Eat real food and limit sugar consumption

Early in the pandemic, the World Health Organization launched a Stay Healthy At Home Campaign, urging adults to limit their sugar consumption to less than six teaspoons a day — the amount of sugar in one small carton of chocolate milk served to school children.

The reality is that we are partially responsible for our fragility to the coronavirus. Now we are hoping for a vaccine and medications to pull us out of this pandemic. But the current crisis reveals how truly vulnerable we are.

We have often blamed the victim for having obesity or other diet-related diseases, but these illnesses now affect up to 80% of the world’s population. Our current COVID-19 approach first focused on hiding from the virus and then a vaccine. But there are always different varieties of viruses lurking.

The best idea is to strengthen our resistance to COVID and future viruses by having a healthy immune system, which means a healthy lifestyle.

Reducing sugar and refined carbohydrates as well as industrial oils, which together fuel insulin resistance, is an ideal first step. Eating to keep blood sugar low and stable will clearly reduce risk. Anyone can purchase a continuous glucose monitor to know exactly how foods are affecting blood sugar levels.

Junk food is the obvious enemy, even if it can be every quarantiner’s best friend. Yet even these comforting foods can be resisted when replaced by whole, natural foods including filling fats and proteins. It is also crucial to focus the diet on foods that are nutrient-dense: meats, eggs, seafood, dairy, vegetables and low-sugar fruits.

Many people who aim to achieve good health aim to do so through natural means, such as better nutrition and other lifestyle changes of moving more, sleeping better and reducing stress. So instead of managing their conditions with pills, they seek to reverse chronic disease through more natural approaches.

This strategy, like a vaccine, should provide protection now and for many years to come, and that is essential, because COVID-19 is not like a blizzard — hitting hard and quickly passing — but rather like a long, hard winter that we just experienced but we are still vulnerable now that it is spring.

We all can get healthier and this applies especially to those with metabolic illness. Each comorbidity you have decreases your physiological reserve. We should be doing a better job in maintaining our health for times when we are under stress.

We hope to see a new world where people have the tools to recover their good health and become stronger to fight pandemics such as this one. We might still be in the early miles of a COVID marathon and even as the coronavirus abates, the ongoing obesity, diabetes, and metabolic disease pandemics will continue to take their toll on our society.

It’s time to take back our health, our own resilience, and that of our nation.

Mark Cucuzzella is a professor of family medicine at West Virginia University School of Medicine and a practitioner at the WVU Center for Diabetes and Metabolic Health and Shepherdstown Medical office.