Leaders Self Care and Group Care COVID 19

How do leader’s take care of themselves, their families and communities during the Covid-19 crisis?

Dr. Sam Pappas identifies the following principles for all leaders and their followers to embrace to not only survive but thrive during this unprecedented crisis.

What are your particular health risks? Age, High Blood Pressure, cardiovascular disease? Metabolic dysfunction?  Where is your biochemistry taking you? Do you have chronic inflammation; low vitamin D, zinc, magnesium, omega 3? Do you need more glutathione? Have you assessed your advanced cardio-metabolic and inflammatory levels?

From Cleveland Heart Labs in conjunction with Quest Diagnostics:

• Identifying cardiovascular risk
• Inflammatory Biomarkers and their Association with Atherosclerosis

Learn from the Ancient Greek goddess of good health, Hygeia, to restore and rebuild. Work to optimize your lifestyle:

• Practice good hygiene
• Enhance the quality of your sleep and get plenty of rest
• Go outdoors and get plenty of Sun
• Eat as clean as you can and exercise often
• Turn up the heat; hyperthermia like baths and saunas are great for your immune system
• Greek theory vs Roman practice. Both theory and practice are needed. We need to be taught by the adversity we are enduring and learn from the discipline of the many ongoing struggles.

A Greek spiritual term related to the exercise of discipline, spiritual training and combat. Make sure to engage in these spiritual exercises to awaken from the ‘sleep-walk’ of daily life to fully engage in a lived wisdom:

• Regular prayer
• Meditation
• Mindfulness
• Fasting
• Scriptural reading

Countless studies confirm many years of real-world knowledge that key nutraceuticals and supplements like vitamin D, zinc, Vitamin C, Quercetin, and NAC provide value for the immune system. Look for products that have the following ingredients:

• Vitamin A
• Vitamin C
• Vitamin D
• Zinc
• Selenium
• Quercetin
• N-Acetyl Cysteine (NAC)
• Medicinal Mushrooms such as Cordyceps, Turkey Tail, Chaga Gold, and Reishi
• Elderberry
• PEA

All of these immune support supplements are included in my custom blend called Immune Armor. You can see more about Immune Armor in a prior message to my patients.

• Protect the many by isolating the few, not isolating the many to protect the few
• Avoid social isolation and stay attuned to your mental health
• Use masks when we can’t physically distance, are in close contact with those having weaker immune systems, or when in prolonged close contact with individuals whose current health status and risk factors are unknown.

Tune out the media, news outlets, and all those arm-chair health experts in your midst.

• There is a huge amount of misinformation circulating on social media.
• New ‘statisticians’ are showing up daily with misleading information.
• Arm-chair ‘virologists’ and ‘immunologists’ often confuse rather than enlighten.
• Listen to trusted health professionals.

• Targeted supplements often at higher doses- Vitamin D, C, zinc, quercetin
• Consider off-label medicines in partnership with your medical team, if at higher risk. Many very well-known and well-studied antimicrobials, corticosteroids, and anticoagulants in combination with supplements are being used with patients at home in the U.S. and abroad with good results.
• Personalize. Be aware that many factors are contributing to the local and worldwide morbidity and mortality numbers- no one country or state, nor any one plan is perfect. We must use all the tools available in this war as we personalize support for our families and communities.
• Insist on the right protocols. If illness is advancing and you need more involved medical care, insist on the protocols set forth by the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance
• The I-MASK+ Prophylaxis & Early Outpatient Treatment Protocol for COVID-19 (PDF).
• MATH+ Treatment Protocol for COVID-19, for hospitalized patients.

As a natural fusionist, I constantly try to see the good in all and look for win-win scenarios especially in the world of medicine and healthcare. In trying to explain and parse out the inconsistent and haphazard approaches of the medical system to the pandemic, I believe we should stay away from conspiracy theories and the unproductive language so commonplace in our fractured society.

A much better explanation may lay in the various outlooks embedded in much of the healthcare system. The deep thinker, risk analyst, and overall Renaissance man Nassim Taleb has talked about a Greco-Roman divide outlook in society. To paraphrase Taleb’s analysis, The real difference in politics isn’t the “right” vs “left” gradation but rather “Greek” vs “Roman.”

“Greek” puts theory above practice, “Roman” puts practice above theory. As a Greek by birth who is also an admirer of the fruits of the Roman world, I believe he is on to something as it relates to healthcare systems and the practice of medicine.

In regards to the medical world, the “Greeks” represent the academic and public health organizations and the “Romans” represent physicians and healthcare workers in the trenches who work more often with patients.

Both groups are necessary and must interact and learn from each other. For the most part, however, I opine that this pandemic has been driven by the outlook of views of the “Greek” faction with not enough emphasis on the experiences and views of the “Roman” side.

We need to look at practice not just theory to better engage in this war.

To close with Polybius, the great Greek historian whose world view was greatly shaped by his time in Rome, Greeks were “untaught by adversity” and the Romans have not reached it by any reasoning but by “the discipline of many struggles and always choosing by the light of experience gained in disaster.“