The Missed Benefits of COVID-19
March 12, 2020
By Dr. Barefoot Sidy Diallo
Lessons learned and tremendous prospects for humans
It’s all about healthy lifestyle and barefoot running to prevent the virus lethality, while efficiently countering global warming and saving a lot of money, as the welcome result of the significantly reduced consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Yes, here, we can have it all.
The macabre virus keeps spreading, causing panic, marathon cancellations, disrupting other events, challenging the global economy, and killing vulnerable people. Yet, at the same time, this novel pandemic is offering us the amazing opportunity and, hopefully, the motivation to wake up and come together to stop effectively overconsumption and global warming, while significantly reducing healthcare costs, and staying healthy, happy and ready to combat new viruses. And there’s no need for money, research or any magic stick: We should just run away from the pandemic of chronic diseases, literally and on our bare feet.
COVID-19 is lethally impacting around the world on the most vulnerable patients (those who are suffering from the preventable pandemic of chronic diseases), triggering the research for drugs and vaccines. Hopefully, these commendable efforts will end up saving many lives, but won’t prevent new viruses from infecting and killing humans. It’s therefore crucial that we aggressively prevent these humanly, financially and climatically costly chronic diseases.
The short-term benefits of the novel coronavirus pandemic are obvious: It’s temporarily slowing global warming and reducing air pollution, as we can see, for instance, on the NASA maps. It’s proving very effective, where 25 yearly big international gatherings have failed. So, if we’re serious about ensuring our survival as a species, this pandemic is providing the evidence of what we should do rather sooner than later, or brace for more tragedies and ultimate extinction.
As I explain in my book Running Barefoot for Human Survival, individuals of the animal kingdom have the same mission to contribute to the survival of their respective species. However, given their propensity to laziness, it’s the impulsive quest for pleasure that prods them to fulfill their vital obligations properly, namely having sex for procreation, and finding food the ancestral way. This means that all humans are hooked on the natural drugs called endorphins, and since modern long-distance running is tantamount to persistence hunting, marathoners are rewarded with the adequate quantity of endorphins. In other words, these incentives which used to motivate our ancestors to run after their quadruped preys, exert the same effects on marathon runners.
But for the reward to work successfully, people must feel an irresistible need to get it. This is the way animal species survive, which means that humans who don’t run marathons may suffer as a result from the endorphin withdrawal syndrome. And, sadly, many of them seek relief in psychotropic medication, excess of food, licit or prohibited euphoric substances, impulsive consumption, pecuniary accumulation, loony superiority complex, quest for power or domination, cruelties to other humans, etc. “An insatiable voracity goes through human history. Man has become greedy and voracious. Having, amassing things seems for many people the meaning of life. . .”, Pope Francis emphasized in his homily of December 24, 2018.
Sadly, the quest for pleasure through consumption is likely to fuel permanent frustration and trigger a damaging impact on the climate, and on the health, well-being and finances of those who choose that option. Moreover, these “alternative therapies” of the syndrome can create new addictions, which regrettably tend to persist in many runners of long distances. Fortunately, the great benefits of barefoot running (injury-free experience, more endorphins, improved brain efficiency, etc.) may help them to get rid of those addictions, and that would be welcome, since alcohol consumption, for instance, may cause serious trouble for some marathoners, even in mild temperatures, which is particularly the case on the second half of many marathons, as I recently witnessed in the 2020 Malta Marathon.
In other words, barefoot running is the most effective vaccine and therapy against overconsumption, preventable chronic diseases, coronaviruses, global warming and ultimately human extinction. And you don’t have to spend a single dollar or euro for that, while you’re saving a lot of money by staying away from the harmful and costly “alternative therapies.”
May 10, 2022 update
Sadly, we missed the opportunity created by the pandemic and many used it even as excuse to aggravate their comorbidities (diabetes, obesity, depression, etc.), while irrationally shifting the blame for everything on the coronavirus, including their weight gain, as if the virus had calories.
Running Barefoot for Human Survival is available on Amazon in paperback and e-book format (French edition: Courir pieds nus pour sauver les humains).
By Dr. Barefoot Sidy Diallo
Lessons learned and tremendous prospects for humans
It’s all about healthy lifestyle and barefoot running to prevent the virus lethality, while efficiently countering global warming and saving a lot of money, as the welcome result of the significantly reduced consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Yes, here, we can have it all.
The macabre virus keeps spreading, causing panic, marathon cancellations, disrupting other events, challenging the global economy, and killing vulnerable people. Yet, at the same time, this novel pandemic is offering us the amazing opportunity and, hopefully, the motivation to wake up and come together to stop effectively overconsumption and global warming, while significantly reducing healthcare costs, and staying healthy, happy and ready to combat new viruses. And there’s no need for money, research or any magic stick: We should just run away from the pandemic of chronic diseases, literally and on our bare feet.
COVID-19 is lethally impacting around the world on the most vulnerable patients (those who are suffering from the preventable pandemic of chronic diseases), triggering the research for drugs and vaccines. Hopefully, these commendable efforts will end up saving many lives, but won’t prevent new viruses from infecting and killing humans. It’s therefore crucial that we aggressively prevent these humanly, financially and climatically costly chronic diseases.
The short-term benefits of the novel coronavirus pandemic are obvious: It’s temporarily slowing global warming and reducing air pollution, as we can see, for instance, on the NASA maps. It’s proving very effective, where 25 yearly big international gatherings have failed. So, if we’re serious about ensuring our survival as a species, this pandemic is providing the evidence of what we should do rather sooner than later, or brace for more tragedies and ultimate extinction.
As I explain in my book Running Barefoot for Human Survival, individuals of the animal kingdom have the same mission to contribute to the survival of their respective species. However, given their propensity to laziness, it’s the impulsive quest for pleasure that prods them to fulfill their vital obligations properly, namely having sex for procreation, and finding food the ancestral way. This means that all humans are hooked on the natural drugs called endorphins, and since modern long-distance running is tantamount to persistence hunting, marathoners are rewarded with the adequate quantity of endorphins. In other words, these incentives which used to motivate our ancestors to run after their quadruped preys, exert the same effects on marathon runners.
But for the reward to work successfully, people must feel an irresistible need to get it. This is the way animal species survive, which means that humans who don’t run marathons may suffer as a result from the endorphin withdrawal syndrome. And, sadly, many of them seek relief in psychotropic medication, excess of food, licit or prohibited euphoric substances, impulsive consumption, pecuniary accumulation, loony superiority complex, quest for power or domination, cruelties to other humans, etc. “An insatiable voracity goes through human history. Man has become greedy and voracious. Having, amassing things seems for many people the meaning of life. . .”, Pope Francis emphasized in his homily of December 24, 2018.
Sadly, the quest for pleasure through consumption is likely to fuel permanent frustration and trigger a damaging impact on the climate, and on the health, well-being and finances of those who choose that option. Moreover, these “alternative therapies” of the syndrome can create new addictions, which regrettably tend to persist in many runners of long distances. Fortunately, the great benefits of barefoot running (injury-free experience, more endorphins, improved brain efficiency, etc.) may help them to get rid of those addictions, and that would be welcome, since alcohol consumption, for instance, may cause serious trouble for some marathoners, even in mild temperatures, which is particularly the case on the second half of many marathons, as I recently witnessed in the 2020 Malta Marathon.
In other words, barefoot running is the most effective vaccine and therapy against overconsumption, preventable chronic diseases, coronaviruses, global warming and ultimately human extinction. And you don’t have to spend a single dollar or euro for that, while you’re saving a lot of money by staying away from the harmful and costly “alternative therapies.”
May 10, 2022 update
Sadly, we missed the opportunity created by the pandemic and many used it even as excuse to aggravate their comorbidities (diabetes, obesity, depression, etc.), while irrationally shifting the blame for everything on the coronavirus, including their weight gain, as if the virus had calories.
Running Barefoot for Human Survival is available on Amazon in paperback and e-book format (French edition: Courir pieds nus pour sauver les humains).
Lariboisère Hospital