Five things every senior should do right now to protect themselves from Coronavirus

We know you have more questions about COVID-19 and we will attempt to answer them as quickly as possible.  To leave a question, please email us at customer.support@steponefoods.com and visit our Facebook page regularly as this is where we will be posting the responses.  As always, your health is our mission.

Staying healthy is paramount for everyone. By now, you know that social distancing, over-the-top handwashing, regular cleaning of frequently touched surfaces, and coughing/sneezing into your elbow or a tissue are vital to stopping the spread of COVID-19. But given that you're in a higher risk group, what else can you do to better protect yourself? 

Being proactive has never been more important. To lessen your vulnerability to complications of a coronavirus infection, especially if you’re older or have an underlying health condition, here is what you should do now:

1. Continue to take all your medications as prescribed. Keeping all of your ongoing health conditions managed as best as possible is really important at this time. 
2. Don’t wait until the last minute to refill a prescription. Many pharmacies offer medication delivery – but this is typically not a same-day service. Put in a request for the refill when you have at least 7 to 10 days of pills remaining.
3. Avoid in-person ROUTINE medical visits. That sounds strange, but you want to avoid ALL unnecessary mingling with other people whenever possible — and things like routine medical follow-ups and non-urgent health issues (like getting an eye exam or yearly mammogram) can typically wait. So either reschedule the visit for another time or find out if your doctor offers telemedicine. If the visit was primarily to authorize a prescription renewal, ask if this could be handled over the phone.
4. Don’t waste your money. There’s a lot of on-line chatter about products that claim to treat or prevent COVID-19. Don’t be lured into purchasing them.  There are no supplements, tinctures or home remedies that have been shown to help prevent or cure COVID-19. In fact, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have cited multiple companies for making false claims. The most reliable source of updates about treatment and prevention of this coronavirus is the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.
5. Prioritize nutrition. What you eat affects 37 thousand billion billion chemical reactions occurring inside your body every second – and impacts a gut microbiome that contains more bacteria than the total number of cells you’re made of!  If there was EVER a time to focus on fueling the complex machine that is your body with the most health promoting foods, this is it!  A healthy diet supports immunity, reduces inflammation, and helps fight constipation (which can be a real concern when you’re less active because you’re self-quarantined). 

At Step One Foods, we never pretend to be the whole answer, but at this time, when having access to high quality, health promoting shelf stable foods is important, we’re here and we can help.

Finally, remember that wherever there are challenges there is also hope. The world community has come together in an unprecedented fashion with medical and bioscience researchers working around the clock to find solutions: 

• Hydroxychloroquine, a generic drug used for decades to treat and prevent malaria, is showing promise as an effective agent against COVID-19 and remdesivir, a new antiviral medication, is in the final stages of testing. 
• Antibodies are being created to directly attack the virus. 
• An effective vaccine will be available in the future.

These are all encouraging developments signaling that the tide will eventually turn.  In the meantime, limit in-person social contact, take the best possible care of your overall health, pay extra attention to nutrition, and hang in there! It might take several weeks, but we will get through this together.