How To Survive the Covid-19 Pandemic

First, I hope everyone is safe and healthy during this most unprecedented time in our history. Novel Covid-19 is now a global pandemic, and very shortly we will all know someone who has been infected by this virus. The experts tell us that a vaccine is 18-36 months away or maybe not coming at all. And more likely than not, 60-80 percent of the people on this planet will contract this virus over the coming years. There is no cure at this time. The best way to survive? Be healthy.

So I am not going to rehash all the details about the virus or any of the projections. There is plenty of info out there on what the virus may or may not do and how many people will die. But what I do want to discuss, is what you can do today to make sure you are not one of those people. I want o discuss how you can improve your health and immune response. I want to give you all the information you need, to not just get healthy, but to create a bulletproof immune system that can defend you against the Covid-19 virus.

I want you think think about your health, as your fire. And just like they say on Survivor, “fire represents your life. When your fire’s gone, so are you”. And so it is with your health. When your health is gone, so are you. And just like a fire requires fuel, air, and a spark. Your health requires nutrition, exercise, and recovery. Nutrition includes not only what you eat, but what you don’t eat. Exercise includes cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, strength, flexibility, and balance among others. Recovery includes sleep, fasting, and meditation/stress reduction. There are other factors such as developing deep personal relationships with your family, friends, and community, having a sense of purpose, etc. Those are beyond the scope of this article but I will discuss those in an upcoming webinar. Right now let’s get you healthy!

First off, if you are a smoker QUIT! This COVID-19 virus enters the body through ACE2 receptors in the lungs. Smoking increases ACE2 expression leading to more severe infections. So if you smoke QUIT. That goes for vaping as well. And limit your intake of alcohol. No alcohol is best but if you do drink, don’t drink everyday and on days you do drink, limit it to 1-2 drinks.

NUTRITION: What you put in your mouth on a regular basis matters. There is a lot of debate as to which diet is best for humans to eat and if you put 10 nutritionists in a room together you would probably get 10 different opinions. And that is because our bodies are giant chemistry labs and the variation from person to person can be significant. However, we are all human and there is enough similarities that there are some common recommendations: more vegetables, nuts, seeds and fresh food and less processed foods and sugar. We will have a more detailed article on nutrition but what you need to know now is if you consume the Standard American Diet you should eliminate the sugars and processed food and consume more wild deep, cold water fish like salmon, tuna, sardines, and mackerel. Take a fish oil (Omega-3) supplement daily. Strive for 10 servings of fruits and vegetables. Avoid grapes and tropical fruits that are high in sugar. Stick to berries, avocado, cantaloupe. apples, etc. Eat grass fed, free-range meats and eggs when possible or opt for wild game. You can order wild game online if you don’t know any hunters. Here is a link for one of the companies D’artagnan.

EXERCISE: Two million years ago, when we became hunter gatherers, movement was a requirement for survival. By the time we evolved into homo sapiens, movement had become a genetic requirement for health and longevity. Much the same as we require vitamins A, C, and E from our diet to maintain our bodies, so do we require exercise. This is not optional. You just don’t die as quickly from a lack of it as you do from a lack of the former. I believe you should strive to move everyday for at least 30 -60 minutes. I recommend buying an Apple Watch, Oura ring, Fitbit or other device to track workouts and heart rate. If you aren’t tracking it you aren’t managing it.

Exercise should be divided into 4-5 days of aerobic or Zone 2 training. Think of Zone 2 as the maximum effort you could sustain for 60 minutes on an activity like walking, running or riding a bike, where you are exerting effort, but you could still carry on a conversation. Perform 1-2 days of high intensity/sprint training. And 3-4 days of strength/core training. How you put this together is not important. Being consistent is! So make it fun. Do you things you enjoy doing. Play sports. CrossFit. Stretch and roll regularly. Lift weights. Walk, Sprint. Ride a bike. Surf. Yoga. Hike. The list is endless. Just MOVE!

RECOVER: I am doing separate articles on each of the following topics. Right now I am just going to cover the basics so you can get started. For the sake of this article, recovery includes sleep, fasting, meditation/stress reduction, and dry sauna. There are others but I these are all necessary, effective, and fairly easy to implement. Like I said, I am going to cover each of these in depth over the next few weeks, so check back on those articles for more detailed information.

SLEEP: So let’s start with sleep. You need 7-9 hours per night. Period. There are a few things you can do to enhance that sleep. First, do not look at technology before bed. It will have detrimental effects on the quality of your sleep. If you really want to optimize your sleep, wear blue light blocking glasses before bed. Sleep in a cold (60-67 degrees F), quiet, dark room. Try no to drink ANY alcohol before bed as it will absolutely wreak havoc on the quality of your sleep. Lack of sleep has many adverse effects on the body including lowered immune function, especially against viruses like the flu, common cold, and the current COVID-19 virus. Ask your partner if you snore or if you stop breathing while you sleep. This could be a sign of sleep apnea which can be a serious, even life threatening condition. If you think you have sleep apnea call your doctor immediately. To make sure you are getting quality sleep, you can track your sleep with an Oura or other sleep tracking device. The technology isn’t perfect but it’s getting better everyday.

FASTING: If I asked you, what is the greatest medicine humans have at their disposal, what would you answer? Insulin? Antibiotics? What if I told you the answer was fasting? Physicians throughout the ages have made this claim and science is proving them right. Fasting has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity, lower blood pressure, maximize lifespan, and enhance immune function among others. According to Dr. David Sinclair, Harvard Medical School researcher and leading world authority on genetics and aging “It (fasting) engages a survival circuit, telling longevity genes to do what they have been doing since primordial times: boost cellular defenses, keep organisms alive during times of adversity, ward off disease and deterioration, minimize epigenetic change (the turning genes on or off), and slow down aging.” The one thing we don’t know about fasting is the dose. How long and how often should we fast to get the benefit. Hopefully those studies are coming. Until then these are the most commonly practiced forms of fasting:

16/8 Intermittent Fasting- really this is more time restricted feeding than an intermittent fast. You restrict the time in which you eat to 8 hours per day and then not eat for the next 16.

Alternate Day Fasting - You eat every other day.

Hypocaloric Fasting - Eating very few calories in a 24 hour period, typically 500 or fewer.

Extended Water Fasts - Fasting for 3-7 days at regular intervals throughout the year.

There are others as well, but like I said we don’t have a lot of data to recommend times and frequency. What I can tell you, is that in order to deplete your liver glycogen stores you would need to fast for a minimum of 48-50 hours. So what I recommend to my patients is daily 16/8 time-restricted feeding along with dietary restrictions. No sugar or processed foods and minimal starch. Then every 3-4 months they perform a 3-7 day water only fast. I recommend they supplement with electrolytes as long as the electrolyte delivery system has no calories. More on fasting in an upcoming article.

MEDITATION/STRESS REDUCTION: We are all subjected to a constant barrage of noise from the environment as well as our own mind. We can shut out the external noise by going in a room and turning off technology. But the voice in our head is always on. It’s always talking to us. And what it’s saying isn’t always in our best interest. Especially today. Most of the chatter is from regions of our mind that developed millions of years ago as survival mechanisms in a physically hostile and violent world. Our minds are constantly analyzing our environment for threats and making connections based on past experience. For most of us, our minds are analyzing the past and projecting into the future, but are never actually present in the moment. This results in constant guilt (the past), anxiety and fear (the future). The physical manifestation of all this guilt, fear, and anxiety are a nervous system that is in a chronic sympathetic (fight or flight) state. When we are in a sympathetic state digestion, repair, and you guessed it, immune response are compromised, making us more susceptible to viruses. There are of course a host of other issues that go along with this state but for our purposes today, it is the lack of immune function that puts us most at risk. So what can you do about it?

Meditation is a great place to start. Mediation has been shown to increase your capacity for happiness and gratitude, improve sleep, and decrease stress to name a few. And you do not need to sit crisscross apple sauce for hours on end to meditate. You simply need to get into a comfortable position, even sitting in a chair, in a quiet place and perform the meditation. If you want to incorporate mediation into your day, and I strongly recommend that you do, there are two great apps to help you. One is Waking Up by Sam Harris and the other is Ten Percent Happier by Dan Harris (not related). Click the text for the links. Both of these apps come highly recommended and are well worth the cost.

CLOSING: The Covid-19 virus is going to be with us for the foreseeable future. Like the flu, the healthier you are, the bigger your fire, the better chance you have of surviving. I will be publishing content over the coming weeks that will expand on all of the topics listed above. My goal is to arm you with all the information you need to live an outrageously healthy life, bulletproof your immune system and help you and your family live without fear of this illness. I will not be charging for any of my premium content over the next 8 weeks. If you need assistance in implementing any of the recommendations or if you have any other questions you can reach me at droliveri@olivierichiro.com. Please continue to practice social distancing, follow the CDC recommendations as well as your local and state guidelines for COVID-19. And most of all, watch out for one another. Together there is nothing we can’t overcome. Be safe and stoke that fire!

Dr. Chris Olivieri