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Currently, more than 14% of the world’s population is pre-obese or obese. The percentage is even higher in developed countries. Obesity is an important risk factor for a vast number of nonmalignant and malignant digestive diseases. Some of the more important examples are cholelithiasis, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and gastroesophageal reflux disease on the one hand and esophageal adenocarcinoma, gastric cardia adenocarcinoma, pancreatic cancer, liver cancer, gallbladder cancer, and colorectal cancer on the other hand. Their epidemic trends as reported in recent studies are reviewed here. Knowledge of their dependencies on obesity will yield a deeper understanding which is necessary to improve prevention and treatment concepts of this epidemic.

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The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in severe disruption to people's lives as governments imposed national ‘lockdowns’. Several large surveys have underlined the detrimental short- and long-term mental health consequences resulting from this disruption, but survey findings are only informative of individuals' retrospectively reported psychological states. Furthermore, knowledge on psychobiological responses to lockdown restrictions is scarce. We used smartphone-based real-time assessments in 731 participants for 7 days and investigated how individuals’ self-reported stress and mood fluctuated diurnally during lockdown in spring 2020. We found that age, gender, financial security, depressive symptoms and trait loneliness modulated the diurnal dynamics of participants' momentary stress and mood. For example, younger and less financially secure individuals showed an attenuated decline in stress as the day progressed, and similarly, more lonely individuals showed a diminished increase in calmness throughout the day. Hair collected from a subsample ( n = 140) indicated a decrease in cortisol concentrations following lockdown, but these changes were not related to any of the assessed person-related characteristics. Our findings provide novel insights into the psychobiological impact of lockdown and have implications for how, when and which individuals might benefit most from interventions during psychologically demanding periods.

BACKGROUND: Social interactions are vital for our wellbeing, particularly during times of stress. PURPOSE: We investigated the real-time effect of social interactions on changes in stress and mood using an ecological momentary assessment approach in 732 participants during COVID-19 lockdown in spring 2020 and in a subsample of these participants (n= 281) during a further lockdown in winter 2020. METHODS: Participants reported their stress and mood in a smartphone app five times per day for seven days and indicated the nature and frequency of their recent social interactions. RESULTS: Overall, social interactions and their frequency were associated with enhanced momentary mood. In person interactions, but not those that were not in person (e.g., via audio, video, or text), were linked to lower stress, especially if they were with closer others. Individuals scoring high on trait loneliness benefited least from social interactions in terms of their momentary mood, whereas those scoring high on trait depressive symptoms benefited the most. Our key findings replicated across both lockdowns. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates the benefits and limits of social interactions for improving momentary mood and stress during psychologically demanding periods and highlight how clinically relevant individual differences can modulate these effects.