Coronavirus Part 1: Spread, Risk and Symptoms
Everywhere you look, everyone you speak with, and everything you read is all about coronavirus, COVID-19 or SARS-CoV2.
Stories, updates and “information” about coronavirus are currently spreading as rapidly as the virus itself. Everywhere you look, everyone you speak with, and everything you read is all about coronavirus, COVID-19 or SARS-CoV2. The number of infected is rising at a dramatic rate, as is the mortality rate. If you’ve been paying attention at all in the last few days, weeks, months, it’s getting really serious, folks.
One of the things that makes this virus so scary is that it’s brand new (you might have heard the term “novel” thrown around). Experts suspect the incidence of coronavirus infection is already significantly higher than we know about, simply because the testing is not widely available. We don’t know enough about it yet--no one does. And it is human nature to be afraid of the unknown.
How Does Coronavirus Spread?
Many viruses hit hard in the winter months, when temperatures are cooler. Moisture in the air is made up of tiny water droplets. When a person coughs or sneezes, or even speaks, respiratory droplets can latch on to water droplets. These fluid droplets can travel feet through the air (three to six feet).
When it’s cold out, those water droplets, and the illnesses attached to them, tend to linger. When it’s warm, however, the droplets evaporate quickly and the spread of illness is typically less. This is one of the reasons we think seasonal influenza is not as prominent in the summer as it is during winter and fall.
The good news: some speculate the spread of the Coronavirus will decrease as warmer weather hits.
Who Is at Risk for Coronavirus?
The answer is, it depends. Many factors go into the spread of a virus including age and immune status (healthy vs unhealthy). Those with underlying health conditions such as heart or lung disease and diabetes are also considered high risk. So far the coronavirus seems to be very mild in children through young adults. The mortality seems to be quite high in populations 60+ years old.
The Odds of Getting Infected by Coronavirus
The risk of infectiousness is similar to a bad flu. Epidemiologists use R naught value or R zero to describe how many people are likely to be infected from one person carrying or infected by the virus. For seasonal influenza, about 1.3 people are infected for every person who has the flu. The R0 for coronavirus is difficult to determine because the initial reporting from China was spotty and there was concern with the testing capacity, however, it is estimated that the R0 is around 2.2 infected for every person who has the virus.
What are the Symptoms of Coronavirus?
Symptoms may appear 2-14 days after exposure:
- Fever
- Cough
- Shortness of breath
- Emergence warning signs:
- Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
- Persistent pain or pressure in the chest
- New confusion or inability to arouse
- Bluish lips of face
IF YOU DEVELOP THE ABOVE EMERGENCY WARNING SIGNS, SEEK MEDICAL ATTENTION IMMEDIATELY.
Basically, this is a sneaky virus that seems like a cold and is spreading through the global population very quickly. It is important to be informed and aware, but also not to be paranoid. Be safe and smart. Learn how to prevent coronavirus infection by reading the second blog in this series Coronavirus Part 2: Prevention.
For more information, or to sign up for daily email updates on the virus, visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/index.html
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Heidi Toy Functional Medicine Blog
Did you know most people didn’t have refrigerators in their homes until well into the 1900’s? It wasn’t even invented for large scale commercial use until the mid 1800’s [1]. So how did people keep their milk cold and make their food last longer? Fermentation. It sounds like a gross concept, because we often associate fermentation with a bad odor, but foods like cheese, yogurt, sauerkraut and pickles are all fermented foods. And those aren’t gross, are they? Well, some might disagree with me about sauerkraut, but that’s beside the point. Fermented foods are digestive aids. Microscopic living organisms in fermented foods help extend the food’s shelf life, enhance flavor, and help the body absorb minerals. These organisms pre-digest the food, getting rid of harmful components, and create more vitamins and enzymes than the food began with. Enzyme-rich foods have many benefits including [2]: Increase digestibility of food we eat Boost immune system Increase alkalinity; neutralizing pH levels Provide a healthy balance of friendly flora in the gut (Learn more about your microbiome in my other blog posts ) Tone the colon and help with elimination Control cravings for unhealthier foods Eliminate toxins and undigested wastes in the body In the “old days,” people use to ferment all kinds of foods through pickling, canning, pasteurization and added salt. Nowadays, however, large scale fermentation has lost many of its nutritious benefits due to the need for speed to get the product on the shelf as fast as possible and as cheap as possible. The only true fermented foods you will find are sauerkraut, kombucha, yogurt and kefir, beans, wine and beer, some meats (such as salami and pastrami), legumes and nuts (such as tofu, soy sauce and miso), sourdough bread, and various kinds of vegetables [3]. Fun facts about sauerkraut: The Germans “stole” it from the Chinese! Sauerkraut (probably not labeled as such for the Chinese, but the same recipe) was one of the main foods for those who built the Great Wall of China. Genghis Khan brought it to Eastern Europe during an invasion. It also contains high levels of vitamin C, and sailors often took it on long journeys to prevent scurvy.
How can we best keep blood sugar stable? Do what our body is designed to do – use fat for energy. Our species did not survive the Ice Age because of vanilla coffee lattes and cheesecake. Throughout most of our history, we ate a diet that was likely 50-70 percent fat. Look at the old family photo albums, specifically pictures of people in the first half of the 1900s, before we had so many processed foods. You won’t see many fat people--in fact, most look darn skinny. If they lived on the farm, they ate lots of eggs, meat, milk, and vegetables out of their own backyards. “Diet foods” were non-existent. Heart disease was almost non-existent. Our metabolism is designed to work much better with fats better than with sugar. Fats provide the slow and steady fuel our body likes to use for energy. Think of fats as a slow-burning log on the fire. One log (i.e. one meal containing fats) lasts for hours. Starchy carbs, on the flip side, are like kindling. You constantly have to throw more twigs (chips, pasta, bagels) to keep the fire burning. The first step is to know your sugars by reading the labels, and then avoid said sugars as much as possible.
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Omega-3 and Omega-6 are considered “essential” fatty acids because they cannot be produced by the body--we get them from the food we eat. They are biologically active upon ingestion, which means the body utilizes them right away and cannot store them up for later. They are essential because they help with both inflammatory and anti-inflammatory responses.
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