Data from Japan show drinking oolong tea may help your body burn fat, independent of the effects of caffeine. Around the world, tea is one of the most popular beverages, second only to water. In popularity, 84% of tea consumed is black; 15% is green; and the remaining 1% is split between oolong, white and dark teas.1 According to the Tea Association, total sales in 1990 were $1.84 billion, which rose to $12 billion by 2016.2 The market continues to grow, albeit at a slower rate, with reported sales of $12.67 billion in 2019. The Tea Association hypothesizes several trends could be affecting their industry, including a healthier outlook of consumers and a greater number of people who practice alternative nutrition such as gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian and keto diet plans. On any day, nearly half the people in the U.S. are drinking tea, with a greater concentration of tea drinkers found in the South and Northeast. Although black tea is the preferred drink, it may be time to consider the less bitter and flavorful oolong tea. A Cup of Oolong in the Evening Raises Fat Burning at NightA recently published study from a team of researchers at the University of Tsukuba in Japan found that drinking oolong tea can help your body burn fat, even while you're sleeping.3 The study took place over 14 days and engaged 12 non-obese men who drank either oolong tea, caffeine or a placebo at breakfast and lunch each day. On Day 14, 24-hour measurements were recorded. The researchers found that drinking caffeine or oolong tea raised fat burning by approximately 20% without any effect on energy expenditure.4 However, they also found a greater decrease was experienced by those drinking the oolong tea suggesting there was an unidentified ingredient in the tea that has a greater effect on fat oxidation.5 Additionally, it appeared that the effect on fat burning was suppressed immediately after meals and occurred during sleep. The researchers also found drinking two cups of oolong tea per day did not interfere with the participants’ sleep habits. Past research has demonstrated caffeine at greater than 100 milligrams (mg) can increase energy expenditure, but in the present study the amount of caffeine ingested did not increase energy expenditure. This suggested to the researchers that the participants became tolerant over the two weeks of routine caffeine ingestion. While the researchers did measure fat burning, they noted two weeks was not a long enough duration to assess the effects this intervention could have on body composition. The senior study author commented in a press release:6
Green, Black or Oolong?Although the health benefits of green tea are well covered, black tea is the most commonly consumed tea in the U.S. As the health benefits of oolong tea are not as well publicized, one team of researchers set out to assess how well a group of dental students understood the benefits of oolong tea.7 Using a set of questionnaires, they drew data from 100 participants using an online survey. Among the students, only 19% had ever heard of oolong tea, and of those only 55% were aware of the health benefits. Interestingly, the Tea Association says that black, green, oolong and all dark and white teas are all made from the leaves of the same tree, an evergreen named Camellia sinensis.8 The difference in the taste and color happen when the leaves are processed. But, no matter which type of tea it is, or whether it’s caffeinated or decaf, it’s only 24 hours from the time tea leaves are picked until they're packed.9 Before processing starts, the tea leaves are graded and sorted. The most common method of processing tea leaves is the Orthodox method during which the leaves go through four stages, including withering, rolling, oxidation and drying. It's in the oxidation stage that the color, taste and strength of the tea is determined. The leaves are laid out and left at 26 degrees Celsius (78.8 degrees Fahrenheit) for 30 to 120 minutes. During this time, oxidation occurs, which changes the color of the leaves. The oxidation process is left out when making green tea, which gives the tea leaves a light fresh flavor. Black tea goes through the longest oxidation and oolong is made from partially oxidized leaves. The oxidation goal for tea leaves destined to become oolong is 70% green and 30% brown, enough to give a delicate color and fruity aroma. The shape of the leaves and flavor of oolong tea can vary depending on where it's grown and how it's processed.10 For instance, oolong tea from Taiwan is traditionally less oxidized and the famous Chinese teas are grown in a harsh environment, which gives the leaves a rich flavor. Oolong Shifts Salivary and Gut MicrobiotaIn addition to raising fat metabolism, oolong tea also has an impact on your oral and gut microbiota. One study, published in the journal Nutrients, evaluated the oral microbiota of three healthy adults who drank 1 liter (33 ounces) of tea daily for eight weeks.11 Before the intervention, during the treatment and after the study, the participants’ salivary microbiota were sampled, sequenced and analyzed. The data showed:12
The results suggested that drinking oolong tea for an extended period of time could change your salivary microbiota and have a protective effect on dental health. Several studies have also evaluated the effect oolong tea has on modulating human intestinal microbiota in the lab and in animal models. One study published in Food Research International demonstrated the compounds commonly found in oolong tea, including epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), (-)-gallocatechin gallate (GCG) and epigallocatechin‐3‐(3”‐O‐methyl) gallate (EGCg3”Me),13 modulated bacterial growth in the intestines.14 They inhibited the growth of harmful bacteria and helped beneficial bacteria to proliferate. A second study evaluated the effect tea had on gut microbiota in light of the known anti-obesity properties.15 The results of this animal model suggested drinking tea substantially increases the diversity and structure of gut microbiota, which may have an impact on fat burning. Researchers also demonstrated the polyphenols extracted from green tea, oolong tea and black tea could modulate intestinal flora and produce a greater number of short-chain fatty acids, contributing to a healthy gut microbiome.16 More Health Benefits Associated With Oolong TeaOolong tea is also rich in antioxidants — beneficial compounds that help reduce the effects of free radicals and reactive oxygen species.17 This plays a role in the development of various diseases, including diabetes, stroke, cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. One study evaluated the effect of oolong tea on bone mineral density in 476 postmenopausal women.18 They were questioned about their lifestyle, types of tea they drink, demographic features and health status. When researchers compared the tea drinkers against the non-tea drinkers, they found those drinking oolong tea had higher bone mineral density. It was significantly higher in those who drank one to five cups of tea per day but did not go up for those drinking more than five cups per day. The antioxidants, caffeine and theanine found in oolong tea may also contribute to a lower risk of cognitive impairment and decline that researchers have found in community-living Chinese adults 55 years and older who consistently drank oolong or black tea.19 In a review of the literature, researchers identified an increase in insulin activity.20 This occurred with black, green and oolong teas with an increase in insulin activity of at least 15-fold in laboratory fat cell assays. Oolong tea also reduced plasma glucose and is believed to be an effective adjunctive treatment of Type 2 diabetes. Oolong tea has been associated with a reduction in heart disease. In one study with 76,979 Japanese adults, those who drank 8 ounces or more of oolong tea each day significantly reduced their risk of cardiovascular disease mortality.21 In a separate study, those drinking one to two cups of green tea or oolong tea each day significantly reduced their risk of stroke.22 EGCG Helps Improve Zinc AbsorptionDuring flu season and the COVID-19 pandemic, it bears remembering that the EGCG found in green, black and oolong tea can help improve absorption of zinc. Zinc is an essential mineral and a cofactor for nearly 3,000 proteins in the body.23 In addition to this, it is crucial for healthy immune functioning. Zinc deficiency has been shown to impair your immune function24 as it modulates cell mediated immunity and acts as an anti-inflammatory agent and antioxidant.25 Although there's no cure for viral infections, your body uses a process to fight viruses that includes zinc. It has also demonstrated the ability to reduce the length of a cold by an average of 33%.26 One effective treatment for the early symptoms of COVID-19 has been a combination of hydroxychloroquine and zinc. Hydroxychloroquine is routinely used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and other autoimmune diseases.27 The hydroxychloroquine acts as an ionophore, driving zinc into the cells where it can impair the replication of the SARS-CoV-2 RNA virus.28 Beyond immune health, zinc has an impact on wound healing, age-related macular degeneration, sense of smell and taste29 and blood sugar balance.30 EGCG is a major polyphenol component found in tea and has demonstrated the ability to act as a zinc ionophore, transporting zinc across the cell membrane.31 A study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry used a lab model to demonstrate EGCG and quercetin could rapidly increase levels of zinc in cells in the laboratory.32 They hypothesized that the ionophore activity of the dietary polyphenols tested may play a significant role in raising the levels of intracellular zinc and thus may be responsible for many of the biological actions attributed to the polyphenols. Get the Most From Your TeaWhile drinking oolong tea is healthy, using tea bags adds a level of toxins you don't want. Tea bags may be more convenient, but many are made with heat resistant polypropylene that prevents the bag from breaking apart in hot water and releases minute pieces of plastic in each drink.33 Paper tea bags are treated with epichlorohydrin, which is a chemical that prevents tears and has been found to be a probable human carcinogen.34 Instead, seek out loose tea leaves and store them in an airtight container kept in a dry, dark cabinet away from direct sunlight and heat. Since the processing techniques used affect the ideal brewing temperature, look for the directions on the package of tea you buy. However, here are some general tips to consider:35
from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/01/22/oolong-tea-may-help-shed-pounds-while-you-sleep.aspx
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The University of Sussex conducted a survey to find out what happened when 800 people took part in “Dry January,” or abstaining from alcohol for the first month of the year. A number of benefits were reported, from losing weight to saving money, but one stood out from the crowd: 7 out of 10 people who stopped drinking alcohol for one month reported sleeping better.1 Considering that one-third of U.S. adults say they don’t get enough sleep,2 this is a significant benefit — one that could have major health implications for those who choose to imbibe regularly. In the time period spanning 2001/2002 to 2012/2013, the number of people who reported drinking alcohol in any amount shot up from 65.4% to 72.7% of Americans.3 About one-third of them engage in “high-risk drinking,” which was defined as five or more standard drinks for men or four or more drinks for women at least once a week. Among women, this type of binge drinking increased by 57.9% percent over the study period.4 Alcohol is often used as a sedative,5 enjoyed with the intent that it may help you unwind and relax at the end of the day. General population studies suggest that up to 28% of adults have used alcohol as a sleep aid, typically for less than one week at a time, although 15% have used alcohol to promote sleep for more than four weeks.6 Behavioral studies support the notion that having two or three drinks before bed helps promote sleep, but this is short-lived. Within just a few days, the sleep-promoting effects of alcohol diminish while in the longer term, alcohol use is linked to sleep disturbances.7 More daytime sleepiness is also reported in those who used alcohol as a sleep aid.8 But what is it about alcohol that interferes with sleep? How Your Sleep Changes When You Drink AlcoholAlcohol can have either stimulating or sedating effects, depending on the dose and timing in relation to bedtime. In the first hour after consuming a small amount of alcohol, stimulating effects occur as your blood alcohol levels rise. If you consume a large amount of alcohol, it will lead to drowsiness as your blood alcohol levels fall. As for moderate alcohol consumption (two to three standard drinks of 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of spirits), dose-dependent sedation may occur that lasts for several hours. Typically, sleep latency, or the time it takes you to fall asleep, gets shorter with more drinks, up to six total. However, alcohol is a short-acting sedative and a rebound will occur, with arousal increasing about two to three hours after your blood alcohol levels decrease to zero.9 A rebound of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep may occur during this arousal phase, during which intense dreams or nightmares may occur. Ultimately, your sleep thus becomes fragmented while even the initial sedative effects will wane as your body develops tolerance, typically after three to seven days of alcohol use. In the long term, it’s unknown how moderate alcohol consumption affects sleep, but according to a review of 107 studies published in the journal Substance Abuse, long-lasting changes may occur:10
Evening Drinking Reduces Daytime AlertnessUsing alcohol as a tool to fall asleep can have consequences the next day, too. Even if you’re well-rested, “reduction in alertness enough to impair performance occurs in the morning after evening drinking,”11 research shows, and your reaction time can be impaired even when your blood alcohol levels are zero. Overall, those who drink alcohol in the evening are less alert during the day and more tired than those who do not. The risks may be especially significant for those who are already sleep-deprived, as even drinking a small amount the night before could raise the risk of traffic-related and other accidents due to severe daytime sleepiness. “Most worrisome is moderate alcohol use among chronically sleep-deprived populations such as shift workers and young adults who are at high risk for falling asleep while driving,” the researchers noted.12 Older adults should also think twice before using alcohol as a sleep aid. A 30-year study of 6,117 older adults found that men who drank more than 21 units (about 168 grams or 6 ounces) of alcohol per week were more likely to wake up several times during the night than those who drank no alcohol. Those who maintained this level of drinking, or had an unstable alcohol consumption pattern, over the three decades of observation, were also more likely to wake several times during the night and wake up feeling tired.13 “Those with disrupted sleep should consider reducing alcohol consumption and people in this age group, particularly men, should be discouraged from using alcohol as a sleep aid,” the researchers concluded.14 Despite this, in a survey of people aged 60 and over regarding why people change their alcohol consumption later in life, 6% of men and 5% of women said they started drinking more alcohol as a way to help get to sleep.15 During Sleep, Alcohol Affects Your Heart, Breathing and MoreDuring sleep, your body engages in important physiological restoration. Your autonomic nervous system (ANS) relaxes, but if you don’t sleep well it interferes with this process while also impairing regenerative processes and triggering metabolic disturbances.16 Finnish researchers were intrigued to find out whether alcohol intake, in turn, affected the ANS during sleep, so they tracked heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of the variations in time elapsed between your heartbeats, among 4,098 people during the first three hours of sleep. HRV is a measure of your heart’s ability to respond to physiological and environmental stress stimuli, which, in this study’s case, was alcohol intake.17 A dose-dependent disturbance of cardiovascular relaxation during sleep was noted in relation to alcohol intake. Specifically, HRV-derived physiological recovery state decreased by 39.2% with high alcohol intake (defined as more than 0.75 grams per kilogram (g/kg) of body weight), 24% with moderate intake (>0.25-0.75 g/kg) and 9.3% with low intake (≤0.25 g/kg). Regular physical activity or being young in age did not protect from this disturbance. Alcohol also affects other aspects of sleep, and even one drink is linked with snoring in otherwise normal sleepers, while moderate drinking can lead to obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) that leads to oxygen desaturations. The Substance Abuse researchers explained:18
Among people with OSA, drinking alcohol may be especially problematic, as it may make the frequency and severity of apneas worse, while increasing the risk of heart attack, stroke and sudden death. The risk of sleep-related accidents is also noteworthy:19
Other ways that alcohol consumption may impair and fragment sleep include the following:20
Risks Related to ‘Impaired Sleep Homeostasis’While alcohol may increase sleep during the first half of the night, sleep during the second half of the night is more likely to be disrupted if you’ve consumed alcohol, due to a disruption in sleep homeostasis.21 In a statement, Mahesh Thakkar, Ph.D., with the University of Missouri School of Medicine, explained:22
Lack of sleep and poor quality sleep, in turn, can raise your risk of chronic and acute health conditions. For instance, too little sleep may interfere with thyroid hormones and raise C-reactive protein levels (CRP), which may promote inflammation and increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes.23 Research also shows that adults who sleep less than six hours a night have a four times higher risk of catching a cold when directly exposed to the virus than those who get at least seven hours.24 Sleep is even connected with subclinical atherosclerosis, the early stages of hardening and narrowing of the arteries. In one study, those who slept for less than six hours a night were 27% more likely to have subclinical atherosclerosis than those who slept for seven or eight hours a night.25,26 If you have trouble falling asleep, or you wake frequently during the night, it’s time to take steps to improve your sleep. Top Steps for a Good Night’s SleepI do not recommend drinking alcohol, and if you’re using it as a form of sleep aid there are many other ways to get a sound’s night sleep that will leave your body truly refreshed. Be sure you’re sleeping in complete darkness, for starters, as light (even that from a night light or alarm clock) can disrupt your internal clock and your production of melatonin and serotonin, thereby interfering with your sleep. In the morning, bright, blue light-rich sunlight signals to your body that it's time to wake up. At night, as the sun sets, darkness should signal to your body that it's time to sleep. You’ll want to keep the temperature cool, between 60 and 68 degrees F, and eliminate electromagnetic fields (EMFs). Ideally, shut down the electricity to your bedroom by pulling your circuit breaker before bed and turning off your Wi-Fi at night. Other practical solutions include going to bed earlier and considering a separate bedroom if your partner is interfering with your sleep. And, as mentioned, avoid drinking alcohol, as it will likely cause you to wake up during the second half of the night and have fragmented sleep. For more tips, my 33 healthy sleep secrets provides a comprehensive list of strategies for a better night’s rest. from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/01/21/why-alcohol-is-bad-for-sleep.aspx Omega-3 fats are important for many reasons. While their brain and cardiovascular benefits are well-established, a lesser known benefit has to do with autoimmune diabetes. According to research1,2 published in December 2020, adults who test positive for glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD65) antibodies — a marker for Type 1 diabetes3 — can significantly reduce their risk of adult-onset diabetes by eating omega-3 rich fatty fish. The study looked at data from 11,247 cases of adult-onset diabetes and 14,288 diabetes-free controls that participated in the Epic-InterAct case-cohort study conducted in eight European countries. As explained by the authors:4
Results Support Previous FindingsSome of the researchers from this team first investigated the impact of fish consumption on latent autoimmune diabetes back in 2014.5 At that time, they analyzed data from a much smaller cohort that included 89 cases of latent autoimmune diabetes in adults, 462 Type 2 diabetics and 1,007 diabetes-free controls. A food frequency questionnaire was used to determine fish intake along with omega-3 supplementation and vitamin D intake. Results showed those who ate one or more servings of fatty fish per week had a 49% reduced risk of latent autoimmune diabetes, but not Type 2 diabetes, compared to those who got less than one weekly serving. Similar associations were seen among those who took omega-3 supplements. The Type of Fish You Choose MattersWhile this is good news, it’s important to be careful about your seafood choices. Importantly, not all fish contain omega-3s. Only fatty, cold-water fish do. Examples include wild-caught Alaskan salmon, sardines, anchovies, mackerel and herring. Farmed fish, especially farmed salmon, is best avoided altogether due to the exaggerated potential for contamination. At first glance, farmed fish may seem like a good idea to help protect wild seafood populations from overfishing, but in reality, the industry is plagued with many of the same problems surrounding land-based concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), including pollution, disease, toxicity and inferior nutritional quality. Most farmed fish are fed genetically engineered (GE) corn and soy, which are a completely unnatural diet for marine life and are loaded with hazardous omega-6 fats. Others are fed fishmeal, which is known to accumulate industrial chemicals like PCBs and dioxins. Remember a few important facts: The first is that the omega-6 fats that are fed to these fish are about 90% of the dangerous linoleic acid (LA) that I have recently written about. So, consuming these fish will not correct a high omega 6-to-3 ratio. Additionally, the primary action needed if your ratio is too high is to first lower your LA intake, as I review in detail in my recent article on LA. According to toxicology researcher Jerome Ruzzin, farmed salmon is one of the most toxic foods on the market — five times more toxic than any other food product tested. Farmed fish waste also promotes algal growth that harms the water’s oxygen content, posing risks to coral reefs and other aquatic life. From a nutritional perspective, farmed salmon have the drawbacks of containing only half the omega-3 of wild salmon6,7,8 and one-fourth the vitamin D,9 while having more than 5.5 times the amount of omega-6.10,11 Farmed salmon are also routinely exposed to antibiotics and pesticides. Alaska does not permit aquaculture, so all Alaskan fish are wild caught. They also have some of the cleanest water and some of the best maintained and most sustainable fisheries. To verify authenticity, look for the state of Alaska’s “Wild Alaska Pure” logo. This is one of the more reliable ones, and it’s a particularly good sign to look for if you’re buying canned Alaskan salmon, which is less expensive than salmon steaks. In the past, sockeye salmon was another good choice as they weren’t farmed. Unfortunately, this has changed. Land-based sockeye salmon farming is now being done,12 which makes it difficult to know whether the fish is wild or not. For this reason, it may be best to avoid it unless you can verify that it’s wild-caught. Your Omega-3 Index Is an Excellent Predictor of MortalityAside from affecting your risk of autoimmune diabetes, omega-3 fats also play other important roles in health. For example, research13 published in 2018 confirmed omega-3 fats can reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), coronary heart disease and all-cause mortality. Overall, those with an omega-3 index in the highest quintile had a total mortality that was 34% lower than those in the lowest omega-3 quintile, and a 39% lower risk for CVD. The strongest association was found for the omega-3 docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). According to the authors, “The omega-3 index can serve as a marker of overall health in older Americans.” As detailed in “More Data Support Heart Healthy Benefits of Omega-3s,” more recent research found fish oil consumption lowered the risk of all-cause mortality by 13% and cardiovascular mortality by 16%. DHA for Your Brain HealthDHA is also crucial for brain health. In my book, “Superfuel,” cowritten with James DiNicolantonio, Pharm.D., we explain how DHA is an essential structural component of your brain, and is found in high levels in your neurons, the cells of your central nervous system. When your omega-3 intake is inadequate, your nerve cells become stiff and more prone to inflammation as the missing omega-3 fats are substituted with omega-6 instead. Once your nerve cells become rigid and inflamed, proper neurotransmission from cell to cell and within cells become compromised. Low DHA levels have been linked to memory loss and Alzheimer's disease, and some studies suggest degenerative brain diseases may potentially be reversible with sufficient DHA.14,15 DHA also stimulates the Nrf2 pathway, one of the most important transcription factors that regulates cellular oxidation and reduction, and aids in detoxification.16 Additionally, DHA increases heme oxygenase 117 (a protein produced in response to oxidative stress) and upregulates antioxidant enzymes — all of which are important for brain health. The omega-3 eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), meanwhile, appears to be particularly beneficial in the treatment of depression,18 as it helps lower levels of tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin 1 beta and prostaglandin E2 — three immune chemicals that tend to be elevated in those with depression. The Many Health Benefits of Omega-3 FatsOther health benefits of omega-3 fats include the following:
The Importance of Phospholipid-Bound Omega-3While fish oil is a well-known source of omega-3 fats, it has several drawbacks, the lack of phospholipids being one of them. DHA and EPA are water insoluble and therefore cannot be transported in their free form in your blood. They must be packaged into lipoprotein vehicles such as phospholipids. This is primarily why the bioavailability of krill oil is so much higher than fish oil, because in fish oil, the DHA and EPA are bound to triglycerides. When you take fish oil, your liver has to attach it to phosphatidylcholine in order for it to be efficiently utilized. Phospholipids are also one of the principal compounds in high-density lipoproteins (HDL), which you want more of, and by allowing your cells to maintain structural integrity, phospholipids help your cells function optimally. Importantly, your brain cannot readily absorb DHA unless it’s bound to phosphatidylcholine, and while krill oil contains phosphatidylcholine naturally, fish oil does not. As the name implies, phosphatidylcholine is composed partly of choline, the precursor for the vital neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which sends nerve signals to your brain, and choline itself is crucial for brain development, learning and memory. Research36 by Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D., has highlighted the value of DHA bound to phospholipids, showing this form may actually reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in those with the apolipoprotein E4 (APOE4) gene, which lowers the typical age of onset of this degenerative brain disorder. Two hallmarks of Alzheimer’s are amyloid beta plaques and tau tangles, both of which impair normal brain functioning. Alzheimer’s patients also have reduced glucose transport into their brains, and this is one of the reasons why plaque and tangles form and accumulate in the first place. According to Patrick,37 DHA encourages your brain’s uptake of glucose by regulating the structure and function of glucose transporters, proteins located at your blood-brain barrier. While eating DHA-rich fish has been shown to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s in APOE4 carriers, taking fish oil has not demonstrated the same efficacy. According to Patrick, this variation in response appears to be related to the different ways in which the two forms of DHA are metabolized and ultimately transported into your brain. When the triglyceride form of DHA is metabolized, most of it turns into nonesterified DHA, while the phospholipid form is metabolized primarily into DHA-lysophosphatidylcholine (DHA-lysoPC). While both of these forms can cross the blood-brain barrier to reach your brain, the phospholipid form does so far more efficiently. According to Patrick, people with APOE4 have a faulty nonesterified DHA transport system, and this may be why they’re at increased risk for Alzheimer’s. The good news is that DHA-lysoPC can bypass the tight junctions, thereby improving DHA transport, and for those with one or two APOE4 variants, taking the phospholipid form of DHA may therefore lower their risk of Alzheimer’s more effectively. Oxidized Linoleic Acid Drives Many Disease ProcessesOne of the most hazardous fats in the human diet, in my view, is omega-6 linoleic acid (LA). Processed vegetable oils are primary sources of LA, but animal foods such as chicken and farmed salmon also contain high amounts of it, thanks to the fact that the animals are fed LA-rich grains. There’s evidence to suggest excessive amounts of LA play a role in most chronic diseases, especially top killers such as heart disease. Evidence implicating excessive consumption of LA as a direct cause of heart disease includes, but is not limited to, the following:38
Do You Know Your Omega-3 Index?An omega-3 deficiency leaves you vulnerable to several chronic diseases and lifelong challenges. Optimizing your levels is truly a foundational strategy to attaining and maintaining good health. The best way to determine if you're eating enough food with omega-3 is to get an omega-3 index test. The omega-3 index is a measure of the amount of EPA and DHA in the membranes of your red blood cells (RBCs). Your index is expressed as a percent of your total RBC fatty acids. The omega-3 index has been validated as a stable, long-term marker of your omega-3 status. An omega-3 index over 8% is associated with the lowest risk of death from heart disease, while an index below 4% places you at the highest risk of heart disease-related mortality. I firmly believe an omega-3 index test is one of the most important annual health screens that everyone needs. GrassrootsHealth makes testing easy through its D*Action+Omega-3 consumer-sponsored research project.40 You can find the GrassrootsHealth omega-3 index test kit both in my online store and on the GrassrootsHealth website.41 Please remember: If you find that you have a high omega 6-to-3 ratio, your primary action needed is to first lower your LA intake, as I review in detail in my recent article on LA. from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/01/21/importance-of-omega-3-fats.aspx While vitamins C and D have garnered much attention in the fight against COVID-19, B vitamins can also play an important role, according to two recent papers — niacin (B3) in particular. The first, "Be Well: A Potential Role for Vitamin B in COVID-19,"1,2,3,4 was published in the February 2021 issue of the journal Maturitas. The paper is the result of a joint collaboration between researchers at the University of Oxford, United Arab Emirates University and the University of Melbourne, Australia. While no studies using B vitamins have been performed on COVID-19 patients, the researchers stress that, based on B vitamins' effects on your immune system, immune-competence and red blood cells (which help fight infection), supplementation may be a useful adjunct to other prevention and treatment strategies. As noted by the authors:5
B Vitamins Play Many Roles in COVID-19 Disease ProcessImportantly, B vitamins can influence several COVID-19-specific disease processes, including:6
The paper goes on to detail how each of the B vitamins can help manage various COVID-19 symptoms:7
Niacin — A Missing Piece of the COVID-19 Puzzle?The second paper,14 "Sufficient Niacin Supply: The Missing Puzzle Piece to COVID-19 and Beyond?" (which is a preprint and has yet to undergo peer review), focuses specifically on niacin (B3), raising the question of whether this vitamin might actually be a crucial player in the COVID-19 disease process. As noted in the abstract:
As noted in this paper, a primary hallmark of COVID-19 pathology is the cytokine storm, which can lead to multiple organ failure and death. Marked elevations in proinflammatory cytokines are to blame for this chain of events, most notable of which are interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-1β (IL-1β), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1). If you can decrease and control these damaging cytokines, you stand a good chance of thwarting the cytokine storm and the downstream damage it causes. Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) plays an important role in this, and niacin is a building block of NAD. As explained in "Be Well: A Potential Role for Vitamin D in COVID-19":15
Aside from markedly decreasing proinflammatory cytokines, niacin has also been shown to:16
Niacin Modulates the Bradykinin StormCOVID-19 also triggers bradykinin storms. Bradykinin is a chemical that helps regulate your blood pressure and is controlled by your renin-angiotensin system (RAS). The bradykinin hypothesis provides a model that helps explain some of the more unusual symptoms of COVID-19, including its bizarre effects on your cardiovascular system. Researchers have discovered SARS-CoV-2 downregulates your body's ability to degrade or break down bradykinin. The end result is a bradykinin storm, and this appears to be an important factor in many of COVID-19's lethal effects, perhaps even more so than the cytokine storms associated with the disease. As bradykinin accumulates, the more serious COVID-19 symptoms appear. Vitamin D has a significant impact on the RAS,17 and can therefore help prevent a bradykinin storm, but niacin also plays an important role. As noted in "Sufficient Niacin Supply: The Missing Puzzle Piece to COVID-19 and Beyond?":18
The paper also expounds on the role of NAD+, and why niacin is a useful strategy for boosting NAD+:20
Recommended UseThe paper21 goes deep into the biochemical aspects of how niacin works in your body, so if you're interested in that, you may want to read through it. In summary, as it pertains to COVID-19, the important thing to understand is that there appears to be a causative link between low niacin status and SARS-CoV-2 infection. According to the authors, SARS-CoV-2's ability to invade your body is dependent on whether calcium signaling can properly proceed, which in turn is dependent on the presence of NAADP. And, as explained in the quoted section above, niacin forms NAADP in your body. NAADP-dependent calcium signaling is responsible both for the inhibition of viral entry into cells and driving the virus out of already infected cells. And, again, the authors stress that "nothing outside of sufficiently, dynamically supplied niacin is capable of readily leading to the NAADP supply needed in these acidic environments for therapeutic action that counteracts inflammatory disease progression." They also point out that the flushing you get from niacin is part of how the niacin drives inflammatory free radicals out of the cells. As you continue to take the supplement at a consistent, sufficiently high dose, that flushing will gradually lessen, which is a sign that your body is reaching a healthy homeostasis.
While the flushing can be uncomfortable, the authors stress that it is "indeed safe," and actually "should be sought when needed for its anti-inflammatory properties." Suggested DosingAs a "health restorative therapy" for those diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2, they recommend starting with a dose of 500 milligrams of immediate-release niacin, two to three times a day, ideally within the first 48 hours of symptom onset. As your flush response lessens, increase your dose to 1,000 mg, two to three times a day.23
Although the authors suggest you can use niacin prophylactically, using that same dose, I disagree. According to the authors:25
There may be some value to the high doses in acute COVID-19 infections but I am skeptical. I am a huge fan of NAD+ augmentation and have been using it for years. My research suggests you really only need about 25 mg per day of niacin, which will not cause flushing in nearly anyone. I believe most would benefit from taking 25 mg of niacin daily, preferably in a well-balanced B complex, which would have thiamine (B1) that has also been shown to be useful in COVID-19. Other alternatives to high-dose niacin would be nicotinamide riboside (NR) and nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN), which is my personal favorite. I believe that compounding these into rectal suppositories would avoid most of the methylation of the supplement and supply you with higher NAD+ tissue levels. Another downside of high-dose niacin is that it breaks down to nicotinamide and in high doses, nicotinamide will inhibit Sirt1, which is an important longevity protein. Personally, I believe a superior strategy to high-dose niacin in acute COVID-19 would be to use nebulized hydrogen peroxide at 0.1%. I have never seen or heard of this intervention failing in the treatment of COVID-19. How to Improve Your Vitamin B StatusAs a general rule, I recommend getting most if not all of your nutrition from real food. This will work well for most B vitamins, but not if you're using niacin therapeutically, as described above. For that, you will need to take a supplement. That said, the list below will show you which foods contain which B vitamins, as well as provide general guidance on dosage if you're taking a supplement. If you're trying to improve your vitamin B status, also consider limiting sugar and eating more fermented foods. The reason for this is because the entire B group vitamin series is produced within your gut, assuming you have healthy gut flora. Eating real food, including plenty of leafy greens and fermented foods, will provide your microbiome with important fiber and beneficial bacteria to help optimize your internal vitamin B production.
from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/01/20/what-are-the-benefits-of-niacin.aspx Mead is a village in Saunders County, Nebraska, with a population of just 580 people.1 Their website focuses on what they do best: small town living. “If you’re ready to escape the city, come join us in Mead, Nebraska,” their official site reads.2 This close-knit farming community is also home to AltEn,3 an ethanol plant that is producing toxic byproducts that are poisoning the community. “It’s definitely within sniffing distance. I come out here to do yard work and I can barely breathe,” Jody Weible, who lives half a mile from the plant, told a news outlet.4 The stench is coming from a byproduct of ethanol production called distillers grain, which is produced after the starch is removed from corn. Also known as “wet cake,” distillers grain is sold by most U.S. ethanol plants as livestock feed, but AltEn’s waste is different. The company secured a free source of corn to make ethanol by billing itself as a “recycling” plant that accepts seeds treated with pesticides, including toxic neonicotinoids. The resulting waste is too contaminated to sell as feed for animals, so AltEn has been spreading the waste on farmland and holding the rest of it — a “smelly, lime-green mash of fermented grains” — on the grounds surrounding its plant.5 Pesticide Contamination ‘Off the Charts’Neonicotinoids are the most widely used insecticides worldwide.6 If you were to visit a conventional farm, you’d likely see evidence of their use in the form of brightly colored red corn seeds and blue soybean seeds, which are color-coded to denote treatment with neonicotinoids. Even when used agriculturally, these seeds have been found to harm pollinators like bees at alarming rates.7 There are other concerns as well, like the fact that planting neonicotinoid seeds kills off insects that prey on slugs — prominent corn and soybean pests — thereby reducing crop yields.8 They’re also known to persist in the environment. When researchers screened oilseed crops in the European Union for neonicotinoids during the five-year moratorium, they found neonicotinoids in all the years it was banned in bee-attractive crops, with residue levels depending on soil type and increasing with rainfall. They concluded that this poses a “considerable risk for nectar foraging bees” and supports “the recent extension of the moratorium to a permanent ban in all outdoor crops.”9 In 2018, the European Union banned the outdoor use of three neonicotinoids (clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam), while the United Nations has also recommended severely restricting their use.10 They’re still widely used in the U.S., however, and in Mead, where the excess waste from the treated seeds is piling up, astronomical levels of the chemicals have been detected. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) attorney Dan Raichel told The Guardian, “Some of the levels recorded are just off the charts. If I were living in that area with those levels of neonics going into the water and the environment I would be concerned for my own health.”11 In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency has set an upper “safety” limit of 70 parts per billion (ppb) for neonicotinoids in food and water, while levels deemed “safe” for aquatic life are capped at 11 ppb for clothianidin and 17.5 ppb for thiamethoxam. Yet, The Guardian reported:12
Sick Dogs, Dead Bees and Birds ReportedThe area’s residents are already experiencing ill effects they attribute to the pesticide-laden waste. Pet dogs have become sick after ingesting waste dumped on farm fields, and dying birds have also been reported. Nebraska’s department of agriculture eventually told AltEn to stop spreading the waste on fields, so the company piled up more of the waste on site as well as began incinerating it or storing it offsite in “biochar” bags.13 State regulators aren’t monitoring for contamination near AltEn’s Mead plant, but researcher Judy Wu-Smart, with the University of Nebraska’s department of entomology, believes area insects are being decimated. The university has a research farm about 1 mile from the city, where every beehive has died, and the bee deaths are associated with AltEn’s usage of pesticide-treated seeds. She also has evidence of birds and butterflies that appear to be neurologically damaged, and found residues of neonicotinoids in plants, which she traced to waterways connecting the land to AltEn. In an interview with The Guardian, she called the findings a red flag, noting, “The bees are just a bio-indicator of something seriously going wrong.”14 AltEn Given Two Months to Clean Up WasteChildren and adults living in Mead have also reported illnesses that occurred after the ethanol plant arrived, while the stench from the waste has caused people to move and businesses to close. Schoolchildren often cannot go outside because of the smell alone, and there’s a high likelihood that local air and water are now contaminated. The Guardian’s exposé was published January 10, 2021. At the time, the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy (NDEE) said they had no opinion on the area’s bee deaths and did not have jurisdiction in the matter, but were reviewing AltEn’s operations and activities. NDEE waste permits specialist Blayne Glissman also told The Guardian that AltEn officials were “hard-working people trying to make a living.”15 On January 12, 2021, News Channel Nebraska reported that NDEE cited AltEn for noncompliance of pollution rules due to waste at the plant contaminating air and water, and gave the company until March 2021 to clean up the pollution. AltEn said they’re “on schedule” and working with NDEE to do so.16 In a statement, Malia Libby, a conservation associate with Environmental America, condemned AltEn, stating they should have known better:17
US Farmland 48 Times More Toxic Than It Was 25 Years AgoFrom 1992 to 2014, researchers found that synthetic insecticide use shifted from mostly organophosphorus pesticides to a mix of neonicotinoids and pyrethroids. This shift, they believe, is the reason why agricultural lands are now 48 times more toxic than they were a quarter-century ago, as in 2014, neonicotinoids represented up to 99% of the land’s total toxic load.18 “Our screening analysis demonstrates an increase in pesticide toxicity loading over the past 26 years, which potentially threatens the health of honey bees and other pollinators and may contribute to declines in beneficial insect populations as well as insectivorous birds and other insect consumers,” they noted19 — concerns that have been echoed by similar studies. One of the observed effects of neonicotinoids in bees is a weakening of the bees’ immune systems.20 Forager bees may bring pesticide-laden pollen back to the hive, where it's consumed by all of the bees. About six months later, their immune systems fail, and they end up contracting secondary infections from parasites, mites, viruses, fungi and bacteria. The chemicals have also been shown to trigger immunosuppression in the queen bee, possibly leading to an impaired ability to resist diseases.21 “Neonicotinoids are suspected to pose an unacceptable risk to bees, partly because of their systemic uptake in plants,” a study published in Nature revealed in 2015.22 Other species are also at risk. For instance, researchers found annual catches of smelt from Lake Shinji in Japan fell by 90% in the 10 years after the application of neonicotinoids to adjacent rice paddies.23,24 An exposé by The Intercept,25 which obtained lobbying documents and emails, revealed an extensive playbook used by the pesticide industry to downplay the pesticides’ harms by influencing beekeepers, regulators and academia. Meanwhile, bees and other pollinators are still in decline and the pesticide industry has gotten richer:
Ethanol, Neonicotinoids Pose an Ecosystem-Wide ThreatPlants take up only about 5% of the neonicotinoids’ active ingredient, which leaves the rest to be widely dispersed into the environment.26 Worldwide, more than 40% of insect species are threatened with extinction in the next few decades.27 Researchers cited “compelling evidence” that agricultural intensification is the main driver of population declines in birds, small mammals and insects. In order of importance, habitat loss due to land converted to intensive agriculture, as well as urbanization, are major problems, but the next most significant contributor is pollution, primarily that from synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.28 Ethanol is advertised as an environmentally friendly solution, but it’s actually part of the problem because it’s driving valuable grassland to be converted into chemical-heavy corn crops. Between 2008 and 2013, wild bees declined 23% in the U.S., particularly in the Midwest, Great Plains and the Mississippi valley, where grain production, primarily corn for biofuel, nearly doubled during the same period.29 Further, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), more than 8 million acres of grassland and wetlands have been converted to corn from 2008 to 2011.30 Overall, since the U.S. government began requiring ethanol in fuel in 2007, corn (and soy) crops have taken over more than 1.2 million acres of grassland.31 Converting more diverse grasslands into corn crops for biofuels is the opposite of what’s needed to save the environment — and creating ethanol out of excess neonicotinoid-treated seeds represents one of the worst outcomes of all. Adding insult to injury, an investigation by the U.S. EPA even found that treating soybean seeds with neonicotinoids provides no significant financial or agricultural benefits for farmers.32 Regenerative farming, on the other hand, improves biodiversity of the soil, does not harm the environment and increases farmers' net profits, a win-win situation for all. As Environment America’s Libby said:33
from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/01/20/ethanol-plant-using-treated-gmo-corn-poisons-town.aspx Will the COVID-19 vaccine become mandatory? That’s a question many are asking these days and, by the looks of it, the answer may well be yes — although as I’ll explain later, I suspect the harms of the vaccine will become so apparent that it’ll kill such efforts before they become widespread. In a January 1, 2021, Newsweek interview,1 Dr. Anthony Fauci said he was “sure” some institutions and businesses will require employees to be vaccinated, and that it’s “quite possible” the vaccine will be required for overseas travel. When asked about the possibility of mandating the vaccine on a local level, such as for children attending school, he stated that “Everything will be on the table for discussion.” That said, he pointed out that since “we almost never mandate things federally” — with regard to health — he doesn’t believe a national vaccine mandate will be enacted. In related news2 December 21, 2020, presidential candidate Joe Biden rolled up his sleeve to get publicly inoculated against COVID-19, stating that the vaccine was “nothing to worry about.” He’s also gone on record saying he will push for a 100-day mask mandate in federal buildings if he wins the presidency.3 Can Experimental Vaccines Be Mandated?While many vaccines are required by state or local law, the thing that sets the COVID-19 vaccine apart from all others is the fact that it is still an experimental vaccine. While Moderna and Pfizer have been granted emergency use authorization for their respective vaccine candidates, they still haven’t even completed Stage 3 clinical trials yet. The mRNA technology used in these vaccines is also experimental, and the sheer speed at which the vaccines have been developed and tested precludes us from knowing much about their side effects, especially in the long term. As of December 18, 2020, the adverse event rate in the U.S. was 2.79%.4 This means your risk of harm from the vaccine is far greater than your risk of dying from COVID-19, which has an overall noninstitutionalized infection fatality rate of just 0.26%.5 Among those under the age of 40, the infection fatality rate is a mere 0.01%.6 If an experimental vaccine were to be mandated, it would set a frightening precedent and pave the way for all sorts of nonconsensual medical experimentation on the general public, going forward. In a December 29, 2020, article7 in JAMA, the authors discuss the legal possibility of mandating COVID-19 vaccines, stating that “SARS-CoV-2 vaccines hold promise to control the pandemic and help restore normal social and economic life.” However, this is questionable, considering the fact that the effectiveness of the vaccines is only measured by their ability to lessen moderate to severe COVID-19 symptoms such as cough and headache. Presumably, this would lower the risk of hospitalization and death for vaccinated individuals. However, as explained in “How COVID-19 Vaccine Trials Are Rigged,” the vaccines were not evaluated for their ability to actually prevent infection and transmission of the virus. And, if the vaccine cannot reduce infection, hospitalizations or deaths, then it cannot create the vaccine-acquired herd immunity required to end the pandemic. What’s more, in a November 26, 2020, BMJ article,8 Peter Doshi, associate editor of The BMJ, points out that while Pfizer claims its vaccine is 95% effective, this is the relative risk reduction. The absolute risk reduction is actually less than 1%. He also stresses that severe side effects appear commonplace:
New York Considers Forced Vaccination BillNone of these open questions is stopping the New York Senate from considering a forced vaccination bill (A4169). As reported by constitutional attorney KrisAnne Hall:10
As noted by Hall, this bill violates the U.S. Constitution in several different ways. For starters, it eliminates your right to due process before forcing you into the custody of health officials, as well as your right to trial “as required by Article I sec 1 and Article VI Sec 18a of the New York Constitution.” It also “arbitrarily reduces the well-established standard of strict scrutiny required for the infringement of these fundamental rights to the lesser standard of ‘clear and convincing evidence’ which will be determined solely by the Governor or some worker in the New York Health Department.” This, in turn, violates the constitutional principle of separation of powers. Thirdly, “A-416 is a bold violation of Article 1 sec 5 and Article 1 sec 12 of the New York Constitution” as it would deprive you of your “inherent rights to due process related to a search and seizure” of your property and/or your body.
In her blog post, Hall includes sample letter and phone scripts you can use when contacting your representatives. Blackmailing the Public to Force Vaccine UptakeGetting back to the JAMA article12 discussing the legal possibility of mandating COVID-19 vaccines, the authors point out that mandating a vaccine while it’s still under an emergency use approval is “legally and ethically problematic.”
Once the vaccine is fully licensed, however, vaccine mandates “could be imposed in multiple sectors,” according to the authors. Still, they point out that “Given the rarity of adult mandates, states are unlikely to enact mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for the adult population, especially in the absence of long-term safety data.” Private companies, on the other hand, can require vaccination as a condition of employment, and according to a Yale CEO survey, 71% of company executives supported the implementation of COVID-19 vaccine mandates in the workplace.13 The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has already ruled that businesses can compel their employees to get vaccinated, and that they may fire those who refuse. Employers must, however, allow for medical exemptions and “offer reasonable accommodations based on religion or disability.”14 Schools may also end up requiring COVID-19 vaccination for students, faculty and staff, and it seems likely the vaccine may simply be added to the ACIP-recommended list of childhood vaccinations. Most troubling, however, is the proposal to require vaccination as a condition of service. According to the JAMA article:15
To be clear, even if state and federal governments don’t mandate the vaccine, by barring unvaccinated people from traveling, participating in social events and even entering into government buildings, they are essentially mandating it. Unvaccinated people would become second-class citizens that aren’t permitted to work, travel, conduct business or engage socially. What kind of life is that? Yet this is precisely what we may be facing. As noted by the JAMA authors, “If scientific and logistical challenges can be overcome, linking vaccinations as a condition of providing service could be an effective incentive for vaccination.” They really should call it what it is: blackmail. Many Front-Line Workers Refuse COVID-19 VaccineDistribution of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines began at the end of December 2020. In the U.S., most states have elected to begin distribution among front-line health care workers and in senior care facilities. However, despite media fanfare, many health care workers are leery of the vaccine. According to news reports, about half of all front-line workers in Riverside County, California, have refused the vaccine,16 as have 60% of nursing home staff in Ohio,17 40% of staff at Chicago's Loretto Hospital18 and 40% of LA’s front-line workers.19 Similar rates of vaccine refusal are being reported in several European countries.20 Interestingly, a survey by the National Association of Health Care Assistants revealed a whopping 72% of certified nursing assistants plan to refuse the vaccine,21 as are 55% of firefighters in New York, according to a December 2020 poll by the Uniformed Firefighters Association.22 The reason for this widespread hesitation is as understandable as it is justifiable. As noted in the Western Journal:23
Side Effects and Deaths Are Stacking UpThe fact that high rates of side effects and sudden deaths are already being reported will hardly improve matters in coming weeks and months. For example, January 4, 2021, RT reported24 that health authorities in Portugal were “on alert” after the sudden death of a 41-year-old pediatric surgery assistant who had been in good health. She was found dead in her bed just two days after being inoculated with Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. December 30, 2020, the Daily Star reported25 the death of an elderly resident in Lucerne, Switzerland, five days after receiving the Pfizer vaccine. The man had previously “reacted negatively” to the seasonal influenza vaccine. According to the report, he suffered from dementia but was otherwise in good health. December 26, 2020, a Boston doctor with severe shellfish allergy suffered a life-threatening anaphylactic reaction to the Moderna vaccine. As reported by RT:26
A December 21, 2020, article27 in The Defender reported the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating a series of allergic reactions to the Pfizer vaccine. Aside from the Boston doctor, other reports of allergic reactions, including anaphylactic shock, include four health care workers in Illinois and three health care workers in Alaska.28 Cases of anaphylaxis also emerged within days of the rollout of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines in the U.K.29 Thousands Injured in Mere DaysAccording to the CDC,30 by December 18, 2020, 112,807 Americans had received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. Of those, 3,150 suffered one or more “health impact events,” defined as being “unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from doctor or health care professional.” That’s 2.79%. Extrapolated to the total U.S. population of 328.2 million, we can then expect 9,156,780 Americans to be injured by the vaccine if every single man, woman and child is vaccinated. Is this really reasonable for a virus that has an average survival rate of 99.74%?31 In the end, I suspect and predict that widespread mandates for COVID-19 vaccination will not take place. I believe there will simply be too many injuries and deaths from the first and second rounds of vaccinations, and that will destroy any and all vaccine mandate arguments. Allergy AlertMany suspect polyethylene glycol (PEG), found in both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines, might be the culprit causing allergic reactions and anaphylaxis. According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “studies show that 1 in 7 Americans may unknowingly be at risk of experiencing an allergic reaction to PEG.”32 Kennedy believes “everyone should be screened for anti-PEG antibodies before getting the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines,” adding that “It is unconscionable that, instead, the FDA and CDC are encouraging people to go ahead and risk a life-threatening anaphylactic reaction and just assume that someone will be on hand to save them.”33 It’s worth noting that the CDC has updated its vaccine guidance in response to reports of allergic reactions to the Pfizer vaccine, stating that:34
COVID-19 Outbreaks Occurring Among VaccinatedYet another interesting problem that has arisen is that many newly vaccinated individuals are suddenly testing positive for COVID-19. In a San Jose, California, hospital, 51 employees tested positive within 10 days of vaccination, although it’s unclear whether all of them had actually received the vaccine.35 One died from COVID-19 complications. Interestingly, the outbreak is being blamed on an employee who showed up wearing an inflatable Christmas costume. The same pattern has been reported elsewhere. For example, in Israel, 21 residents of a retirement home tested positive for the virus after receiving the vaccine.36 Authorities pointed out that since two doses are required to provide protection against SARS-CoV-2, you can still catch it after the first dose. The same argument was made in the San Jose hospital case. A doctor in Philadelphia also tested positive after taking the vaccine,37 as did a nurse in San Diego.38 In each case, health authorities have insisted that it’s not the vaccine causing the problem but, rather, the fact that the shot needs time to work. Overall, there’s plenty of reason to be cautious and delay COVID-19 vaccination as long as possible. As mentioned earlier, I believe that, in time, the harms will become apparent enough that any talk about mandating these vaccines will simply evaporate. from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/01/19/covid-19-vaccine-may-become-mandatory.aspx Informed consent to medical treatment is a right that ensures patients receive information about the recommended treatment so they can make a well-informed decision about their medical care.1 Medical practitioners are both ethically and legally obligated to ensure their patients have an opportunity for informed consent, which means disclosing both the risks and benefits of potential medical treatments. In the case of the COVID-19 vaccine, it’s not possible to provide a full list of potential risks, considering the unprecedented speed with which they were developed and released to the public — the long-term effects are completely unknown. Significant concerns have been raised, however, surrounding antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), and the possibility that COVID-19 vaccines could worsen COVID-19 disease via ADE.2 Anyone receiving this experimental medical procedure would certainly want to be informed of its potential to worsen the very disease they’re trying to avoid, but it’s not included as part of the informed consent disclosure — despite researchers recommending back in October 2020 that it be “prominently and independently disclosed.”3 COVID-19 Vaccine Recipients Should Be Warned About ADE RiskWriting in the International Journal of Clinical Practice, Timothy Cardozo of NYU Langone Health and Ronald Veazey with the Tulane University School of Medicine, noted, “Patient comprehension is a critical part of meeting medical ethics standards of informed consent in study designs.”4 As such, they set out to determine if enough research existed to require clinicians to disclose the specific risk that COVID-19 vaccines could worsen disease if the recipient is exposed to circulating virus. First, they reviewed preclinical and clinical evidence, which revealed that ADE is a significant concern. They noted:5
Their next step involved reviewing clinical trial protocols for COVID-19 vaccines to determine if this risk was properly disclosed to research subjects (at the time, the vaccines had not yet been released to the public). It was not, leaving people largely in the dark instead:6
The conclusion reached by the study was that, in order to meet medical ethics standards of informed consent, people taking part in COVID-19 vaccine trials, as well as those who have received it after approval, should be clearly warned of the “specific and significant COVID-19 risk of ADE.”7 This, however, has not occurred, and most receiving it have likely not even heard of ADE, much less its association with the experimental COVID-19 vaccine. What Is Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE)?When your body is exposed to a pathogen, it first ramps up a nonspecific response as part of your innate immune system. Next, your adaptive immune response takes over, generating neutralizing antibodies against the pathogen, which work to bind to the offender so it can’t enter your cells. While vaccines may generate neutralizing antibodies, they can also induce binding antibodies, sometimes referred to as non-neutralizing antibodies, which increase the ability of a virus to enter your cells and worsen the disease. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia explained, “ADE occurs when the antibodies generated during an immune response recognize and bind to a pathogen, but they are unable to prevent infection. Instead, these antibodies act as a ‘Trojan horse,’ allowing the pathogen to get into cells and exacerbate the immune response.”8 It’s possible for pathogens to cause ADE, the most well-known being dengue virus, which has four different serotypes. If a person is infected with one serotype, neutralizing antibodies may effectively fight back against the disease. However, if they’re exposed to a different serotype later, the neutralizing antibodies already circulating in their system can bind to the virus and enhance its entrance into cells, causing a severe form of the disease known as dengue hemorrhagic fever.9 Vaccinations are also known to cause ADE. In 1969, attempts to create a vaccination against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) catastrophically failed after it led to increased rates of severe illness in infants. Eighty percent of vaccinated infants ended up hospitalized compared to only 5% of the nonvaccinated infants, and two vaccinated infants died due to enhanced RSV infections caused by the vaccine.10 RSV is an upper respiratory illness that is very similar to that caused by coronaviruses. In my May 2020 interview with Robert Kennedy Jr., he talked about the failed RSV vaccine:
An early version of the measles vaccine also resulted in ADE (measles belongs to the same family as RSV). Children who were vaccinated with the formalin inactivated measles vaccine were more likely to develop a severe, atypical measles infection, including high fever, unusual rash and pneumonia, leading the vaccine to be withdrawn from the market.11 Coronavirus Vaccines Linked to ADEAs Kennedy further noted, coronavirus vaccines remain notorious for creating ADE, or paradoxical immune enhancement. Coronavirus vaccine development, which began in 2002, followed three consecutive severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreaks. SARS is caused by SARS-associated coronavirus, or SARS-CoV. By 2012, Chinese, American and European scientists were working on SARS vaccine development and had about 30 candidates. Of those, the four best vaccine candidates were then given to ferrets, which are the closest analogue to humans with lung infections. In the video above, which is a select outtake from my full interview, Kennedy explains what happened next. While the ferrets displayed robust antibody response, which is the metric used for vaccine licensing, once they were challenged with the wild virus, they all became severely ill and died, mirroring the severe effects that occurred during the failed RSV trials. At the time, even long-time pro-vaccine advocate Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and professor of pediatrics and molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, was shaken. According to a feature published in PNAS:12
According to Kennedy, the same thing happened in 2014 with the dengue vaccine DENVax. “They knew from the clinical trials that there was a problem with paradoxical immune response,” Kennedy says, but they gave it to several hundred thousand Filipino kids anyway. They got a great immune response from the vaccine, but those exposed to wild dengue got horribly sick and 600 of the children died. “Today, the Philippine government is prosecuting criminally a bunch of the people locally who were involved in that decision,” Kennedy says. Risk of ADE in COVID-19 Vaccines ‘Compelling’The International Journal of Clinical Practice researchers called the risk of ADE in COVID-19 vaccines not only nontheoretical but also compelling.13 They noted that vaccine-elicited enhancement of disease has been previously found with SARS and Middle East respiratory syndrome-related (MERs) coronaviruses, as well as feline coronavirus, all of which are closely related to SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19. A 2019 study involving macaques and SARS14 raises additional concerns. According to the researchers:15
The goal of most COVID-19 vaccines is to produce neutralizing antibodies, and they believe that vaccine-elicited ADE is therefore likely to occur “to some degree” with COVID-19 vaccines. “A finite, nontheoretical risk is evident in the medical literature that vaccine candidates composed of the SARS-CoV-2 viral spike and eliciting anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, be they neutralizing or not, place vaccinees at higher risk for more severe COVID-19 disease when they encounter circulating viruses,” they explained.16 Current data on COVID-19 vaccines do not reveal a risk of ADE, but data are limited and studies have not been designed to follow what happens when subjects are exposed to circulating virus after vaccination, which is when ADE could occur. “Thus,” the researchers added, “the absence of ADE evidence in COVID-19 vaccine data so far does not absolve investigators from disclosing the risk of enhanced disease to vaccine trial participants, and it remains a realistic, nontheoretical risk to the subjects.”17 True Informed Consent Is Required to Weigh Risks and BenefitsIt’s often recommended that patients weigh the risks versus the benefits of medical procedures before making a medical decision. But this is only possible if informed consent provides an accurate picture of risk. In the case of COVID-19 vaccines, the researchers believe informed consent has failed:18
Unfortunately, only minor risks such as injection site reactions, rare risks from the past or risks from unrelated vaccines and viruses are typically disclosed on vaccine trial informed consent forms. Further, generic statements about more severe systemic adverse events and death are the norm. Given the strong evidence of ADE risk from COVID-19 vaccines, the researchers believe that a separate informed consent form should be given out to those receiving the vaccine, warning them of the specific risk of worsened COVID-19 disease from vaccination, and demonstrating consent that they understand this risk.19 If you received such a form, would it change your mind about getting the shot? from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/01/19/informed-consent-for-covid-vaccine.aspx Milk thistle (Silybum marianum) is a member of the Asteraceae family and an herbaceous perennial native to Southern Europe and Asia. The plant enjoys full sun and grows to a height of nearly 5 feet. It blooms between July and August with deep purple to pink flowers.1 Throughout history, people have used the fruit and seeds of the milk thistle plant as a treatment for liver disorders. The plant goes by several other names, including Holy thistle, Mary thistle, Our Lady's thistle, wild artichoke and St. Mary thistle.2 Traditionally, the leaves have been harvested to use in salads and the flower may be roasted and used as a coffee substitute. However, it is the seeds of the milk thistle that were prized for their medicinal activity. According to the NIH, the oldest recorded use of the plant was by Dioscorides, who believed it could be used as a treatment for snake bites.3 During the Middle Ages it was used as an antidote for liver toxins and by 1898 physicians were using it to treat liver, kidney and spleen disorders. Currently, the German Commission E lists milk thistle for the treatment of hepatic cirrhosis and toxin-induced liver damage and to support chronic inflammatory liver conditions. Milk Thistle Protects Your Liver HealthThe main bioactive compound in milk thistle is a group of flavonolignans called silymarin.4 Flavonolignans are a group of flavonoids with known hepatoprotective properties.5 Silymarin consists of seven different flavonolignans among which silybin has the highest concentration and biological effect. Nearly 70% of silymarin is in the form of silybin A and silybin B.6 Silymarin can be isolated from milk thistle seeds, and while the term milk thistle and silymarin have been used interchangeably, it is technically inaccurate. Multiple studies have demonstrated the ability of silymarin to help protect your liver, and it is regularly used in individuals whose liver has been damaged by nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, hepatitis and liver cancer.7,8 Silymarin also has a protective effect against amatoxin, a deadly toxin produced by the death cap mushroom. Nearly 90% of fatalities from mushrooms worldwide are due to the death cap mushroom.9 Symptoms manifest six to eight hours after ingestion and are followed by kidney and liver failure. In one review, researchers found nearly 1,500 documented cases where the mortality was less than 10% in patients treated with Legalon® SIL, a pharmaceutical silibinin compound. In another case report,10 doctors successfully treated two patients who accidentally ingested the death cap mushroom with a combination of n-acetylcysteine, cimetidine, silibinin and high-dose penicillin. Benefits to liver health from silymarin likely result from the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antifibrotic properties of the compound. Silymarin also has demonstrated the ability to reduce virus-related liver damage and has a direct antiviral effect when administered intravenously in patients with hepatitis C.11 Silymarin has a positive effect on nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), which is a more advanced form of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.12 The compound can also help reduce the fibrotic changes that lead to liver cirrhosis.13 In combination with vitamin E, researchers found silymarin helps improve liver function tests and can be:14
Your Liver: The Great DetoxifierOne of the largest organs in your body is your liver, and for good reason. It performs many metabolic and detoxifying functions, helping to convert toxic substances into harmless substances that are then released from your body.15 Your liver is in your upper abdominal cavity just under your right diaphragm, where it sits on top of your stomach. A normal healthy adult liver weighs about 3 pounds and is made of two lobes connected by a band of connective tissue.16 Just inside the hollow under the liver is the gallbladder, where your body stores bile. At any given time, your liver holds about 13% of your body's blood supply, which it filters and then excretes toxins in 800 milliliters to 1,000 milliliters of bile each day.17 This is emptied into your gallbladder. In addition to detoxifying your blood, your liver also produces some of the proteins for blood plasma, converts excess sugar into glycogen and helps balance the production of glucose.18 Your liver is also responsible for regulating blood clotting mechanisms, resisting infections and clearing bilirubin that is formed when hemoglobin breaks down. Silymarin offers significant benefits to your liver, including the ability to increase glutathione, which is a powerful antioxidant crucial for liver detoxification.19 Researchers have also found it may help your liver cells to regenerate, supporting the only organ in your body capable of regeneration.20 Incidence of Liver Disease on the RiseAs you can imagine, liver damage affects these functions and more. Although many tend to equate liver disease with alcohol use, as many as 100 million people suffer from nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD),21 which is associated with obesity.22 As the incidence of obesity in the U.S. has risen, so has NAFLD. In 2017-2018, the age adjusted prevalence of obesity in the U.S. was 42.4% of adults.23 Risk factors for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease include obesity, diabetes, high triglyceride levels and poor eating habits. The condition is sometimes called a silent disease because you may not experience any symptoms and many people may live with the condition without developing further liver damage.24 If NAFLD progresses with signs of inflammation and cell damage, it is called nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). NAFLD is also the most common type of liver disease found in children.25 Data released in January 202026 from a large cohort in the U.K. found 20% of young adults had NAFLD. When the researchers widened the data set, they found over 20% had evidence of NAFLD and 2.5% had developed fibrosis. Breaking out the data further, they found at 17 years, 2.5% had moderate to severe levels, yet by age 24 this had risen to 13%. Silymarin Reduces Cellular InflammationMany of the health benefits attributed to silymarin are the result of the compound’s capacity to help reduce cellular inflammation. Research has suggested silymarin does this using a two-phase process similar to that used by other natural compounds such as curcumin and epigallocatechin gallate, found in green tea.27 During the first phase there was a rapid increase in genetic expression that is linked with cellular stress. After this follows a longer sustained depression of genetic expression that is found with inflammation. As described by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, in this study, silymarin:28
An important factor in those steps is the activation of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). This is an enzyme that sometimes is called the “metabolic master switch” since it plays an important role in regulating metabolism.29 According to the Natural Medicine Journal, AMPK regulates biological activities to normalize energy imbalances. In addition:30
More Health Benefits With Milk ThistleThese factors mean milk thistle offers a wide range of health benefits. Milk thistle extracts have been tested for anticancer actions in prostate cancer both in the lab and in clinical trials. According to one study, “extracts enriched for isosilybin B, or isosilybin B alone, might possess improved potency in prostate cancer prevention and treatment.”31 The plant also has neuroprotective effects and has been used in the treatment of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease in modern society and neurological diseases such as cerebral ischemia for well over 2,000 years.32 The antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties may contribute to the neuroprotective effects that help prevent a decline in brain function as you age.33 In one study, researchers used silymarin to reduce oxidative stress and inflammation in an animal model that helped reduce the potential for dementia in obese animal subjects.34 Other studies have also demonstrated the ability of milk thistle to reduce amyloid plaques in animal models associated with Alzheimer's disease.35,36 Silymarin has also demonstrated antiosteoclastic activity in animal studies, causing one research team to conclude it significantly prevents bone loss, potentially “either due to direct interaction with Erbeta [an estrogen receptor beta-isoform] or increasing bone formation parameters including calcium, phosphorus, osteocalcin and PTH.”37 The American Pregnancy Association writes that blessed thistle has been used for hundreds of years to raise a woman's milk supply, and it is especially effective when taken with fenugreek.38 One published study of 50 healthy lactating women demonstrated oral supplementation with 420 milligrams per day of silymarin boosted their milk supply by 85.94% as compared to the women taking a placebo whose milk supply went up 32.09%.39 None of the women dropped out and no one reported unwanted side effects. Considerations Before Planting Milk Thistle at HomeBefore planting milk thistle in your garden or picking up a milk thistle supplement, there are a few things to consider. Research has found silibinin is poorly absorbed as it has low water solubility. Using a novel formulation, combining silibinin with phosphatidylcholine, researchers were able to improve the solubility and bioavailability, which markedly improved the therapeutic efficiency.40 If you're hoping to grow your own plants in your backyard and harvest for tea and salads, be forewarned the plant is highly invasive and spreads quickly. While you may not mind having it all over your yard, it doesn't respect your neighbor’s boundaries and will likely end up in their yard as well. Milk thistle is also highly toxic to livestock, so if you have grazing animals it's important you don't plant it outside.41 Milk thistle has adapted to growing even in poor quality soil. The plants enjoy full sun and once the flowers have begun to dry, they'll be ready for harvest.42 Cut the flowers and place them in a paper bag, storing the bag in a dry place so the flower heads dry. Once all the moisture is gone, shake the bag to separate the seeds, which can then be kept in a dry airtight container. The seeds can be powdered in a coffee grinder and sprinkled on your salads, added to smoothies or even raw juice. You can use the seeds to make your own tea, which you'll find a recipe for in “Magnificent Milk Thistle.” from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/01/18/milk-thistle-promotes-liver-function.aspx 1 According to recent research, the reason why some COVID-19 patients develop life-threatening organ failure is because they:
2 Which of the following vaccine ingredients is suspected of being the culprit causing allergic, including life-threatening anaphylactic responses in some recipients of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine?
3 The SARS-CoV-2 PCR test was developed based on:
4 Which of the following is a technique that allows scientists to make a pathogen more virulent?
5 Which of the following countries detained or arrested the greatest number of journalists in 2020?
6 According to financial guru and former assistant secretary of housing, Catherine Austin Fitts, the riots that occurred in the U.S. during 2020 were:
7 Which of the following "hacks" will make fasting easier by preventing hunger pangs?
from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/01/18/week-165-health-quiz.aspx In recent weeks and months, there's been an upshot of studies1 demonstrating the benefits of vitamin D against COVID-19. The evidence is so compelling, more than 100 doctors, scientists and leading authorities have signed an open letter2 calling for increased use of vitamin D in the fight against COVID-19.
• Higher vitamin D blood levels are associated with lower rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Higher D levels are associated with lower risk of a severe case (hospitalization, ICU, or death). • Intervention studies (including RCTs) indicate that vitamin D can be a very effective treatment. Many papers reveal several biological mechanisms by which vitamin D influences COVID-19. • Causal inference modelling, Hill's criteria, the intervention studies & the biological mechanisms indicate that vitamin D's influence on COVID-19 is very likely causal, not just correlation." The letter recommends taking enough vitamin D to achieve a blood level of at least 30 ng/mL (75 nmol/L). They also urge testing of all hospitalized COVID-19 patients and adding vitamin D to the treatment protocol for any patient whose level is below 30 ng/mL. Many other doctors are also urging government health agencies to get onboard with vitamin D recommendations. As reported by NL Times:4
Vitamin D Optimization Is Powerful PreventionIn a December 23, 2020, Fox News interview5,6 (above), Dr. Peter Osborne with the Origins Nutrition Center stated that the most recent studies suggest 9 out of 10 COVID-19 deaths could have been prevented had people had adequate vitamin D levels. While I suspect this might be an overestimation, there's no doubt in my mind that optimizing vitamin D levels among the general population would significantly lower COVID-19 incidence and death.
Osborne also recommends using vitamin C and zinc, as well as quercetin, which allows for greater zinc absorption. Quercetin also boosts type 1 interferon, which signals infected cells to produce proteins that stop the virus from replicating, and works synergistically with vitamin C. This is all good advice. As noted in a December 2020 Frontiers in Nutrition review:7
However, vitamin D is not my first choice for acute illness that requires immediate treatment. While high-dose vitamin D loading may be helpful in some respects, my No. 1 choice for treating acute respiratory illness is nebulized hydrogen peroxide, which I'll discuss at the end of this article. It goes to work immediately, while vitamin D requires time, at bare minimum, days, to make a difference. With respect to preventing COVID-19 deaths, I strongly believe that nebulized hydrogen peroxide could easily prevent at least 90% of the deaths if administered properly. It deeply saddens me to see so many die needlessly because they don't use this incredibly inexpensive and safe therapy. Vitamin D Improves COVID-19 OutcomesNow, bear in mind that prevention and treatment are not the same. I firmly believe that vitamin D optimization will help prevent COVID-19 infection and reduce your risk of severe symptoms should you contract it. In fact, I launched an information campaign about vitamin D back in June 2020, which included the release of a downloadable scientific report that detailed the science behind vitamin D. This report, as well as a two-minute COVID risk quiz is available on StopCovidCold.com. There's also evidence to show high-dose vitamin D loading can improve COVID-19 outcomes even in acute and severe cases. According to a December 2020 randomized, double-blind study8 in the European Journal of Integrative Medicine, giving critically ill COVID-19 patients high doses of vitamin D significantly reduced the number of days they had to spend in the ICU. They were also less likely to need ventilation. According to the authors:9
Similarly, a mathematical reanalysis10 of a calcifediol trial concluded there's a "strong role for vitamin D in reducing ICU admissions of hospitalized COVID-19 patients." The analysis looked at data from an earlier trial11 done on hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Córdoba, Spain. As explained by the authors of the analysis:12
In an effort to account for these shortcomings, they reanalyzed the data using statistical techniques, concluding that "the randomization, large effect size, and high statistical significance address many of these concerns." For starters, they found that "random assignment of patients to treatment and control groups is highly unlikely to distribute comorbidities or other prognostic indicators sufficiently unevenly to account for the large effect size." They also demonstrated that the imperfect blinding did not have a negative impact, as it would have had to have "an implausibly large effect to account for the reported results." To double-check their findings, they also compared the data with two other randomized clinical trials of vitamin D supplementation for COVID-19, one from India and another from Brazil. In conclusion, the authors stated that:
Irish Experts Call for Increased Recognition of Vitamin DIn addition to the open letter mentioned earlier, the Irish Covit-D Consortium is also calling for greater use of vitamin D against COVID-19, citing evidence showing it can lower the risk of death from COVID-19 in the elderly by as much as 700%.13 In a position statement14 published in the Irish Journal of Medical Science, the team urges health professionals and policy-makers "to recognize the importance of enhanced vitamin D in … the optimization of immune response" and to "Develop explicit population guidance and clinical protocols for vitamin D supplementation at … effective doses." As reported by the Herald:15
Vitamin D Speeds Viral ClearanceAnother recent study,16 published in November 2020 in the Postgraduate Medical Journal, looked at oral vitamin D supplementation on SARS-CoV-2 viral clearance. This study included only asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic SARS-CoV-2-positive individuals who also had vitamin D deficiency (a vitamin D blood level below 20 ng/mL). Participants were randomly assigned to receive either 60,000 IUs of oral cholecalciferol (nano-liquid droplets) or a placebo for seven days. The target blood level was 50 ng/mL. Anyone who had not achieved a blood level of 50 ng/mL after the first seven days continued to receive the supplement until they reached the target level. Periodically, all participants were tested for SARS-CoV-2 as well as fibrinogen, D-dimer, procalcitonin and CRP, all of which are inflammatory markers. The primary outcome measure of the study was the proportion of patients testing negative for COVID-19 before day 21 of the study, as well as changes in inflammatory markers. As reported by the authors:17
Vitamin D Slows COVID-19 SpreadAs reported by KRGV 5 News (above), a Texas news station, doctors in the Rio Grande Valley are also urging people to check their vitamin D levels and supplement if they're deficient. The reason? Research18,19 published in the Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism suggests people who have low vitamin D levels are more prone to contracting SARS-CoV-2 infection, and that also makes them more likely to spread the infection to others. As noted in that paper:
How Vitamin D Impacts COVID-19October 31, 2020, my own vitamin D review,20 co-written with William Grant, Ph.D., and Dr. Carol Wagner, both of whom are part of the GrassrootsHealth expert vitamin D panel, was published in the peer-reviewed journal Nutrients. You can read the paper for free on the journal's website. As noted in that paper, dark skin color, increased age, pre-existing chronic conditions and vitamin D deficiency are all features of severe COVID disease, and of these, vitamin D deficiency is the only factor that is readily and easily modifiable. You may be able to reverse chronic disease, but that typically takes time. Optimizing your vitamin D, on the other hand, can be achieved in just a few weeks, thereby significantly lowering your risk of severe COVID-19. In our paper, we review several of the mechanisms by which vitamin D can reduce your risk of COVID-19 and other respiratory infections, including but not limited to the following:21
Vitamin D is also an important component of COVID-19 prevention and treatment for the fact that it:
Data from 14 observational studies — summarized in Table 1 of our paper29 — suggest that vitamin D blood levels are inversely correlated with the incidence and/or severity of COVID-19, and the evidence currently available generally satisfies Hill's criteria for causality in a biological system.30 COVID-19 Features Related to Vitamin D StatusOur paper31 also details several features of COVID-19 that suggest vitamin D deficiency is at play in this illness. For starters, SARS-CoV-2 emerged in the winter in the northern hemisphere, and as we moved into summer, positive tests, hospitalizations and death rates fell. So, generally, COVID-19 prevalence has been inversely correlated with solar UVB doses and vitamin D production, just like seasonal influenza. Secondly, people with darker skin have higher COVID-19 case and death rates than Caucasians. Vitamin D is produced in your skin in response to sun exposure, but the darker your skin, the more sun exposure you need in order to maintain an optimal vitamin D level. As a result, vitamin D deficiency tends to be far higher among Blacks and dark-skinned Hispanics. Blacks and Hispanics are also high-risk groups for COVID-19. Thirdly, one of the lethal hallmarks of COVID-19 is the cytokine storm that can develop in severe cases, which manifests as hyperinflammation and tissue damage. Vitamin D is known to regulate inflammatory cytokine production, thereby lowering this risk. Lastly, vitamin D is an important regulator of your immune system, and dysregulation of the immune system is a hallmark of severe COVID-19. Nebulized Peroxide — My Favorite Treatment ChoiceAs mentioned earlier, while vitamin D is certainly important, if you develop symptoms of COVID-19, or any other respiratory infection for that matter, downing vitamin D may be too little, too late. I believe your best option at this point is to use nebulized peroxide. This is a home remedy I recommend everyone familiarize themselves with, as in many cases it can improve symptoms in mere hours. Nebulizing hydrogen peroxide into your sinuses, throat and lungs is a simple, straightforward way to augment your body's natural expression of hydrogen peroxide to combat infections and can be used both prophylactically after known exposure to COVID-19 and as a treatment for mild, moderate and even severe illness. Dr. David Brownstein, who has successfully treated over 100 COVID-19 patients with nebulized peroxide, published a case paper32 about this treatment in the July 2020 issue of Science, Public Health Policy and The Law. He also reviews its benefits in "How Nebulized Peroxide Helps Against Respiratory Infections." Nebulized hydrogen peroxide is extremely safe, and all you need is a desktop nebulizer and food-grade hydrogen peroxide, which you'll need to dilute with saline to 0.1% strength. I recommend buying these items beforehand so that you have everything you need and can begin treatment at home at the first signs of a respiratory infection. In the video above, I go over the basics of this treatment. from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/01/18/vitamin-d-prevents-coronavirus-death.aspx |
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