Forget that yearly flu shot, get into the gym instead. According to an animal study published in the Journal Of Nutrition, healthy levels of body fat make it less likely you’ll be laid low by the flu. Researchers at the University of North Carolina infected a group of overweight mice and a group of lean mice with the flu virus.
Ten days after infection, 42 percent of the fat mice were dead, but only about five percent of the slim mice passed away. That means the flu was almost seven times more dangerous for fat subjects than thin ones. The scientists then extracted immune cells from both groups and subjected them to cancer cells.
The immune cells from the thin mice killed more of the cancer than the immune cells of the fat rodents. This leads the researchers to believe that carrying high levels of body fat disrupts the immune system and makes the body susceptible to all kind of infections.
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