As restrictions are lifted, are you feeling confident and ready to resume normal life? In this video Dr. Alison shares her top 4 things you need to know to protect yourself and your health!
Read the podcast transcript:
Hi everyone. This is Dr. Alison DiBarto Goggin with Little Black Bag Medicine and today we are talking about getting back to real life post quarantine life. What does it look like? Are you ready? How are you feeling? Are you nervous? Are you scared? Are you over it? Are you done? Can you wait, like not wait until everything’s back to normal. You can go to your stores and your restaurants and get back to work and start to feel like have some semblance of a normal life. I know we’re probably all feeling all of those things as totally normal. That’s okay.
And I think the biggest things that I want to talk to you about today is moving forward without fear. And how do we do that? So the number one thing that we know that we can talk about today about COVID is that the highest risk factors for people who become critically ill with this virus is that they suffer from heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes and metabolic disease.
Where we used to just write these things off. Not in my practice, but in general. People are like, well, I have heart disease while I take my medication. My cholesterol is under control or managed because I’m taking medication. It’s fine. I’ll do what I want. W
e now have these really eye opening illnesses that are telling us it’s not okay just because you’re doing what you want. You’re justifying, your borderline, you feel like you’re a managed. You aren’t. Because when these viruses come in, they’re going to jump in on the situation and exacerbate all of those things. So it’s so important that right now you take your health back in control, start taking the steps to figure out why these things are happening.
Now, my mini disclaimer right now is of course your medications are important. Don’t stop taking them. We can be grateful that we have these things.
They are life saving in many cases, but when it comes to, I don’t feel good, but I feel managed with my medications. We still need to get to the root cause. So how do we do that? I do that through functional medicine. We do blood testing, saliva stool, we can link things back to infections and mold and toxins, but it depends on what’s going on for you. So don’t guess, don’t put your future at risk. Take control. Now start getting these tests on. You can’t put this off anymore.
It’s so incredibly important for your health, for your future, for you know, the biggest thing coming up now that people are focused on what’s going to happen in the fall and in the winter. Are we going to be safe? Are you going to be protected? Are do you have immunity? Are you ready? What’s going to help you the most is taking care of the underlying metabolic issues like diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, managing them now so you have a better future.
It’s really, really important. All right, number two. I think this time really shines a light on what we’ve been doing to take care of ourselves on a daily basis. So if you’ve gone out, you’ve noticed all of the shelves are empty of vitamin C and zinc and elderberry, all of a sudden it’s a hot new thing. When you go to Fullscript, you can’t order these things. I can not order vitamin C right now, every single company I know is back ordered and what that tells us is that people do know that nutrition is important, that it is vital to our health, our immune system, our survival, and just taking something when you’re sick or you’re worried isn’t going to cut it, just grabbing vitamin C off the shelf and ascorbic acid isn’t going to do anything for your body.
So what can you do right now on a daily basis that you get zinc and C and chromium and all of your omegas?
I take doTERRA’s lifelong vitality because I know I’m getting everything from whole food sources. I’m not taking risks, I’m getting it all. I didn’t have to run to the store to get extra vitamin C or vitamin D. I had it all already. Now you can always stock up on these things, but it really shines this bright light on what you’ve been missing, what you need to start doing on a daily basis to really make sure that for the rest of your life, you’re not chasing down supplements out of fear because somebody said this is what might help, but you’re doing things on a daily basis to make sure you are health is intact, that your future is safe, that your health is ready to go, and whatever happens, you know that you’ve laid the foundation for your body to respond in a healthy way no matter what.
So figure out what you need. And sometimes we do that with testing, whether we do nutritional testing or genetic testing. There’s lots of different things that we can do, but just starting with that lifelong vitality pack as a daily nutritional supplement for your vitamins or minerals, your Omega is your antioxidants. All of that will get you that baseline that you don’t have to run around and add anything in. And it’s going to give you such a good baseline and there’s so much research on it with cholesterol, sleep, blood sugar, heart issues. So talk to me, if you want to learn more about that. I’ll put a link below so you can read about it. Alright.
So then we have integrating self care is my, the number one. I had a really, I think we’re really aware of what our body needs right now. We, you’ve gone off the other side, even binging on fun foods.
We’ve been having a neighborhood conversation about who’s hoarding pop tarts, right? So we’ve gone in one direction where we feel like maybe it was eating, things we’re not normally eating because we’re self soothing and maybe you’re noticing that your body is either not feeling very good or that you’re really missing movement cause you can’t get to the gym every day and you really thought, wow, I would thought I would work out at home a lot if I had the time. And then you’re not because you just don’t have the energy or getting out to the gym was your motivating factor and being social was your motivating factor. How amazing is that? So now, you know, so now you’re learning when that you can go back to your quote unquote normal life. What is that going to look like for you?
What motivates you? What drives you? What is your self care as opposed to self soothing? And that’s a really, really exciting time and we have to take time to process this trauma that we’ve been going through as a collective. We have to admit that this has been incredibly stressful, different fearful and for not only yourself, but probably a family and your children. That’s put strain on relationships. So take your time to move through this. Don’t feel like all right, Monday, May 4th or May 30th or June 15th, whatever that day is for you. Wherever you are, you don’t have to snap back into a normal person. You can give yourself some time. Make, start making those self care base of what you notice that you need. You need that connection. You need to go drop by a friend’s house and you need to go see your mom, whatever that is for you, that you start incorporating that.
And then the last one I have is, you know, valuing time with our friends and our family and how we have been missing that our virtual calls are amazing, right? Videos are amazing, but that in-person physical connection that we have not been able to have with our loved ones in our family and our coworkers is so important. And this is in my opinion, a really great time to realize that we need to be present with those around us. We need to be mindful, we need to enjoy what we’re doing. And you know what you’re talking about, not looking at your phone and really making eye contact with people and being involved with their stories, choosing the right friendships and relationships that you want to have, who’s probably also shown a light on that as well for you. So we can really be careful in how we take care of ourselves with our relationships, our friendships, our family, and really be mindful and present with that.
And so one of my favorite mindfulness training apps now is doTERRA’s new app called adaptiv. And it’s free and they do like 10 minute walkthroughs. It uses voice feedback to talk about how stressed you are and how meditation is helping you with affirmation. So check that out. It’s totally free as on Apple and Google, and you can really start practicing now. So you get your mind trained, you get your stress levels down, who really focus on that connection with yourself. So when you go back out and to be with people, you can do that as well. So thank you so much for tuning in and if you are ready to get tested, get blood work done, figure out what’s actually at the root cause of all of your issues. I would love to talk with you. You can message me on Facebook, shoot me an email or schedule a free online counseled. All right, I’ll talk to you then. Thanks.