Studies Show Eating Sugar Puts You at Risk for COVID

New numbers from the CDC reveal 94 percent of Americans who have died from COVID-19 already had underlying health problems.  

This reinforces what doctors have been telling us all along, that the weakest among us are the ones who are most susceptible to the virus.  

CBN News Medical Reporter Lorie Johnson explains, "The data does not suggest that these people with underlying conditions would have died anyway from that condition if they had not been infected with coronavirus. It should not be interpreted to mean that the only 'real' coronavirus deaths are the ones where the patient had no underlying conditions."  

Since God created us with immune systems to fight disease, Johnson points out we should work on improving our health to make us less vulnerable to serious complications from viruses like COVID.

"We need to stay as healthy as possible, because that way our body is better able to fight off the virus if it enters our body," she explained on CBN Newswatch. "Believe it or not, doctors recommend eating less sugar because new research shows too much sugar can blunt our body's ability to fight off the virus."  

Johnson spoke with Dr. Michael Goran, a sugar researcher at USC who said since COVID could be with us for a while, now is a good time to give up sugar. 

"Clearly a high sugar diet in the long term is going to contribute to longer-term increases in your blood glucose levels," he began. "And what these studies are showing is that when you have a higher blood glucose level in general it contributes to this kind of broad, across-the-body, low-grade state of inflammation that comes along with that high blood glucose."

"And so what these studies are showing is that when you have that low-grade inflammation across the body, when you actually get an infection, like from COVID-19, the response becomes a little abnormal and the body responds to the low-grade inflammation throughout the body instead of just attacking the COVID. So it's not a good thing to have broad-scale inflammation in the body when your immune system needs to fight COVID-19."

"The combination is not very good and you have a greater amount of complications to the infection because the thinking is that the immune system is attacking other parts of the body instead of the COVID 19," he explained.

Dr. Goran just wrote a book called Sugarproof that comes out on September 1, and it's all about how sugar harms children.  

The book offers practical advice about how to get them off the sweet stuff and even includes recipes. Childhood obesity is a known problem in America, but even skinny kids often eat too much sugar which can adversely affect their development. It can cause attention problems, anxiety and inflammatory conditions such as asthma and acne. And beware that even if you're buying organic cereal and goat milk yogurt don't think they are low in sugar. 

Meanwhile, the head of the Food and Drug Administration says he's open to fast-tracking a COVID-19 vaccine before clinic trials are completed.

Dr. Stephen Hahn told the Financial Times that, under the right circumstances, an emergency authorization could be approved while stage three trials are still underway.

Dr. Hahn said the drug company would have to request emergency authorization before the FDA makes the decision. He stressed that pressure from the White House would not influence the decision.