-Margao-based functional medicine and geriatric medicine Dr Lenny Da Costa

The lockdown is opening in most parts today with the resumption of air travel and movement from the various zones into the other and with no decrease in new cases of Covid19. We can only accept the fact that we need to live with this coronavirus. The only thing we can do is to make our immune system rock solid and despite all other preventive aspects I spoke about earlier there are some important aspects of this whole pandemic that we have not understood.
Today we talk about two important systems, the immune and adrenal systems and their interplay and how understanding this is important. Your innate immune system will protect you and it is important to learn how to live with Covid19. Understand that our body has two defense mechanisms, one helps fight infections be they viral or bacterial. Viruses and bacterial is handled by the immune system. Then there is the adrenal system which takes care of such external threats as say you’re being chased by a tiger and you need to run for your life…here the fight or flight hormonal system comes into play and the stress is short-lived, temporary. Once the fear is over your adrenal system is back to normal. See, we were hunter-gatherers once upon a time as so lived under the constant threat of being attacked by wild animals…this stress is of a temporary nature and to do with the production of hormones like cortisol courtesy our adrenal system. We lived in fight or fight mode. However times have changed and now many of us live in stress all the time around the clock and this can shut down everything including our immune system…unfortunately, we’re stressed most times and there is constant production of cortisol (till presumably its production goes kaput). Then we are in real trouble. My advice is we stop seeing TV coverage which compounds stress levels and quite simply when our immune system is down we are more prone to virus attacking us. Solution, stop stressing, easier said than done. Ways to do it? Stop watching TV. Stop being always worried. Stop reading, listening to all this pandemic talk around us…see a good comic movie and laugh your guts out. Laughter is good to de-stress. Laughing makes for good hormones, it helps the immune system to be strong! If your immune and adrenal systems are okay you can live with the coronavirus, you will win, not the virus!