How to stay healthy during the covid19 pandemic, a video from Dr. Charschan

We are as they say all in this together although our experiences may differ widely depending on where we live, how we live, our health and our employment situation.

Turning on CNN is scary but thank the lord we have Governor Cuomo who offers some straight talk as well as our Nj’s governor Murphy who has shown some leadership skills just after having cancer surgery.

We have been told to stay home, and many of us have been furloughed and can’t wait for things to just be normal again. True, the government is helping us out but as Americans, we can’t wait to not feel helpless again at the hand of an invisible enemy.

I feel as you do and as your humble public servant, I am here to help and offer some advice that can help both you and your family.   Rather than writing a long post, I thought it would be best said in a video.  Check out my tips on how to stay healthy during the covid19 pandemic.  Feel free to share the video with a friend or family member as well.

Transcript

Hey, its Dr. Charschan,

We’re in extraordinary times right now.  Its the first time I’ve ever lived through a pandemic and its very likely that you have never lived through one either since the last one on record was in 1918.

But, the thing is,  is that right now they are telling us to social distance, stay home, don’t go out.

The reality is that if you stay away from others, you are less likely to communicate this virus to other people.  That’s why they want you to stay away from other people and its important to do so and follow the recommendations.

But, you also have to understand, that we are kind of gonna be cooped up in our homes, and quite honestly, that is not good for our mental health.  We still need to exercise.  We still need to eat right. We still need to do the things we need to do for ourselves.

And, even though things have changed and it is a very stressful time for many of us, we really need to do what is right for ourselves, and part of that is immunity.

Other than social distancing, what can you do?

Well, if you’ve been on our website, there is a special blog that I put together on Covid19.  It’s updated like every other day.  When I find new great information to share, I put another link on the site.  It’s like a one-stop shop that you can take a look at. If you go to backfixer1.com, and click on our blog section on top, you will need to scroll down until you find the covid19 blog(shortcut, you can also use this link). And that particular blog will give you a lot of very useful information on nutrition and things you can do for yourself. So it’s kind of a one-stop-shop for information on how you can take care of you and your family.

The thing is that you can take things like selenium, vitamin c; actually, the Chinese were using it and the NY Post reported that one of the hospital systems, Northwell Health was using it as well since it has antiviral activities.  I have been recommending vitamin c for years, and it does shorten the course of a cold. Even though we do not have absolute science on this, I can tell you anecdotally, there is no harm in taking it and there are other things you can do as well.

So if you go on there, there is a whole list of things that you can do to improve your health.

One of the recent things I just came across and I just added a blog post about it was the NY Times just added an article about exercise, but not every exercise and how it can improve your immune response.  So anything that improved your immune response reduces the likelihood that even if you do get the covid19 virus, we do not have any real statistics on how many people have been infected, and how many people have gotten rid of it, and until we have an antibody test, we’re not going really know that and we are probably not going to screen 300 and something million people to find this out.

So, the data that you have been hearing are just those who have been tested because they were having active symptoms.  Many people haven’t and have been told to stay at home and they self quarantined. So, just realize the numbers you are hearing out there are just a sampling. But the problem is that many of us have probably been exposed and may have developed an immunity.  And, now with the current antibody tests that are coming out, they might give us more clarity on that.

So, we are here to help. This is why I do these things for patients.  We do have office hours in our Scotch Plains and North Brunswick offices and we are making special accommodations to people because, we know that there are still people who are in pain that if they are not sleeping, that will affect your immunity too. But we are here to help.  Please use us. We’re not seeing a lot of people but we are here to help.

What else can you do for yourself now that you have extra free time?

Why not cook? We’ve seen the pictures of all the empty shelves at different stores.  All the frozen stuff is gone. I’ll be honest with you; if you are c=going ahead and cooking, you know exactly what is in your food, and you g=cn go to the vegetable markets; they’re usually not that crowded. To be honest with you, fresh vegetables are full of nutrition and again that feeds the immune system, so cooking is a great idea. Now that you have all this time, you can go on the internet; that’s still working so we can go ahead and get all these free recipes.

Hobbies.  Listen, I’ve taken up piano.  When my wife wanted to sell our Clavinova because she redid our home office, I wouldn’t let her sell it. I said to her, I am going to take piano lessons.  Guess what, now I am doing it.  I found a great app for doing it.  I actually put another blog on there that gives you great ideas on what you can do with your downtime.  

Ultimately, if there is nothing to do, it’s not really good for your mental health and we are social beings as well, so we need to be around others but we are being told we can’t. So the other day we went for a social distance walk. We went with a couple of friends.  Me and my wife and our friends were staying apart about 6-10 feet.  Then later, we were sitting in our back yard about 12 feet from each other.  I gave my friends a wiped down beer.  We ‘re doing things in a very safe way.

That’s not to say that you should have a party, but it’s good for our mental health and when this is all said and done, and that is a problem for you, then you have another problem.

So it’s ok, but maintain what they are telling you to do.  If you want to be a little extra safe, now they are telling u to use masks.  Is it going to make a big difference for us if you use a mask?  I don’t know, they don’t know but they do know that in Korea and some of these places that have already been through this, they saw lower rates of infection so was the mask really the reason?  We don’t know but you know what, it can’t hurt.

So biking.  Get out there and bike.  If you are with somebody else, you are not on top of them and if they are 10 feet away, it’s fine.  Get some exercise and besides that, your body produces vitamin D.

So, kind of keep your wits about you during this.  You know, it’s a stressful time for you, its a stressful time for me.  Bottom line is, if you do the things that keep you healthy, you’re going to be in pretty good shape when this thing is finally done.

True, you may have found yourself being furloughed from your job, but you know what, the government is backstopping all of this, so think of this as the retirement that you never really had and if you are older like me, it is kind of a dry run.  Personally, I’m not ready for retirement. I’m going to be available to serve people just like you.

Don’t be afraid to visit us if you’re in pain. But we will maintain the social distancing guidelines that everyone is following now, we’re extra clean; we have to be. Right now, we don’t want to be a problem for people and you don’t want to be a problem for people so as long as we take some extra measures we will all be fine when this is over.

Anyway, it s Dr. Charschan, I’m here to help. Take care