Joané & Jonathan: (00:02)
Hi, I’m Joané Hart, and I am Jonathan Hart. This is The Hart of Health. A show where we focus mainly on health and self-optimization. Here, we like to talk about our experiences and knowledge when it comes to health and biohacking. We hope you enjoy the show.
Joané: (00:02)
Hey everyone, on today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about a very hot topic at the moment and that is the Coronavirus.
Jonathan: (00:45)
Yes. Now obviously, none of us are viral investigative experts or any kind of experts on pandemics or how viruses work, but this is related to health and you’re listening to The Hart of Health. So, we would just like to give a little bit of advice and perspective on what we’ve managed to learn, and hopefully, we can try and help impact this in a positive way.
Joané: (01:17)
Yeah, well, I don’t think we need to explain what the Coronavirus is. If you have an internet connection, you probably already know and you might be living in a country that has taken some drastic steps to try and contain the virus. I know here in South Africa, the schools are closing down. A lot of companies are letting people work from home. Everybody’s advised to isolate themselves as much as possible. So yeah, that’s the current state in South Africa, but it keeps changing every day.
Jonathan: (02:04)
Yeah. I think we’ve gone past the containing stage and we’re now fully in the delay from what it appears. It’s like a flu virus. It is actually very closely related to the flu virus apparently. So, there is kind of no way of containing it as we now see with all the cases popping up all over the world. So, now everyone is just trying to delay it, so that you don’t get a sudden rush of cases that overwhelms the hospitals and then everyone who needs critical care can receive it without the hospitals having to try and figure out how they’re going to handle all the patients at one go.
Joané: (02:53)
Yeah, that’s a bit rough. So, what can people do if they don’t have the virus to help strengthen their immune system, so that they have a better chance? Obviously, the older you are, the more likely it is that it will affect your health drastically. And, there is a chance of death, unfortunately. But if you are still quite young, then your chances are much lower. But yeah. What can you do to help support your immune system? I just want to keep telling everyone to take zinc because I know zinc helps with your immune system and it helps you when you start feeling like you’re getting sick. If you start taking zinc, usually that can help you recover a lot quicker.
Jonathan: (03:52)
Yeah, I think it’s a pretty important mineral for the immune system. But yeah, it’s going to be quite tricky to really get healthy, especially if you’ve got some underlying health issues. But obviously, any little bit you can do will help the odds because it looks like between 70% and 80% of the population is probably going to end up contracting it at some point. Obviously, the people who are the most at risk, that’s over the age of 70 with any kind of underlying health conditions like high blood pressure, a history of cancer, or being severely overweight. There’s actually a whole bunch of co-morbidity factors you can look up online. And so, if you have any of those, then you’d probably want to look at avoiding catching it all together. Because yes, you can actually try and do some exercise, get some good sleep, improve your diet, and stop smoking. All of these things will help you fight any virus. Just by being healthier, it gives your body a better shot at fighting any kind of a viral infection. And one of the things that surprised me that I learned is that cholesterol is actually a pretty helpful ally when it comes to combating viruses. So don’t be afraid of fat, don’t be afraid of getting your cholesterol levels a bit higher because that actually might make your Coronavirus recovery a bit faster.
Joané: (05:41)
Yeah. And ideally cut out sugar because, well you definitely stopped getting sick when you cut out sugar and went on a lower-carb diet. Sugar and stress can negatively affect your immune system. I know it’s hard to stay calm when it feels like the world is in a state of crisis. But it’s important to try and stay calm, because if you’re stressed, then it’s just going to mean that if you do get the Coronavirus, it will be harder for you to recover and it will also increase your chances of becoming sick.
Jonathan: (06:29)
Yeah. So there are probably people out there who caught the Coronavirus and maybe got like a sore throat or a runny nose or something like that. And then their body already built up an immunity to it before it could really progress. And so, they probably thought that they had a little sniffle or a sore throat and that was it. So you know, it’s going to vary from person to person. There’s always going to be exceptions to all of the things we were saying. It’s not like there’s a hard and fast rule to these things, but in general, you can definitely do things like we mentioned to boost your immune system; taking zinc, getting good sleep. And another one that I forgot to mention is sunlight, getting some good sunlight in. Don’t be afraid of the outdoors. Yes, if you’re elderly, don’t go into a crowded shopping centre with a whole bunch of people that might not even know they’re infected or whatever. That’s obviously a huge risk. But going outside into the fresh air and getting some sunlight is going to improve your health and quitting smoking; because it seems to be the problem is that people end up on respirators and it’s directly involved with the lungs. So, smoking definitely is not good for your lung health. So, if you’re already starting on the back foot with having smoker’s lungs, you’re obviously going to get hit harder by this virus. So yes, even though you might think: “Oh, what is a few days of not smoking going to help me with the virus?” But you never know. Those few days could make your recovery a lot quicker.
Joané: (08:15)
Well, another thing that could help motivate people to stop smoking is: you don’t know what’s going to happen with the economy. I think a lot of people’s jobs are at risk. If the economy shuts down for a little bit, well for a lot of businesses that’s really not good. You want to start saving money because you don’t know what the months ahead will be like. And cigarettes are expensive, especially in certain countries. So, if you want to save money and doomsday prep a little bit so you have some money for months to come, quitting cigarettes definitely help your health and your wallet.
Jonathan: (08:58)
Yeah. Why not use the Coronavirus as a springboard to finally quit cigarettes? I know a lot of people who are smoking have always sort of spoken about you know, “I want to quit”. So, why not do it when it’s the best opportunity? You know, money’s going to be tight, so you’re going to save, you’re going to improve the health of your lungs, and all the long-term factors that young people who smoke don’t really care about. But even in the short term, your health markers will improve. And smoking is just generally a really bad idea.
Joané: (09:34)
Yeah. It’s like, yeah, we can’t say too much about treating the Coronavirus because obviously, we’re not experts. But one thing that I’ve seen come up is a lot of people are worried about getting frustrated just staying at home and getting cabin fever. It’s really important to take care of your health and your mental health if you are stuck at home. I mean, staying at home for two weeks to a month can be rough. And I’ve heard recommendations where they said that, you know, people over seventy should basically stay home for the next three months. That can get a bit rough. I was thinking like, you use it as an opportunity to get to things on your to-do list that have been there for a while. Life constipation.
Jonathan: (10:29)
Yeah. Get rid of some life constipation while you have the time and opportunity to do so.
Joané: (10:34)
Yeah. So, organise cupboards, build that puzzle, finally learn to play that instrument that’s been sitting in the cupboard or something. I don’t know. There are a lot of things that you can do. I even joked if you’ve stocked up on food, you can do a mystery box challenge with whatever’s in your pantry. But hopefully, people have bought healthy food. We went to the stores today and some of the shelves were a little empty, but I’ve seen photos of some stores where there was no food left in the stores.
Jonathan: (11:10)
Yeah. Especially the easy to preserve foods disappeared quite quickly. I wouldn’t be able to say how healthy those foods are, but I suppose it’s better than no food in some circumstances.
Joané: (11:28)
How did we prepare? Well, we already have a chest freezer full of meat because we got some grass-fed beef at the beginning of the month from the farmer’s market. So, we’re technically already sorted, and then we went to go and buy some more meat and things like bone marrow. We’re probably going to stay quite carnivore. Jonathan’s going full carnivore anyways from April.
Jonathan: (12:01)
Yeah, well that’s my April challenge. This month has been stretching and red light therapy. So yeah, if you’re in a more Northern climate and you can’t really get some sunlight, maybe looking at ordering a red light therapy unit actually is not a bad idea. You know, it’s really good to get that exposure to those light frequencies. It’s good for your body, you can order from online if you can, if it’s possible, I don’t know. But yeah, that’s the thing is I don’t even know if anything’s going to really shut down here as much as it has overseas because everything is still open and running and it’s just a few food items that sort of disappeared off the shelves.
Joané: (12:49)
I think restaurants might struggle and obviously public events have been cancelled, things like that. But most people are still working, and yes, they’re closing the schools because if you really want to spread a virus, you give it to kids and send them to school.
Jonathan: (13:10)
Yeah, that was just one of the delay strategies. It’s not that kids are actually, a lot of people think: “Oh, they’re shutting down schools, it must mean kids are in danger.” No, kids are actually probably the least in danger. So yeah, I mean obviously, we’re not in Italy or in England or any other European countries, so we don’t know what it’s really like. They can only look at brief glimpses that we see in videos. But it seems like it hasn’t really hit home here yet. And hopefully, the fact that our country implemented a delay strategy so quickly means that it will not ever get out of control. But yeah, we’re not the richest country, so you never know.
Joané: (13:57)
You never know. But we’ll just have to wait and see what happens in the next few weeks and the next few months. Obviously, people are getting updates on the current virus every day. So yeah, we don’t know. We don’t know how long some people might have to stay at home, but like we said, get some things to keep yourself busy. I have this long list of movies that I’ve always wanted to watch and that I see it on Netflix, but just never have the time. So I can use this time to watch some movies.
Jonathan: (14:35)
Yeah. Well obviously you can’t, you can’t be productive the whole day. You’ll burn yourself out in the first few days. So you’ve got to try and keep it balanced. And you know, boredom is not the worst thing because often, boredom can bring about some creativity,
Joané: (14:50)
Loneliness can be a problem. I was worried about people who are perhaps depressed and already feel lonely, but they at least get some social interaction. But now if they have to stay at home and if they maybe live alone, I’m just a little worried about people’s mental health.
Jonathan: (15:12)
Yeah. Obviously, we are social creatures, so try and get your social interaction as much as you can. But yeah, it’s going to be hard, especially for people in the risk category to do that. I mean, if you’re old elderly and you have more than one co-morbidity factor, I think the self-isolation for a couple of months is actually a very good idea because no one wants to get rushed to the hospital and roll the dice on, you know, everything being okay in the hospital and them having enough supplies and being able to help you out. And yes, chances are, you might end up catching it next flu season or whatever because that’s how it’s going to go. You know, it’s going to keep on roaming around in the population. And this might not be the end of it, but at least you can delay it and wait until the medical system is better equipped to handle it and that will obviously increase your odds. Now I know obviously not a lot of elderly people are probably listening to this podcast, but hopefully, you can share this with your elders and sort of just keep your distance from them because you don’t even know if you have it or not. You could have it and not even show symptoms, but yeah, don’t hug and kiss your elders for the next few months. Basically.
Joané: (16:47)
It sucks. If you love your grandmother, don’t visit her now.
Jonathan: (16:51)
Yeah. Or if you do visit them like keep it very clinical and separated. Safe distance, keep a safe distance. Even though it ca be spread in the air, it is less likely to spread through the air. It’s much more likely to spread through, obviously direct contact. But yeah, I hope that helps inform you guys on what we think will help you get through this time and be safe out there.
Joané: (17:25)
Be safe out there and until next week,
Jonathan: (17:28)
Yeah, hopefully. Listen to more podcasts like this one, while you have the time right.
