Green Wizardries, Staying Healthy in a Time of Omicron, by Maxine Rogers
I have found it puzzling that Public-Health authorities have chosen some measures to publicize and avoided talking about others which would be of great benefit to all of us. I am sure the strategies I suggest will be helpful in addition to all the usual measures suggested by Public Health officials.
The first and, most glaring, omission is their failure to promote the use of Vitamin D as a dirt-cheap method of improving immunity. Up North here in the winter, the sun is at too great an angle to do us any good in the way of Vitamin D production. Vitamin D deficiency is very common. There is a blood test to determine one’s level of Vitamin D but BC Medical will not pay for it. I say, go and get one; it is money well spent.
Years ago, I was getting the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder, SAD for short, in the spring when I was working outside all the time! My Doctor suggested I take the blood test even though I was taking 4,000 IUs of Vitamin D a day. The test came back showing that I was well below the minimum level of Vitamin D so we went to 10,000 IUs a day and tested again in 6 months. At that point, I was at the top of the normal range for Vitamin D. I have tested the same several times in the following years so I am right where I want to be with Vitamin D levels.
High blood levels of Vitamin D have, right from the start of the pandemic, been shown to correlate with very mild or undetectable cases of Covid 19. In Stockholm, Sweden, a full 40% of the first people to die of Covid 19 complications were Somali people. Somalis are very dark and they are not as mad keen on herring and other oily fish as the Swedes are. The Scandinavian people get most of their Vitamin D from eating oily fish. The Somalis, being so dark, were less able to make Vitamin D from the thin Swedish sunshine than the Swedes were. So they were very Vitamin-D deficient and despite being only a tiny fraction of all the people living in Stockholm, they died in much higher numbers than anyone else.
It also happened at the start of the pandemic that Doctors working in the National Health system in Britain got sick and died very quickly. They were, mostly, darkly-complected Doctors who worked inside a lot. They were Vitamin D deficient. The lighter-complected Doctors and Nurses did much better, because they had more Vitamin D in their blood. Vitamin D really does help immunity, not just for Covid but for colds and flu too.
If you have been vaccinated then I would still say that having a good level of Vitamin D is essential as any vaccine has to work with your own immune system. I was listening to Physician from the States, a specialist in Internal Medicine who runs an ICU and has done so through the whole Covid 19 episode. He said that he sees the vast majority of patients in his ICU with Covid 19 complications that are sadly deficient in Vitamin D. He has seen only a small handful of similar patients who have high Vitamin D blood levels.
So Vitamin D is only part of the answer but it is a large part and that is why I am surprised that Public Health Officials in Canada, The States, Britain and Israel are not promoting this very inexpensive and helpful way of boosting people’s immune health.
Another very large part of a rational response to Covid 19 would have been to get people to lose weight. Being overweight is terribly hard on the body and this is reflected in an under-performing immune system. The Covid 19 patients with the worst outcomes have been obese and or diabetic patients. I know that a lot of people have put on weight during the last two years but I have managed to lose over 20 lbs and my health has greatly improved because of it.
I found losing weight very difficult until I read Dr Jason Fung’s books on fasting. His books are available at the Public Library and are interesting and well written. His guidelines are simple and easy to follow.
I came to fasting with a certain amount of trepidation as I thought it would be similar to a reducing diet only worse. Typical reducing diets such as Weight Watchers leave me starving, weak and miserable. Fasting leaves me bright, energetic and easily satiated.
Even severe Type-Two Diabetes responds well and quickly to fasting days and a program of eating one meal a day on the non-fasting days. This gives great results of increased insulin sensitivity and weight loss. If a person is on Diabetes medications, they have to have their Doctor’s support in fasting because their medications must be reduced.
Fasting and eating one meal a day (OMAD) has been shown to rejuvenate people by increasing growth hormones and reducing the symptoms of many of the diseases of civilization such as high blood pressure, obesity, Alzheimer’s and of course Diabetes. I guess the bottom line is that we all eat too much, too often for optimal health. Fasting is the cheapest, easiest cure for disease that has ever been invented. Why are Public Health Officials not talking about this?
I think that Public Heath officials locking people down in their homes and encouraging a climate of fear has been enormously counterproductive, if they had the good of the public in mind at all which I am beginning to doubt. A program of asking people to go out for a run or a vigorous walk every day and to drink lots of water and get eight or nine hours of sleep a day would have been a better response. Such activities boost the immune system and overall health.
photo: Randy rogers
The best news I have is that the data out of South Africa shows that the Omicron variant is very easily transmissible and results in something very like the common cold. I am hoping this strain will help naturally immunize anyone who has not already had one of the other Covid 19 variants.
