This article is not just about you and me. It’s about all of us. COVID-19 and locust outbreak are a good example to show this world is a very small place, how we are connected and how one-person act can lead to suffer this whole world! So, can you spare your 15 min of your life time to read this article to save everyone’s life?

Here we are going to cover what measure we can take personally to minimize risk of getting CORONA. This article is collective study is written by discussing with frontline doctors and nurses working closely with CORONA patients. Until now… people have been infected with corona and …. People have been recovered globally. Although mortality rate is up to 1% many people have died. There are many reasons for increased deaths in short span of time. Because of rapid spreading most of the situation got out of control. Once identified many precaution measure, isolation, simple medications, proper health care and supplements helped to ease its effect.

According to WHO, Corona is persistence. For at least 1 year we have to be cautious until we have vaccine developed against it or we ourselves develop antibodies as adaptive immunity. We will now look closely how these brave doctors and nurses used to keep themselves safe as well as help patients to recover from Corona.

1. Personnel safety first
2. Medication
3. Diet plan
4. Implementing healthy lifestyle (Focusing on both physical and mental well-being)

Before diving in every point let’s discuss how severe corona can be. Corona affects our body in two ways: Asymptomatic and Symptomatic. In Nepal itself most of the cases are Asymptomatic. We can detect virus through rapid test or PCR but symptoms are not seen until death.

CASE STUDY, CORONA VIRUS:

CASE 1: ASYMPTOMATIC

Similar cases of asymptomatic condition were observed in a family based in Germany. They said “Whole society was isolated. Almost all of us were positive to SARS-CoV-2 and most of us were middle aged. In the first week we felt we had cold flu. The symptoms were not like CORONA. Later our neighbors were hospitalized. Their condition was serious even kept in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for near about 15 days. Other needed ventilator support. Amongst them we were going fine”.  This suggest that even in asymptomatic case it can be as deadly. In this case mass screening is only way out to detect viruses. This will help us to take prevention in time as well as going in contact with other person to reduce spreading.

CASE 2: SYMPTOMATIC

The symptomatic cases are distributed in many countries. Mainly in United States. After developing cold like symptoms only corona test was done. This led to more outbreak of diseases. One of Corona survivor shared with us her story in detail about how corona breaks you one by one showing its symptoms. It all started with working with Corona patients being frontline medical worker. She shares she got exposed with the virus at her work. At first it felt like flu. Symptoms were normal and flu test showed negative. She was continuing her work. Later that week there was sudden rise in fever spiking to 103.5 F. “I was taking paracetamol 3-4 times a day. Situation got worse when nausea, vomiting and diarrhea hit me hard at same time” she said. In this situation it makes anyone to lose energy. Now it become hard for her to move, even to go to bathroom she needed help. Her room partner used to help her with precautions but every time it was not possible. In this scenario both people end up getting corona. It was amazing that even caring her friend didn’t got corona. This supports fact how corona can affect different people based on their immunity. Then it was until next symptom appeared after that. She faced continuous coughing. She shares “I cried a lot. It scared not only me but my fried. Now I lost hope of being alive. I used to keep emergency number of nearby hospitals.” She added “I refused to go to hospital. The situation was even worse in hospitals at that time. I kept myself in self isolation”. She even doesn’t remember how much cough syrup she had finished. My mother used to make ginger and honey syrup for cough. I used to take a lot since medication was not working for me. Her fried was also taking supplements so that she could keep up her immunity. It was a relief for some day until she got strike with another symptom of severe back ache. Now she lost her taste to food. She could not take solid food. Intake food used to get out either due to vomiting or diarrhea. “I used to drink lot of water to keep me hydrated. At intervals I kept drinking ginger/lemon/honey hot water, soups and Gatorade.” When you are living far from family it leads to emotional break down. She used to listen motivational speeches, story of corona survivor. She knew only one thing that is to fight, fight and fight. Her friend was more horrified than her. “I used to check her breathing at night. She had already faced shortness of breathing. She couldn’t stand straight. I have to lie her down as soon as I can” Her friend added. Being a nurse, she knew once she took help of ventilator there is no way of coming back. Ventilator act as artificial lungs. Corona affects mainly lungs. If you keep fighting your lung will also respond. Taking support from ventilator creates long term effect. It is usually given at last stage of your life. Finally, after 16 days of her fight there were no symptoms. On 20^th day she got back her taste. She says "It is important to boost our immunity. I used to take Tylenol (Paracetamol), cold compress, dayquill/nightquill (painkillers), Bromfed DM and Robitussin (cough suppressant), and most importantly have multivitamins to boost immunity).” (We will discuss in more detail about the medications we can take daily to keep maintain immune system). She also added “I don’t know it helped or not but I used to take lot of Bishop’s weed (called Jwano in Nepali). In our Nepalese culture we generally give it to breast feeding mother (Sutkeri in Nepali) believed to give energy. Soup of Jwano and Vitamin C tablets was my regular intake”.

From above cases now we pretty much now what we can do in our level. Not taking long let’s come straight to the point:

1. Personnel safety first

Either you are a health worker or non-worker until CORONA is not over, we should take precautions in every step. It is highly recommended to wear mask whenever you are out from home. Open mask only when you are confident you are safe from corona. Maintain at least one-meter distance. If not make sure you avoid any physical contact to other person. Sanitize your hands by rubbing alcohol or wash hands with soap water whenever you touch suspicious things. Avoid touching your face area even when you are wearing gloves. Main route of virus entry is nose, mouth and even eyes. Gloves do not have anti-viral property. It acts just as hand. Before cross touching make sure you sanitize your gloves. Only medical staffs are recommended to wear gloves and face shields. It is mandatory to wash hands before eating. Choose appropriate hand- sanitizer. It must have at least 70% ethyl alcohol. Its better to use 70% rubbing alcohol. Methanol are toxic to your hands.  Clean your work area before and after your work. Since this virus remains active mostly in steel and being droplet infection, we should make sure of absence of any dust particles in working area. It is effective to clean surfaces with 70% alcohol, Lysol or any surfactants like surf than just water. If possible, take bath as soon as you return from outside. Discard one-time use mask and gloves safely. Do not wear same clothes next day. Change clothes as soon as you return home without touching anybody or anything.

Wondering how to make 70% alcohol?

We can find easily in market 99.99% ethyl alcohol commonly known as spirit. All we have to do is take 7 parts of alcohol and mix it with 3 parts of distilled water (normal water can be used for sanitization purposes). E.g. For making 100ml of 70% alcohol, you have to mix 70ml of 99.99% ethyl alcohol with 30ml of water.

2. Medication

It is extremely important to remain healthy from inside to combat any diseases. For now, no any proven medication has been used to treat corona virus. Many front-line doctors and nurses are using supplement tablets and natural food and fruit source that increases immunity. Here we discuss list of medication recommended by health staffs.

• For corona patients: For fever and backache pain you can use normal cetamol or any painkiller found in local drug store on recommendation. You can either take dayquill or nightquill according to your pain encounter time. Avoid taking too much pain killer. One painkiller 500mg is effective enough to work for 12 hours. For severe cough you can take cough suppressant like Bromfed DM and Robitussin. Dosage depends on how severe your cough is. To relief your neck pain it is recommended to gargle with mild-hot salt water or even take hot steam. You can also try Nepalese traditional style of cough relief medicine. Mix half a table spoon of ginger juice with half honey. Mix them thoroughly and heat it mild and then swallow. Do not take water along with this medication. Once or twice a day relieves cough a lot. Decrease amount of ginger if you feel your body is already hot. Sometimes nose bleeding may occur if taken in hot temperature condition.

Drink a lot of water. Vitamin C is proven for its antiviral activity so take as much as lemonade. The condition of diarrhea makes to lose water a lot from your body so make lemon juice with added sugar and some salt to maintain body status.

Drink hot soup. Solid food becomes hard to intake for corona patients because of vomiting. Mushroom soup/ Bishop’s weed (Jwano) soup/ Gundruk soup helps a lot to gain immunity as well as to retain body strength. Vitamin Supplements are key to fight corona. Multivitamin tablets with (A, D, E and K), Vitamin C tablets and Zinc tablets is taken twice a day (morning and evening) with soup or light food.

• For normal people to increase immunity

Supplements like Vitamin C tablets, multivitamins tablets with (A, D, E and K), and Zinc tablets is recommended to take once a day, generally in morning after breakfast. Supplements taken in empty stomach may cause bloating in some people. Hydroxyl tablet like aciloc/pentop can be taken to prevent gastritis if you wish to take supplements in empty stomach. If you do not wish to take these supplements they can be replaced by natural foods. For Vit C you can drink lemonade as much as you can during day time. Other vitamins like Vit A is found in fruits. Vit E is found in fish. Vit K and Zinc is found in banana and leafy vegetables. Vit D is found in mushrooms (Oyster mushrooms recommended, sundried best). Check out more foods in our previous article. We have already discussed 10 immune booster foods that you can find locally here at https://rarabiotech.com/top-ten-immune-booster-foods/

3. Make Diet plan according to your body type

Due to CORONA we have come back to concept of food as medicine. Lot of diseases can be cured if we maintain diet. Here we will not just talk about diet but about nutritious diet. Diet can also refer to the food and drink a person consumes daily and the mental and physical circumstances connected to eating. Nutrition involves more than simply eating a “good” diet—it is about nourishment on every level. It involves relationships with family, friends, nature (the environment), our bodies, our community, and the world¹. In our previous article we have already discussed in detail about top 10 immune boosting foods found locally with its proper dosage of intake in reference to scientific evidence.

Association for Traditional Chinese Medicine (CACM), due to inherited and acquired influences, it forms our body constitution that determines how we live and behave, and our susceptibility to pathogens and disease development. Our body constitution can be divided into nine types, named as neutral, qi deficiency, yang deficiency, yin deficiency, blood stasis, phlegm & dampness, damp-heat, qi stagnation and special constitution. men and women have some physiological differences, in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) terms, men are more rely on qi (vital energy), while women are more rely on blood.

In TCM food is divided into five natures, called "siqi": cold, cool, neutral, warm and hot. This classification is not based on temperature but rather by what effects they have on a person's body after consumption. Foods that are warm and hot bring heat to our bodies -- e.g. beef, coffee, ginger, hot chilies and fried foods -- while cold and cool foods cool down our bodies-- think of salad, cheese, green tea, and beer. Neutral foods are foods like oil, rice, pork and most kinds of fishes.

Currently, by Huang Qi, has introduced nine types of bodies in 1978. A person who has too much heat in their body usually feels hot, sweats all the time, is grumpy, has a swollen tongue, or could be constipated. People who have too much cold in their bodies appear pale, have cold hands and feet, might feel weak, or have bad blood circulation. A person with a lot of "dampness and phlegm" (tanshi) in their body tends to be overweight, might sweat a lot and might have an oily face. These people are usually more mild-tempered. However, a person with a lot of "dampness and heat" (Shi-Re) is usually short-tempered and often presents with an oily and acned face.

 "There is no substance which is good for anybody. Many consider ginger to be healthy, but when you are already a very dry person and you have so much heat in your body, the more ginger tea you drink, the drier you get," says Guo. We have to eat according to the season and place because we are adapted towards that environment. Summer is hot, so we need food to cool us down, such as watermelon and cucumber. Autumn is dry, which means we need food to "lubricate" us, such as snow peas and honey. Winter is cold, so we need food which warms up the body, such as beef or shrimps².

Read more at : Healthy eating in Traditional Chinese Medicine (https://www.dw.com/en/healthy-eating-in-traditional-chinese-medicine/a-18619239)

4. Implementing healthy lifestyle (Focusing on both physical and mental well-being)

Our body is a machine. Machine functioning depends upon quality of oil we pour. Oil acts as lubrication which gives power to run machine effectively. Oil here is refereed to as food we intake. The quality of food ensures how our machine will function smoothly. Other part is machinery part. We have to make sure every part is working well. We need to keep moving these parts time and again which is enhanced by physical exercise. Besides all these mental well-being plays an important part in input of energy towards our work. Recent study had shown that most of the physical diseases are also associated with imbalance in mental status. Too much stress damages our repairing cells, making us weak, physically impaired, lack of focus and also making us old in faster pace. Many case studies done in cancer recovered patients have shown that because of their strong mentality they were able to combat cancer and return to healthy life.  Our body works in synergy. In order to keep ourselves in flow we need energy. We get energy from food. Food comes from nature. So, If we can maintain ourselves with these energy then our life will be balanced. And, this world will be always sustainable and beautiful. 

Special thanks:

This is a underline study solely done in private basis.This is reason we are not revealing any family name and even near about places from where they belong.  We, RARA Biotech family are really grateful for those family and friends who shared their experience so that from your experience we start to take Corona seriously and any of us don’t have to lose our life by just simple mistakes. You all are warriors who fought corona and came back winning death. Thank you!

References:

1. “What is diet and nutrition”. University of Minnesota. https://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/enhance-your-wellbeing/health/diet-nutrition/what-diet-nutrition
2. Healthy eating in Traditional Chinese Medicine.https://www.dw.com/en/healthy-eating-in-traditional-chinese-medicine/a-18619239)

ARTICLE BY:

Sumeena Karki

Biotechnologist, Founder/CEO

RARA Biotech