Can You Reduce Your COVID-19 Risk With Lifestyle Changes?

1. Adopt a whole food diet. This means ditching the processed, high-sugar, and packaged foods in favour of cooking at home. One silver lining of all the shelter in place orders has been that many people are cooking more, which is incredibly beneficial for health. In addition, focusing on eating whole food most of the time helps you to naturally achieve a healthy weight.If you have insulin resistance or diabetes, consider a low carb or keto diet to help manage blood sugar. At the Hoffman Centre for Integrative and Functional Medicine, we often see blood sugar dysregulation in its early stages and are able to course correct before it progresses to diabetes. My team and I are here to help you personalize your dietary approach for your unique needs.
2. Move your body. Exercise helps your body and mind to function at its best, is a wonderful tool for blood sugar management, keeps you mobile as you age, and helps to prevent chronic disease. My best advice is to make exercise fun and enjoyable instead of it being a chore. The key is building movement habits into your day and week and I promise, as you move more, it will get easier and your body will naturally want to move.You can read more about my approach to exercise on my blog post, "Exercise Smarter, Not Harder: How to Optimize Your Workout for Your Brain and Body".
3. Stress less. Stress contributes to weight gain, inflammation, and chronic disease. Tools such as movement, meditation, neurofeedback, and biofeedback are incredibly helpful to incorporate into a self-care routine. Here at Hoffman Centre, we can help you learn tools to pull your body’s nervous system out of a stressed state and into a relaxed one. When considering stress, it’s important to note that not sleeping enough and exposure to toxins cause stress in the body, along with the typical stressors that we’re familiar with.
4. Optimize your vitamin D levels. Vitamin D is incredibly important for proper immune function and deficiency has been linked to a variety of chronic diseases. (7) Vitamin D deficiency is a very common nutrient deficiency, especially here in Canada because of our northern latitude. A recent article suggests that because of vitamin D’s role in reducing respiratory tract infections, supplementation may reduce the risk of COVID-19 infections and death. (8)
5. Consider supplements. It takes time to move the needle on your health and while you work to put the foundational pieces of diet, movement, and stress management into place, supplements help to bridge the gap. My team and I support patients with developing personalized supplement protocols for their health concerns.In addition, supplements provide immune support, which may be of particular benefit to those at higher risk for severe COVID-19 infections. Consider vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc, probiotics, curcumin, green tea, and others. The Institute for Functional Medicine released a handout with potentially supportive supplements for both prevention and treatment of COVID-19.

When we look deeper to uncover root causes, we see that poor health and chronic disease not only affect quality of life. It also increases risk of pandemic infections. This connection is empowering because so much of what contributes to, or prevents, chronic disease is completely within our control. It truly is never too late to make changes.

If it feels overwhelming to change your daily habits to improve your health, including upgrading your nutrition and moving your body, start with one small and achievable goal. Once that first habit’s in place, work on the next. Over time, you’ll achieve sustainable lifestyle change and will notice differences in your body and how you feel. Please note that we’d love to support you here at the Hoffman Centre for Integrative and Functional Medicine, so don’t hesitate to contact us for an appointment.