Fighting The Pandemic

One of my favorite lessons I taught patients in treating their Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and related conditions is the following:

If you make anything healthy, then you make everything healthy.

This is a guiding concept for treating every illness.  It applies to preventing illness.  Every person making themselves healthier will make them less susceptible to acquiring COVID-19, better able to weather the symptoms, and more likely to recover from the disease.

Fight a pandemic just as you should fight your own chronic or acute illness.  Everybody should do everything they can to make themselves healthier before becoming symptomatic.  This includes: 

Take deeper breaths.  Much damage from COVID-19 comes from small airways blockage in the lungs resulting from the infection.  Learn how to do abdominal breathing and practice this technique daily to increase lung expansion.  Use an incentive spirometer to train yourself to maximally expand your lungs every day.  Besides enhancing health in general, this will increase overall resistance to the virus.

Increase oxygenation.  Oxygen is energy.  We need as much as we can have.  This is true for life in general and for withstanding and acute illness, like COVID-19.  Aerobic exercise and muscle strengthening exercise both improve blood flow. which improves oxygen content to the tissues.  This increases the energy to fight off an attacker.

Gargle a couple times every day with warm saltwater and a little vinegar.  This helps treat an early case of the virus [and other upper respiratory infections] and would be a good preventive in these times of risk. 

Stretch.  Stretching conserves energy.  You’re going to need more energy if you get sick.  You’ll also feel better if you are stretched.  Stretching should be done twice daily in the best of times.  It you are not stretching, then you use excess every time you move.  Daily stretching helps give you more energy.  Stretching is not the same as “warming up.”  You should hold a stretch for at least 30 seconds. 

Reduce the dust mite population in your house, especially in your bedroom.  These critters stimulate allergic reactions and add a burden to your immune system.  Put dust covers on your pillows, mattresses, and comforters.  Keep the house as dust-free as possible.  It will make you stronger.

Maintain hydration.  This is a known piece of medical advice that, like handwashing, is not followed nearly as much as recommended.  Do it and make it a lifestyle habit.  Consider a bedroom humidifier.  Keep it clean.

Vitamin, mineral, and antioxidant supplements enhance cellular function and coping capability.  This is known for the only one that intracellular levels have been studied: calcium in osteoporosis.  The pattern in aging and disease is that deficiencies increase susceptibility to illness.  Patterns reveal to us how we can enhance our health.  Take these supplements.  Just as it is difficult to prevent osteoporosis without supplements, the micronutrient deficiencies that naturally develop will also benefit from this strategy.   A pre-natal vitamin is a good supplement fro anyone.

Take probiotics.  These maintain the microflora.  The microflora is an organ of micro-organisms that envelops and interacts with the body.  It is necessary for good health.  Lactobacillus and Saccharomyces are the dominant organisms that should be taken as supplements.

         Keep warm.  Wear a hat, even indoors.

Change your air filter.  Consider getting a bedroom air filter or negative ion generator.

Get a good laugh every day.  TV has many.  The internet has more.  Laughter helps healing.

Wear a mask in public.  Unless it’s high-tech, it probably does not offer optimal protection.  But it may offer some protection.  Some droplets may not get through.  Perhaps more importantly, it’s a conscious action that gets you affirmatively involved in your own care.  It will remind you and others to keep the recommended distance. 

Be sure to read, review, and carefully follow the CDC advice on prevention.

This type of advice can be promoted from TV forums meeting daily to report on the pandemic.  A section could be added to teach people healthy practices.  These lessons are immediately helpful for the current crisis.  They will be useful far into the future.

How can we “make anything healthy” from a public health perspective?  Nations can assure that clean water is more available worldwide.  That type of cooperation can be initiated during these troubled times. 

Maybe that would lead to greater consensus and collective actions on other fronts.  Like safety.  It is not a great leap from supplying face masks for other countries to working together to draft and sign agreements to meaningfully push against the health problem of war.  After all, this problem adds to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, too.  Uniting against this common foe could lead to cooperation among nations unheard of before.  Who knows where that could go?   It is necessary now.