Slow Down, Keep an Even Pace, Health Matters Most

Doctor zhou February 11, 2023

Among the people around me, not many died from contracting COVID, but quite a few developed aftereffects, and I am one of them. Before infection I occasionally had episodes of tachycardia—three or five times a year, usually caused by poor rest. After the New Year this became more pronounced.

This is related to our family genes; my father has coronary heart disease. I had a distant cousin who died of congenital heart disease before he ever married.

On the 29th day of the 12th lunar month last year, I returned to my rural hometown. Because of a year of drought, the family well had run low. Since we came home for the New Year and water use increased, one day the well yielded no water, so I went to a neighbor's and carried a load of water back. I had not carried water for many years, and my ability to bear weight had deteriorated considerably. After carrying that load, I felt my heart pounding and racing nonstop, and it took a long rest to settle.

From that day on, my heart felt off. But from the first to the third day of the Lunar New Year, there were so many family social obligations; I had to pay New-Year visits relative by relative and could not rest. Because of work, on the fourth day I traveled from my hometown to Wuhan, and on the fifth returned from Wuhan to Beijing. After returning to Beijing I constantly felt a discomfort in my heart; when tired or staying up late, I would develop tachycardia.

I really am not as tolerant of fatigue as I used to be; my body has clearly been affected by the novel coronavirus. If I get enough sleep, worry little, and do not do too much physical labor, everything is fine. But with even slight fatigue or lack of sleep, I feel cardiac discomfort. Now, after a day's work, if I want to exercise, I have to take a short nap first, otherwise I easily develop tachycardia.

There were days when, halfway through lunch, I felt I lacked the strength to chew and had an urgent desire to lie down and sleep. But later I prescribed myself Chinese medicine; after two doses the symptoms disappeared and have not recurred until now. I prescribed seven doses in all but only drank two, leaving five more that I never had the courage to drink because they were too bitter. I really admire patients who drink herbal decoctions long-term; I am not as hardy as they are.

I also made some pills according to my own Chaige Huayu Wan formula and take them from time to time. But I likewise could not keep at it; now I mainly rely on adjusting my daily routine to relieve my symptoms. In the past, one night's sleep plus a midday nap was about enough. Now I sometimes take two or three short naps during the day, each lasting ten-plus minutes; after a short nap I feel much more refreshed.

I dare not overwork anymore; I stop seeing patients and reading at an appropriate point, often silencing my phone and tossing it aside, and my exercise intensity is only 60–70% of what it was before infection. Every day during the day I do the Eighth Set of Broadcast Calisthenics two or three times—the Eighth Set was what we did at school; as that familiar music plays, it feels very warm and familiar. The broadcast calisthenics are designed scientifically, covering every movement at a moderate intensity; after doing them one feels very comfortable. Not moving worsens COVID aftereffects, but overexertion is more than the body can bear, so one must choose moderate forms and amounts of exercise.

Besides the broadcast calisthenics, I now also ride a bike for a while every day. When the weather is warm I ride in the countryside; when it is cold I ride the stationary bike at home. The riding intensity is also reduced compared with pre-infection, but each ride still basically burns off over 500 kilocalories, and I break into quite a sweat when riding at home—sweating is one of the body's important ways of detoxifying, and exercise that makes you sweat is very good for health.

Besides exercise, I am also keeping up heat therapy. I bought a heat pack that you plug in; it is more convenient than the hair dryer. When feeling palpitations and a racing heart, one must not exercise; exercising or taking a sauna while the heart is uncomfortable can very easily cause sudden death—this must be kept firmly in mind. I myself exercise only when I am full of energy and my rhythm is normal.

When the heart is uncomfortable, lying down and using heat therapy rapidly improves the symptoms, adjusts the rhythm, and also improves sleep. The key to regulating the rhythm is improving sleep quality; if sleep is good for several days running, the arrhythmia disappears. The principle is simple: during sleep the myocardium slows and the heart rests; only when well rested can it return to normal working order. After that, as long as one does not stay up late or over-exercise and overwork, the arrhythmia will not easily recur.

I have also adjusted my diet. After the fifth day of the first lunar month I have eaten mainly light food—during the Spring Festival days at home I had joined everyone in eating quite a few big feasts, and afterward did not feel well. From November last year until before the Spring Festival holiday, we stayed home, moving little and eating well, and put on seven or eight jin. After adjusting the diet this period, the weight dropped by another two or three jin; once the weight came off, my stamina clearly improved.

COVID aftereffects are mainly problems of the circulatory and nervous systems; thrombosis is the most common problem, and a thrombus can appear anywhere in the body. These days I from time to time brew tea with dried hawthorn slices that activate blood and resolve stasis, and I also occasionally eat some Xiebai (jiaotou)—this vegetable was a regular on my dinner table as a child, but now it is not easy to find in Beijing. But a friend told me that some large vegetable markets in Beijing, such as Jinxiu Dadi not far from my home, do sell Xiebai.

Both hawthorn and Xiebai activate blood and resolve stasis; Xiebai is one of the must-use herbs for Zhang Zhongjing when treating cardiovascular disease (chest impediment), and modern pharmacological research shows Xiebai's anticoagulant effect is even better than aspirin. Treating with drugs is never as harmless as dietary therapy, so I try to find ways through food. This year I have rented a small plot of vegetable land to start growing vegetables again, and I plan to try growing some Xiebai in the Beijing suburbs. I will eat more Xiebai all this year and keep brewing dried hawthorn-slice tea, occasionally taking some medicine but using as little as possible.

I believe my own recovery system can help me resolve the COVID aftereffects without relying too much on medication. But the human recovery system only works when the routine is regular, the diet reasonable, exercise moderate, and the mood relaxed; so this year I will not go back to that overly tense life.

I will continue to study medicine and help patients, but only on the condition that my body is basically well; I cannot sacrifice my health to pursue a career. This life is long; a long career is done slowly. Taking it slow and keeping an even pace is better than galloping ahead. There is too much suffering in the world—plagues, wars, earthquakes, and disease are always taking some people's lives; each of us can only worry about so much.

My child is in his senior year of high school, and I have repeatedly told him that he need not sacrifice his health for the college entrance exam, and that if COVID aftereffects appear he should not tough them out. A person's life is long; there is no need to make the college entrance exam seem too important. A career one loves can be pursued for a lifetime; the success or failure of the exam has a negligible effect on a whole life. My own college entrance exam was almost a total failure, and the university I attended was not my ideal school, yet I am now quite satisfied with my life.

My son also shows some signs of aftereffects after contracting COVID—he feels sleepy a bit more than before. Now when he wants to sleep, I let him sleep and do not force him up to do exercises. A survey released on October 9, 2022 by the Hong Kong Community Organization Association and the Coalition on Child Rights showed that about 80% of minors in Hong Kong had aftereffects after contracting COVID, such as fatigue, breathing difficulty, insomnia, memory decline, and poor concentration. Although we do not yet have statistics, I believe our situation is no better than Hong Kong's.

The novel coronavirus can be counted as one of the major biological events in human evolutionary history; it may even alter our genome, and fragments related to the novel coronavirus will be present in the chromosomes of our descendants. We must view this event at the biological level; our species needs to evolve the ability to adapt to the novel coronavirus, otherwise we cannot survive on this planet.

We must make a series of adjustments in our mindset and lifestyle in order to avoid being eliminated as the virus repeatedly ravages the world. Biological success is not the fame and fortune we pursue in worldly society; it is to stay alive and pass on our genes.

Several acquaintances back in my hometown recovered from COVID but did not look after themselves; recently, from playing mahjong day and night, they developed cerebral infarction. Their illness is truly pitiable, but to be honest, they brought it on themselves; they have no one to blame, and one cannot blame it entirely on the novel coronavirus. The suffering they will endure for the rest of their lives is the price they pay for their own ignorance. The biological world follows the law of survival of the fittest and elimination of the unfit; those who do not cherish life, who are ignorant of and lack reverence for disease, and who are addicted to pleasure, are precisely the ones nature means to eliminate.

People back home are addicted to gambling; cards and mahjong matter more than anything, and this has exhausted my fondness for that close-knit rural society. I will never consider going back to live that degenerate life. Perhaps in the future I will visit my hometown when there are few people around, but I will not go back to live in that social environment. When I was a child, although a few people back home liked to gamble, it was not like now, when almost everyone does.

If a person cannot break free from bad habits, it is hard to have a healthy body and a peaceful life. In this sense, it is good to have some ideals and aspirations in life. A person with ideals will at least not sink to such a pointless degree. How many people weep bitterly only after losing their health and suffering catastrophe, yet normally will not listen to advice and act recklessly! It truly fulfills the Buddhist saying: the Bodhisattva fears the cause, while ordinary beings fear the effect.

You should also read: