I AM a year into my International Health postgraduate degree. You know how some students complain about not having any actual application for their academic studies? I have it the other way these days. What scares us the most is the unprecedented transmissibility of the Covid-19 virus that has necessitated lockdowns in many of the world’s cities, including community quarantine in Metro Manila and Cebu. Whoever didn’t take his/her health importantly before is surely not joking around now.

How do we stay healthy amid the quarantine and the chaos around us?

On exercise:

1. Move as often as you can within the confines of your home. This is not the time to be in the gym if you don’t want to contract the disease and spread it to someone else.

2. Short bursts of activity are enough to keep our fitness levels maintained. A 15-minute exercise in the morning and 30 minutes more before dinner is pretty good.

3. Work on movements you can do on a yoga mat: Planks, deadbugs, lunges and following exercise videos are all better than nothing.

On nutrition:

1. Stock up on healthier food: Sweet potatoes, beans for protein; Oatmeal for fiber; Tableya for fat; Red and brown rice varieties are food that we can store for a long time. These healthier food options help maintain our immunity during these times.

2. Try fasting. There are multiple studies now on fasting and autophagy, the body’s ability to heal itself at the cellular level. Try not eating for 16 hours and build up to 24 hours or even longer.

3. Learn Recipes. Perhaps this may be the best time (since we may have a lot of it) to learn different recipes that may be more beneficial to our health and palate.

On stress:

1. Unwind, meditate and pray.

2. Use this time to sharpen the saw, become a better person and a better professional.

Let’s use this social down-time to improve ourselves and get healthier. We’ve been pushing health and wellness for quite sometime now. I hope this time around, people really take their health seriously. Exercise and good nutrition are really beyond looking good and losing weight. We used to say that health is wealth. It is true, but this time, good health is also a matter of life and death. Choose wisely.