While the media focuses our attention daily on statistics of those infected with COVID-19, those who have died and occasionally on those who have recovered. I rarely read advice from any authority on what we can individually do to help ourselves, aside from hand hygiene measures and social distancing.
An integrative approach not only supports the body’s innate ability to heal, but focuses on prevention and the support of natural defences and up-regulating our innate immunity. Conventional medicine focuses on prevention primarily through immunisation and aims to cure or relieve symptoms mostly with medication.
Our bodies have intricate and wonderfully designed mechanical barriers of defence that prevent unwanted bugs - pathogens - from entering our bodies. These include, but are not limited to; the moist, sticky and hairy surfaces inside our nose, our incredibly durable skin and a mechanical and dynamic system in our gut with specific antibodies in our saliva, hydrochloric acid in our stomach and up to 2 kg of bugs making up our microbiome in our large intestine. We literally have an army working 24/7 for us with various helpers, different weapons and intricate and multiple complex communication networks. Think of how your body heals a cut on your finger without you even thinking of it, one day a cut is there and within 10 days it has totally healed.
Ironically it is the simple things we can do that are most overlooked - and in some cases - the most challenging to change or implement. It is often easier to pop a pill, say yes to a boss (and inadvertently no to ourselves), multi-task and go faster, than it is to change our diet, eat slower, listen to our bodies, do one thing at a time, set “real priorities” and slow down in our permanently switched on digital world where self-care is seen as weakness or lack of commitment, and pharmaceutical companies push their self funded research and products onto doctors and government.
The race for a vaccine against COVID-19, the trials of antimalarials and other drugs take the focus away from boosting our host immunity. Where are the nation wide campaigns supporting a healthy diet, enough sleep, comedy films, quality time with family or those in our bubbles during lock-down, hydration, exercise and fresh air outdoors? Just two weeks of being a couch potato equates to a significant reduction in muscle mass, capillary size, bone density, flexibility, overall blood flow and energy production. Anxiety and depression often increase.
We know from research that positive thoughts, connection, a sense of purpose and faith in a positive outcome positively affects our immunity and that the opposite - fear, stress, separation and panic have the opposite effect. Just think of the placebo and nocebo effects related to COVID-19 and the messages we are receiving on a daily basis from the media. Top being a couch potato off with panic, fear and isolation and you can only start to imagine the longer term health effects.
When we look at the statistics, those who did more poorly (or died), were vulnerable hosts. Often known underlying medical conditions co-existed. But despite this, with supportive care such as IV fluids and oxygen or breathing support, those who survived - pulled through and killed the virus. This is innate immunity at play. In fact it is only due to our innate immunity that people are living to “tell the tale” so-to-say.
We also need to be reminded that approximately 80% of people show only mild to moderate symptoms, but this is unlikely to be entirely accurate. There will be many thousands of people who don’t feature in these statistics who have had COVID-19 who never showed symptoms, or had symptoms so mild that they never got tested. There will be people with symptoms that could not get a test done because there just currently are not enough to test everyone. Once we have more time to do the number crunching, we may find that COVID-19 has a lower mortality (the percent of people that die) and morbidity rate (the percent of people more seriously affected) than previously thought and that the majority of healthy people (higher than 80%) experience this virus as a mild to moderate respiratory tract infection. Other viruses such as SARS, Measles and even Influenza are likely to be associated with more mortality and morbidity than COVID-19. The main difference - is the number of people infected all at once - due to this new virus being something our human bodies have not been exposed to before.
I do by no means suggest that COIVD-19 is not a serious and potentially fatal infection, especially for those of the population that are vulnerable, but wonder what changes we would see if we empowered people to believe they have the ability to innately conquer the virus and up-regulate their innate immunity, rather than be helpless victims to a microscopic virus that relies on human cells to survive and reproduce.
https://medsafe.govt.nz/profs/PUArticles/March2019/The%20nocebo%20effect.htm
