COVID Weight Loss: Your Questions Answered

Like with many viral infections, it’s common to lose weight after having COVID-19. In severe cases, this could lead to complications. Experts have some tips on how to regain unintentional weight loss.

There’s much we still don’t understand about COVID-19 and its short- and long-term effects on our bodies. One interesting pattern is that many people with COVID-19 reported weight loss. Specifically, people have reported muscle loss, which healthcare professionals call “cachexia.”

Weight loss from COVID-19 can potentially impair your recovery by affecting your energy levels, among other things. If you’ve noticed unintentional weight loss post-COVID, keep reading to learn why and discover suggestions on regaining weight safely.

There are several ways in which COVID-19 can affect your appetite and your body’s ability to use calories from food as energy. A combination of factors probably causes some people to lose weight related to COVID-19, including:

According to a 2020 study, the longer you have COVID-19 symptoms, the more likely you are to experience weight loss.

In one study of COVID-19 patients 1 month after hospital discharge, 30% of people had lost more than 5% of their baseline body weight. More than half were at risk for malnutrition.

Weight loss can vary after COVID. The more weight you lose, the more concerning this can be because you could be malnourished (not getting the nutrients your body needs to function at its best).

As a general rule, maintaining muscle mass helps you live a healthier, more functional life. While the term “weight loss” may be positive for those wishing to lose weight, unintentional weight loss related to COVID-19 can result in malnutrition and muscle loss.

Researchers have also connected COVID-19 weight loss with health effects, including:

Additionally, COVID-19 can induce fibrosis (scarring) in your body’s tissues, including important organs like your heart and lungs. This fibrosis can also worsen muscle wasting.

Research regarding weight loss and COVID-19 is still emerging. Even less is known about how to regain weight after the virus. Most advice about regaining weight is similar to what you should follow after unintentional weight loss after a prolonged illness.

You may consider the following:

It’s best to speak with a healthcare professional before starting an exercise program to ensure you can do so safely.

The following are commonly asked questions about COVID and weight loss or gain.

Reports of COVID-related weight loss occur even with mild illness. But those with more severe illness tend to report greater amounts of unintentional weight loss.

How long it takes you to regain weight after COVID may depend on several factors, including your overall health and the severity of your illness. Talk with a healthcare professional about a reasonable time frame to regain weight based on your circumstances.

Some people reported weight gain during the COVID lockdown periods, often because they were sedentary and indoors. But weight gain explicitly related to the virus is much less common than weight loss.

Researchers have reported many cases of weight loss after COVID-19, especially after prolonged hospital stays or severe illness.

If you have unintentionally lost weight after COVID, talk with a healthcare professional about safe ways to regain muscle mass. Doing so may aid in your recovery and help you feel better overall.

rsa, the security division of emc, unveils major new capabilities in data loss prevention

The Middle East operations of RSA, The Security Division of EMC (NYSE: EMC), today announced the advancement of the RSA™ Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Suite through new capabilities that are designed to allow regional customers to secure the sensitive information that is most critical to their businesses.

The RSA DLP Suite is engineered to provide unified, seamless data policy orchestration across the enterprise, allowing customers to discover and monitor sensitive data and apply the appropriate enforcement mechanisms to secure sensitive data across the IT stack.“Securing data is an information management process. To be successful, data must first be identified and classified; different controls need to be applied to prevent the data’s loss, and the enterprise-wide management of those controls needs to be as efficient as possible,” said Mohammed Amin, Regional Manager, EMC Middle East & North Africa. “This release of the DLP suite is a major advancement in addressing this overall process in a holistic manner. The RSA DLP Suite is engineered both to provide the ability to orchestrate policies that secure sensitive data in the datacenter, network, and at the endpoints, and to provide one of the industry’s most robust data discovery and detection capabilities, which are key to an organization’s ability to identify risk and protect against sensitive data loss no matter where the data resides. ”

In the Middle East, RSA have already found significant awareness of Data Leakage issues. Kieran Hernon, Key Account Manager of RSA, Middle East explained, “The Gulf countries have been alert to data leakage long before their European and US counterparts. The culture of individual and corporate privacy, long fostered in this region, have focused corporations on the security of data assets and many organizations therefore already have the processes and policies in place to execute on a full data leakage strategy. In this regard, the adoption of the relevant technology is a natural step towards closing the loop in information security and as a result, Middle East customers are well educated on the current hodge-podge of point products on the market. At RSA, we are certain that our customers will find the total solution presented in the newly released RSA DLP Suite, a very welcome breath of fresh air.”

New Features Provide Accuracy and Scalability

The RSA DLP Suite is one of the industry’s most comprehensive data loss prevention solutions, and is designed to provide customers with the most robust database of policies to secure data for both regulatory (PCI, privacy laws) and non-regulatory (intellectual property, business strategy/operations data) security drivers. This design simplifies the integration of DLP technology into existing IT infrastructures.  These capabilities along with the RSA DLP Suite’s distributed grid architecture provide market leading accuracy and scalability.  The DLP Suite includes RSA DLP Endpoint, RSA DLP Network, and RSA DLP Datacenter, with overall management of the Suite provided by the RSA DLP Enterprise Manager.• RSA DLP Network is designed to locate sensitive data traveling over the network such as email, IM, or webmail traffic, and then applies the appropriate action such as block, quarantine, or encrypt.• RSA DLP Datacenter is engineered to discover sensitive, unprotected data in the data center and provides a range of remediation options and can work in conjunction with other products in the RSA Data Security System, such as the RSA™ File Security Manager, which is designed to provide the ability to audit user access to sensitive files or folders, and then enable role based access controls using encryption.

The RSA DLP Suite also is engineered to provide broad, international DLP support. For international organizations and multinational companies, the DLP Suite is designed to provide comprehensive, pre-packaged policies for international markets that map to important international data regulations and non regulatory security drivers. Out of the box, it comes with a database of more than 100 different policy templates for a range of security drivers.

Getting Started With Data Loss Prevention Technology

For organizations who are seeking guidance with their data security strategy, understand potential risks associated with the loss of sensitive data, or feel that the task of securing all sensitive information is too costly, RSA is introducing the RSASM DLP RiskAdvisor Service. With RSA DLP RiskAdvisor, organizations can quickly gain visibility into where sensitive data is unprotected and be given concrete remediation recommendations to reduce the risk of sensitive data loss.  The high impact service helps customers prioritize their needs based on business risk and delivers measurable results in preventing data loss.

Powering RSA’s Data Security System

The RSA DLP Suite also provides the strategic hub for the RSA™ Data Security System, a set of products and services that implement a holistic approach for securing data.  The Data Security System is designed to enable customers to discover and monitor sensitive information; enforce controls, such as encryption and data loss prevention, and report and audit to prove that sensitive data is secure.  The RSA DLP Suite is engineered to provide policy orchestration for the RSA Data Security System, enabling other data control and audit mechanisms from RSA, EMC and 3rd parties, to be leveraged as part of a holistic process. The DLP Suite enables organizations to define policies centered around the data itself, and leverage control mechanisms throughout the infrastructure to remediate risk and enforce policy.

Availability

The RSA DLP Suite will be available in May 2008.  Customers with current support agreements will be able to upgrade to the RSA DLP Enterprise Manager as well as to upgrade for currently licensed components; other components of the RSA DLP Suite not currently licensed will be available for additional fees. 

About RSA

RSA, The Security Division of EMC, is the premier provider of security solutions for business acceleration, helping the world's leading organizations succeed by solving their most complex and sensitive security challenges. RSA's information-centric approach to security guards the integrity and confidentiality of information throughout its lifecycle - no matter where it moves, who accesses it or how it is used.

RSA offers industry-leading solutions in identity assurance & access control, data loss prevention & encryption, compliance & security information management and fraud protection. These solutions bring trust to millions of user identities, the transactions that they perform, and the data that is generated. For more information, please visit www.RSA.com and www.EMC.com.# # #

Bone loss occurs in teens who have weight loss surgery, study says. Is that unique?

By Sandee LaMotte, CNN

(CNN) — The bones of teens and young adults who lost significant weight after bariatric surgery were weaker than those of youth with similar levels of obesity who did not have surgery, a new study found.

But that doesn’t mean bariatric surgery should be avoided for youth with severe obesity, said lead study author Dr. Miriam Bredella, professor at Harvard Medical School and vice chair for faculty affairs and clinical operations of radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

“Totally get the surgery — diabetes and heart disease cause much more morbidity and mortality than osteoporosis, and type 2 diabetes is also bad for your bones,” Bredella said.

“Our study was not to say, ‘Don’t get bariatric surgery,’ but to say ‘Hey, if you get the surgery, just make sure you have a healthy diet, you do weight-bearing exercise, and you get enough vitamin D and calcium,” she said.

Significant weight loss for any reason causes bones to weaken as the body adjusts to the new reality of not carrying extra weight, said Dr. Thomas Inge, surgeon-in-chief and director of the adolescent bariatric surgery program at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

“NASA scientists are very worried about this issue with sending human beings into space,” said Inge, who was not involved with the study. “Bone mass and density can decline within weeks, and that’s why they have astronauts trying to mitigate the bone loss that happens when they’re weightless with physical activity.”

The study, published Wednesday in the journal Radiology, compared the bone health of 25 youth between the ages of 13 and 25 years who underwent bariatric weight loss surgery with that of 29 youth of the same age group who did not. All received dietary and exercise counseling and were reevaluated after two years.

Despite counseling, teens and young adults who did not undergo weight loss surgery continued to gain weight over those two years, the study found. Those who had surgery, however, lost around 20 BMI points, which is astonishing, Bredella said. BMI is short for body mass index, an approximate measurement of a patient’s body fat based on height and weight.

“Some of these kids had a BMI of 50 or 60 and lost so much weight they got down to a BMI of 30 or 35, which is huge,” she said. “Unfortunately, a BMI of 30 and 35 is still obese.”

Stronger bones are necessary to support the 100 or more extra pounds of weight that teenagers have when they’re severely obese, so it’s not surprising that the bones of teens who lost that much weight would weaken, said Dr. Justin Ryder, associate professor of surgery and pediatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

“If you think about it, they basically taken a big, heavy backpack off of themselves,” said Ryder, who was not involved in the study. “So, they need to find a way to put some of that weight back on the bones through strength and resistance training.”

What was surprising, Bredella said, is that the bones of the children who did not undergo surgery and continued to gain weight also weakened, although the change was not statistically significant.

“Why would their bones not get stronger?” she asked. “Because obesity itself is bad for bones. Obesity is an inflammatory state and we have done studies that show the inflammation negatively influences bone health.”

In addition, the type of visceral fat that comes with severe obesity also slows secretion of growth factor hormones, which are crucial for healthy bones, according to Bredella.

However, it’s difficult to accurately study bone loss in adolescents and young adults. “Kids in this age range haven’t reached full maturity of their bones yet. You don’t hit peak bone formation until your late 20s or early 30s,” Ryder said.

“So, it’s really challenging to study the impact of weight loss surgery on bone health in this variable period where they’re still building bone and the density of those bones,” said Ryder, who is vice chair of research for the department of surgery at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

A study would need to follow teens who underwent surgery for at least 10 years to determine if the bone loss seen in the new study lasts, Inge said.

“With just two years of follow-up, this study unfortunately doesn’t really shed light on whether the drop that we’re seeing is pathologic or to be expected as the bones get back to normal density,” Inge said.

In youth who underwent sleeve surgery, by far the most common kind of bariatric surgery used today, there was an odd development — the marrow of their bones contained more fat.

“Despite the fact those children had a significant loss of weight and BMI, which reduced their overall body fat, they had more fatty yellow marrow within their bones,” Bredella said.

There are two types of bone marrow, she explained — red marrow, where our stem cells make white and red blood cells to replenish the body, and fatty marrow that is quite yellow in color.

“We used to think fatty marrow within bones was just filler with no function,” Bredella said. “But we know now that it’s an endocrine organ — it secretes hormones of different kinds and is associated with making bones weaker.

“Why did fatty marrow increase inside the bones of children who had sleeve surgery? That’s the million-dollar question we have to answer,” she said.

Gastric bypass surgery, which was popular in years past, bypassed a section of the small intestine called the duodenum that is critical for uptake of micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals. The newer sleeve surgery removes a section of the stomach without affecting the duodenum, thus allowing more food nutrients to be absorbed, according to Inge.  

In addition, parts of the stomach that send some hunger signals to the brain are removed during sleeve surgery, reducing appetite and food cravings. However, the surgery is associated with deficiencies in some nutrients, such as calcium and vitamins D and B12, which need to be supplemented.

“We do worry long term about adequacy of micronutrients in general, and calcium and vitamin D in particular,” Inge said. “That’s why we insist that people undergoing weight loss surgery take their multivitamin with calcium and vitamin D every day, just like medicine.”

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