Anyone started taking vitamins due to coronavirus ? What one's?

[Changeusernameagain1929383]

Just that really - anyone started taking vitamins to try give their immune system a boost?

I've seen some news articles saying other countries been treating it with vitamin c and d .

Just to add, I'm in no way that it's a cure and there's no evidence it works, for me I just feel like I have to do something 🤷‍♀️

[hamstersarse]

Perhaps covid will be seen as a killer for the medicated? Many of the risk factors relate to conditions that are medicated rather than prevented or treated by looking at the cause

I really agree with this sentiment. It seems we have being taking our ‘health’ for granted for too long as a nation. The cost of lifestyle disease for the NHS is astronomical and why the NHS is struggling in general. Yet people still say the funding should go up and up. This is just not a sustainable model, people need to be responsible for their own health. Obesity is not healthy, taking no exercise is not healthy....we can’t keep hiding from this. It can’t all be on the NHS.

[ppeatfruit]

people need to be responsible for their own health

YES YES YES Eating plenty of good fresh food seems to be beyond so many people (even before this crisis) Living on high fat take aways is not going to help our health . The opposite in fact.

Sadly I blame the media for a lot of it. The adverts on telly hardly ever promote healthy food. It's all fizzy high sweetened\sugared drinks or alcohol, fast foods etc And the TV chefs cooking carb and sugar heavy cakes, desserts also meat heavy meals.

[crazyontheweekend]

I agree about personal responsibility for own health. And am hoping this situation will finally make more Brits take more care of their health.
The ‘standard UK diet’ isn’t generally healthy. As a nation we eat way too much sugar, processed food and general crap.
Corn Flakes for breakfast. Crisps and a processed sandwich for lunch. A ready meal or a bowl of pasta for tea. Just examples obviously but horrendous.
Add in too much alcohol and generally overeating and it’s a health disaster.
We all need to be eating food in its original form with way more vegetables and fruit (fruit to a lesser extent than veg). Vegan or not it’s about food in its unadulterated form.
All the vitamin tablets in the world do no good if your general diet is poor.

[ppeatfruit]

Yes I agree crazy The traditional British way of eating is not healthy. Pie and chips will not cut it every day.

Even meat and 2 veg. esp if one of the "veg." is potatoes isn't easy to digest as is egg and or cheese on wheat toast. I can't eat like that I'd be continually constip.!!!! (sorry tmi )

[iVampire]

Perhaps covid will be seen as a killer for the medicated? Many of the risk factors relate to conditions that are medicated rather than prevented or treated by looking at the cause

As the cause of my cancer is unknown, and I do not match the only suspected environmental factors, this was deeply unpleasant to read. If someone blamed me to my face for my cancer, I would have no difficulty in being equally rude in answering, but at least my rudeness would be based in fact. Because better lifestyle might reduce your chances of getting certain conditions. But it does not eliminate them

[Calledyoulastnightfromglasgow]

I vampire - that was me and I am honestly very sorry if I upset you. It was why I used the word “many” and not “all”.

There are many people at higher risk through zero fault of their own.

But it does remain the case that many of the risk factors are preventable lifestyle diseases so prevalent in the west relating to cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, obesity and type 2 diabetes. These are medicated. They don’t need to be with lifestyle adjustment

[Calledyoulastnightfromglasgow]

And I say that as someone facing a lifetime higher risk of a genetic cancer

[VanGoghsDog]

*Corn Flakes for breakfast. Crisps and a processed sandwich for lunch. A ready meal or a bowl of pasta for tea. Just examples obviously but horrendous.x

Sorry, why is this "horrendous"?

And what is a "processed sandwich"?

I have something like corn flakes with oat milk and blue berries. I often have a wrap for lunch with felafal and salad. There's nothing wrong with pasta.

[VanGoghsDog]

I blame the media for a lot of it. The adverts on telly hardly ever promote healthy food. It's all fizzy high sweetened\sugared drinks or alcohol, fast foods etc

Obviously. Because who is going to fund an advert for spinach?
But to be fair the supermarket adverts often show people cooking healthier food.

[Calledyoulastnightfromglasgow]

Because most of that is “ultra-processed” food - even the bread - of which the UK consumes the highest amount in the west and which is linked to poorer health outcomes.

[crazyontheweekend]

Most breakfast cereals and bread is ultra-processed, doesn't resemble its original food-stuff, is stripped of its original goodness and has a fair amount of sugar added. Wheat, corn etc are also highly highly sprayed crops.

In the case of Cornflakes, however you eat them and whatever you add to them, they are touted as healthy by their makers. It's clever advertising.

I encourage anyone that eats Cornflakes or any of the other similar cereals touted as healthy such as bran flakes, rice crispies etc to take a look at how they are made and what is stripped out/added in. This link gives you an idea;

www.theguardian.com/business/2010/nov/23/food-book-extract-felicity-lawrence

Most bread is the same to a lesser or greater extent. A loaf of white Warburtons toastie loaf/white wraps are much worse on the scale than a loaf of Sainsbury's (for example) wholemeal organic bread for the same reasons. This type of ultra-processed food plays havoc with blood sugars too.

Again, pasta is the same. It's a scale again, white pasta vs say sprouted organic spelt pasta. You get the idea.

It's really hard because like another poster said, we are bombarded with companies telling us how healthy their product is. A lot of us were brought up on convenience food (i was, particularly in the 80s when convenience food really took off) and with our busy lifestyles it's difficult to cook everything from scratch.

I just hope after this situation, more people will move towards eating a less processed diet and we can go back to our ancestral roots a bit more where food is not what i call Frankenstein food. My diet isn't perfect and my kids would live on cheese wraps if they could but we all have a duty to read about/find out what we are putting in our bodies. I hope this helps, I'm not being snippy or nasty about people's diet choices, just want to get more information out about healthy eating. Let's face it, health is everything x

[hamstersarse]

But it does remain the case that many of the risk factors are preventable lifestyle diseases so prevalent in the west relating to cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, obesity and type 2 diabetes. These are medicated. They don’t need to be with lifestyle adjustment

This point is so important and I don't feel like many people appreciate it. People seem to have lost their agency over their own health, they feel like if they are diagnosed with T2 diabetes for example, then "the medication will sort it". This is not their fault, it is the way the health system and advice works - there is no money in telling people to change their lifestyle and fix their disease (unless you count tax savings in the long run!) and most doctors in the UK follow this pharmaceutical model - diagnosis of T2 and straight on the medication and very very little discussion about how you can quite easily reverse T2 diabetes without medication.

To give some scale to the context of the problem with T2 diabetes:

• Each year in the UK, 24,000 people with diabetes die early
• Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness in people of working age in the UK
• Over 100 amputations are carried out every week on people with diabetes because of complications

The most comprehensive analysis to date concludes that the cost of for Type 2 diabetes to the NHS is £8.8bn

All of this data is from 2010/11 and the figures have very much increased since then - best estimates show that 5.5 million people will have it by 2030.

That is what is wrong with the shitty processed sandwich and the crappy cornflakes. People don't seem to make the connection that this food makes you actually ill - it doesn't just make you fat, it will kill you over time! Yet here we are with a vast number of people now more vulnerable to this virus than they need to be had the advice been better and they could have taken on their underlying health conditions, or never developed them in the first place!

I will be clear that I do not blame individuals directly, they are given SHITTY advice and the whole mass marketing of very unhealthy food is a disgrace, but I do feel that people can do their own research and take back control of their health despite the society we live in.

[crazyontheweekend]

hamsterareace - i couldn't agree more.

There are foods that heal and foods that hurt.

My BIL was diagnosed with Type2, has been a sugar/carbs fiend all his life. He has tried hard to change his diet with no advice from his doctor at all. But the other week he told me he eats Kelloggs Bran Flakes for breakfast and was genuinely under the impression that they are a healthy foodstuff. I totally blame advertising/lack of education not him. It had never occurred to him to look at the side of the box so I pointed out the sugar/carb content and he was shocked. He's dropped them now thank goodness.

[hamstersarse]

I would be very very very angry if I had T2 diabetes right now and I did my research and actually found out that the doctors I had been dealing with had never pushed me to change my diet and given me shitty WRONG advice about how to 'manage' diabetes. It has put people at unnecessary risk.

If anyone is interested in a doctor who DOES know how to reverse T2 by lifestyle and actively does this in his practice, look up Dr David Unwin or @lowcarbdoctor

[VanGoghsDog]

Well, if people don't know that cereals are carbs then you are right, there is no helping them.

[ppeatfruit]

hamster and crazy So good to hear some common sense (well it should be) on here. After waking with arthritic fingers in my 40s I remembered my poor granny's deformed hands and researched about how to eating for health.

It lead me to begin Food Combining . Which, with looking at my Blood Type way of eating has given me very good health since , that's one of the reasons I was so surprised to get even a 'mild' version of Covid (if I did get it) I hadn't had flu (or anything else) for 15 years.

I know that stress and bad sleeping can bring my Immune system down too. it's not easy of course but it's well worth trying to be healthy.

I remember my GP saying (many years ago) I was one in the 300,00 of her patients to care about their health. !!

[crazyontheweekend]

ppeatfruit - so glad you managed to eat well for your health.

I totally agree, sleep and stress are equally important for good health.

Van Gogh - the problem is that most people are not taught this either at school or by parents. It's not that they're stupid. It's only when they experience poor health for the first time that it might become something they research for themselves (case in point the poster above ppeatfruit or as in the current Covid situation). I only pray this makes more people eat better, lose weight and take more personal responsibility. That companies like Kelloggs are taken to task more or better still abandoned.

[hamstersarse]

Well, if people don't know that cereals are carbs then you are right, there is no helping them.

I think most people don't even think about carbs, and what we even mean by that. If you ask most people what would the problem be with eating lots of carbs, they wouldn't know the answer or would think there is no problem with it.

Never mind that Bran Flakes are not marketed as a carb, they are marketed around the one good thing they apparently have - low fat! (That in itself is total bollocks anyway because there are healthy fats that we need to sustain life). These companies pick ONE thing that is good about their product and market the hell out of it, you can't blame people for believing them.

@ppeatfruit I too am glad you have got healthy - arthritis at 40 is your body telling you you were doing something wrong! And I totally agree that it is not just food - I work to the 4 pillars of sleep, nutrition, exercise & movement and stress management ( you have to keep your cortisol low!).

[ppeatfruit]

I remember quite a few discussions on here with posters saying they couldn't\or didn't know how to, get their 5 veg. or fruits a day.

The interesting thing about the Blood Type is the explanation it gives for our varying reactions to so called 'healthy' foods. I've always had a nasty heartburn after eating a banana or an orange, also the 'deadly nightshade' veg. They are all an 'avoid' for me, but they aren't for others, this is confusing for almost all people. But it does help to explain 'allergies'.