Before I start, I want to give a disclaimer that information I am providing here is nothing more than hypothesis and has not been proven. I am not a doctor, however, it is based on years of knowledge through my studies and tied with logic. If any of the information you feel vague or unclear, check with your doctor and perform you own research just as I have done.
After March 2020, people's lives got captured by the COVID-19 and caused not only restriction to our living but cost us so much. Majority of school has shifted to remote learning, great number of businesses has been shutting down permanently, traveling for vacation has been limited, and so on. Pharmaceutical industries are working hard to come up with vaccine to prevent from people getting affected by COVID-19 or Corona virus and I'm looking forward to it's availability to the public so our lives can be restored.
As much as I'm excited about progress of vaccination to it's completion, however, I do feel that not every detail has be explained or understood by the public. That is relationship between our immune system and effectiveness of the vaccine. Whether it is flu, corona virus, or other vaccination shots, if the immune system is too weak, you can still get sickness. Strength of immune system cannot be boost by wearing mask or social distancing. Sure, those habits will help prevent and I would keep on encouraging people to use it and practice it as needed.
Yet, those who are not been active, dietary habits been off balance , or stress level has not been managed and disrupting the sleep, most likely the immune system of those people are compromised. Let's get into basic of immune system.
It is said that 70% of immune system is within our digestive system and 1 in every 3 cells in our intestine is responsible for immunity. So how does it work? When any object that enters the body will be judge by immune system whether the body needs it or not. It is like immigration staff at the boarder line or at the airport to check who can enter the country or not. Whether you like it or not, virus, bacteria, toxins enter our body everyday. However, because of our immune system, we can avoid getting affected by them.
So why do we get sick? When digestive system is compromised by lack of sleep, too much junk food or stimulants are being consumed will cause stress to the body and immune system will not work properly. Thus the body's protection is allowing virus, bacteria, and toxin to enter the body causing condition like allergy, flu, cancer, virus infection can affect your body. So when people has been sleep deprived due to too much screen time (movie, game, work related), consuming too much junk food, alcohol and caffeinated beverages, lack of physical activity, and taking too many medication can lead to drop in immunity system by stressing the digestive system.
What does this has to do with vaccine? Well, effectiveness of vaccine can be determined by quality of vaccine itself, of course, but also by strength of immune system. This means even when the quality of vaccine is good but the body is compromised, vaccine may have no effect. Recently, Seattle Times covered that CDC has warned that the vaccination may not be effective to people who are obese. It is not very surprising and glad to see some people are catching up. However, it is not only obese population that needs to be concerned. When you look at people who are taking some sort of medication, whether it is, blood pressure, cholesterol, anxiety, depression medication, you are stressing your body out. People who are over consuming, caffeinated beverages such as energy drinks, coffee, and other beverage that has high concentration of caffeine. Caffeinated beverages does have benefit to our health especially coffee, however over consumption can affect our sleep quality and may negatively impact our digestive system.
Vaccine for the corona virus still has not been available to the public yet. However, until then, we all should be prepare our health so that vaccine can be effective. First, exercise 2-3 hours per week. You should work on resistance based exercise. Rather than just walking carry a sack with bottles of water in it. If you have access to resistance training, start lifting some weights. Second is improving your eating habit. If you have been consuming junk food, start replacing them with natural food sources such as vegetables, meat, fish and so on. Try consuming caffeinated products before noon, so it won't affect your sleep quality. Which leads to third point, fixing your sleep. Work on sleeping and awaking at same time. For example if you are planning to sleep at 10 pm and waking at 6 am, make sure to keep that schedule everyday. Even if sleep may seem not compromised with caffeine, alcohol, and sleep aids study shows that quality of sleep is disrupted.
I pray that we can get proper vaccination shot so that all of us can go back to our normal lifestyle.
Kota Shimada
Comments