Life At Slow-Mo

My wife had a bad case of cold and coughing. She was okay on Friday and Saturday morning. On Saturday afternoon she started feeling unwell and feverish. She lost her appetite and she felt aching all over. She started coughing in the evening. She took some cold medicine and vitamin. After I gave her a foot rub, she went to bed.

Sunday morning came, and she woke up feeling sore. She took two home Covid tests, one using a saliva sample and one using a nasal swab sample. They both came back positive. We drove to a nearby medical clinic and we both took the PCR swab test. After waiting for 30 hours, the result came back positive. We had to self-quarantine for at least two weeks.

“You should stop dieting for now,” my wife said. That sounded great! An excuse to stop my intermittent fasting!

My wife had the symptoms. I, on the other hand, felt nothing despite the positive test result. Thanks to fact that I took the booster jab as soon as they were available last month, my body had time to develop immunity against the virus. So should I continue?

I searched for information about doing intermittent fasting (IF) while being covid-positive. I found a fascinating study that explores the role of IF in prevention and the improvement of clinical results of Covid-19:

• First, we must learn about the mTOR signalling pathway. It’s a signalling system that mammalian cells use to control cellular growth and metabolism. The mTOR signalling pathway has a role in decreasing apoptosis (programmed death of old cells to be replaced by new cells) and autophagy (the process of eating dead cells for use in the regeneration of new cells).
• Somehow viruses like SARS-CoV-2 that causes Covid-19, hijack the system for their own benefit. They use the system to increase the synthesis of viral proteins to replicate themselves.
• IF disrupts the mTOR signalling pathway. This means IF promotes apoptosis and autophagy processes. That could wreak havoc in the synthesis of viral protein and could slow the production of new virus cells.
• IF also found to be anti-inflammatory. This property could help lessen the severity of Covid-19 if contracted.
• Sometimes Covid-19 virus can relocate to the gut, causing inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract, or even hide there when its colony in the nasopharynx and respiratory mucosa is destroyed in medication. IF plays a role in the decrease of the gut inflammation caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The conclusion is that IF helps the body in fighting Covid-19. So instead of stopping my IF, at least for the next two weeks of my self-quarantine, I will make the following changes to my program:

• To lessen the burden a little, instead of 16:8, I will step back to 14:10, or if condition dictates, 12:12
• I will add vitamins C, D and E to my diet
• Because I cannot go outside, I will do more indoors exercise