How to help the immune system in times of coronation

No one who has followed the news reports in the past few weeks can have missed the most important steps to prevent the transmission of the covid-19 transmission: keep social distance, wash your hands, and stay home with symptoms. By following the demands of the Public Health Authority, health care is less at risk of collapse because too many people get sick at once.

At the same time, several people judge experts that sooner or later the virus will pass through large sectors of the population. For example, it turned out that half of the people in Iceland who tested positive for covid-19 had no symptoms.

So is it possible to prepare for a possible illness? Can you do something to ease the course of the disease or increase your chance of recovering faster?

– The most important measures are, of course, the general recommendations on social distance, working at home if you can and not going out if you have symptoms. But I don’t think that self-care should be excluded to reduce the risk of getting sick from respiratory infections, says Peter Bergman, an associate professor at the Karolinska Institute (KI).

How to be serious Sick people become dependent on age and health conditions, explains the researchers that contact with DN. Obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and high blood pressure have been found to be risk factors for the new coronavirus. Lena Uller, associate professor of respiratory immunopharmacology at Lund University, describes these risk factors as a hallmark of our Western lifestyle.

– For example, one can speculate on why the United States has been hit so hard. The fact that they have a lot of difficult cases even at younger ages could be related to the fact that there is almost nothing called normal weight there. The United States has big problems with being overweight, says Lena Uller.

What is the risk for people with high blood pressure who are well controlled with medications or for people who have well controlled diabetes?

– At the moment we do not have that knowledge. In general, it can be speculated that the better treated you are in your basic disease, the better conditions you will have to control a serious infection. In Sweden, we have very good medical care and treatment for hypertension and diabetes compared to, for example, the United States, where many patients do not receive treatment because they lack health insurance. This may also explain why the United States has more young individuals dying from covid-19 infection precisely because they have underlying, untreated diseases, says Lena Uller.

The age factor is difficult. do a lot about it. But health can be affected. In the UK, the Perioperative Care Center (CPOC) has urged the public to prepare for covid-19, which is preparing for major surgery. CPOC medical experts recommend easier physical training, good nutrition, quitting smoking, alcohol-free days, strength training, and adequate sleep.

Although a major operation and a difficult respiratory tract infection are two different things, they both involve physical stress that the body recovers more quickly if it is in good condition from the start. Anna Smed-Sörensen, who investigates the immune system in the airways and lungs for infections and inflammation in KI, believes there is a point with the comparison.

Being overweight is a risk factor for both surgery and covid-19

– If you have a real flu infection, it is clearly a great strain for the body to return. What is generally known is that the healthier you are when you get sick, the better it is that you usually cope with the disease, she says.

Also Lena Uller believes that the comparison between major operation and disease in covid-19 is reasonable:

– When an infection is contracted, huge resources of the body’s immune system are needed to fight the infection. It requires a good blood supply, to supply nutrients and oxygen, but also resources to seal the slag products. If you have high blood pressure, these processes are complicated. And being overweight is a risk factor for both surgery and covid-19, she says.

So far there is There are no scientific studies looking at the relationship between the immune systems and only covid-19. But the role of the immune system in pneumonia and respiratory tract infections has been studied, in humans with respect to bacterial pneumonia and in mice when it comes to pneumonia in the form of viruses.

So what can you do to prepare for a possible collapse of the new coronavirus? None of the DN researchers has had contact with recommended turmeric, ashwaganda or any of the other preparations sometimes sold with promises to “boost the immune system.”

On the other hand, they point out certain lifestyle factors that are effective, especially in the long term, but in some cases even with a faster impact.

1) drink less alcohol

Alcohol sales at Systembolaget increased by almost 10 percent in March compared to the same month last year. In the United States, alcohol sales in the same month increased by 55 percent.

It advocates for a number of impaired immune systems. Cecilia Magnusson is an associate professor in the KI Department of Public Health. In her role as Chief of Operations for the Stockholm County Council Center for Epidemiology and Social Medicine (CES), she is currently working on developing a crown and public health base for county council politicians.

– We know that both excessive alcohol consumption and excessive alcohol consumption at the same time and high chronic alcohol consumption lead to a deteriorated immune system. Alcohol increases blood pressure, and therefore stress on the heart, and high blood pressure is possibly one of the risk factors for covid-19. The connection between alcohol and impaired healing is so clear today that one month of alcohol freedom is recommended for a major operation, says Cecilia Magnusson.

For those who are prepared to cut down on alcohol, there are benefits to be had even in the short term, perhaps even this weekend:

– Drinking excessively one night has acute effects on the immune system the next day, says Cecilia Magnusson.

2) stop smoking

Smoking also suppresses the immune system, among other things by affecting circulation. This means that it takes longer for blood to heal damaged tissue. A smoker who smokes for good can also get quick health gains:

– Unless you have developed a smoking disease such as carbon, a smoker who stops smoking may disagree with your immune system after a month. This also reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes, which itself has effects on the immune system, says Cecilia Magnsson.

Like alcohol, smoking also has negative effects on blood pressure, says Lena Uller:

– Smoking and alcohol, even in moderate amounts, have a hypertensive effect. Since high blood pressure is a risk factor, it has been found that it is good to exclude or reduce consumption as much as possible.

Cecilia Magnusson wants to raise a special warning flag for the hookah:

– We see an increase in mortality in vulnerable areas, where the smoking pipe is often more widespread. Here’s a habit of hanging out in cafes and smoking hookahs together. This may be the case for older men sitting close to each other in small spaces and sharing mouthpieces, which is not appropriate at this time.

When it comes to tobacco, Cecilia Magnusson says there is no clear link to the immune system:

– But what the divers don’t think is that they put their fingers in their mouths all the time. It is not so appropriate at the moment, I say, that in itself it is a great tobacco.

3) physical activity

When covid-19 causes pneumonia, the body’s absorption of oxygen is greatly affected, and the supply of oxygen to the body’s tissues decreases. It’s also a reason why it’s good to be in good physical shape if the new corona virus sticks, explains Lena Uller:

– By training, for example, with a half-hour walk in the morning and a half-hour walk at night, and preferably a bit of strength training, you can prepare your body to withstand a little more load. To cope with an increase in heart rate. Everyone who has had a fever knows that the pulse rises and that you can hardly climb stairs. Well-trained athletes can have a resting heart rate of less than 40, compared to a normal 40-year-old who can be 60-80. This means that the athlete has better conditions to cope with the physiological stress that occurs in pneumonia. If you’re well trained, your heart doesn’t need to pump as much blood to oxygenate the same tissue, says Lena Uller.

But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to go from a life as a couch potato to trying to train like an elite. For most people, moderate exercise is what gives the best effect on the immune system, says Cecilia Magnusson:

– Cross-country skiers or marathon runners at the elite level who have been training extensively for several weeks and run out of it will have a negative impact on the immune system, and then may be more severely affected by infections. They are often concerned about meeting people and getting sick during the racing season, because they are infectious at the time. But it is extreme training that is hardly possible for people in general. So there really is nothing to worry about, she says.

4) Vitamin D deficiency and sunlight

The researchers suspect that vitamin D deficiency may also be a risk factor for covid-19. Peter Bergman, an associate professor at KI, is one of the researchers behind a large 2017 study showing that vitamin D has a protective effect against respiratory tract infections in general. The effect was greater in those who initially had low levels of vitamin D in their blood.

– Vitamin D is cheap, harmless and easily accessible. Vitamin D is known to prevent viruses in test tube experiments, and there are also randomized trials in which vitamin D supplementation has been shown to protect against influenza viruses. It is important to emphasize that there is no evidence that vitamin D protects against only covid-19, but it is not unreasonable that there are positive effects since vitamin D may have some protection against other respiratory tract infections caused by the virus, says Peter Bergman. .

Sunlight does many things that are positive for our immune system, which do not need to be linked to vitamin D

Beneficial effects of vitamin D It was discovered in the early 1900s when children in London’s slums were affected by the English disease, called the rocket, which produces a weak skeleton. Both fish liver oil and sunlight were tested as a treatment, which cured the rocket. In 1928, the chemist Adolf Windaus was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for the discovery of vitamin D and that it could be formed by ultraviolet light from the sun.

Among other things, Peter Bergman’s research team has looked at how vitamin D can strengthen the body’s immune system against tuberculosis by increasing the production of antimicrobial peptides, which can be described as the body’s own antibiotic.

– TBC victims were often treated in sanatoriums where patients were allowed to spend a lot of time in the sun. Vitamin D against tuberculosis was something you saw, but did not understand why. When the antibiotic came after World War II, it was far more effective against tuberculosis than ultraviolet light, making it forgotten, says Peter Bergman.

The development of resistance. Antibiotics have meant that vitamin D and other ways to strengthen the body’s immune system have increased again in the past 20 years. However, Peter Bergman maintains that among some researchers there are exaggerated notions of vitamin D as a type of universal medicine.

– There is a debate in the field. Some claim that vitamin D cures many different diseases, such as diabetes, depression, and Alzheimer’s, but there is very little scientific support there, he says.

Although vitamin D is available as a dietary supplement, the body is more easily absorbed by exposure to the sun and especially UVB light. However, it is sufficient to expose the skin to the sun for about 30 minutes a day to achieve maximum production of vitamin D in the skin, says Peter Bergman:

– Sunlight does a lot of positive things for our immune systems, which don’t need to be linked to vitamin D. So we usually weigh this up with sunlight carefully when we talk in the papers because we get criticism from dermatologists later. We don’t want to help people get more skin cancer.

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