Family Health & Wellness in the Time of COVID-19

“Wealth is the first health,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of America’s foremost philosophers. It’s the foundation for everything else: personal well-being as well as community and economic growth.

Although the idea isn’t anything new, the significance of health and wellness strategies has become painfully clear in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping across our world.

Although there is no solution in sight on how to end the pandemic, there is much you can do to help your family during this time. You can take steps to improve the financial security of your family as well as take steps to boost the immune system of family members.

Here are a few insightful questions you could ask yourself:

Should I Get Life Insurance?

If you’re a single parent or the primary breadwinner in the family, then you should consider your family’s health and wellness if you are no longer around to take care of everyone. One way to do this is to buy life insurance coverage online.

When shopping for life insurance, ask yourself, “How much life insurance do I need?” The cost and the number of death benefits depend on a variety of factors, such as your current health and age. You will need to have a medical examination and answer an insurance company’s questionnaire about your health habits.

How Well Do I Understand Nutrition?

If you are in self-quarantine, then now is an excellent time to study nutrition from a free or paid online nutrition course. Heavy advertising by the food industry and diet companies has led to a plethora of utterly false ideas about what makes up a healthy meal.

By learning to eat healthily, your family will avoid many diseases caused by a poor diet. For instance, type II diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular diseases are all related to poor food choices.

A course in nutrition will give you a wide range of scientific information about the nutritional value of common foods. Armed with this information, you will make smart choices when shopping and preparing meals. You will understand just how nutrition affects personal health and what you need to consider when making healthy meal plans for your family.

How Can I Learn How to Reduce Stress?

As you watch the news, you are likely to get triggered by many issues that will distress or alarm you. You are also likely to have many disturbing conversations over the course of the day with family and friends about the fate of the country and the world at large. In addition, you may worry about your own life or fret about the welfare of family members.

All this unsettling information about threatening scenarios stimulates cortisol, the stress hormone.  According to Harvard health researchers, there are six things you can do to reduce stress.

1. Learn how to breathe in a way that calms you. Take slow abdominal breaths.
2. Learn how to relax your entire body by mentally scanning your body.
3. Use guided imagery to calm down.
4. Do mindfulness meditation to keep your mind focused on the present moment rather than dwelling on the past or trying to anticipate the future.
5. Learn an Eastern exercise, such as tai chi, yoga, or qigong, to down-regulate your sympathetic nervous system and engage your parasympathetic nervous system
6. Practice repetitive prayer if you practice a faith-based belief system.

What Causes Sleep Deprivation?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 7 to 19 percent of adults in the US suffer from sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation and deficiency result in serious health problems, such as depression, obesity, stroke, diabetes, high blood pressure, kidney disease, and cardiac disease.

If you or your family members have sleep deprivation, try to find the cause and remedy it, or speak to your doctor to find a solution. The worst thing you can do is ignore it.

Although you may feel helpless against the pervasive presence of the coronavirus, you can make many informed choices that will improve your family’s well-being.