Hello Friends,
If you are interested in facts and science then here are three short blog posts by a man named PD Mangan. I have found him to be reliable and sane. I think you will too.
And remember Health Comes From You Not To You!
Cheers,
ks
Image by stokpic from Pixabay
It’s nearly a proverb that fresh air is healthy. “Get some fresh air” – that’s what we’re told when we’re feeling gloomy or anxious or lacking energy.
Is there any truth to the effects of fresh air? Or is it just an old wives’ tale?
A fascinating article, “The Open-Air Treatment of Pandemic Influenza”, discusses how patients in the influenza pandemic of 1918-19 were treated in the open air.[i]
The belief that fresh air could be helpful in treating sick patients goes back to the 18th century, and in the 19th century, the physician George Boddington
“had noticed that people who spent their time indoors were susceptible to tuberculosis, whereas those who worked outdoors, such as farmers, shepherds, and plowmen, were usually free of the disease. He reasoned that patients should copy the lifestyles of those who appeared immune to tuberculosis. They should live in well-ventilated houses in the country and spend much of their time outside breathing fresh air.”
In the flu pandemic of 1918-19, open air treatment was used, and many doctors were convinced of its value.
The value of fresh air in health even goes back as far as Hippocrates (400 B.C.), who noted that anyone studying medicine must note the influence of air, as well as the seasons.
In the 20th century, doctors have discussed the “Open Air Factor”. Fresh, open air kills both bacteria and viruses, and does this even at night, so it’s not due (entirely) to the sun.[ii]
Indoor air rapidly loses the ability to kill microbes.
It’s possible that the Open Air Factor is ozone (O3), which is formed in the air when solar radiation or electricity reacts with atmospheric oxygen.
Ozone itself, when used in medical treatment, has a hermetic dose-response curve.[iii]
All of the above points to the real value of fresh air, although more research would need to be done to get to more definite conclusions.
But it does seem evident, and makes sense, that fresh air could have an effect on people’s health, and one way is by killing microbes.[iv]
I’ve often spoken of the importance of the sun to health. Getting sufficient (but safe) sun exposure improves health through vitamin D production and generation of nitric oxide.
But it appears that fresh air might have great value on its own, even absent the sun.
I have the windows open as I write.
Could we use fresh air as another example of hormesis?
Certainly, people who get out in fresh air are healthier, but one must also consider reverse causation, i.e. that healthier people are more likely to go out into it.
But the experiences of the influenza pandemic of 1918-19, as well as earlier treatment of tuberculosis in sanitariums, which were typically placed at high altitude with lots of sunshine and ozone, should be noted.
Hormesis is a powerful principle.
You simply cannot be healthy if you don’t experience some sort of good stress regularly. Your body simply deteriorates, and this is common to virtually all living things.
My program, Beyond the Comfort Zone, teaches you how to harness the power of hormesis to get healthy, to lose weight, to improve insulin sensitivity, relieve pain, improve your mindset, and much more.
Peace and health.
[i] Richard A. Hobday, John W. Cason, “The Open-Air Treatment of PANDEMIC INFLUENZA”, American Journal of Public Health 99, no. S2 (October 1, 2009): pp. S236-S242.
[ii] Hobday, R. A. “The open-air factor and infection control.” Journal of Hospital Infection 103.1 (2019): e23-e24.
[iii] Bocci, Velio A., Iacopo Zanardi, and Valter Travagli. “Ozone acting on human blood yields a hormetic dose-response relationship.” Journal of Translational Medicine 9.1 (2011): 66.
[iv] Burleson, Gary R., T. M. Murray, and Morris Pollard. “Inactivation of viruses and bacteria by ozone, with and without sonication.” Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 29.3 (1975): 340-344.
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It’s been said that sunshine is the best disinfectant.
Literally and figuratively.
Sunshine can kill viruses with UV light.
The flu season takes place in the winter, when there’s less sunshine. Many people attribute this to lack of vitamin D production from sunlight hitting the skin, and that may be.
But there may be other reasons for this phenomenon, such as direct viricidal effect of sunlight.
Sunlight is good for humans too, in several different ways.
Besides vitamin D, it increases nitric oxide production, and that makes arteries more pliable, and lowers blood pressure.
The effects of sunlight itself – visible light, not necessarily skin exposure – are also important to health, by entraining circadian rhythms.
Light exposure is even a treatment for depression.
All the ways that the sun improves our health – how often do you hear that?
No, they tell us to avoid the sun.
Of course, saying that the sun is good for us doesn’t mean that you should fry all day on the beach.
You need safe sun exposure.
How much that is depends on many factors.
Sun exposure is only one of many factors that make up the phenomenon of hormesis.
Hormesis is important for brain and mental health as well.
Applying the principles of hormesis can dramatically improve your health, and it can do so quickly.
Image by Pexels from Pixabay
Most people would not consider having a fever as a good thing. A fever can make you feel miserable, and it’s common to treat a fever with ibuprofen or aspirin or acetaminophen.
But maybe nature knows what it’s doing when it gives you a fever.
“There is overwhelming evidence in favor of fever being an adaptive host response to infection that has persisted throughout the animal kingdom for hundreds of millions of years.”[i]
Yet it’s not always been the case that the adaptive value of fever has been recognized.
Trauma patients who were treated “aggressively” when they had a fever died at higher rates than those who were not so treated.[ii]
The study that found this was stopped at the first preliminary analysis, since the difference was so stark.
Fever can inhibit the growth of pathogenic microorganisms.
Allegedly, the common thread among younger coronavirus patients who had to be hospitalized was the use of NSAIDs (ibuprofen, aspirin, etc.). If those drugs interfered with fever, that might be why.
Furthermore, ibuprofen and other NSAIDs blunt the production of antibodies, which the immune system makes to fight infection.[iii]
The human body seems to know what it’s doing.
The fact is, the body requires regular stress to be in good health.
If we don’t subject our body to certain stresses, it deteriorates, and becomes like that of a couch potato: high body fat, insulin resistant, and susceptible to illness.
Consider that brief cold exposure can increase immune function.
That doesn’t mean that it “boosts” your immune system, but that it normalizes it.
There are many other beneficial stresses of this kind.
The natural way of living includes regular intervals in which our bodies undergo some kind of stress, and then recover, stronger and healthier for the experience.
Most people don’t know this. They think that with diet, exercise, and sleep, they’ve got their health covered.
These stresses fall collectively under the name “hormesis”, which is the antifragility of health. The human body gets stronger through being challenged.
So does the mind.
The good news is that you can access these techniques easily; they’re free, immediately available, and work quickly to improve your health.
I’ve put them into my program, Beyond the Comfort Zone.
It’s a truism that if you stay within your comfort zone, you will never improve, and that goes for your health too.
Beyond the Comfort Zone is on sale:
Click here to get Beyond the Comfort Zone.
Peace and health.
[i] Kluger, Matthew J., et al. “The adaptive value of fever.” Infectious Disease Clinics 10.1 (1996): 1-20.
[ii] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16433601/
[iii] Bancos S, Bernard MP, Topham DJ, Phipps RP. Ibuprofen and other widely used non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs inhibit antibody production in human cells. Cell Immunol. 2009;258(1):18-28. doi:10.1016/j.cellimm.2009.03.007