How can having a grain-free diet can help boost your immune system
The current coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19), is caused by a SARS cross corona, non-human vector virus. This virus mostly will pass from one person to another via respiratory micro-droplets produced during coughing, sneezing, breathing and touching all types of surfaces including clothes, and skin. The time between contracting the virus and showing symptom can be more than a week, and up to two weeks—that means that most people can infect others, even though they may not have obvious symptoms.
Initial symptoms occur in the nose (blocked on and off with change to sense of smell) and it can in some cases move to the throat and chest to give low-grade fever, cough, fatigue, general aches-pains. More advanced symptoms relate to difficulty breathing, with added complications such as pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome in the immunocompromised people of advancing age. Common symptoms such as sneezing, a runny nose and sore throat, are not common with this virus, and notably, some infected people are not showing any symptoms at all—these people are the long-term ‘carriers’ who are unknowingly transferring the infection. Eventually over the next several months, this virus will probably infect billions of people. There is no vaccine or specific antiviral treatment for the current coronavirus, yet. Hopefully this will occur within the next year.
Expect to contract this virus sometime over the next several months.
Prevention
The best prevention against catching this virus is to keep away from other people, and that is not practical. Otherwise you should constantly wash your hands with soap, avoid touching other people (use gloves, impracticable in the long run!), and only touch your face, eyes and mouth after you have washed your hands (impossible to be disciplined doing this over some months!).
Because coronavirus stays viable on metal, glass, plastic and smooth wood surfaces for more than a week, and up to a month on those surfaces that stay warm, it is almost impossible not to catch this virus. Still, use a household cleaning spray or wipe to clean all frequently-touched surfaces (counters, toilets, door knobs, etc.) every day (if you have the time).
When you catch the virus, your best defence is to have a competent immune system that can act quickly and communicate efficiently for a week or more—most people have a competent immune system, although the older you get, the less competent is will be. Interestingly children and infants appear to have a quicker acting innate response to this strain of virus and few will become really sick. However most children will be carriers because they don’t present with any severe symptoms.
Your best defence as an adult is to have your immune system primed and ready to quickly respond—as is happening with most children. Ninety percent of adults over the age of 35 will have immune system communication scarring, and this may slow down the effectiveness of their immune system to (1) identify the virus, and (2) create the specific defence to eliminate the virus.
If the immune system is too slow identifying this virus, it will mask its activity and stealthily will move to the lungs and throat, and tend to trigger inflammatory responses. This will allow other pathogens to survive in the lungs (pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome), and this combination can be lethal in those older people (above 70 years of age) who are stressed, working too much and not getting restorative sleep, eating the wrong foods, not exercising to stimulate the nervous to immune system communication, smoking, handling/breathing-in toxic commercial chemicals, and other stressful lifestyle factors.
In order to have the best chance of overcoming this virus, you should keep your immune system unloaded and free from doing extra work—so that it will have reserves to quickly attack and control the virus. You do this by taking immune-boosting herbal and immune-focusing medicines, do self-therapy (specific yoga trunk-stretches and yoga breathing techniques to balance the autonomic nervous system, sometime every day), and be most careful with your diet. If you don’t want to use the natural medicines, then simply change your lifestyle to assist your immune system. The most efficient ways to do this are to:
1. Reduce emotional stress (using self-therapy or professional therapy, taking specific flower essences or herbal medicine), have enough quiet time every day to reset your perspective on your life. This can include meditation, prayer, or reading an inspiring book.
2. Constantly aim to obtain adequate sleep (8 hours of deep sleep at least 3 nights a week—with no waking).
3. Reduce those plant foods that your immune system has a problem with—that are causing type-1 type-2, type-3 or type-4 allergies and those that cause intolerances and micro-intolerances. Reduce or remove those dairy foods that produce mucous responses, or pain or bloating after eating them (ghee should be fine for most people).
4. Remove all cereal grain products (rice, corn, wheat, rye, oats, barley, etc) out of your diet for a few months—this is the most effective way for most people to unload their immune system. If you only want to do one thing—do this. Change over to grain-free bakery products, or start a Paleo way of eating.
5. Reduce the population of internal pathogens such as the herpes group of viruses, threadworms, protozoa and inappropriate gut bacteria using specific nosodes, or medicines from the chemist—for example take a course of Combantrin, add a small amount of apple cider vinegar into your drinks, reduce all junk-fast foods (and stop eating extra sugar).
6. Maintain regular movement exercises (such as combining dancing/martial arts, with hatha yoga/pilates, or strong walking to get out of breath for a short time), or have regular acupuncture, osteopathy/chiropractic and massage.
7. Avoid commercial/industrial toxins as much as is practical (be extra careful with insect sprays or similar toxins. If you have to use industrial/commercial chemicals, undertake the required specific detox for them).
8. Reduce carbohydrate intake to a minimum (free sugars/starch), since bacteria in your lungs feed off extra sugar in the bloodstream, and pathogenic bacterial populations (Staph, Strep, Pneumococci, etc) are more likely to survive in your lungs if you contract the coronavirus.
9. Take one general vitamin/mineral tablet a day and an extra vitamin-C tablet (don’t take vitamins if they have grain-fillers bulking them). Remember, people with coeliac disease or Baker’s asthma, can respond to 5 parts per million in concentration of gluten. This is extremely small and can trigger immune compromisation for weeks after one contact.
10. Two times a week do intermittent fasting (minimum of 18 hours between meals). Google this if you are not sure what this is.
11. Live and spend more time in the physical and social environments where you can feel totally relaxed and comfortable, some time each day.
Deeks Healthy Bakery Foods can help unload your immune system (which naturally boosts its competence) to help combat the Coronavirus.
One of the first things I noticed 25 to 30 years ago when I was started taking clients through grain-free controlled trials, was that all people said that they were not catching the influenza virus any more, and nor getting Summer colds when they stayed strictly on a grain-free diet. People who strictly follow a Paleo diet also say this.
I still observe this today with my clients, however mainstream medicine has never investigated this as a way to unload the immune system (Publication: No More Chronic Fatigue—improving immune strength and efficiency 2000 ISBN: 0-046-39742-7 (based on 4000 case studies).
Do a 2 to 3 week trial where you remove all grain foods and drinks (100%), and allow your body to detox from constantly eating grains—and see how much more healthy you become (use a graph to determine how long it takes your immune system to boost).
Once you experience for yourself how going grain-free improves your overall immune health against viral infections, you can have more confidence in combatting the coronavirus when it infects our community. Your lifestyle change would be based on eating totally grain-free foods and drinks for the few months. Simply change to grain-free diet products available in the supermarkets.
Check out the Deeks website (www.deeks.com.au).
Deeks delivers all types of guaranteed grain-free diet bakery products (Most Coles and IGA stores stock a limited range of Deeks products—so order direct from the factory). These products really are delicious, but a bit more expensive than your average bakery products. However, with this potential coronavirus pandemic, a few dollars extra to protect your health is easily worth the investment.
I will be going over yoga methods to boost your immune-nervous system in another blog and during my yoga classes and upcoming workshops.
Pass this blog on to others who you think may benefit.
Bill Giles
Clinical Immunobiologist