Here are four things I am going to tell you how to do for yourself:
How to improve your immune system to avoid / or have a better outcome if you get Covid.
How to think more clearly and reduce your anxiety or depression.
How toincrease your energy and motivation.
How to improve your digestion and help with 1, 2, and 3 above.
None of these actions will be overly challenging (I am always telling my patients, “Things that work aren’t hard to do”).
Truthfully, these things work so well that you’ll be sending this email to everyone you know.
THIS IS PART ONE OF A THREE-PART POST: I’m covering 1 and 2 above. Here is a link to PART 3. I’ll be posting PART 4 shortly.
1. IMPROVE YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM
Your immune system should be your priority right now. Covid is at extremely high levels, and the new variants are much more contagious. For safety information on how to effectively protect yourself without over-or under-doing it, see this article.
Actions to improve your immune system in order of importance:
You should stop eating cake, candy, cookies, soda and sweet tea. (OR: Use healthy sugar substitutes—here’s information about these).
Eat no more than three servings of fruit per day, and not all at once.
Eat protein with every meal and snack (this buffers the sugar absorption and also keeps it from spiking from fruit sugar and carbohydrates like bread, pasta, and rice).
Reduce your simple carbs (bread, rice, pasta, and white potatoes) by at least ½.
Take these immune-boosting supplements every day.
Vitamin C: 500 mg
Vitamin D: 2000 iu
Zinc: 30 – 50 mg
Don’t be a couch potato.
Move your body for 30 minutes at least once a day; twice is better! You can walk, bike, swim, run or do 30 minutes on a treadmill or other training machine. You don’t have to break a sweat; just move for 30 minutes. Here’s a great indoor portable stepper. Here are some examples of rebounders. Here’s a link to a free YouTube yoga class.
Don’t sit for more than 30 minutes at a time without getting up and moving around.
You should consult your physician or other health care professional before starting any fitness program to determine if it is right for your needs.
Sleep for seven or eight hours every night.
Getting enough sleep can be a matter of self-discipline for many people. You have to put your body to bed in time to get enough sleep. This is especially true for you Netflix bingers who go to sleep in front of the TV and then can’t get back to sleep when you go to bed.
If you have trouble sleeping, try these tips:
Waking in the night: Eat a snack at bedtime (low blood sugar may be waking you).
Get your body tired! Those 30-minute walks will help.
The blue light from phone, TV, and computer screens suppresses the hormone melatonin which gets the body ready for sleep. Get rid of blue screens an hour before bedtime (most phones and computers have settings for this). There are blue light settings on most modern electronics. Windows 10: Search for “Night light settings.” IOS: Settings/Display & Brightness/Night Shift.
2. THINK MORE CLEARLY, REDUCE ANXIETY & DEPRESSION
Once you are more protected from Covid (by boosting your immune system and adopting effective safety protocols), your next focus should be on enjoying your life! If you have brain fog, are depressed and sad or anxious and fearful, you won’t enjoy much of anything.
Stop eating mind-altering foods
Read labels, stop eating junk: If you can’t pronounce the ingredients or don’t know what they are, you are eating stuff that IS NOT FOOD. Artificial sweeteners and flavors, preservatives, colors, texture enhancers, flavor enhancers—all this stuff can directly affect your brain. Further, many people have developed allergies to these chemicals, which can cause severe brain fog and difficulty concentrating.
Try avoiding the most likely allergic foods. Over the past decade, food allergies have become an epidemic (or plague). Allergy testing and a health improvement program to address allergies can reduce inflammation, allow natural weight loss, and help with everything from digestive stress to brain fog (see here for more information). While testing and treatment of allergies can permanently reduce your problems, the do-it-yourself approach can still work wonders: Try avoiding the foods below for two weeks. I recommend you do it one food group at a time to know what to avoid and what you can still eat. If you notice that you can think more clearly, have a better mood, or that other symptoms improve (joint pain, digestive problems), then quit eating that food group.
Gluten-containing foods (wheat, barley, rye).
Dairy foods (milk, cream, cheese, yogurt). Butter is usually OK.
Eggs
Stop eating refined sugar. Your blood sugar is crucial to the correct operation of your nervous system. Eating refined sugar can make blood sugar swings from high to low and back, which can cause mood swings, depression, anxiety, and brain fog. Try this: Quit eating sugar for two weeks and see what happens. Most people who do this experiment never go back to their previous sugar consumption.
Reduce the danger in your world, so you aren’t in fight or flight
You may not even realize that your environment has become threatening to you. However, there is an experiment you can run to quickly find out if you are always on edge.
Do these actions for a week and see how different you feel.
Stop watching/listening/reading the news. I promise that the world will still go on without your knowledge. Stopping can be hard at first; if so, please notice that you may be somewhat addicted to your news feed (not good).
Stop watching/listening/reading opinion content. Stop talk radio, Twitter feeds TV shows and Facebook.
Survey your contacts: In person, social media, phone calls, emails. What you’re looking for are people who make you feel worse after you have contact with them. Quit talking/communicating with these people. Maybe just get off Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter entirely for the week.
I have people look at me cross-eyed when I tell them to do the above actions. It’s as if they never realized that this was even an option. I’m not telling you to ditch all media forever, but you will never look at it the same after this week of freedom.
