COVID-19 Wars Part 4. The New Hope.

He who cures a disease may be the skillfullest, but he that prevents it is the safest physician.
Thomas Fuller

Darth Maul fights coronavirus. — Wear a mask and social distance (use the force instead).

Monetary abundance and poverty. Vegetables and Twinkies. Exercise and binge watching. One prevents problems and the other causes problems. Which do you deserve? Pick your poison because coronavirus isn’t a picky poison. It loves everyone equally. In coronavirus’s lack of eyes, we are all warm and squishy inside. Time to arm yourself and prevent it from lung lounging and cough coasting.

Prevention 101

How does no cost sound? Money is tight. Hard to fit in your pockets if it was free flowing and loose. First prevention strategies are easily accessible to everyone. Reason being these have no cost attached. If you want to pay money, the next post will tell you where to spend it.

Solar Rays

Vampires hate it. Superman adores it. The sun. source of light and life on planet Earth. It emits pleasing colors to the eyes, and harsh penetrating rays of death called UV. An early article by homeland security has said that “sunlight kills the virus quickly”.[20] On a surface, exposed to direct sunlight for three minutes, coronavirus was undetectable. The virus becomes unstable at higher temperatures. Even in droplets, the virus stands no chance basking in the glory of the sun’s face.

UV light eradicates DNA. This is how UV light leads to skin cancer for example. Coronavirus is no exception as evident in the preliminary results of the Department of Homeland Security. Go outside and get some sunlight. Humans can tolerate a little UV light. More than enough to kill viruses. Nonetheless, listen to your local laws and get some sunlight rich in UV.

UV exposure is associated with higher nitric oxide levels.[21][22] Yes, UV light kills viruses, but nitric oxide inhibited replication of the SARS virus [23]. It stands to reason that coronavirus has the same weakness.

Should you go buy a UV light to disinfect yourself and everything around you? No. First off these are prevention methods with no cost attached. Second off the UV used in those concentrated lights is called UV-C. That stands for Uh-oh Very Cancerous. UV-C is one step below X-ray radiation. Do not do this unless you want cancer and loss of eyesight. Enough talk, time for action. Grab a weapon or two. It’s go time.

Basic Weaponry

Exercise. Are you doing enough or any at all? Most of us think we do enough when we don’t do enough. Want to suppress your immune system?[1] How about achieve chronic inflammation from not exercising?[2] Not exercising = over exercising. Pick one and you win immune suppression.

The Chinese have a saying “still water breeds poison” Stagnant water becomes a swamp. A stagnant body will result in disease when lacking motion. Get up and move! Exercise improves blood flow, the roadway used by the immune soldiers. Exercise improve your immunity in many way. For example exercise:[3][5]

Improves natural killer cells.
Restores hormone balance thus regulating immunity.
Improves aerobic capacity (this makes it easier for the lungs).
Improves heart function.
Regulates the nervous system response.

The Sympathetic nervous system is the active/crisis system. It helps the body be on high alert. Whether the high alert comes from a heavy load, a tiger chasing you, or a virus the results are the same. High alert.

Parasympathetic is the consuming system (feeding) and conserving energy. It tells the you to be at ease. Relax, after all you escaped the tiger or dropped that heavy load.

Guess which system activates during exercise? High alert. High alert is necessary to hold the overhead heavy iron weight. Not being on high alert, means the weight of the world will crush you. While running, high alert is important. Running unconsciously with cars around? Then I have bad news for you.

Lift what feels heavy for you. Repeat until strong. — Keep those wheels running. Lift something, even your body counts.

Overdoing Exercise

If your idea of exercise is lying in a puddle of sweat panting and lifting limbs that feel heavy as iron, bad idea. Overdoing exercise=over activating the high alert system. You tell your body there is a crisis. The body listens. What causes this?

Exercise promotes lactic acid, the burn. No pain, no gain? More like “more pain, insane”. Exercise is a stress on the body compounded by lactic acid, another stress. Lactic acid decreases your antioxidants creating more stress. The antioxidant system cannot keep up with the acid bursting forth.

Excess lactic acid increases oxidative damage. Antioxidants cannot keep up and lose the fight. lactic acid gets a free pass and steals from your cells. This causes you damage and accelerates aging. It makes you more susceptible to respiratory infections.[3][4] Covid-19 anyone? It impacts and lowers natural killer cells count. Do not kill your own immune soldiers. Start slow if you don’t regularly exercise.

What To Do

Light aerobic such as walking is perfect. You get fresh clean air, sunlight, and aerobic exercise. Biking and swimming work wonders too. Avoid chronic cardio. Running all the time day in and day out jogging endlessly and burning out. Just walk. That’s a good start. Don’t go from couch hero running at zero to a marathon dasher disaster.

Lift heavy. Hard to do with no iron. Use a kettlebell. Do body weight exercise. Tension is tension. The body knows not the difference. Does your body know the difference between mashed potatoes made at home or from a box? Both cause equal gains around the waist. Resistance training makes you harder to kill.

Stay alactic. That means avoid the burn like it’s the coronavirus. It keeps the antioxidants safe for when you really need it. Could be tomorrow or in a few hours. Never go to failure. Always keep a rep or two away from failure. When your form fails, (you slow down) that’s when you stop.

Rest

This is important. For example, muscles grow during rest, not during exercise. Likewise, the body needs rest. Real rest! What does rest look like? Answer this carefully there is only one answer.

Doing nothing.

When a dog rests, does it check Facebook? No, it curls in the corner and stops moving. Yes, a dog does not have opposable thumbs for clicking the like button but it won’t play with its toys if it wants to rest. If it needs electricity or a battery, it is not for resting. If it is for entertainment purposes, it is not resting. In between exercise sets, after exercise, after working and in the evening rest.

Draw the curtains, play some soothing music and do nothing. This is true rest. Light reading is acceptable, the more boring the better. Can’t sit still long enough? Here is a solution accessible to everyone.

Meditate. This counts as resting and lowers the stress response [6]. Yes, you are “doing something”, but your mind is at ease. The body is still. Sit down, breath into your nose. Focus only on that. Repeat for 20-30 mins or for hours. Meditation provides adequate rest. Hate sitting? There’s a solution for that too.

Moving meditations. Tai chi, Qigong, and others are good meditations as well. The more relaxing it is, the better it is for resting. Avoid anything too stimulating like Ultra Pilates Yoga.

Sleep.

We touched upon this before, now inspect it closer. Sleep has many impacts on the body. Sleep repairs and prepares the body for the next day’s despair. A king once asked a holy medicine man in China, to boil his knowledge down into one distilled answer. His question was what the most important medicine, or remedy was. The answer? Sleep.

The body goes into repair mode. Without it, incidences of colds rise due to lowered immunity.[7][8][9] Get appropriate shut eye. Remember, lights out means lights out.

Mind

A great leader controls the actions of his troops. The brain is central command. It communicates with the endocrine system using. hormones like cortisol. The brain also controls the nervous system like the sympathetic, high alert, system and parasympathetic, relaxing, system.

An overburdened leader is an inefficient leader. That leader cannot command adequately. Stress and mood have the biggest impact, second only to sleep. Sleep is self-regulated, when you are tired, you feel it. Mood and stress are sneakier. They will grab hold tightly and not let go, unless commanded.

Emotions can cause immunity suppression.[10][11][12] Think of stress induced from fear. Something frightening occurs and the body recognizes the threat. Adrenaline pours out and immunity is reduced. People who are chronically depressed also have lower immune function. Meditation helps with the emotional response. [13] Reduce the stress in life, it starts with you. Rein in those emotions. Show them you’re the master. Who is in control? You are. Do not let them control you!

Water

What’s the number one substance the body contains? Water. Without it nothing occurs. No blood flows, no muscles contract, no digestion occurs. Life fails. Drink adequate water. Food water is not enough. Most of us are dehydrated and do not know it.

Drink clean pure water. Avoid common toxins in water.[14] They disrupt the body’s immune system and affect the immune soldiers waging battle. Avoid polystyrene (Styrofoam) as it is an endocrine disruptor.

Air

What will kill you quickest if you lack it? Not food, nor water. Air. You can last maybe minutes without air. Get some good quality air. Go outside. Make sure your face covering allows you to breath some air. After all, no one wants to smell their own breath all day.

Recirculated air can harbor molds and allergens. After all, there is no wind to blow the bad guys away. Get some fresh air, open the windows. Let out the stale air and B.O. The lesson presented earlier “still water breeds poison”, also applies to air. Air that’s stale is deaths exhale.

Remember meditation? You can double down efforts and do Pranayama to enhance this. This will save you time, although we have lots of time currently. Qigong and Tai Chi are versions of pranayama as well.

Breathwork is best done early around 5-7 am when pollution is lowest, and oxygen is highest. Plants exude oxygen. Get some indoor plants or open the windows. Get it in while you can. Clear out those lungs.

avocados and tomatoes are fruit. onions and garlic are roots. — Eat some good stuff.

Food

The most important aspect of the immune system. This provides the building blocks for the immune system. Remember toxins disrupt and preoccupied the immune army. Toxins can enter via the mouth. Mercury in fish[15], BPA[16][17] and organophosphates[18][19] (endocrine disruptors), and refined carbs/fried foods (toxins[20] and rapid blood sugar drop) are all stressors.

What is the best diet? During times when war is raging within; eat a high antioxidant and high in good fats diet with adequate protein intake. Eat a low to no refined carbohydrate intake and an adequate amount of complex whole carbohydrate intake. Avoid a diet “label” and eat foods that agree with you. Closer to nature is best. The fresher the better too.

Food List

List of Vegetables:

All of them. (be aware of starchy veggies and nightshades)

List of good fats:

Grass-fed dairy. (butter, cream, ghee, cheese.)
Grass-fed animal fat.
Wild fish.
Unrefined coconut oil.
REAL olive oil. (hard to find.)
Whole olives. (better choice than olive oil.)
Egg yolks.
Avocado.
Nuts.

List of carbohydrates:

Roots. (potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, kohlrabi, beets, carrots.)
Fruits. (all of them, limit yourself to a few servings a day.)
Grains. (whole, unhusked is preferred but white rice is acceptable in small amounts.)

Despite eating well, getting enough nutrients can be difficult. Eating well is the foundation, supplementation is partial salvation. Eat appropriate foods to help the immune army fight. Supplements cannot replace real food, only enhance. Like how TV caters an event to your eyes, the cheap imitation (TV) cannot compare to feasting your eyes on the in-person event. Nourishment is everything. A multivitamin doesn’t replace a bad diet, it only enhances.

Prevention 101 is over. Next class is 102. Don’t be late or hesitate.

Next up, part 5.