Grasping the enormity of the situation the world finds itself in is beyond challenging. I’ve been reluctant to post too much about the pandemic as I feel it’s critical that authorities and experts can get urgent public health messages across in these early days.
That said, I wanted to share a few things at this point in time.
Firstly, I did a webinar with Dr Clare Walker (President of Rural Doctor’s Association QLD) and Joy McClymont (health champion from Off the Track Training) last week for a special COVID-19 & Rural Communities Q&A Information Session. Dr Walker answered a range of questions on what COVID-19 means for rural communities, at risk people, testing options, current information and much more. I spoke about ways you can enhance immune resilience and what we can do from a lifestyle medicine perspective.
You can access the replay here (apologies for the poor audio quality at times).
Secondly, to say the immune system is complex would be an understatement.
From a nutritional and lifestyle medicine perspective however, there is so much we can do it support our immune system; and we know that inadequate nutrition and poor lifestyle choice can weaken the immune response.
That said, we don’t so much want to ‘boost’ immunity, but rather strengthen and enhance the resilience of the immune response, keeping in mind that the immune system is intricately connected to a range of other networks and ‘systems’ in the body (meaning that ‘general health’ is critical to a robust immune system).
From a nutritional perspective, to be clear there is currently zero evidence for certain nutrients (and western herbs) in relation to the current strains of coronavirus causing COVID-19 because this is a novel virus. However, as this paper states, a person’s nutritional status matters. The nutrients listed below have been proven to be useful in both the treatment and prevention of similar viruses like SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, as well as Influenza virus and viral mutations.
To give you some examples of how these nutrients work;
- “Vitamin A is also called “anti‐infective” vitamin and many of the body’s defenses against infection depend on an adequate supply”
- “Dietary selenium deficiency that causes oxidative stress in the host can alter a viral genome so that a normally benign or mildly pathogenic virus can become highly virulent in the deficient host under oxidative stress.”
- “Zinc deficiency results in dysfunction of both humoral and cell‐mediated immunity and increases susceptibility to infectious diseases.”
This are just some examples of how nutritional repletion matters so very much in regards to prevention and handling of an infection (before even getting to secondary plant metabolites, amino acids and the all-important microbiota!).
Lastly, please know however that each and every one of us has different needs and what will be of most benefit to YOU will be quite specific to YOU. Also, this is not the time for self-imposed restrictive diets. Dietary diversity should be maintained as much as possible.
I’m in the process of creating a tutorial on which will cover a range of evidence-based approaches to strengthening general immunity (including kitchen medicine!), so watch this space.
Bottom Line
For now though, look after yourselves and your loved ones, practice gratitude, help others wherever you can as fellow Naturopath Leah Hechtman says, “let us use these times to reflect on how we can better support society moving forward”.
Much love,
Stacey.