It seems to me that wherever I turn to these days, the recurring topic is vaccine, vaccine, vaccine. It doesn’t matter whether it’s print news, radio or television broadcasts.
Despite all these attention, less than 50 percent of the Philippine population is vaccinated.
Allow me first to categorically say here that I am not anti-vax.
But yes, I have not been vaccinated. And in December last year, I contracted CoViD.
I didn’t even know I had it, because I didn’t realize I had the supposed symptoms, save for the fact that I had a slight runny nose, and a mild cough.
When my mother-in-law died, my sister-in-law, who’s a medical doctor, gave all family members an antigen test before gathering together.
I sat down in her clinic, while she administered the test, and surprisingly, she proclaimed, “Manong Ron, you are CoViD-positive!”
I went straight home to self-isolate. Two days later, I went to the hospital to confirm the antigen result. Sure enough, I was CoViD-positive.
So I continued to self-isolate, with family members bringing me food. Six days later, I returned to the hospital for another test. My result: SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA — Not Detected.
So that was my brief battle with CoViD-19. I never lost my sense of taste, nor my sense of smell. While in isolation, I continued exercising, and spending lots of time outside my room, especially getting lots of sunshine which provided me with lots of free Vitamin D to ward off any adverse effects of the virus.
I will discuss sometime later about Vitamin D, with some medical researchers proclaiming it to be the ‘fountain of youth’.
I did take Ivermectin as a precaution. So now, I have antibodies circulating in my blood to help ward off future infections.
But the story isn’t over. My wife came back to the Philippines in January. She is vaccinated. She tested CoVid-negative for the flight prior to leaving the States. When she arrived in the Philippines, she directly checked into her quarantine hotel, and five days later, she tested positive for CoViD. She, too, had slight symptoms but nothing serious.
Okay, so I am almost 73 years old, and my wife is 70. You might be curious, how did we both defeat CoViD-19? You might be thinking the elderly are more likely to suffer from CoViD.
This is what I believe happened, as we both have similar lifestyles:
Almost every morning, I make a terrible-tasting shake of malunggay, alugbati, sometimes ashitaba, and other greens.
We plan our days of exercise under the sun with two days swimming, and two days of me running and she, walking. We also do weight-training twice a week.
Then we seriously watch our food intake, and try to eat only healthy foods — not much fatty meat and not much sugar.
So as I see it, this is a Pandemic of the Unhealthy, not of the elderly like us, well into our seventies.
In the United States, a vast majority of CoViD deaths were related to obese patients.
I truly believe that if everyone took care of our bodies that God gave us, and who directed us not to be given to appetite, many of the diseases that affect us now would greatly be reduced.
We are what we eat. We are how we treat our physical bodies. Garbage in, garbage out. This pandemic is a test of survival of the fittest. Indeed, health is wealth.
___________________________________
Author’s email: [email protected]
