Staying Healthy
Staying healthy in this age of viral infections: We all know about the official recommendations, and most of us have already followed them, so I won’t be writing about those here.
What I’m doing – in addition to the measures we all know about and hear about every day – is:
- Washing my hands
- Covering my coughs and sneezes (if I should ever cough or sneeze)
- Wearing a mask in public
- Eating a healthy diet with lots of fermented foods like kefir and yogurt and kimchi
- Exercising
- Using mouthwash. Rinsing or gargling with antiseptic solutions appears to have a strong protective effect against viruses. In terms of the virus that’s been in the news recently, there’s strong evidence in particular for benefits from gargling with Listerine Cool Mint. (In my own case, both for my tooth health and viral protection, I rinse with xylitol granules several times a day.) (In Vietnam, where there were a very tiny number of deaths in the recent pandemic, the government urged everyone to gargle with mouthwash daily from almost the start.)
- Eating foods rich in vitamin D3 and zinc and elderberry (and also taking the first two as supplements)
There are some indications that the current variant may turn out to be a drizzle, no worse really than a common cold. Or it still could go in a different direction.
Either way, with an R-value of 3-5… one person can infect three to five people… we are going to have to go through this. (Even with a Herculean effort, we could only at this point slow it down a little.)
I agree with the voices saying this isn’t yet a time to assume all is well. I hope it is and think it probably will be. But viruses change, and can change again. We should know either way how the current wave is going to work out in the United States and the world in a couple of weeks.
