Winning Against Covid-19: 2- Immunity Building

CoViD-19, a disease caused by novel coronavirus, has turned into a pandemic. It is an event that happens once in a century. The good news is that there are multiple levels of defences available to us, and we must understand them first.

1. Preventive Measures

2. Immunity Building

3. Protecting Your Lungs:

4. Medical Treatment - Early Symptoms

5. Medical Treatment - Severe Symptoms

6. Medical Treatment - ICU

In this article, let us focus on Immunity Building. Amazingly, building immunity is cheaper and easier. It does not require big degrees or even big books.

Let us first appreciate the exclusions that will ensure your immunity is not reduced: reduce intake of tobacco, alcohols, salt and sugars to minimal. Sugar particularly is the food of choice for bacteria and virus. Thus, extra-sugar in blood serves to increase virus growth and reduces body’s immunity.

Now let us look at the foods that you should include in your diets:

Vegetables & Fruits: A simple rule here is if you are eating five different colour vegetables and fruits, you are doing well. Some greens, tomatoes, yellow peppers, garlic or ginger, and basil or rosemary and you are doing amazing. And there are infinite combinations. Here are some quick references.

Green: Spinach, Kale, Fenugreek, Lettuces, Grapes, chillies.

Red: Tomato, Red Capsicum, Apple, Watermelon, Grapefruit.

Yellow: Yellow capsicum. Lemon,

White: Radish, Eggplant, Avocado, Cabbage,

Violet: Cabbage,

Black: Grapes,

Pink: Musk melon,

Note that I am focusing on inside colours and not of the skin. Here is the link to my detail superfoods blog.

Herbs & Spices: Green tea with mint, ginger or lemon is not only refreshing but also helps increase body immunity. So does spices like cinnamon, turmeric and herbs like basil, rosemary, coriander add medicinal value to your diet.

Dairy: Milk, curd and cottage cheeses adds another colour to your diet along with calcium, iron and vitamins. Cheese on the other hand should be limited due to salt and fats.

Meats & Fish: Rotate red meat, white meat, and fish. Reduce meat to 8 oz a day per person. Increase Fish in diet to replace meat - for example 4 days fish and 3 days meats within a week.

Toning Body: Food is only the part of the immunity. Few simple steps can go long way to tone your body into an immunity defence wall.

1. A 10 minute walk in morning or evening Sun. It helps in multiple ways. A brisk walk helps your heart and muscles. The sunlight helps you with vitamin D, a key immunity The key is not to walk during afternoon Sun as it

2. A 15 minute Yoga even on alternate days can tone your body.

3. A 5-15 minute meditation a day can help your mental health.

So you see, immunity is really will power- will to live.

May the immunity power be with you!