Wellness as Community Power: Why UpLift Pushes Health to the Forefront
By Kai Warrior
At UpLift Chronicles, we pride ourselves on sharing relevant, timely and timeless need-to-know information. We push health and wellness toward the top of that list, providing help, resources, and information to take care of our minds and bodies as best we can. To celebrate three years of publishing, we thought it only fitting to recap the info we’ve shared!
Where It All Began
We started publishing UpLift Chronicles with a clear purpose—to empower and strengthen our communities, especially the most vulnerable individuals within them, to view equity as an attainable right. The year 2020 and those following have been a test of our individual and collective patience, resilience, and strength. Do you remember when the veil fell after the murder of George Floyd? Maybe it’s falling for you now, and that grief is setting in as unmarked vehicles stake out grocery and home improvement store parking lots.
It Starts in the Body
In September 2022, we hosted a 5K run called Pamoja, which means “better together“ in Swahili. Bringing the community together provided an opportunity to support local vendors and provide healthcare resources during a family-friendly 5K race.
In October 2023, we covered Dr Stevie DeJuan Springer, a Doctor of Natural Integrative Medicine. Springer hosts “Wise and Well” on KRQE News 13, where he provides habits and exercises we can adopt to manage health conditions and live our lives with more ease. To quote our own article from Vol. 1, Issue 2, “When we’re right in our body and our minds, then our ability to do right by ourselves, our families, and our communities expands amazingly!”
COVID Is Still with Us
As we surpass five years of this ongoing pandemic, we trust you know how to spot your COVID symptoms by now. Studies are still finding how damaging COVID is to our bodies, but what we do know is that it isn't just a cold that gets you down for a week. The SARS-CoV-2 virus can forever alter how your brain and body exist, even after you’re no longer positive.
COVID upsets the human immune system’s communication channels, creating more opportunity for disease and autoimmune disorders to develop. That’s why it is so important that we try our best to avoid getting COVID, and to rest well if we catch it.
If you want to protect yourself better the next time you go out, stay up to date on COVID vaccinations and boosters, wash your hands regularly, consider throwing a KN95 mask in your bag, and do a saline nasal rinse when you get home to clear out any pathogens that may have snuck in.
All in All
Federal and state agencies, including those directly tasked with safeguarding public health, aren't choosing to invest in COVID or any overarching infectious disease prevention. That means it's up to is to keep ourselves and each other safe and healthy.
Keep yourself hydrated, move your body by going on walks or taking exercise classes with friends, put good food in your body, see your PCP regularly to keep an eye on sneaky conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure, and listen to your body if something isn't feeling right. Take care!