Why I am calm in the midst of the COVID-19 chaos (March, 2020)

To Health-Conscious Friends:

In my thirty years leading the American Holistic Health Association, this is the first time I have felt a pressing need to send out a personal message to you.

I want to send you loving wishes that you are finding the inner and outer resources to nurture yourself and your loved ones during these uniquely challenging days. May you be in a safe location and able to do what is needed to keep yourselves healthy.

And may you find a way to be calm. It is understandable to feel the stress of the possibility of becoming infected with the Coronavirus, or COVID-19, that is spreading around our nation and the world. But as a high level of emotional stress can have a negative impact on your immune system, I encourage you to consider what specifically you are might be concerned about and look for ways to lower your anxiety about these things—to lighten the load on your immune system.

The key message I want to share in this letter was triggered by others who were surprised that I was staying so calm, even though I am in the group “most at risk of dying from an infection with the virus” due to “severe acute respiratory syndrome“ with a “hyper-immune response.” Understand that I am not a healthcare professional, so this is not about what I am doing to stay healthy. Rather, I am sharing the process I went through to make a series of decisions about what I would do or not do to give myself the best possible opportunity to have a positive outcome. And thus to be able to sustain being confident and calm. Should you have any of the same categories of concerns I mention, perhaps what I did might offer some options to support your personal process for lessening your level of anxiety.

Level of Risk

When I first heard about COVID-19, I felt it important to figure out how much of a threat it might be to me. I learned that being in my mid-80s put me smack in the middle of the most vulnerable group. Rather than freaking out, which is a natural initial response, I decided to determine everything that I could possibly do to reduce my level of risk.

I acknowledged my personal life journey of involvement with and leadership of health enhancing organizations, and how this has connected me with amazing teachers that explained how to lead a healthy lifestyle. As a result of decades of learning about healthy lifestyle choices and gradually adapting them, I am blessed to currently have no serious health conditions. This is a strength to help me offset the weakness of my age. It’s a promising start.

I invite you to take a moment and be honest with yourself about the current status of your health. Have you been following what AHHA’s website (ahha.org) and free eReports have been sharing with you about healthy lifestyle choices? What are your current health strengths and weaknesses? What is your level of risk of a COVID-19 infection?

Get Informed

Since I first heard about COVID-19, I have been monitoring available information and wading through emotional rhetoric to find facts. I have noted who was primarily being infected. I learned the typical symptoms. I followed the unfolding data on how this virus is transmitted and how to lessen this happening. I tracked the severity statistics. I am continuing to follow the new information becoming available about treatment options.

I encourage you to decide what you need to know for your own peace of mind. Then go out and find this information and take the time to verify its credibility. There is much on the internet these days to support your research. Moving from not knowing to knowing can be empowering.

Prevention

I wanted to be proactive, so I contacted my personal healthcare team to learn what preventive suggestions they had for me. As I was already eating a healthy diet and taking carefully selected supplementation, their key recommendations were focused on what would enhance my immune system in addition to the standard cautions for reducing proximity to the virus. I live in California, so have honored the recent state directives to stay at home unless absolutely necessary to go out to, for example, restock groceries.

I encourage you to talk with your personal physician or healthcare team about what is recommend for you, based on your age and health status. If you need to add another practitioner to your healthcare team, you can check out AHHA’s referral resources at ahha.org/referrals-portal.

Symptoms

I felt it would be important that I correctly understood what symptoms I should be on the lookout for. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other medical sites are describing the usual COVID-19 symptoms as mild to severe respiratory illness with fever, cough, and difficulty breathing. However, some people have very mild infections of COVID-19 and do not show any symptoms. I also learned to keep in mind that many symptoms could be allergies, the common cold, or another strain of flu. Very confusing! The best I can do is consider myself a “possible carrier” and not do anything to possibly pass on to someone else. And I should do all I can to pay attention to any symptoms I might develop and keep myself very healthy.

I encourage you to watch for these symptoms in yourself and call your physician if ANY symptoms show up. Also avoid senior citizens or anyone with an existing health condition so you don’t accidently expose them or yourself to the virus.

Identify Treatment Options

Early on, no treatment options for COVID-19 infections were being mentioned. For my own peace of mind, I needed to know that specific treatment would be appropriate for me, should the worst happen and I end up with a severe pneumonia-type COVID-19 infection. As my system does not tolerate any pharmaceutical drugs, I had more of a challenge than most. I had to find a non-drug treatment option. I was able to locate published research discussing a non-drug approach for treating pneumonia when the inflammation was caused by an infection from either a virus or bacteria. It made sense to me that this should at least help with COVID-19 infections. I made sure my healthcare team agreed that this could be a possible option for me should it be needed. Having this information in place was the reassurance I needed to stay calm. I sincerely hope, of course, never to have to implement this option.

If treatment options are a concern of yours, I encourage you to check with your personal physician or healthcare team to find out, should you get a COVID-19 infection and it is severe, if they have treatment options in mind that would be appropriate for you. Consider the pros and cons of any option to be sure that you would be happy with its implementation. This may calm your fears.

Availability of Treatment Selections

Because my selected treatment option, should it be needed, would most likely not be readily available, it was important to me that I could verify that it was currently available in the county where I live. Once I had found a local doctor who was currently providing this therapy, I was able to totally relax.

Testing

Currently, my focus is on staying informed about the rapidly changing COVID-19 testing options. I know that should I show any suspicious symptoms, I may need to be tested to learn whether or not I might infect others and so I might keep ahead of the progression of the virus. I was concerned about finding a situation where someone who was a carrier could be tested without infecting others. Now more and more special COVID-19 testing locations are becoming available. I particularly like the sound of drive-thru testing as an option that minimizes transmission as much as possible.

Ongoing

I plan to continue being sensible, rational, and vigilant in all of my preventive activities. I am able to remain calm because I am confident that I am doing all that I can to stay healthy so that, if I should become infected, my immune system should be healthy enough to deal with it before it becomes serious.

I encourage you to do the same—for your own protection and to protect those around you. May you do whatever is appropriate for you to create your own sense of calm.

Yours for good health,
Suzan Walter
AHHA president