Getting Healthy During The COVID-19 Pandemic

Many of us, actually all of us, are now at home minimizing our contact with others.  Per local experts, this weekend and through the next week, Houston will likely see the most cases of COVID-19 yet.  This means the hospitals will continue to fill up and our available ICU beds will continue to decrease.  Officials have issued the "Stay-at-home" and I know many of you whom I have spoken with on the phone are doing your best to follow these guidelines.

For many of my patients, social distancing is extremely important because so many of you are considered "high risk" for serious complications if infected with COVID-19.  Therefore, we are doing our best to treat whatever issues you have from home when possible, saving you a trip to an ER or hospital where you could become infected.

But many of you are also going a bit "stir-crazy" at home.  There is something about the human mind that does not like being confined.  And so, as time languishes on, this stay-at-home becomes less and less pleasant for some.

The question I have is:  how are you spending that time at home?   More importantly, could you use the time to begin some new healthy habits that usually you are "too busy" to try...? 

Yes, Im talking about improving your diet and increasing your exercise!

As an example, here at Casa Aliota we are researching new and healthy recipes and trying to put them in place of old staples in our diet.  Since we do not have a food shortage in Houston, there is still access to fresh vegitables and fruits.  Our goal is to have at least one full salad, filled with vegitables a day.  Our new "healthy salad" looks like this:

Spring mix (or any lettuce you prefer)

1 cubed yellow squash

1 chopped avocado

1 cubed medium cucumber

1 carton of small cherry tomatos

1 diced yellow pepper

1 chopped green onion

To make it more of a meal, we then add grilled or steamed chicken, or even 99% fat free turkey that has been browned on the stove (seen here in the picture.)

The most important thing is to set some personal goals during this time, take your medicines regularly, and try to get some basic exercise so that do you not decondition.