With the surge in infections worldwide of the Delta variant, DR SANJAY TEOTIA’s advice on keeping Covid at bay comes as a timely reminder to us that we must never let our guard down
There are three main protocols that we must follow all the time if we are to win the war against Covid-19 – and that includes proper use of masks that cover both mouth and nose, social distancing of at least four metres and proper hand sanitization, whether with a sanitizer or with soap. Along with this, the corona vaccination is a must. Corona vaccination protects the person from corona infection, reduces the severity of the disease and significantly reduces the mortality rate.
Immunity plays an important role to protect the body from infections, whether bacterial, viral, fungal or any other type of infection. Nutritious diet, mild to moderate exercise, yoga, meditation, breathing exercises, a firm belief in spirituality, prayers and chanting of mantras according to your individual religious beliefs only further enhances the immunity of a person either directly or indirectly.
Take a nutritious diet which contains a balanced mix of proteins, minerals and vitamins in abundance and fat and sugar in small quantity, besides milk, green vegetables and seasonal fruits that work as immunity boosters. Mild to moderate exercise is a must to keep your body healthy, active, fit and disease-free.
Exercise should be mild to moderate, never strenuous. The best exercise is a four to five kilometers or a forty-five minute brisk walk; or you can opt for other good exercises like cycling or walking on the treadmill.
Deep breathing exercise or pranayama plays an important role to prevent lungs from the corona virus and is very useful in avoiding post-covid complications primarily because corona is an infection of the lungs. An attack can cause pneumonitis, breathlessness and lung fibrosis, and deep breathing exercises protect the person from such ailments. There are various advantages of deep breathing exercises, such as it improves blood flow, improves immunity, calms down anxiety, and helps the person to sleep better, increases energy level, reduces inflammation and detoxifies the body.
You can also add yoga to your daily routine. Yoga is a type of exercise of the internal organs that improves the blood circulation of every organ and each cell of the body. Blood provides the oxygen and nutrition to each organ and to every cell of the body. Yoga helps lower our stress hormones and calms the nervous system, which compromises our immune system. Through relaxation, the nervous system can tell the immune system to settle down and stop attacking the foreign bodies, which are naturally cleared out by sneezing once or twice a day.
It is also a good idea to introduce meditation, a practice where an individual uses a technique such as mindfulness or focusing of the mind on a particular object, thought or activity to literally train ourselves to focus and increase awareness to achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state. Mindfulness meditation can have benefits for your health and performance including improved immune function, reduced blood pressure and enhanced cognitive function. Essentially, when you are practising mindfulness meditation and paying attention to the present moment with judgement, your body naturally responds by calming down. That enables your immune system to do what it needs to do to take care of you.
So, take to spirituality, which is all about promoting a firm belief in god within yourself. Spiritual care forms a vital component of holistic health management, especially in terms of coping and coming to terms with illness, suffering and ultimately death. The relationship with the transcendent or sacred has a strong influence on a person’s beliefs, attitudes, immunity, emotions and behaviour. People say health is wealth, and experience of life will tell you that this is absolutely true. Health is our real wealth and we must treat our body like a temple.
Therefore, prayers and chanting mantras are for good health and for boosting our immunity because they fill us up with positive energy, which improves our immune system so that we are ready to fight against disease.
Dr Sanjay Teotia is a senior consultant eye surgeon
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