One of the biggest hurdles to making life wonderful is living in survival mode, lowering our heads and soldiering on day after day, dealing with whatever comes our way as it comes. We know what survival mode looks like at a meta‑level. And we know how bad it feels day‑in and day‑out: the exhaustion, the fear, the dissatisfaction, the desire for something different and more fulfilling.

We are not designed to live in chronic survival mode. In fact, our ancestors experienced danger and threat in short bursts. They would see a threat, they would escape from the danger, and then they would rest and recover.

Unfortunately, today the threats we perceive are pervasive and often constant, primarily because they come from our thoughts, not actual physical danger. We are not just running from the tiger; we are raging on the road, worrying about our finances, struggling to balance work and home life, concerned about our children, anxious about the relationships we have or the ones we want and don’t yet have, and so on. This threat exists in a mind that, in survival mode, doesn’t shut off danger signals. In fact, your body is designed to raise the ante, or in other words, to “see your threat and raise you another threat” that you haven’t considered yet, all in an effort to protect you from anything and everything possible while increasing your chances of survival. As a result, we never get to rest or recover, and thus our bodies remain in a perpetual state of threat or high alert.

Therefore, a strategy that was once beneficial to our survival has transformed into one that has become detrimental to it. Chronic stress is linked to all sorts of proinflammatory states and conditions, challenges with fertility, and increased risk of asthma, heart disease, obesity, pain (headaches, back and neck pain), gastrointestinal issues (reflux, heartburn, colitis), depression, insomnia, and immune suppression, among other health issues.

Unfortunately, the ups and downs of daily living make it impossible to rid ourselves of stress. Instead, we need to learn to manage our daily challenges differently. We can do this by giving our bodies messages of safety instead of messages of danger. Here are a few exercises you can try to signal safety and reduce stress.

Use facial expressions to dampen the threat response.

Use facial expressions to dampen the threat response and increase your sense of safety. Try singing or humming your favorite tune. Share a smile with someone, even if it is just yourself in the mirror. Studies show that smiling, regardless of whether you are happy or not, can help lower your heart rate and more quickly recover from a stress response.

Take some deep slow breaths.

Take a few deep, slow breaths, breathing in for a count of three and out for a count of seven. Slow breathing techniques increase relaxation, alertness, and comfort while decreasing anxiety, depression, confusion, and anger.

Use your five senses.

Use your five senses to bring your attention to the present moment, most likely a time when you are indeed safe. This grounding technique helps reduce stress and anxiety by shifting our perception away from danger and towards safety. You can engage with the five senses in several ways.

1) Step outside with a cup of tea (taste), smell a flower (smell), listen to birds chirping (hear), look at the trees around you (see), and feel the weather on your skin (feel).

2) Another variation is the 5‑4‑3‑2‑1 technique. Find and name five things you can see (sky, clouds, flowers, butterflies, trees), four things you can feel (wind, warmth, hair on neck, ground), three things you can hear (traffic, talking, birds), two things you can smell (grass, flowers), and one thing you can taste (tea).

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5 Key Components of Optimal Health

At Kinectin.com, we developed the “Hands of Joy” model for optimizing health and well-being, composed of your internal world, or left hand, interwoven with your external world, or right hand. 

We label the five fingers of your left hand S.N.A.P.S., which stands for Sleep, Nutrition, Activity, Play, and Soul. By optimizing each of these fingers of your internal world you will be more resourced to do everything that is important to you, including fighting viruses. So, if you are wondering what you can do right now to optimize your immune system, focus on these five areas.

• SLEEP: Ensure that you get sufficient sleep to feel rested (for most that is 8 hours).
• NUTRITION: Eat as many whole plant foods as possible (to both optimize nutrient content and minimize toxic burden).
• ACTIVITY: Get your body moving by engaging in moderate daily activity (everything from taking walks to following online exercise videos).
• PLAY: Engage in play (that is, content-free time) regularly—not only with your family and friends, but also by finding your own fun and creative outlets. It’s hard to stimulate stress chemical–inducing anxiety during play.
• SOUL: Take daily measures (e.g., meditation or other self-regulating techniques) to get your body out of survival mode to enjoy life rather than just get through it. 

This simple framework ensures that your body will be primed for action when needed. Additionally, all five of these areas of internal health play an important role in helping to rid your body of excess immune-system-suppressing stress chemicals such adrenaline and cortisol. 

As you can see, there is quite a bit involved in your internal world, so it is helpful to explore this in parts. For the remainder of this article we are going to focus on nutrition and how proper nutrition can significantly increase the odds of remaining healthy through this pandemic.

Have Healthy Comfort Food Ready to Go

The first thing to remember is we all have needs for ease, comfort, and relief that are particularly triggered in times like this. For many, that can mean turning to highly processed junk foods. So, let’s be aware of that and then take steps to set ourselves up for success by having whole plant foods on hand that are both tasty and ready to enjoy. 

While we love leafy greens, don’t limit yourself to just salads: Have more calorically dense dishes, like mashed potatoes and whole grain baked ziti, available at a moment’s notice. (You can find many delicious options and recipes right here.) We like to freeze large batches of these comfort foods so that we can pop them in the microwave or toaster oven whenever the need arises. Make your list of comfort foods and prepare large batches to eat both now and later.

Liberate Your Naturally Robust Immune System

It’s important to remember that whole plant-based foods are optimal fuel for your body in general which therefore makes them optimal fuel for your immune system. We like to think of your immune system as an exceptional virus fighter that is extremely effective at baseline, when your body is functioning optimally. When we are stressed (stuck in survival mode), anxious (living with little play in our lives), inactive (getting little exercise, sunlight, and vitamin D), exhausted (from not sleeping well), and malnourished (eating lots of added sugar, added fats, processed foods, and animal products), then we impair our normally robust immune system along with all of the other organ systems in our body. So, it is not that we have weak immune systems that need to be bolstered; rather, we have robust immune systems that need to be liberated from the “added weight.” 

A helpful analogy is to think of a marathon runner who is given a 40-pound weight vest to wear while he runs. How well is he going to run with that vest? Does he need more supplements to run better? No, he needs to remove the weighted vest and release the robust athlete underneath. Similarly, our immune system can be weighed down by our diet and lifestyle, and rather than adding supplements, we need to remove that burden. That is where the healthy diet and lifestyle come in (aka S.N.A.P.S.). 

Reverse Chronic Diseases that May Increase Mortality with COVID-19

It appears that people with heart disease and diabetes are at higher risk of mortality when fighting COVID-19 (and many other infections). What seems to increase mortality is when their body is unable to take the stress of fighting the virus. For example, the lungs and/or heart fail under the stress of illness (people with existing lung or heart disease are at higher risk of this) or the body gets a secondary infection on top of the viral infection (diabetics are at higher risk of this). Whole food, plant-based diets are known to slow, halt, and, in many cases, even reverse these high-risk conditions. Therefore, we can’t think of a better time than now to make changes that will get your key organs into fighting shape!

The bottom line is that your body is naturally a fantastic virus fighter—when given the proper fuel, care, and environment that allow it to function optimally. So, do yourself (and all of those people who want you to be around for a long, long time) a favor: Act now to remove that standard American diet weight vest, and prepare your heart, lungs, blood sugar, and the rest of your body to handle not only COVID-19 but anything else that Mother Nature throws at you in the future!

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So what’s the scoop? Well, it is true that coconut oil contains some medium-chain fatty acids called MCFAs, which are less readily absorbed compared to longer-chain fatty acids. And these MCFAs have been shown to have less of an effect on LDL, bad cholesterol. But is that not similar to saying that burning your hand with a 300-degree flame has less of an effect on your skin than burning your hand with a 400-degree flame? Oil and fat are oil and fat.

That being said, we have read that MCFAs are absorbed directly into the liver, and as a result, have the potential [to promote] weight loss. Even if true—this was only theoretical in the study—this reductionist view misses the point that people don’t eat MCFAs. Rather, they eat coconut oil, and half the saturated fat in coconut oil is not MCFAs. At over 90% saturated fat, taking away the portion of MCFAs in coconut oil—which still requires us to make the huge assumption that MCFAs are all good and can’t be negated—then you are still left with 45% of the saturated fat. So even subtracting all of the theoretical goodness of MCFAs from the total saturated fat content, coconut oil is still worse than lard, which is only 43% saturated fat. And we all know that lard is not a health food.

In many cases, the minimal amount of beneficial MCFAs in coconut oil are isolated and removed from the oil to be used medicinally or in beauty products. So many people are risking their hearts and their lives and not even getting the little theoretical benefit they thought they were getting.

Yes, it is true that some of these MCFAs, like lauric acid and capric acid, have been shown to have antifungal and antiviral properties, but we don’t eat foods because of their antimicrobial properties. We eat foods to provide healthy fuels, which as a result strengthen our immune system, which then fights microbes. Now, food doesn’t fight infection; rather, our immune system does. With that argument we could recommend alcohol as a health food because alcohol kills some microbes.

More importantly, we shouldn’t approve of a food just because one part of it has a specific property we like. This reductionist view is sort of like saying cigarettes are great because they have found some antioxidants in the tobacco. The take-home message is that the whole food serves no purpose and does pose a serious risk. There are no omega-3 fats, the essential fats people actually need, in coconut oil. And furthermore, if people on a no-added-oil, low-fat, plant-based diet added coconut oil to their diets, the fat load on their vessels would cause serious damage. Inflammation increases and blood vessel flow decreases when exposed to any fat, including coconut oil. Overall, health takes a beating.

When looking at the whole package, the numbers just don’t lie. Take a look at the nutritional content of one tablespoon of coconut oil. There are 116 calories, which all come from fat, which is easily stored as fat on your body. The mostly saturated fat is 12 grams, half of which are not MCFAs, this theoretically good medium-chain fatty acid. There are no carbohydrates and no protein; there are no vitamins except 0.1 micrograms of vitamin K. And just so you get this in perspective, one romaine leaf has 30 micrograms of vitamin K.

Are we sensing a theme here? The bottom line is that coconut oil is devoid of vitamins, minerals, and most other nutrients. It is pure fat, and worse than that, it’s over 90% saturated fat. The same saturated fat that raises our cholesterol, clogs our arteries, and contributes to our heart attacks. In the 1980s, the American Heart Association recognized coconut oil’s high saturated fat content as being overall destructive to heart health, as well as specifically promoting heart damage and disease. As a result, they continued to advise the reduction of all saturated fats, including coconut oil, to less than 7% of dietary calories. This opinion is shared by the World Health Organization and the FDA, both recommending decreasing intake of saturated fats, because the reduction of saturated fat, including coconut oil, has been shown to benefit our overall health.

In light of this information, coconut oil seems better served in our cars and on our skin, and really should never be used in our food. Having said that, if you enjoy the taste of coconut, or if a little bit of coconut is helping you stay on this healthy new diet and lifestyle, then using a little bit of the whole plant food, not the oil, once in a generous while, is okay.

This article is reprinted from the Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate Program with permission from the Center for Nutrition Studies.

(RELATED: Why Olive Oil Isn’t a Health Food)

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We are bombarded by stories in the media about how sugar is bad for our health and sweets of all kind should be avoided. However, the desire for sweet-tasting foods is perfectly normal and natural! Indeed, our tongue contains an abundance of sweet receptors for a good reason. Fresh fruit, the source of natural sweetness, is health promoting and an excellent source of calories for the human body. This is why we recommend you include generous amounts of fresh fruit in your diet, and know that it’s even okay to make a meal out of nature’s candy. If you have never tried this, you may be surprised by just how satisfying it is.

Food Companies and Refined Sugar

In drawing us to fruit, our sweet tooth was designed to support our long-term health; however, food companies, in an effort to make their products more desirable, use this natural affinity for sweets in a way that brings harm to us. While the simple sugars from whole fruit support human health, the refined, or extracted, sugars do not. The refining process removes the water, fiber, and virtually every other nutrient and element of the food. What’s left behind is sugar and only sugar—not the package it belongs in. This extraction is more calorie dense and thus overstimulating to our pleasure senses. Even worse, food manufacturers add these highly concentrated, palate-pleasing sugars to already stimulating and disease-causing high-fat foods.

Embrace Sugar in Fruit and Whole Foods

There’s a point in all this that’s not frequently made in the media or by health professionals: Sugar as it occurs in whole foods is not an issue; in fact, it is necessary and should be embraced. It’s a problem only when it is extracted from its natural package and used to excess. Also, the foods highest in added sugars frequently are higher in added fats, sodium, refined flours, and animal products, making them unhealthy for a variety of reasons and not just because of the added sugars.

Desserts and Added Sugar

We hasten to add that even small amounts of added sugars, especially in food made at home, can be enjoyed without posing any significant health risk. That said, dessert and other foods that contain added sugar should be eaten only occasionally and should not be a significant part of your diet. When used on occasion, a small amount of added sugars will contribute only minimal calories to the overall calorie intake in a day, and thus you should not worry about it.

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