I promised last week not to send a COVID-19 e-mail since everyone is overwhelmed with information right now, but I will tackle some tangential topics given the many questions and requests I’ve received. Everybody’s routine has changed over the last few weeks in at least a small way…and a big way for many. With change often comes anxiety or poor habits, so I’d like to bring some optimism here, things to consider, and also provide my favorite resources for COVID-19 info.

Now more than other is your time to MOVE, get outside, and keep the body healthy, and keep developing good habits! Given the situation, there are now more than ever a ton of on-line options for workouts. All my gyms now offer live on-line content, and everyone and their mother has posted at-home workouts now. I won’t join the masses with new content, but all the fitness videos I’ve posted to date can be done at home.

That said, I would highly encourage you to GET OUTSIDE!!! Unless you live in a highly dense urban area, it is super low risk to go outside, and very easy to maintain social distance when outside. Go for a run, hike, bike ride, whatever. More than anything our bodies need connection with nature. And please don’t use the weather as an excuse. Our bodies are built to get wet, cold, hot, muddy, or whatever else mother nature can throw at us. In any case, it’s a GREAT TIME to be healthy! That will always reduce the hazard caused by risks such as these times.

As much as our bodies need nature, our minds and souls need social connection, which is also at risk today. Stay connected to those that you love, using technology as needed. With that in mind, I have to pass along a great quote that was sent to me by one of my gym managers as something to consider while ‘sheltering-in-place’: “You can show your family, that in times of chaos, you retreat into distractions and entertainment or you choose to “skill up,” to learn, to deepen relationships, to progress rather than pause or hide and/or hunker down onto the couch all day.  Please, you still have goals, and dreams and those goals and dreams are watching” – Brendon Burchard

On the virus front, I can appreciate that many are confused or anxious, while others are comfortable with the information they have. While I maintain no pretense of having all of the answers, feel free to reach out directly to me if you’d like me to opine or speculate more on where this might be going, and I promise to do my best to provide you the information I have and believe to be true. From what I know, though, this virus does have the combination of contagion (relatively high), incubation period (relatively long), mortality (relatively high, particularly for the old and pulmonary infirmed) to create a pandemic. It’s important for all of us to take the shelter-in-place activities seriously, not for yourself (if you’re young and healthy the risk is actually quite low), but to keep us from overwhelming our health care system (like Italy did) and protect our elderly and morbid. The mortality rate will literally move an order of magnitude if we ‘flatten the curve’, even with the same AUC, versus letting nature ‘run its course’.

Beyond your typical news sources, which I tend to avoid, my best source for real-time information has been Peter Attia’s interviews with Peter Hotez. There are two thus far, and here is the link to the most recent: link to Peter Hotez on the Drive. As for things you can do, I like the new ‘salty talks’ podcasts on The Healthy Rebellion Radio, where Robb Wolfe provides both facts and interpretations. There are also two of these thus far, and here is the link to the latest one.

As for my latest egg photo. Eggs ‘on the road’ this week…lots of green stuff again with avocado and Emma’s homemade pesto sauce on top of a nice ham & cheese scramble: