Click here to visit the new home of that's fit!

Hot on HuffPost Healthy Living:

AOL.com
MAIL

En Español

That's Fit

Send Feedback

Obesity brings down immune response

Posted on Dec 14th 2007 12:02PM by Brian White

Filed Under: Diet & Weight Loss

A study out of Boston University this week concluded that obese people have a weakened immune response and, as such, find it much more difficult to fight off infections.

To those who have researched a healthy lifestyle that leads to optimum weight levels, this is no surprise. Obesity can stress the body in many ways which apparently causes the immune system to be less effective.

Maybe this is why the U.S. sees so many drug prescriptions for infections -- because the burgeoning level of obesity in this country has made a majority of us unable to competently fight infections with the tools inside our own bodies. What do you think?

Source

2 Comment

Tags: immune system, immune system response, ImmuneSystem, ImmuneSystemResponse, obese, obesity

Around the Web

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Nancy 12-19-2007 @ 12:28PM

So now the overweight are being blamed for the infections too. That's a real stretch of the imagination. Not in my case. I have a hyper immune system from lupus and I am overweight because of the steroids I have to take. All studies are flawed and there are exceptions to all those tidy theories. Why can't we just quit the blame game. It only makes a very few people feel good about themselves for a very short time.

Nancy 12-19-2007 @ 12:36PM

This makes it sound like skinny people don't get infections, don't get sick and never die. I know so many skinny people who have diabetes, cancer and heart disease. How can that be? Following the insurance standards for ideal weight will have us living forever. Right?