Health Matters Newsletter - May 2020

Welcome to the second edition of Health Matters for May 2020... a year that will go down in the history books as a somewhat unique one thanks to COVID-19.

Its been a tough few months for many of us and a frustrating one for many of our customers who have had their orders held up by courier companies and the postal service. The good news is, however, that we are starting to see some light with the clearance of many of the backlogs. Hopefully, in a few weeks, all the delivery issues will be largely resolved, although I expect it will be sometime after that before we can say that things are back to normal with deliveries.

Some of our customers have been severely affected through either the loss of their jobs and or their businesses. My heart goes out to these people. I understand what it is like to suffer severe financial hardship... but, remain positive no matter how hard that is. Sometimes adversity can bring about a new start which is better than before.

One positive thing that we see about COVID-19 is an increase in people's awareness of the need to take personal responsibility for their own health. This is no doubt more people realise that we cannot rely on the medical system to protect us from a virus such as COVID-19 and that the only real protection is from what our own body can provide us.

Sadly, a high proportion of us does not have a body that can provide that protection. This is why around 90% of all fatalities from COVID-19 are with people with 1 or more underlying conditions. Age is really not the major cause of death from this virus if you are healthy... it just seems that way because so many elderly people do have underlying conditions. In Italy, the average was something like 3 underlying conditions for each fatality.

To make matters worse, the use of prescription medicines are out of control with many people 65+ having 5 or more medications a day. These destroy our immune systems and do not generally fix the underlying cause of the condition but rather mask the symptoms. No one knows the interactions between many of these medications which turn the inside of your body into a battleground.

My Mother indirectly died from heart medications when she was 89 because they made her dizzy, caused a fall and broke her hip and then died a few days later in hospital from pneumonia.

So, the takeaway message today is there is no need to be fearful of COVID-19 or anything else for that matter irrespective of what age you are... so long as you focus on your overall health.

If you are on medications, question your doctor about the need for them but do some research on them before doing so. Remember it is your body and it is right to question everything that you put in it. So often I find after talking to people that they are on medications that are doing them more harm than good. So, do your research and if in doubt, seek another opinion.

Talk to you again in another couple of weeks... until then... take care.