Self-treatment of a non-chemical kind
Tags: Health, Exercise, Prevention, Pollution, Food Poisoning

As a kid growing up, I used to worry about the population explosion in India. It seemed to me we would literally run out of standing space in India once we overtook China as the most populous country in the world. That day could happen in less than five years even though China’s population growth has dropped to 0.39% while India is hovering at 1.11%. The thing is India is a much smaller country, which means India has three times as many people per square kilometer than China (440 vs 148).

Vehicle Population Explosion

What I never expected was the vehicle explosion in India. Public transport used to be the de facto means of travel when I was a kid as few Indians could afford to have their own vehicle. But as the economy improved, everyone started getting their own internal combustion engines and today there are millions of 2,3, 4, 6, 8 wheelers polluting the air in most of urban India.

The improving economy also led to a whole lot of ongoing development projects like roads and flyovers. The real estate industry wants to maximize profits by putting up giant apartment towers everywhere without worrying if the surrounding areas have the infrastructure to support that many people. Construction at this level leads to a lot of dust and pollution in urban areas.

The third effect of the improving economy was the change in food habits. Indians have moved away from wholesome foods made from locally grown produce towards packaged foods. These are created by corporations whose raison d’être is to maximize profits. This makes them come up with innovative ways to increase taste and addictiveness. The problem is the cheapest way to do this is by using food-grade chemicals (which is an almost perfect oxymoron), as well as chemically processed food like white sugar.

Chemicals that kill

The net effect of all this is that we are now ingesting massive amounts of chemicals from the pollution in the air and also via the food we eat.

It’s no longer in dispute that air pollution can kill. Delhi and many Chinese cities have regularly been in the news for smog and illnesses related to bad air quality. Just when we thought things could not get worse, coronavirus has been added to the mix.

What goes in must come out

My logic is what goes in needs to come out. If not, our systems will be poisoned and we will fall ill. Human bodies aren’t designed or capable of identifying and expelling most of these chemicals. So they accumulate within our systems, and our bodies have to try to find new ways to expel them.

I believe the allergic and chronic health issues like asthma, colds, coughs, sinusitis, rhinitis, etc are our body’s new strategy to get rid of these harmful chemicals that have accumulated within us.

From my personal experience, I have observed that human bodies react to pollutants in different ways. My wife gets an asthmatic attack if she rides her two-wheeler without an anti-pollutant face mask. On the other hand, my body reacts to pollutants by coming down with a cold with related coughs and sore throats, which eventually lead to complications like sinusitis and chest infections. My assumption is the cold is my body is trying to expel these harmful chemicals from my body by making me sneeze them out.

Clueless Doctors

Medicines don’t work for me. I learned this the hard way after having three different operations on my sinuses. These actually ended up worsening my condition instead of improving it. As for antibiotics, I have become allergic to almost all of them after those ENT doctors waged war on my sinuses with massive and repeated doses of antibiotics.

What I learned is stopping colds with medicines is counterproductive for as it stops only the symptoms, and does not tackle the cause of the cold. In short, medicines only makes things worse for me as it stops my runny nose, and clogs up my respiratory system and leads to my sinuses and chest getting infected.

The doctors had no more answers, and I was on my own. It took me a couple of years but I finally figured out that prevention is the best cure. The only way to recover my health is to stop ingesting those pollutants, and letting my natural immunity kick in to help my body recover its health.

Exercise as a cure

This is where exercise comes in. I have always been a strong believer in exercise as a way to build up your immunity and stave off illnesses. So I work out for an hour every day. It’s a mix of jogging or brisk walking on the roads, throwing in a few upper body exercises and some yoga postures to stretch out the kinks. But what if exercising in polluted air makes you sick faster?

This is what happened to me over the last few months.

Invisible Killer

I usually split my time between two cities in south India. One is a coastal city with very little industries, and the other is a hilly, landlocked industrial city at an altitude of around 400m. I believe the air in the coastal city is relatively cleaner because the wind blowing in from the sea helps carry away some of the pollutants being spewed out by those countless vehicles as well as the construction industry and roadworks. The second city has no cleansing sea breeze and instead has loads of industries adding to the pollutants in the air.

What the two cities have in common are very little green spaces to serve as lungs for the cities. To exercise, you choose between working out indoors at a gym where the air is relatively sterile or using the roads. There are outdoor parks but the heavy traffic streaming past on the roads outside means the air isn’t particularly healthy. Unfortunately, I again learned this the hard way.

While staying at the coastal city, I had recently taken up jogging on the roads and developed a persistent cough, which I just couldn’t shake off. I suspected the pollution from the traffic on the road. This suspicion deepened when I spend time in the hilly city where the air is more polluted. My cough became a full-blown sinus and chest infection, which left me coughing and breathless and unable to jog. Refusing to give in, I switched to walking and kept going. But by the tenth day, I was struggling to keep up with walkers who were normally no competition. My lungs were just not working at full capacity.

I had to change something. Rather than switch to a treadmill in a gym, I thought I would give my outdoor workout one last chance by venturing out before dawn when the traffic was minimal or non-existent.

It was literally the last gasp effort to stay outdoors. I would have to be at the local park before 6 am, and back home by 7 am before the vehicles began pouring out on the roads. It was worth a try.

Fighting back

After two days of avoiding the morning traffic, I woke up feeling a bit better on the third day. My sinuses were slowly beginning to clear up, and I was hopeful that I may have crossed the hump. My walking pace which had deteriorated to an alarming 12 min/km, went back to a more respectable 9 min/km. I began planning to jog and get back to my 6-minute pace.

With my known allergy to medicines which are after all nothing but chemicals, I had been battling the illnesses for over ten days with hot lemon & mint tea, ginger-honey-lime concoctions, steam inhalations, and sticking to a simple diet of clean homecooked food. On the exercise front, I began doing a yoga-related breathing exercise that helped clear out my congested chest.

Chemicals in my food

Unfortunately, the third day I had a relapse and was again down with a bad cough. As I had limited my exposure to air pollutants, my guess is it was the chemicals in the food I ate that my body was rebelling against. My mistake was I felt I was recovering, let down my guard and tried a dish I shouldn’t have. It probably had some chemicals that my body couldn’t digest. So it was back to my breathing exercises, and homemade remedies.

Lessons Learned

That was around two weeks ago. A few days later, I was able to go brisk walking and touch an 8.5min/km pace, and another week later I was back to jogging at my usual 6 min/km pace.

Before, after and back to normal

The bad news is my lungs have cleared up 95%, but that last 5% is stubbornly refusing to go. I need a full recovery as quickly as possible, and am working at my breathing exercises. The coronavirus epidemic is looming on the horizon, and logically people who are sick would be more at risk of getting hit hard by a novel virus.

The lessons I learned are urban dwellers need to exercise early in the morning to avoid inhaling polluted exhaust gases. With my history of sinusitis, I also need to stick to simple foods that are free of chemicals. Well, at least till my chest completely clears up. Breathing exercises may have to become a regular part of my exercise schedule.

Terminator Thoughts

The pessimist in me says my weakened system is more liable to catch the coronavirus. The optimist in me says my immune system would have become stronger than usual on recovering from the illness without using medicines.

The fighter in me says there’s a storm coming and I’m ready for it.