How you can kill yourself in the name of treating Covid-19

As Covid-19 crept into our lives at the beginning of 2020, I thought to myself that it was one of those corona viruses that would be largely confined to Asia. By March, it became obvious that it would spread across the world. A sense of anxiety, fear and hopelessness began to consume my thoughts.

I started reading as many articles as possible to understand its immunology (study of how the body fights incoming enemies like a virus) and what epidemiologists (professionals who investigate patterns and causes of diseases) and virologists (professionals who study the identification and characterisation of viruses that cause disease) were saying in order to understand the risk the novel virus (not previously recorded) posed to our lives.

Many of the journal articles shared by friends abroad were mostly by virologists and epidemiologists. Immunologists were nowhere. Their absence opened room for propaganda to take effect. Terminologies like “asymptomatic carriers” emerged only to fuel more fear.

Catastrophic entry

What scared me most was the fact that every new research publication I read contradicted previous ones. Media amplified what was going on in Italy, Spain, the UK then the US with warning that next will be a catastrophic entry of the disease into Africa. Powerful nations were reduced into hopelessness and the politicians no longer had anything to promise their followers other than preaching hygiene, masking, social distancing and imposing curfews.

Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe, whom I know as a brave man, changed tune to require the infected to stay at home and manage the crisis there. Then one afternoon he invoked Rodney Neely’s quote, “Every man to himself and God for us all,” meaning that everyone finds his own interests and God decides the outcome.

At that moment my anxiety was a notch higher. I needed to make serious decisions – to buy every therapy that I had read about in the research papers, in the media and every other concoction – in the process buying Hydroxychloroquine, Zithromax, Zinc, vitamin D tablets, Effervescent vitamin C tablets (quick absorption), Moringa powder, Cinnamon powder, Ginger, Lemon and Garlic.

Although my response strategy was not to be questioned and that everybody under the roof would have to take my prescriptions prophylactically, I had forgotten that I lived with a medic. She put her foot down that no one is to take non-prescribed medication. I argued that everything I bought was either off-the shelve or from mama mboga. She hid my priced Hydroxychloroquine from me.

Quietly, I found a new dose and other tablets including Vitamin C and D. This was in addition to honey, Lemon, Ginger, Garlic and Cinnamon, which she didn’t consider as dangerous. When she discovered that I had been taking other things not on the public menu, she hit the roof and demanded that I do a liver function test. I obliged.

“Did you start drinking?”the doctor asked me as he went through the results. “Drinking what?” I responded. He suspected I had started drinking alcohol because my liver wasn’t functioning well. He warned that if I continued with whatever I was taking, I will soon have jaundice. “See Daktari, whatever I was doing, I was doing it for good intentions,” I explained.

“Yes, but good intentions can kill,” he concluded as I gave him the list of the medication I had self-prescribed to fight the pandemic.

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said to me, “You are lucky. Do you know that some people have had cardiac arrest from this drug? You could even develop a mental disease. Please listen to your wife.”

I swallowed my pride in stride. This, however, didn’t stop me from other curiosities I harboured such as nutrition and other traditional therapies (motivated by IBM’s non-pharmaceutical interventions).

Provide an answer

In the absence of any reasonable therapy, I had suspected that nutrition could perhaps provide an answer. I had been curious about the fact that those dying in developing countries are those living in urban areas. Indeed, those people who ran into rural areas are doing great. New studies now show that diet greatly contributes to quick recovery of those suffering from Covid-19.

A recent study, The impact of nutrition on Covid-19 susceptibility and long-term consequences, by a team of researchers from Ohio State University concluded that:

The high rate of consumption of diets high in saturated fats, sugars, and refined carbohydrates (collectively called Western diet, WD) worldwide, contribute to the prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes, and could place these populations at an increased risk for severe COVID-19 pathology and mortality. WD consumption activates the innate immune system and impairs adaptive immunity, leading to chronic inflammation and impaired host defense against viruses.

These findings perhaps explain why the majority of those who have lost their lives live in mostly Western countries where it has severely attacked mostly the elderly, underrepresented minorities, and those with underlying medical conditions. That pattern is beginning to emerge in developing countries similar characteristics suffering the most.

Although in Africa we are poor, there is one thing we do better than people in any other continent – per capita consumption of vegetables. Our rating on this score is high and as such we inadvertently wad off many non-communicable diseases. Several other researches show that such a diet is an overlooked treatment that can fast track your recovery, but the good news is that it's something that's completely in your control. 
Olivia Tarantino in an interview with Cordialis Msora-Kasago (Los Angeles-based national spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics) for Healthy Eating noted in her May 2020 article, This One Mistake Will Slow Down Your Covid-19 Recovery, that, “diet plays a role in your susceptibility to Covid-19, your recovery, and the lasting impact the virus can have on your health.”

As we deal with fear and anxiety over what may happen, the silver lining in this pandemic is the fact that social distancing, masking and better hygiene practices have helped slow down even the common cold. These lessons should inform what our cultural practices should be going forwards. And above all, avoid self-prescription no matter what threats we are facing. Even good intentions could be fatal. It is a lesson for all to learn from.