For the last year, we have been living with COVID-19, and since the vaccine, there has been over twenty million people who have been vaccinated.
Last week I attended a practitioner training session, given by six medical doctors with knowledge of functional medicine.
In this month’s newsletter, I will be sharing helpful tips and insight, in preparation for your vaccine. The tips provided are interventions that may improve your immune response to the vaccination.
As we know from watching the news, we have Pfizer and AstraZeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccine. The difference between the two vaccines is, the AstraZeneca can be stored at higher temperatures and cost less per dose (£2.87) and uses different technology to immunize people. They use a modified version of a common cold virus. This altered virus cannot make you sick, but it carries a gene from the novel coronavirus’ spike protein, the portion of the virus that triggers an immune response. This allows the immune system to manufacture antibodies that work
against COVID-19. Pfizer (£ 14.42 per dose) rely on mRNA technology, which essentially introduces a piece of genetic code that tricks the body into producing COVID-19 antibodies, no virus required. Both vaccines require two shots with a four week pause in between.
Although this virus may infect people of all ages, the evidence to date suggests that there are two groups of people who are at a higher risk of getting infected. Group A is the elderly and group B, those who have underlining health issues.
The elderly is at risk because as we age, our body starts to deplete important nutrients needed by the body to function properly and those who have underlining health issues, means that their immunity is compromised in some way due to ill health or disease. Covid is an added stress that the immune system must deal with. When you get Covid the immune system gets overwhelmed with a severe immune reaction and releases too many cytokines into the blood too quickly. Cytokines help to control the immune system and help fight disease.
This month’s newsletter focus is to prep your body for the vaccine.
Lifestyle tips and how you eat, are part of the pre-preparation, obviously continue with following government guidelines, like mask wearing, social distancing and hand hygiene.
Stress is a biggie, which affects our physiology both mentally and physically, so this is one area that you could improve if you suffer from stress. Providing your body with immune boosting nutrients is another area you can improve on. Working towards lowering inflammation is especially important. There are things that can cause an inflammatory reaction in our body for example:
- Food intolerances, this can cause issues with inflammation and gut health.
- Lack of exercise can cause visceral fat accumulation-inducing chronic inflammation.
- Deficiency in vitamin D can impair your immune system, as this will further support your immunity.
- Taking a good B complex will help with stress.
- If you smoke try to stop, as smoking lower oxygen levels in the body.
- If you have an autoimmune disease seek an alternative practitioner who can help you improve and maximise your health.
- If you like alcohol try to stop drinking this if you are not getting the vaccine for a month or two.
- If you like your saturated fats, make changes to your diet by swapping to good fats like olive oil, fish oil. Eat more of a Mediterranean diet.
- If your sleep patterns are bad, address this by taking magnesium an hour before you go to bed. Breathing exercises help lower blood pressure and calm down the nervous system. Take deep breaths through the nose and out through the mouth six to eight times before you go to sleep.
- Do not stress out your digestion by eating late, aim to finish your last meal no later than 9pm.
I Hope these tips help you in preparation for your vaccine, which you can start to implement straight away. Contact me if you need to speak further or have a health issue that you would like me to help you with or recovering from ill health.