How to protect yourself from viruses?
With the widespread effects of the coronavirus in different parts of the world nowadays, most people want to take extra effort to improve their health protection and to keep themselves save from viral infections. Is it possible to strengthen your body’s defense against dangerous viruses? The answer is yes.
Here are just some of the things you can do to boost your body’s ability to protect itself from any deadly virus:
Practice proper hygiene
Practicing proper hygiene is one of the secrets to protecting yourself from viruses. Follow good and well-recognized personal hygiene habits as they will serve as your first line of defense from viruses around. It is the key to preventing infections before it even starts. Proper hygiene can also prevent the spread of viruses. The following are just some common hygiene practices you have to follow regardless of where you are:
Keep your hands clean
Make sure to wash your hands before you prepare or eat food, after you use the bathroom, and after doing some tasks that expose you to dirt, like gardening. You also need to do so after sneezing, coughing, or blowing your nose. Do not touch your mouth, eyes, and nose if you haven’t cleaned or washed your hands yet. It is because those are the specific parts of your body where bacteria and viruses can easily enter.
Limit or avoid contact with those who are dealing with contagious illnesses
Avoid getting too close to them while they are still healing or recovering. Also, never touch any of the objects they used, such as utensils.
Keep your surroundings clean
These include your counters, sanitary items, and other areas and surfaces you usually touch. Sanitize and clean your sink and toilet regularly, too. You have to clean your surroundings thoroughly to kill viruses that are capable of surviving on hard surfaces.
Cover your nose or mouth when coughing or sneezing
Use a tissue as a cover and dispose of it right away. If you don’t have a tissue, use your elbow to cover your nose or mouth every time you cough or sneeze. Avoid covering it with your hands.
Avoid sharing eating utensils, glasses, and dishes
Similarly, you should also avoid being in direct contact with tissues, napkins, handkerchiefs, or any other item that others have already used.
Take a bath or shower every day
It is the best way to get rid of bacteria and odor from your body and skin. Make sure you use your own bath towels, too.
Do not forget your oral hygiene
Brush your teeth regularly (at least two times every day). This is helpful in keeping your oral mucous membranes clean and intact, thereby aiding in avoiding infections. Aside from regular brushing, you should also floss in between each teeth. Check the insides of your gums and mouth, too.
Stick to a healthy diet
Make sure to eat healthy and well-balanced meals. This tip can help ward off viruses and speed up your ability to recover if you are suffering from an illness. Your meals should include whole grains, fruits, veggies, and fat-free or low-fat milk products. Your daily diet should also include lean meat, nuts, eggs, beans, fish, and poultry. Fruits and veggies should be part of your daily diet as they contain plenty of vitamins and minerals that are good for your immune system. Protein-rich foods are also essential for rapid healing.
Get routine vaccinations
Another way to keep yourself protected from viruses is to get routine vaccines. Vaccination serves as your ultimate protection from specific ailments. While some vaccines are provided during your childhood years, note that adults also require routine vaccinations. These vaccines can help prevent some common illnesses, like influenza and tetanus.
Stick to a healthy lifestyle
Apart from making some healthy changes to your eating habits, it is also advisable to make some adjustments to your lifestyle. Your goal is to develop healthy habits that can improve your immune system. You need to strengthen your immunity so you can easily fight illnesses each time you get exposed to germs, bacteria, and viruses.
Some of the healthy habits you have to develop are getting adequate sleep, exercising regularly, and managing your stress. Practicing these three habits can already help you develop a healthy and strong body that can fight off infections.
If you have unhealthy habits, like smoking, then maybe this is the time to stop. Keep in mind that smoking can negatively affect your immune system, thereby increasing your chance of developing common illnesses, such as flu and cold.
Keep the air around you clean
The flu and common colds are kinds of respiratory infections. They are caused by viruses that replicate within the mucus membranes lining your respiratory tract. They have the tendency to travel in small mucus droplets through the air. In other words, those suffering from flu or cold can transmit the virus every time they sneeze or cough.
You can, therefore, prevent yourself from getting infected by keeping your air clean. You can use air purifiers to clean up the air in your home. Some air purifiers are built in a way that they can get rid of flu and cold viruses and bacteria in the air.
Conclusion
While it would be difficult to prevent all kinds of illness, you can still do a few precautionary measures to keep yourself and your family protected from some of them, especially those caused by viruses. The best thing that you can do is to support and strengthen your immune system. Your goal is to make your immune system as strong as possible so it can function the way it is supposed to.
Health Protection FAQs
What is health protection?
Health Protection is the set of restrictions enacted by the government in order to prevent the spread of communicable diseases. These restrictions enforce the minimum health standards, which the public sector manages.
Health Protection’s primary aim is to reduce and manage the spread of the COVID-19 virus so that it would one day be completely eradicated and thus bring everyone’s lives to normal. However, it does not stop at just COVID-19. Note that it also aims to prevent a similar pandemic from ever happening again.
What do health protection teams do?
Health Protection Teams consist of medical practitioners, mainly doctors and nurses. However, there are also people who deal with surveillance of cases and administrative staff who work closely with the health departments, hospitals, GPs, and infection prevention control teams, among many others.
The Health Protection teams split themselves regionally to provide services that fit the local epidemiological needs. Each team’s duty is to provide specialist support locally to prevent or at least reduce the impact of infectious diseases among the local population. They are responsible for the surveillance and monitoring of the infected patients. They also implement strategic health protection work, emergency planning, and operational support. Moreover, they are responsible for the education and training of local healthcare workers and the general population.
Who is Involved in health protection?
Health Protection encompasses a huge range of professionals, not just in the medical field. Although most of the people engaged in Health Protection have medical backgrounds, some of them are part of the construction industry for building emergency medical facilities. Others are from the transport and logistics industries.
What are health protection restrictions?
Some of the restrictions included in the Health Protection Regulations of 2021 pertain to how many people are allowed to gather during a particular occasion, depending on the Step level of the area. Step levels range from 1 to 3, with 3 being the strictest.
The restrictions also cover which businesses are allowed to operate and which ones should be temporarily closed. These restrictions also instruct how many people are allowed inside the business establishments at any given time.
