Maintaining foundational health during quarantine
Nicole Ceil is not a medical doctor, and nothing herein constitutes medical advice or a patient-provider relationship. Please consult your healthcare provider before undertaking a healthcare regimen. Never disregard medical advice or delay seeking treatment.
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Now more than ever, it’s important to support our foundational health, including the health of our immune systems! This blog post is a follow up resource to a talk I gave on March 27th with the Women’s Business Development Council targeted to support busy female entrepreneurs during the unique stressors of the SARS CoV2 Pandemic and quarantine.
Before we start this conversation, I’ll review my credentials. I’m a Functional Nutritional Therapy practitioner, not a medical professional. The goal of these suggestions is to highlight effective behavioral and dietary strategies for general health promotion. While improving general health can increase resilience to stress and disease, none of these items constitutes disease prevention or medical treatment.
Okay, let’s get to it!
Outside of actual instances of illness, there are patterns of difficulties emerging related to the huge emotional and logistical shifts that our world is going through. We’ve passed through the most acute, jarring changes, and are now settling into a routine of “new normal.” As new normal becomes more familiar, we’re starting to step back from the adrenaline rush of survival that characterized the first few weeks of quarantine, and think about how we can recreate health promoting routines in this new configuration of life.
Some of the less obvious but still impactful obstacles we are all facing at this time include:
Change to routine, loss of routine
Emotional uncertainty, stress, fear
Shifts in resources, financial, food, etc.
While these obstacles affect us all individually, I’m seeing some interesting patterns in the clinic around symptoms of:
Insomnia, stress, anxiety, fatigue
Constipation and dehydration
Concerns about metabolic issues - weight gain, stalled weight loss, feeling “blah”
Here are my top actionable tips for combating these obstacles and managing the symptoms that result.
Tip #1: Drink more water
With changes to our day to day routine, many of us are missing our old cues to drink enough water. Dehydration can result in a surprising number of uncomfortable symptoms. Mild dehydration can show up as fatigue, anxiety, irritability, depression, cravings, muscle cramps, and headaches. More advanced dehydration can result in symptoms such as heartburn, joint pain, back pain, migraine, body malaise, and constipation. We should all aim to drink half our body weight in oz. of water each day.
How to
Bring back old cues. If you previously brought a water bottle to work and used that bottle as a gauge for how much you drank, pull that bottle out and use it daily.
Place a large glass of water by your bedside and drink it before you get out of bed each morning.
Pair drinking water with a task you must, or cannot forget to do (I drink a glass of water when I feed my dogs their breakfast, there’s no way they’d let me forget to feed them!).
Make water fun by adding fruit or herbs, or making freezing fruit into ice cubes. Check out this article for more fun water enhancing ideas. Note: I don’t recommend putting essential oils in your water or taking them internally without medical supervision.
Tip #2: Cultivate a normal eating routine
Without a set start to the workday or colleagues to take a lunch break with, or the added pressure to make lunch for home-schooled kids, it’s all too easy to skip breakfast, or lunch, or both! Skipping meals leads to unstable blood sugar, which can show up as:
Mood swings
Sugar cravings
Fatigue, lack of motivation
Anxiety
Restrict/binge cycle & weight gain
If you experience any of the symptoms mentioned above, it’s essential that you cultivate an eating routine to ensure stable blood sugar.
How to
Fake it till you make it. If your work is solitary, and you tend to get into a flow, forgetting to eat, set some alarms on your phone that remind you to pause at specific times. If you’re working with clients or patients, or your day is suddenly filled with virtual meeting after meeting, use your calendar to schedule out breakfast and lunch. Encourage your colleagues and employees to do the same.
Create external accountability by planning a virtual lunch date with a friend, or an actual lunch date with your partner of kids.
Prep your lunch just like you would if you were going into the office. You’ll be much more likely to eat if something is already prepared, and the process will be less stressful if there are fewer cooking and clearing chores to complete.
Tip #3: Schedule movement and sunlight
For many of us, working from home means a reduction in any incidental movement we used to get throughout the day. We’re no longer taking the stairs, walking across the street for a coffee, or going to a meeting in another part of the building. All that movement adds up! To complicate matters more, a lot of us are working from makeshift offices such as bedrooms or kitchen tables, spaces that aren’t conducive to movement or proper alignment. Finally, we’re having to be cautious about the ways we spend time outside, which can leave us feeling more than a little cooped up.
How to
Schedule movement and sunlight. Just like meals, exercise and sunlight breaks can be put on the calendar.
Aim for progress, not perfection. Not all of us have access to isolated backyards or nature preserves, so we need to work with what we have! A front porch, apartment balcony, or even an open window are great places to soak in some sun and move your body.
Leverage off times. If you have access to walk-able streets, parks, or hiking trails try going early in the morning, or at twilight, and on weekdays rather than weekends. These areas will be less busy at those times and you’ll be able to relax and enjoy your exercise.
Embrace indoor movement. There are dozens of options for small space indoor movement including hand weights, body weight exercises, weighted jump roping, and free online fitness classes. I recommend the collection of classes supplied by the YMCA which includes instructional videos and classes geared towards all ages and fitness levels.
Tip #4: Use food to boost your mood
Stress, anxiety, and uncertainty are hallmarks of times such as these. It’s to be expected that each of us will feel some unexpected or negative emotions related to the pandemic. However, the type of food we consume can go a long way to exacerbate feelings of stress and unhappiness, or conversely protect us from slipping into true despair by creating a stable environment in the body. By eating foods the promote healthy blood sugar and neurotransmitter function, and avoiding foods that create stress and stimulation in the body, we can keep moods manageable.
How to
Reduce the use of stimulants such as chocolate, coffee, sugar, and alcohol (while alcohol leads to temporary feelings of relaxation it increases stress hormones in the body).
Eat a 3-5 oz of protein at every meal to keep blood sugar stable and build healthy neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, GABA, and melatonin. Proteins include meat, eggs, fish, full fat dairy products, and organic tofu, beans, nuts, or seeds.
Eat a serving of fat with every meal to support stable energy throughout the day and build health nervous system tissue (brain health). Health fats include nuts and seeds, avocados, olive oil, coconut, butter, and full fat dairy.
Lean on herbal teas such as chamomile and Valerian for calming nerves, ginger to soothe digestion, nettle for seasonal allergies.
Tip #5: Eat to support your immune system
The immune system is a complex, coordinated, body-wide effort to control inflammation, attack foreign particles, and create symptoms that force you to slow down and rest. The immune system requires a large amount of energy in the form or vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, and fat). Food is the optimal source of these compounds, with supplements offering an occasional helping hand. If we make an effort to consume certain foods we can ensure our immune systems have enough fuel to operate efficiently.
How to
Support Glutathione production (the master antioxidant) by eating spinach, pastured poultry, low-tox seafood, legumes
Stock up on minerals (specifically selenium and zinc) with shellfish, seafood, brazil nuts, grass-fed red meat, almonds
Boost Vitamin D and A levels with liver, egg yolks, and fish eggs. Plant sources are orange, red, and yellow veggies and sunlight. This is a great time of year to get vitamin D from the sun. I recommend the D-Minder App for smartphones to help you track your vitamin D intake from sunlight.
Eat sufficient Vitamin C by consuming foods like papaya, kiwi, red bell peppers, camu camu, acerola berries, citrus fruits, berries. Eat raw produce when you can, as vitamin C is destroyed by heat. Smoothies are an amazing way to sneak in more raw greens.
Don’t skimp on protein: pastured animal foods (don’t forget the organ meat!), cottage cheese, organic tofu, tempeh, and edamame, eggs, low-toxicity fish and fish eggs.
Tip #6: Access better food more safely
Heading out the grocery store can feel intimidating right now, and for the first time in recent history, we are facing uncertainty about food availability. This is a great time to get creative about food sourcing and shopping to ensure you’re eating the healthiest food possible while having the safest shopping experience.
How to
Shop your farmers market. Markets take place outdoors with plenty of distance between shoppers. In addition, local produce comes straight from the farm meaning it’s passed through fewer hands. Organic market produce has the added benefit of staying fresh for much longer, helping you shop fewer times/week. Many farms are still enrolling in summer CSAs, which offer affordable produce deliveries weekly and encourage you to consume a diversity array of nutrients each week.
Plant a garden. Now is the perfect time to plant a few of your favorite vegetables in a garden patch, window box, or patio container. Some veggies even do well planted straight into bags of potting soil. Growing your own produce is a good investment and a great project for families with kids.
Shop local online. Many local food merchants are offering curbside pickup, and some are offering online ordering and delivery options. Fiddleheads Co-op and Mystic Organics are two local retailers with such options.
I hope these actionable tips will help you feel your best physically and mentally during these unprecedented times. If you’d like to stay connected and receive more nutritional information, please subscribe to my email list below.