So a lot of people in the Long Covid community are scoffing at the interview released by Gwyneth Paltrow this week, accusing her of ‘promoting’ an unhealthy diet.
The only way in which this interview could have been construed as promoting anything is if you were particularly susceptible to celebrities. She put out a video showing her as a little waif who lives on no calories just before her court case started. This has backfired as a PR strategy as I, for one, would have not been at all interested in her silly court case had it not been for the Orphan Annie interview.
As someone who two months ago had a scarlet face and was too exhausted too do terribly much, I was interested as we are approximately the same age and are likely to be suffering from the same issues.
I took the approach I know about, which is to minimise the cost of taking a natural approach and ignoring all bullshit in favour of things I know have worked in the past.
The advantage of having had a compromised immune system at a very early age due to Glandular Fever, now known as Epstein Barre, coupled with a gender and weight disadvantage at the doctor, is that it makes you extremely self reliant when you do finally get around to fixing your health issues.
I was reading the tweets of a former athlete with Long Covid this evening. Similar to Tories having their pension stolen under the cover of the Liz Truss episode, they are astonished to find that their additional capillaries due to their fitness actually puts them at a significant disadvantage when being attacked by Covid.
So I am talking a pragmatic approach to dealing with this issue, and the first issue I chose to deal with was breathing. I have spent the best part of the last two months healing a fluid retention/lung issue rather than bothering with actual weight loss, have, for now, wiped out an ‘incurable’ issue one doctor refused to believe existed, whilst another flung some cream at me and smirked on a different visit. I already had this knowledge, I was just too tired and grieving to actually use it.
The second issue which was rather pressing was my liver, and it turns out that due to my other health issues, low carbing was suppressing that because of anaemia and lack of vitamin c, so I chose to take a fruit based approach until this showed some improvement, which it has. Again, it got worse before it got better, so it was sheer experience that told me this would work.
The dizziness, which was rather stifling as it makes you very wary of being far from a chair, is now gone as I also dealt with blood quality and consistency, and the stubborn issue of headaches is much improved. Blood pressure, which was fluctuating wildly, is now under control.
Today I was testing cloves, and whilst I somewhat overdosed due to listening to some advice from the Middle East, a couple of cloves a day along with the garlic and ginger is looking like a good plan too as this released some previously bound infection.
When doing this, it is a good idea to be in a position to have a lot of sleep, as your sleep demands vary wildly when your body is unaccustomed to being provided with the tools to fix things, so this can come on rather suddenly. To go from being insomniac to sleeping 14 hours within a few short days can come as rather a shock if you are a creature of routine.
Finally, I would say so far, do not rush exercise. I found the first time that I experimented with food that you are quite keen on exercise WHEN YOUR HEALTH IS GOOD ENOUGH, and not before, so rather than tell yourself you are lazy, keep trying an exclusionary approach until you hit the combination that works for you. This is likely to be unique, so in terms of releasing a book on the subject, I will be taking much the same approach as I did to cooking, which is a loose framework rather than a set of rules.
There will always be stupid demotivational people who will try to talk you out of trying anything new. From my experience, such people end up dead, so feel entirely free to completely ignore them. They have no better option, they are just useless bottom feeders who probably do things like take advice from a wellness guru that in one breath claims to live on bone broth and in the next recommends duck bacon. Get such people out of your life completely. I cannot tell you how much better life is without them.
