How to increase your immune system against COVID-19?
It is a very well-known scientific fact that the better the immune system the less likely for viral and bacterial infections to happen and vice versa. The same thing apply to the newly discovered Coronavirus infection the so called 19-CoV or COVID-19 or SARS-2. Coronaviruses is a big family discovered in 1960s are mainly 7 groups, four of them are a usual cause of flu like illnesses infecting millions of people yearly without problems. However, the other 3 groups, SARS – 2003; MERS – 2012 and now COVID-19 caused serious mortality and morbidity around the world.
The increasing numbers of infected people and deaths of the COVID-19 are indications of the continuous spread despite all the measures put by the states around the world and expecting to become worse in the next few weeks, hence the need to increase strict measures on international and personal levels. There are countries that have good infrastructures and yet others are weak in which the spread and deaths will be more. Nonetheless, even those with highly effective health systems, their facilities can be easily exhausted such as what happened in China when the numbers of infections exceeding the number of kits required for performing the tests. This lead to adopting new definition criteria for the infection based on Chest X-Ray and CT scan changes rather than swab tests, bilateral infiltrates and ground glass appearances subsequently. There is a good chance that the virus spread may be halted with the help of the warm months of the summer as the virus less likely to survive for long time in summer due to the heat but with the large number of infections the virus got an opportunity to change its genetic structure either to become stronger and more viable even in summer or the other way it become weaker. We do not know much about this yet and which way the virus is heading.
To protect yourself and as now become standard is the hand wash with water and soaps every time you become in contact with suspected surfaces or door handles or people or return back home or office. This is a good way of hand washing.
As the transmission mainly droplet spread, avoid the following:
1. Hand shake
2. Hugs
3. Kissing
4. Close contact (closer than 2 meters) including Ques
5. Crowded
6. Staying in same room with people you do not know their status more than 10 minutes
7. Smoking shisha (Arabs)
8. Touching your nose or eye or eating with unwashed hands or feeding your child
9. Breast feeding without a mask if you got cold (mothers)
10. The virus might transmit by urine and stool so take measures when you use public toilet
11. Avoid gathering for any reason
In addition to the above you need to drink plenty of water and fluids and eat healthy diet including fruits and variable food. It is very good in all times to keep fit by suitable regular exercises that you like.
In regard to the mask and despite some said it will not be needed or it will not protect against infection that is not right. Mask are certainly allowing better protection and that is why the health staff wearing masks to reduce the risk they get the infection. So instead of you directly inhale the droplet of other may be infected people the mask will prevent direct spread of other people droplets to your airways. There are several ways you can make your own mask at home like this one:
There is a very strong evidence that Vitamin D play very important role the immune system against viruses and bacteria in particular provide strong protection against respiratory infections to all ages. If you suspect that you might have vitamin d deficiency that makes you susceptible to infections like COVID-19 so better try measure your vitamin d level by consulting your doctor or if you cannot take at least 800 International Units of good vitamin D once per day if you are not sun exposed and 400 to 600 IU if you expose to sun well. Vitamin D help both the systemic immune system and the local one inside your airways or respiratory system that get invade by COVID-19. Also make sure you do not have Iron deficiency anemia. See the following references about vitamin D role in the immune system: 1; 2; and 3;
At last if you or one of your family gets fever and cold symptoms wear a mask and consult your doctor sooner rather than later an apply the above measures. Over all the COVID-19 is easily spreadable but not as fatal as SARS or MERS viruses.
