2020 will be remembered by most of us as the ‘Year of the Virus’. Everyone is talking about Covid-19, but the irony is that no one seems to know much about it conclusively. This is where Dr Vishakha Shivdasani’s new book, Covid and Post-Covid Recovery, might be of help. She charts out a six-point plan to expedite recovery from the virus and reduce chances of complications from it.
Shivdasani (popularly known as DoctorVee) says that one of the causes for complications arising out of Covid-19 is chronic inflammation. It is the “common denominator in patients with comorbidities, be it obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease or other lifestyle ailments”, she writes. Most of her recommendations in the book are lifestyle modifications that are designed to reduce this inflammation and thus fight Covid-19 and its complications.
Shivdasani has helped countless patients reverse lifestyle diseases, like obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, through this plan, which covers diet, gut health, sleep, exercise, stress management and enhanced healing with supplements. So does it work for Covid and post-Covid recovery? “Considering the volume of patients I see, it was easy for me to connect the dots,” she says. “To reverse chronic lifestyle diseases, we take care of inflammation. I found remarkable success among patients when I extrapolated it for Covid-19.”
But the true utility of the book might be that it is not just applicable to Covid-19 patients, but to all of us who want to improve our lifestyle and take care of our health. She teaches you things like the right technique to do slow breathing, how to stimulate the vagal nerve—the longest nerve in the body—as an antidote to stress, how to ensure undisturbed sleep and which food have anti-inflammatory properties. The book is a veritable encyclopedia of useful information like this. As Shivdasani says, if you can make your body more resilient, you can fight whatever is out there, whether it is Covid-19 or something else.
The author can be contacted on vishakhashivdasani@gmail.com or on her Instagram handle @doctorvee
COVID and Post-COVID RECOVERY: DoctorVee’s 6-Point Plan
By Dr Vishakha Shivdasani
Published by HarperCollins
Price (ebook) Rs99; pages 55
