We’ve had a lot of information about how to react to the current pandemic. Important official reactions including social distancing, closing community gathering spaces and increasing hygiene practices.
These can be fantastic short term measures to “flatten the curve”. The idea of flattening the curve is to make sure the hospitals can prepare in case they are overwhelmed with serious cases as the new virus moves through the population.
However, when it comes to reducing serious cases, you can also do your bit by going above and beyond reacting as suggested by the officials.
You can also be PROactive…
Many of the more serious symptoms of a viral infection, the ones that often lead to hospitalisation, are due to our body’s own exaggerated immune response.
To fight a pathogen like a virus, your immune response causes inflammation. The respiratory difficulty and lung damage seen in people who have contracted this current virus are largely a result of their own exaggerated inflammatory response in their lung tissues.
Inflammation can be broken into 5 components: pain, heat, redness, swelling, and loss (or change) of function. These can all be a necessary, and helpful, part of the healing process, when it functions in an optimal manner.
In a perfect world, your body targets a pathogen very precisely with exactly the correct type of inflammation, at the correct level, for the correct amount of time, in the correct location. Once the pathogen is dealt with, the inflammation (and the symptoms caused by the inflammation) can reduce, and you return to health.
For some people, this is exactly how it happens with this virus. Their immune response does its job well, and therefore their inflammatory symptoms can be so slight that they don’t even know they had the disease. We’ve already seen many reports of this.
Other people may have such an exaggerated inflammatory response that it requires extended care in a hospital bed.
Same virus, but different outcome… How so?
There are many factors involved. One major factor determining whether you hardly notice having the virus, or experience a long stay in hospital, is your body’s ability to optimise its inflammation response. The good news is you can be proactive and take some actions to help with this.
This all comes back to a topic I have been talking about for more than a decade, and it’s why I changed up my life to help people with their health at a foundational level, so they can get on with building a better life.
That topic is Physically Retained Stress. In this particular case, how a stressed physiology tends to have a chronically high level of systemic inflammation
There’s already a large body of evidence showing that when the body is stressed it activates the inflammatory response. Inflammation can be a normal and healthy part of the stress response – over a short term.
However, when your body is dealing with a stress response that hasn’t properly switched off (AKA Physically Retained Stress), its ability to accurately modulate the inflammation on and off is compromised. Our ambient level of inflammation is usually on the high side.
Take the specific example of the life threatening respiratory disorders and lung damage that some people are sufferring from with this pandemic. These problems are being blamed on what is called a “cytokine storm”. An over-release of inflammatory chemicals called cytokines.
During short term stress, certain hormones reduce your inflammatory cytokines. But when your body has stress responses that are hanging around past their use-by date, those same hormones can actually begin to up-regulate or increase the cytokines. In the case of the lungs this can occur to the point where it restricts our ability to breath and lead to permanent lung damage.
You can take measures to be proactive with reducing your ambient level of inflammation. This doesn’t just help with virus situations, it can better prepare and protect you from many future health storms that may appear on your horizon.
How to be proactive?
Simply put, improve your baseline of health by reducing your overall stress load… Ok, but what does that look like?
Just remember that old saying, “My body is my temple.” Then consider yourself, your whole self, as a temple. A temple with 4 pillars:
1) The way you Eat and drink. Your Nutrition. The Chemical environment you live in
2) The way you Move. Your activity levels. Your Physical environment
3) The way you Think. Your thoughts and self talk. Your Mental-Emotional environment
4) The way you Recover. Your sleep cycles and practices to switch off
In each of these 4 pillars of life ensure you reduce behaviours that stress your system, while having sufficiency of what is helpful.
For example:
Eat more natural whole foods that are rich in micro nutrients but free from artificial additives and over-processing.
Maintain appropriate physical activity levels, and avoid prolonged desk work and sedentation.
Be disciplined with your ‘self talk’, the ideas you entertain and where you let your attention focus.
Find a reason to fall in love with every moment of life and eliminate negativity.
And kick start it all by getting a good night sleep, no screens or devices after sundown etc.
Your temple also has a roof to protect you from the fickle world around you. The roof represents the principles you live by, and the meaning you assign to life. Attend to this part of your temple on a regular basis by digesting archetypal ideas, timeless ideals and considering something beyond the self.
Finally we come to the most important part of your temple. It’s the part that supports the 4 pillars, the roof and everything you are. It also keeps you firmly grounded and connected in the present. Your Foundation.
Without a strong foundation everything will crumble. Regardless of the way you move, eat, think and rest…
The nervous system is your Foundation.
A nervous system that is free from Physically Retained Stress, resilient and able to adapt to the stressors in our modern world is a necessity if we are to build the life we really want to be living. That’s not-negotiable.
This Temple Model is a helpful metaphor for your body. Also remember that what’s occurring in your body is a metaphor for what’s occurring in your life. Building a strong “Temple” not only helps your body better modulate its inflammatory response when you catch a flu, it will also protect you from any future storms while providing a longer, healthier, happier life.
“Preparing Your Temple” is a simple formula:
– In each of the 4 pillars, reduce ongoing daily stressors.
– Increase healthy habits that assist your body in creating health.
– Develop the meaning and purpose that guides and inspires your life.
– Address the Physically Retained Stress that is weakening your foundation.
if you are interested in learning more about how we can help you build a strong foundation for life, book your complimentary introductory consult…
With Love,
Andrew Maher.
Neurostructural Chiropractor (and Temple Janitor).
Refs:
Yun-Zi Liu , Yun-Xia Wang. Chun-Lei Jiang. Inflammation: The Common Pathway of Stress-Related Diseases. June 2017. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00316.
Geng Li et al. Coronavirus Infections and Immune Responses. Jan 2020.
Journal of Medical Virology, Vol 94, Issue 4.