COVID-19 Update: The Elephant In The Room
Hello again everyone:
The elephant in the room that very few seem to recognize is all about your health status before you get sick. Conditions such as asthma, allergies, smoking, lack of exercise, obesity, being overweight, diabetes and pre-diabetes, sedentary lifestyles, heart conditions, high blood pressure, liver disease, persistent high stress, lack of sleep, being older, living in nursing homes, poor nutritional status, etc. are all being mentioned as pre-existing conditions that can severely worsen your outcome if you become ill with COVID-19, or any other viral or bacterial illness for that matter. The CDC stated: “Based on currently available information and clinical expertise, older adults and people of any age who have serious underlying medical conditions might be at higher risk for severe illness from COVID-19.”
While all of this is being mentioned, no one seems to be telling you to actually do anything about these pre-existing conditions…and that is unfortunate because this pandemic is likely to continue for a long enough time for each of us to embrace a health promotion lifestyle that may make a difference. At the very least, whatever you can do now will give your health a boost, which is always a good thing. In other words, use this urgent pandemic to your advantage and stop putting off beneficial adjustments to your lifestyle.
So, where do you start?
Why not start with consuming mostly organic food to lower your risk of cancer and immune associated disorders?
Or look at the results from another study:
Conclusions and Relevance: In this multicohort analysis, various healthy lifestyle profiles appeared to be associated with gains in life-years without major chronic diseases.
Bottom Line: It is possible to improve your health with simple additions or subtractions from your lifestyle. In the above paper, they only looked at 4 lifestyle factors: weight as body mass index (BMI), smoking, leisure-time physical activity, and alcohol consumption. These are all factors we can absolutely control/improve…stop smoking, exercise and reduce sedentary activities, keep your weight down, reduce or stop alcohol…all are do-able and practical things proven to improve health outcomes.
Can you imagine how much stronger the results would have been if they not only improved those 4 risk factors, and also reduced sugar and processed foods, ate more organic foods, got adequate sleep, reduced and/or controlled stress?
Right now, all types of media are reporting that those with one or more pre-existing health conditions are the ones with the worst outcomes regarding COVID-19 infection. My contention is that it is NOT too late to start improving your health when it comes to not only this pandemic, but your future health and the possible gains in life-years WITHOUT chronic disease. Are you with me?
So please get moving, go for walks, do some yoga, exercise and avoid all sugar and processed foods as a start, reduce screen time and catch up on what you love to read, learn to play a musical instrument, write your book, and move forward with your life in a healthier way and look forward to enjoying the benefits.
For some interesting info on foods and the immune system, you can look at a recent blog:
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