Coronavirus is presently dominating the headlines, our conversations, and our thoughts – and for good reason. It’s a big deal, and we don’t know exactly how big yet. So given the current situation, I want to offer two quick ideas to help you stay healthy.
I’m not here to peddle some pseudoscience cure, and I’m not here to tell you that you shouldn’t be worried about COVID-19. We don’t have a cure, and a reasonable amount of worry is totally warranted.
The very best thing you can do is follow the guidelines put out by the CDC and the WHO.
Those recommendations are mostly about avoiding contact with people who have the virus, avoiding infecting yourself if you do come into contact with someone who has it, and avoiding spreading the virus if you have it yourself. And I can’t stress this enough: DO THESE THINGS.
My aim here is to supplement that advice with two ways to strengthen your immune system and improve your overall health. Doing these things should reduce your likelihood of contracting the virus should you come into contact with someone who has it, and it should improve your ability to fight the virus if you do contract it.
I want to help you stay healthy during the current pandemic, and I also want to help you stay healthy in the long run. This advice is extra-important right now, but it’s also timeless, as it helps combat illness in general, along with more distant dangers like heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s.
And again, just be clear, there is no way to guarantee you don’t get the coronavirus or most any other illness for that matter. All we can do is take steps to improve our chances.
Now, with those caveats in mind, here are the two ideas.
1. Automate Your Produce Variety With This Rule
When I go to the grocery, I’m mostly there to buy produce: veggies for salads, veggies for curries, and fruit for breakfasts. As I’m selecting my produce, I follow this simple rule to ensure variety:
If I bought it last time, I’ll buy something different this time.
For example, if the last time I bought salad supplies, I got arugula, endive, cucumber, green onion, and radishes, this time I might buy spinach, tomatoes, yellow squash, fennel, and parsley. Next time, I might get super greens, bell peppers, zucchini, snow peas, and cilantro.
By purchasing different vegetables than I bought last time, I ensure that I’m eating a healthy variety. This is much better than falling into a routine where you always eat the same four or five vegetables every day.
Now, don’t get me wrong: If you’re eating salad at all, you’re doing better than many people. So if you’re not eating salads, well, get on that. Consider making a huge salad your main course for either lunch or dinner each day. But if you are eating salad regularly, and you’re stuck in a rut, adopting this rule will automatically infuse your diet with greater variety.
By eating a wider range of vegetables, you’ll provide your body with a broader spectrum of micronutrients. Food is more complicated than just the list of vitamins and minerals it contains, and we don’t fully understand all the phytonutrients, antioxidants, and whatnot that are found in various vegetables, so your best bet is to eat as much variety as possible.
The same goes for the vegetables you use to cook. If you always buy carrots and broccoli, you would benefit from mixing it up. Likewise for fruit. If you always buy oranges, apples, and bananas, you should branch out.
I also automate variety in a few other ways.
My staple dinner food is curry. But “curry” here really means a wide array of Thai and Indian dishes that I cook in bulk. When I do bulk cooking, I make two pots – each a different type of curry, and each crammed with as many vegetables as possible. When buying those veggies, I mostly follow the same rule as when buying salad stuff: If I bought it last time, I’ll buy something different this time. And each pot gets different veggies, so as I alternate curries day-to-day, I’m switching up what I’m eating.
My daily fruit usually comes from a smoothie of frozen fruit. Again, variety is the name of the game: I have blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, and pineapple in the freezer. The program here is similar: If I ate it yesterday, I’ll eat something different today. Sometimes I buy a lemon and squeeze lemon wedges into my smoothies. And most weeks I buy some fresh fruit to get even more variety. This week, for instance, I bought some grapes and tangerines. Next time I buy fresh fruit, I’ll buy something different.
In addition, I have a variety of nuts and seeds that I rotate through: almonds, macadamias, pecans, peanuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, hemp seeds, flax seed powder, and chia seeds. These get added to smoothies and other dishes or eaten as snacks.
Now, as with almost every rule, there are exceptions. I almost always buy carrots because I love to eat carrots with peanut butter. But I do try to rotate among purple carrots, red carrots, and standard orange carrots. It’s not necessarily bad to eat the same thing every day, as long as you’re also eating a variety of other things. And I will allow my produce selections to be driven by what is ripe, fresh, or in season.
For the most part though, if you adopt the rule of, If I bought it last time, I’ll buy something different this time, you’ll get a lot more variety in your diet without having to think very hard about it.
Now, on to the second idea.
2. The Full-Court Press
The nutrition rule I just explained is actually just one component of my “do everything” program for physical and mental health. I refer to this program as running a full-court press on myself.
In basketball, the full-court press is a high-effort strategy that underdog teams can use to beat more skilled opponents.
As someone with a history of addiction and depression, I’m something of a mental health underdog, so I run a full-court press on myself in order to keep my mind well. But nearly all of the things I do to stay psychologically resilient also improve physical health, and should therefore make you more resilient to disease.
Here are some of the things I do:
- Exercise every morning
- Make sleep a priority
- Eat healthy, non-processed foods
- Avoid sugar (mostly)
- Avoid alcohol (completely)
- Spend time in nature multiple times per week
- Daily meditations
- Gratitude journaling
- Giving to charity each month and whenever I spend money on myself
(Read the full article for more details.)
It’s obvious that things like regular exercise, quality sleep, and good nutrition will improve your immune system.1 But there’s also research indicating that less-obvious things can make you healthier as well: time in nature,2 meditation,3 gratitude,4 and generosity.5 Plus, there are cultural norms that hurt our immune system, such as eating sugar1 and drinking alcohol,6 which are easy to overlook as you strive to optimize your health.
Will running a full-court press on yourself guarantee you don’t get sick? Of course not. But it will improve your odds. And it should help you recover more quickly if you do get sick. Case in point: I’m currently battling a mild cold. Yesterday I started to feel sick and got worse throughout the day. Today, I’m already feeling much better. And this is the first time I’ve been sick in over a year.
Compare that to me in college. Back then, I basically did the opposite of running a full-court press on myself: I ate poorly, didn’t prioritize sleep, drank and smoked pot all the time, and didn’t do any of the other things I currently do to stay healthy, except for exercise. I got sick more often, and when I did, it was much worse.
Now, you don’t have to do everything in my full-court press to stay healthy. The more you do, the more you improve your odds. Every step in the right direction counts. Healthy living isn’t an all-or-nothing thing; it’s about taking advantage of all the little choices you have each day.
While the full-court press is a strategy for underdogs, anyone can use it. But, if you are an underdog in the fight against coronavirus because you’re over 60 or have other medical conditions, then you really need to run a full-court press on yourself. And you really need to follow all the CDC and WHO guidelines.
Stay healthy my friends.
1 “6 Immune System Busters & Boosters.” WebMD.
2 “It’s official — spending time outside is good for you.” ScienceDaily. July 6, 2018.
3 Walton, Alice G. “New Clues Into How Meditation May Boost The Immune System.” Forbes. Sep 6, 2016.
4 Dunn, Lauren. “Be thankful: Science says gratitude is good for your health.” Today. Nov. 26, 2015.
5 Hamilton, David R., PhD. “Can kindness boost the immune system?” July 24, 2018.
6 Coghaln, Andy. “Too much booze blunts your immune system.” New Scientist. 30 September 2011.