When it comes to self protective education for ourselves and our families the government started off on the wrong foot. At first we were advised to just wash our hands and not wear masks. “Stop wearing masks”, the US Surgeon General warned…”Wearing face masks could increase the spread of coronavirus.” We were advised to just wash our hands. But COVID-19 does not enter the body through the fingernails. It accesses the body through the air and into the respiratory system.
Then, four weeks later, after COVID-19 had entered the population at large, came information from the government to wear masks. By then confusion was rampant. In Western society only surgeons and bank robbers wear masks, not the average citizen. It all felt so very confusing.
So in this newsletter I want to talk about protecting the respiratory system in terms maybe we can all begin to understand in hopes of adding some common sense to this garbled soup. Because you can eat the most perfect food on the planet, but if you have no idea what the respiratory system is, you may not know how to keep it safe.
WHAT ON EARTH IS THE RESPIRATORY SYSTEM?
In an attempt to make a complicated system super simple, the respiratory system is the movement of air into the body by breathing. Breath is vital to life. If you are breathing correctly, air begins its life-giving journey through the nose and mouth.
Since yesterday at this time you have taken perhaps twenty thousand breaths, 12-20 every minute. Given the sheer volume of air the body needs, it is very easy to take breathing for granted.
So here’s the thing. The air I just breathed and exhaled is the air you just breathed and exhaled. My air becomes your air, your air becomes my air. As humans it is one of the most communal things we do.
“I add my breath to your breath
That our days may be long on the Earth
That the days of our people may be long
That we may be one person…”
‘Ancient Keres Song’ (Keres: female Greek deities)
As well, the Hawaiian ancient word ‘ohana’ literally means “people who breath together”.
The two openings of the airway…the nasal cavity and the mouth…. meet at the pharynx, also known as the throat, at the back of the nose and mouth. At the bottom of the pharynx, this pathway divides into the esophagus, which carries food to the stomach, and the trachea, which carries life giving air to the lungs.
It’s a short trip from your nose and mouth to your lungs. A short journey from the outside world to that inside world. If you stretch your arms wide open and draw a line from arm-pit to arm-pit, this is where the divide takes place, where the trachea branches off into the lungs. I hope this will give you a sense of what a short distance COVID-19 has to travel before entering the lungs.
This short inner space is what you must protect from the virus we humans have not yet developed an immunity to, that enters the body on the breath.
How do we block this holy entry? With a mask. I have heard many arguments about not wearing masks. I am a little perplexed. You would not leave the garden gate open because rabbits only eat at dawn and dusk, only to come back and find your much loved veggies mowed to the ground. You would take action, practice full on protection; a fence, a gate.
Through research, it is now known that viruses have intelligence. They can adapt to the environment, they can change in order to survive. But they cannot live forever in the air unless they can find a way into a host to continue their life cycle.
So it goes with COVID-19. The Highest Priority then? Protect the nose and mouth, that then protects our airways from getting infected. This may involve getting comfortable with wearing masks for up to three months or longer.
Stay Safe, My Dear Community. We Will Get Through This.
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