedical Research Center, part of Louisiana State University.
His research found that people were eating a healthier diet during the first days of the stoppage, but were more sedentary.
A previous study by UCSF researchers looked at daily step counts, monitored by smartphones, among almost half a million people in almost 200 countries. The number of measures taken by people decreased by 27% per month after the World Health Organization declared the pandemic.
The concern with exercise also extends to children, who are known to gain weight harmful to their health during the summer recess months, when they are not at school. The risk is even greater for Hispanic and black children than for white children, said Andrew G. Rundle, associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, author of a recent article that expressed concern that the closing schools exacerbating the existing race disparities in health.
“We argued that being out of school, that we thought it would last six months and that it would last longer, would be like the summer break, but even worse, because everyone would be filling up with food loaded with stable shelf calories, and staying inside. from home and not leaving, ”he said. “Everything that makes the summer dangerous for children would be amplified by the blockade.”