In this article, I’m going to review two of the most common denominators found in patients who either died from or struggled with COVID.
Interestingly enough it’s not just COVID it also exists with many other problems. What we really need to be aware of is how to reduce our risk and strengthen our immune system at the same time, not treating a condition or disease, but how is it that we can build our immunity and also reduce our risk of different viruses, not just COVID.
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There is not enough information out there about what you can do to become healthier and to have your best quality of life through different activities and education and things that you could do. That’s what we want to try to provide for you.
When we talk about immunity, it’s a bit of a slippery slope for some people. This isn’t how you treat conditions A, B, or C. We’re not talking about any of those things. What we are talking about is what you can do as an individual to strengthen your immunity be able to fight against things in a better way.
What is the number one thing that we are discussing with our patients about immunity?
Vitamin D
As far as deficiency of the people that are struggling with COVID, but we talk to our patients about stress, and Vitamin D is super easy to test in your blood work, and it’s just not commonly done. So I think a lot of people don’t realize where they’re at on the scale of deficiency versus sufficient vitamin D. We don’t see enough of just clear sun to absorb enough of that, to have enough in our immune system itself, and almost every cell in your body has a vitamin D receptor on it.
It’s one of the most important immune vitamins, although it’s more of a hormone than a vitamin. Your body synthesizes it as well. But the reason why vitamin D is so important is that, for your body to produce white blood cells, which is your army, those are your immune fighting cells that go out and fight infections, you have to have a high enough level of vitamin D to produce adequate amounts of white blood cells. And so what the research has shown is that when people have a lower white blood cell count, lower vitamin D, they don’t produce a rapid enough impactful immune response.
And so what happens is it kind of lingers then infection or whatever it lingers and over time that starts creating more and more problems, right? So we want a kind of a rapid and powerful immune response, so our body can manage the infection, and hemming up adequate levels of vitamin D make that possible.
Have You Had Your Vitamin D Tested?
The other thing is that the standard for vitamin D if it is even tested, is as low as 30. I don’t know a functional medicine doctor anywhere that would recommend a level of 30 is okay. Right. Our goal is like 60 to 80 range is where we’d like to see vitamin D amount in your blood work.
So basically every single person, at least in Ohio should be supplementing probably 5,000 IUs/day, it’s all year long in the winter months, even more than that. So we test our patients to see where they start, where they are after a few months of supplementation, and where they should be from a maintenance standpoint.
So you can not take enough vitamin D and you can also take too much vitamin D and overdose because it is a fat-soluble vitamin. The only way to know is to test it, take into account a certain recommended amount that tells us how much a person should be taking. So, if they’re already closed, they wouldn’t need to take as much, if they’re not, then they, if they’re lower on the scale, I mean, we’ve seen them in the teens.
What To Look For In Vitamin D for Immunity
If they’re lower on the scale, then they would need to take more. And then we would retest that again, typically in 12 weeks, and see what kind of progress has been made.
This is kind of like, maybe it’s a bit of a rhetorical question, but how do we know? Or we just answered it. How do we know if the vitamin D supplement is working? Through the blood work.
People will go, “well, I’m taking vitamin D.” and we go,” well, great. Does it work?” and they go out. “Yeah, it feels better.”
You don’t know if it’s working unless you test it. The reason why we use what we use is that we know for a fact that if people take the right amounts it will increase.
Obesity
The second thing was obesity. Obesity is one of the top risk factors for struggling with or dying from COVID as well. Right. And that is typically related to high levels of inflammation.
Yes, inflammation. If when we have high levels of obesity, number one of the body doesn’t have to work much and so there are ways to not be obese either. And those programs we do in our practice, it’s not just weight loss to kind of starvation, weight loss. It’s weight loss to try to improve function and overall health that inherently reduces inflammation.
Anti-Inflammatory Diet
The diet program that we use, we call it the anti-inflammatory diet specifically because the foods that we’re recommending help to reduce inflammation, and those things would be things like lean proteins, lots and lots of veggies. We don’t do a ton of fruit because it is still processed in your body as sugar. Sugar is inflammatory in nature, obviously processed sugars, a lot worse. Little grains. We do healthy fats, lots of healthy fats, no gluten, no dairy.
Healthy fat is one of the most important ones there. We want to make sure that we’re getting those, especially omegas, coconut oil, avocado oil, things like that. We want to stay away from processed fats, trans fats, unnatural like refined fats. A lot of the vegetable oils are in that family.
Those things create inflammation. Fast food, things that are high chemical content, highly processed foods. Preservatives- foods that have high amounts of preservatives, but also like artificial flavors and artificial food colorings. All those things can be inflammatory, which impacts if we already have inflammation and then we get into it, then we have an infection. It just makes the inflammation kind of get out of control at that point.
What other things can people do to improve their immune function?
Taking care of your nervous system is important and dealing with stress is really important.
The relationship between immune function and stress is super important because any doctor in any specialty can relate stress to inflammation, to chronic disease as kind of a domino effect. That’s just been researched by any kind of doctor everywhere. And so that’s just a fact.
Stress Management Is Key
With stress, not just mental stress, but that’s important too, but chemical stress of being exposed to toxins, emotional stress, I mentioned physical stress, like biomechanical stress on your body. Whether you have a joint that’s arthritic or a painful joint or something that’s worn down differently than other joints in your body is physical stress. Chiropractic has been shown to improve or support a healthy immune function.
Again, it’s not treating a condition or disease, but when we take the stress off of the nervous system, it’s supporting again, proper nervous system function, helping to get out of a state of stress, supporting immune function as well. So really cool stuff, guys. There’s a lot that you can do here. We do recommend that you have a couple of these things tested, so it is possible to test inflammation.
But also doing a consultation-understanding where your overall health immunity really is, is going to reflect our overall health. The better our health is, the better our immune system is going to function. There are definitely ways to do that!
Do not hold off on addressing IMMUNITY. Load your WEAPON!
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