The COVID-19 pandemic has been a terrible ordeal for the entire country. While the pandemic has been frightening, you’re not powerless to protect yourself and help protect others. Several ways in which you manage your health and how you choose to conduct yourself can have a substantial impact.

Take Care of Your Digestive Health

When your body has to fight a novel virus for which a cure has not yet been developed, your best defenses are a healthy body and immune system. Your digestive system has a key role in regulating your immune function. The majority of your immune system’s cells are contained within your gut. In order to have a healthy immune system, you must be conscientious about how your diet and personal habits affect your gut health.

Avoid foods that put a strain on your stomach. If you have to waste your gut’s energy on processing heavily refined foods, you prevent it from operating at its full capacity. Fighting off bacterial and viral invaders is a formidable challenge when your gut is slowed down by sugars and carbohydrates that are hard to break down. Moreover, your cells will be at a structural disadvantage if you fill up on unhealthy foods. Without the proteins, vitamins, and minerals that your cells need, they’ll be no match for fighting foreign organisms.

Start with reducing the amount of hydrogenated plant and seed oils in your diet. The oils that cause continual inflammation can also cause severe inflammatory reactions when you’re sick. Also, carbohydrates that don’t totally break down can cause an overgrowth of unhealthy bacteria to line your intestinal tract, which makes it hard for your body to process the beneficial nutritional content in what you eat. Next, focus on eating healthier foods to give your body what it really needs. Look for foods that have lean protein, fiber, and key minerals. A supplement such as Gundry MD is an excellent way to round out dietary deficiencies in an optimized delivery system.

Make Careful Choices About Where You Go and What You Do

It’s understandable that you want to get back to life as normal, but you have to evaluate the risks involved with every type of setting before you do something. Until there are vaccinations available to the general public and infection rates have subsided, you can’t let your guard down. Don’t attend superspreader events. Don’t have people outside of your household in your home for social reasons. Avoid any indoor area where people aren’t wearing masks. Skip unnecessary travel.

Equipped with information from health authorities, you have to rely on your own judgement about what’s safe. Unfortunately, you can’t rely on the safety of what you see other people doing, even when they’re leaders who you should be able to look to for an example about how to conduct yourself.

Make Your Leaders Accountable

The surge in cases near the end of 2020 is one of the most tragic events in the nation’s history. Part of what makes it so tragic is that it was entirely preventable. Cases surged due to poor leadership at the highest levels of government, intentional dissemination of misinformation, and inexplicable messages to the public that the virus was a hoax and people should not be afraid of it.

If you live in an area where local leaders failed to take appropriate action to the pandemic, you need to hold them accountable. When you go to the polls in your state’s next election, make public safety your number one priority in who you choose to represent you. Going forward, competent leadership will make a big difference in helping people stay safe.

The pandemic has created considerable disruption to how everyone goes about daily life. People have lost loved ones, suffered permanent health consequences, suffered financial hardships, and endured extreme stress and sadness. However, people will emerge from the pandemic with a greater self-awareness about their overall health and an enhanced commitment to protecting themselves and others.