Coronavirus and Low Vitamin D Levels – Is There An Increased Risk | Podcast #286

How’s it going, everyone? In today’s podcast, Dr. J is looking at how we can help quench that inflammation and how to address low Vitamin D levels knowing that the Coronavirus is causing a lot of inflammation in the lungs. Dr. J is honing in on antioxidants, Vitamin C, glutathione (which will help with electrolytes), and Vitamin D as an immunomodulator (which gives us a better, more intelligent immune response). And what lowers our Vitamin D levels? Lack of sunlight is a big one. If you’ve been indoors almost 24/7, you’re probably not getting enough Vitamin D and this is crucial for physical and mental health. The Coronavirus cannot survive outside in direct sunlight with at least 40% humidity for more than a minute, so going out into your own backyard or walking along the sidewalk while keeping six feet away from any passerbys won’t hurt you, it’ll help you get in some Vitamin D, get some fresh air into those lungs, increase your physical movement, and more!

Dr. J and Dr. Evan Brand also look at Coronavirus case fatality by age, lending us more perspective to help lessen stress. Still, Dr. J encourages you to try and get in the foundational nutrients and minerals to strengthen your immune system: Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin D (5000 IUs), glutathione or NaC, and Zinc (30-50mg/day).

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

5:15 Why we need to go outside

07:21 Age brackets of coronavirus cases

10:43 Analyzing online data and stats

17:42 Vitamin D correlation

30:56 Vitamin C levels given to coronavirus patients

39:11 About the coronavirus vaccine

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Hey, guys.  It’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani here really happy to be back. We got a fabulous podcast on deck for you today.  We’ll be chatting about the correlation and potential causation between low vitamin D and COVID-19/coronavirus infection and symptoms.  Evan, how are we doing today, man?

Evan Brand:  Doing very well.  We got off of this topic for a couple of weeks to go back to some other regular stuff but considering this is still going on—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Uh-hmm.

Evan Brand:  There are still everybody on the planet wearing masks everywhere they go and places are still shut down and a lady in Dallas is getting put in jail for trying to open her salon to feed her kids.  I felt that it was important for us to discuss some of these things that are coming out in the literature.  Things that should be the headlines but they are not the headlines because they don’t involve death directly and they are free mostly or very cheap to implement like vitamin C and vitamin D.  So why don’t we go straight into this one paper that you had just sent me over, the one that was titled, “Can Early and High Intravenous Dose of vitamin C Prevent and Treat Coronavirus?” from Dr. Chang because this is pretty, pretty awesome.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Let me set table for everyone here first.  Okay?  So most of the mainstream, kinda conventional approach is to what is going on with coronavirus are very defensive measures, right?  Washing your hands, wearing a mask, okay, right?  Maybe some social distancing.  Maybe quarantine.  These are all kinda common sense, you know, defensive measures that are put in place.  There aren’t really a lot of offensive measures, right?  So we wanna take the time today and just look at some of the things that are in the literature now that there is some evidence out.  Maybe it’s correlation.  Maybe it’s causation. Again, to actually have causation you need a lot of money and studies, so that probably will never happen but we can use knowledge guided by experience to extrapolate the correlation and apply it and see how it works from n equals 1 standpoint applied in your life.  So we are excited to talk about that. Some of the things that we are lining up here are in regards to vitamin D and vitamin C and some of the data on that and the mechanism really is we know inflammation is being caused especially in the lungs by these infections. We know an increase in cytokines can also be produced.  Cytokines are these inflammatory chemical messengers that happen as a result of your immune system and/or the inflammation caused by the virus, and so what happens is your body needs things to kinda help quench the inflammation.  So there are antioxidants.  We call them redox components, right?  Vitamin C is in that pathway, so is glutathione.  They really help quench and they help give off electrons to deal with and neutralize inflammation, and then there are also nutrients like vitamin D that are immunomodulators.  They modulate the immune system and by modulating the immune system, we can have a better, more intelligent immune response, less maybe internal cytokine production.  We can also make natural antimicrobial peptides like cathelicidin and others that can really help knock down even the infection as well, because vitamin D helps modulate that Th1, Th2 immune response.  So if we have a healthier immune response, it’s theoretically we can go after and deal with the infection.  We know the infection rates are—I went over the data last week.  A lot of anecdotal, I shouldn’t even say anecdotal, but a lot of the early antibody testing, for instance, Triumph Foods plant here up in Kansas City, I saw 353 workers tested positive for coronavirus, all 100% of them had no symptoms.  They did a 3300-patient study for the jails, for the federal jails, 3300 patients had coronavirus.  They tested them antibody-wise, 96% had no symptoms, alright?  They did study up in Santa Barbara or LA area and they did a study up in Stanford/Santa Clara area, 50 times plus the amount of people that had the infection actually had antibodies.  So we know this is not a hallmark of a, let’s say a very virulent infection, and Evan will go over the data looking at the ages.  We see a lot of people that are younger are really not really coming down with it.  So that’s important to note and the CDC even said from age 0-17, the flu is actually far more severe than the coronavirus on our young people.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, so I wanna comment on one thing.  I’ll talk about the age in a second but I just wanna point out one thing you said which is that we are finding the infection rate is 50 to 80 times greater than originally thought.  Meaning when you look at all these numbers, oh, 1 new case here, 1 new case there.  That’s like headline but the reality is way more people are infected than we even know like we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg just based on some of the antibody testing coming out and what we’re finding is I don’t wanna exaggerate it but based on these numbers that are saying 96% plus in these big groups, almost everybody has it or has had it and they’re already making antibodies towards it.  So I wanna –

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Well…

Evan Brand:  Point that out.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  I’ll just say we need about 60% to get really this herd immunity level where it’s hard to pass it around.  Like if every other person has antibodies for it, it becomes very difficult to pass it around.  So over time, most people will get it, right?  You know, you can’t—unless you’re gonna totally be in quarantine forever, which I think actually negatively impacts your immune system.  It may make you more susceptible to having more symptoms and succumbing of the virus.  I think even if you’re older and you have comorbidities, you should still be outside and having reasonable social distancing.  Remember, the virus can’t live more than a minute in 75-degree temperature, 40% humidity, only a couple of minutes because we know UVC light kills the virus.  We know that.  It’s a national disinfectant.  So if you are older and you have those comorbidities, you should be outside getting fresh air, you should be getting vitamin D and still keep your distance if you’re concerned, but you should still be outside.  Staying inside is not healthy.  They did a study up at New York City and they found 60% of people that came in with the infection actually had quarantined.  So the quarantine thing is not what it is playing out to be.  I think there is more risk factors in that and how it impacts your immune system just staying inside too long.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, explain that.  It’s like, “Okay, yeah, I was quarantined for the last month.  I didn’t go anywhere but yet you still got the virus somehow”  I thought quarantine was the magic remedy.  You know—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Well, I think moving—

Evan Brand:  So how are these people getting it?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, I think moving is a big thing.  I think getting fresh air, I think getting vitamin D and sunlight, I think just being outside does something.  You know, we talk about it with—you mentioned in the past with forest bathing how it impacts cortisol levels and helps your immune system.  I forget what’s the term for forest bathing?  What’s it?

Evan Brand:  Yeah, shinrin-yoku.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Evan Brand:  And it boosts your NK killer cells, too.  They found that even—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Exactly.

Evan Brand:  Like a 2- to 3-day camping trip in the woods boosted up the NK killer cells which are anti-cancer and many other benefit for a month.  So 2 days boosted the immune system up over 50% for a month.  So this age thing, you and I talked about this before but you were looking at some Italy stuff and the average age of someone who had a fatality from it was 81 years old, and so we have this picture here from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Korea Center for Disease Control and on and on and on, and long story short, when you’re looking at someone 0 to 9 years old, 0% fatality rate overall; 10 to 19 years old for most countries, 0% overall.  It’s not until you really get into the 30-39-year-old, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, that you even break above 0 and then you’re getting into 0.1% in the 30-39 group, 0.3% in Spain for 40 to 49-year-olds, 50 to 59-year-old 0.4%.  So still, just really tiny numbers.  You don’t get in ’til the—until your 80 plus years old that you’re getting into a 13% plus fatality rate and even then, we know with Dr. Birx who came on TV and said, “Hey, all of the cases that could possibly be related are still gonna be tagged as COVID until further research and then maybe we’ll go back and adjust those numbers later.”  So how many 81-year-olds are dying that just happen to have the coronavirus in their system.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  I’m not sure if you caught it over the weekend.  Dr. Birx said—she was commenting about the head of the CDC.  She said that there could be up to 25% incorrect on the CDC data points on the COVID-19 deaths/diagnosis.  So she commented that over the weekend which is interesting.  I wanna share some data here on screen just to kind of bolster the things that you’re saying.  So if you guys are listening to this, you can always jump on the Youtube link as well to get some more information.  So here’s the study that Evan was showing here, looking at corona case fatality rates by age.  So you can see here 0-9, 10-19, 20-29, so I mean you’re at looking at very minuscule percentage points here, right?  Very minuscule percentage points, 30-39 and then it starts really going up significantly once you get into 60-79 but even that, I mean, really it’s 70 and 80 is where it really goes up.  You still only have a chance, you know, a 1% to 2% chance in the 60-69, right?  Yeah.

Evan Brand:  Well, let me point this out, too, real quick while you got that up which is that the percentages are actually gonna be lower than what is showing here because these numbers are based on confirmed cases.  So confirmed cases, confirmed death.  So if there’s many other people that have had it, they might not even show up here.  So, if you know what I’m saying, so on their website.  This is a world data website.  They’re saying you can’t even take these numbers and really publicly talk about them too much because we haven’t had enough testing.  So once we do get tested, let’s say we tested another hundred thousand people and put them in that pool, those death rates would be way, way, way, way lower.  Those are confirmed cases and then confirmed deaths.  So, basically how many other people are out there that have it haven’t gotten tested and therefore, their numbers don’t get factored in. So it makes it look worse than it even is.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  So here are the coronavirus deaths from last week, okay?  And so how it works is this.  You have the top numbers the deaths, the bottom numbers the case.  So you divide the top number by the bottom number and then you get a percentage, okay?  That’s how you figure out the mortality rate.  So when Evan talks about this, this data here is if there are more cases than we know about, right?  That makes the denominator the bottom number bigger, right?  And what we’re finding is, the cases are actually getting far more bigger because of the fact the asymptomatics.  The data is showing a 50X asymptomatic being present.  Looking at the Stanford study, they show data there and up at the study up in Chelsea, Mass. in Boston.  Study down in the UCLA area.  USC did a study.  So there’s about 3 to 5 different studies on this already out there.  I did a video on this last Friday on my Youtube channel.  We’ll put that video in the description so you can go dive into that.  So the data’s there.  Now, we do know here.  This came from Italy.  Right here, this study here.  It only bolstered what we talked about so you can see it came from a government agency, Istituto Superiore di Sanità.  Even though my last name is Marchegiani, I don’t really speak the best Italian.  So—

Evan Brand:  I had a lady—I actually had a client go, “Yeah, I like listening to you and that Italian guy.”

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  You got it.  I gotta brush up on my Italian, right?

Evan Brand:  Yup.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  But in general, you can see number 1.  It primarily came in 2 major areas here.  Right about 60 what, 69%.  It came in 2 major areas.  There’s a reason why two 2 areas were hit really hard.  I can go into it briefly but Lombardi is a big area where there’s a lot of textiles produced there.  So a lot of Italian textiles are produced, right?  China bought a lot of companies.  Italian clothing companies, brand companies, and instead of making it in China, they wanted to keep the Made in Italy type of logo and branding on there, so they fly a lot of Chinese up here to these areas to work on the products in the textile industry in the mills.  So part of the reason why these areas were hit so hard is there was a flow of Chinese up here to go work in the textiles.  So that’s a big reason why, not to mention there is a just a lot of elderly population up there.  Now, let’s look at the data.  So if you go down a little bit lower.  You could see the average age is a little bit over 80.  About 80, 81-ish, and then when you look at the people that actually die, I mean, look you don’t really have an increase until you get in the 60s.  I mean, look at that.  So this is the deaths here and you can see men are actually being hit, about two-thirds are men and one-third are women, and you don’t have an increase in women until you get to up 90+.  That’s probably because most of the men are already dead by then.  So you can see that spread right there and then look at the diagnosis, right?  So this is interesting because they break down more percent of people had what disease that died of COVID.  Now, when you go down at the bottom, a number of comorbidities.  Look at this, 3 or more comorbidities, 61%.  That is unbelievable.  So there—what’s being put, portrayed in the media is that this is an infection that could just take anyone down, right?  No matter what.  No, that’s not the case.  Not even close.  The data does not support that.  Now, when we actually put reason, logic, and evidence here, there’s a lot less fear guiding people.  This is a disease that’s gonna take primarily elderly people, people that have multiple comorbidities.  Now is it possible that you’re gonna see a news article with someone who is 20 or 29 passing?  Yeah, I mean 0.2% in China, 0.22% in Spain, 0 in Italy, right?  Once you hit 30-39, then you had 0.3%.  Is it possible someone from this age category could die?  Yeah, it’s very possible.  You don’t know what their comorbidity status is.  There’s HIPAA laws in the United States so, you’re not gonna see reporters saying, “Hey, this person was a type 2 diabetic.  Hey, this person eats processed food.  Hey, this person whatever.”  You’re not gonna get that data.  So it’s easy for people to be like, “Ooh, I’m so scared.  It’s attacking people that are in their 30s.”  You just don’t know about that person and obviously, you don’t even know if the person they’re putting up on screen is even in the last couple of years or their most relevant decade.  A lot of times they are notorious for showing younger pictures of people that have passed.  That’s pretty common.  So I just wanna lay out the data and just look at, you know, what these statistical norms are for these infections so people can get a perspective, and then part of the correlation and why it’s older people is number one, you have had more time to accumulate a disease because the bad habits compounded over time is what creates diseases, right?  And then also, certain nutrients like vitamin C and vitamin D go down over age and we’ll look at the data in a second on that.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, you did good.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  It is here.

Evan Brand:  No, I’m glad you pointed out the three—the comorbidities and over 61% of the deaths and I’m glad you showed for people that are just listening, that’s okay.  You’re not missing out on much.  We’re just talking about the numbers here, so hopefully it makes sense.  But the hysteria math versus the reality math, I really like that you put that together because once you talk about the—which really you did even put what’s coming out now.  You put on here there’s 50X asymptomatic.  Now, we’re seeing it could even be 80X asymptomatic but the real death rate with your 50X asymptomatic math is showing a 0.01 death rate versus if we go up to 80, I mean, it’s gonna be even smaller than 0.01 deaths.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  And this is less than the flu already by the way.  So the numbers are, just so you’ll understand.  Hysteria math is not understanding the full breadth of the case, okay?  So not understanding the full population—the extent to which people are affected across the board because the asymptomatics prevent people from being tested that have no symptoms, right?

Evan Brand:  Well, can we—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  They’re not gonna go to the hospital.

Evan Brand:  Now, let me ask you.  Let me ask you this real quick, too, based on what you said over the weekend happened.  So you’re saying that the hysteria math is even gonna be cut down by 25% now, is that right?  Because of what Birx was saying?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.  Yup, I’ll pull that article up here in a second.  But that is what is showing here as well.  The hysteria math may even be cut down more and there’s 2 different diagnostics codes.  I’ve already talked about it in the past but the hysteria math, the diagnostics codes are U07.1, U07.2.  Let me pull this up here as we chat.  This will hopefully help you guys out.  It will give you a little bit more info here.  I’m gonna help you guys out on this, okay?

Evan Brand:  And while you’re doing that, let’s talk about what the whole point of today is, so we can’t spend all day on the stats but what people really want to hear is that, well, I think we covered a lot of which one here, which is that the numbers just are not adding up to what is happening in society, with police arresting people, and you know, using helicopters, the surveillance speech, and they’ve talked about these contact tracer programs and apps to track people, and all that.  Just weird 1984-style stuff.  But what we’re seeing in some of these new papers here and this is more, as you mentioned, correlation.  This is not necessarily low vitamin D causes blank, but we’re finding that if someone has a level of 30—30 ng, it’s gonna be ng/mL but if you get a standard vitamin D test, just look at your number, 25(OH )is what you’re gonna look at on your blood work.  There’s little to no death at all occurring if the vitamin D is above 30.  So if you’re vitamin D is above 30, if you get it, chances are it’s gonna be mild to moderate at most.  All the major, major, major numbers of death, those had very, very, very low vitamin D.  You’re talking a level of 10, a level of 20.  Those are people that are ending up in real trouble.  So the mean serum, 25(OH)D level in the critical cases was the lowest.  The highest in the mild cases.  So when I’m saying this, it sounds confusing like I’m just thinking of someone driving their car listening to this.  It may sounds confusing.  So I’m trying to make it as simple as possible.  High vitamin D, more mild.  Low vitamin D, more severe.  It’s basically that simple.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Correct.  And then, here’s an article by Washington Post right here.  So during the task force meeting on Wednesday, heated discussion broke out between Deborah Birx from the physician administration and Robert Redfield, he is the director of the CDC.  Birx and others were frustrated with the CDC’s antiquated system of tracking virus data which they worried was inflating some statistics such as mortality rate and case counts by as much as 25%, according to 4 people present for the discussion.  Two senior administration officials said the discussion was not heated.  So we have this 25% number that is interestingly popping up.  So I just—I wanted to highlight that and then here’s some of data here briefly I wanted to highlight more than 370 workers at a pork plant in Missouri tested positive, right?  We go down here and look at the data.  What do they say?  All of them were asymptomatic.  All were asymptomatic, okay?  We go here and look at the—in 4 US state prisons, nearly 3300 inmates tested positive for coronavirus, 96% without symptoms, okay?  Now, let me just be clear.  Asymptomatic means you develop an immune response.  You develop antibodies.  You are infectious for 2 weeks or so on average.  The infection is no longer shedding after about 2 weeks on average.  You have antibodies and now more than likely you won’t be able to get sick for years.  Now, we go to the USC study, similar, similar thing here.  USC study, they found that the estimate 28 to 55 times higher in the antibodies versus the confirmed cases, okay?  We have a study here, Science Magazine, similar type of category here.  On this thing here, this I think is looking at Germany though.  I think this is up in Europe and the same thing, I had it highlighted here earlier.  I will have to come back to this one.

Evan Brand:  Well, I saw one thing at the top there where it said that the infection rate was 30% higher.  I saw that near the top of that article.  It was talking about Germany and did it say Netherlands as well?  Yeah, there it goes.  Survey results Netherlands, Germany, several locations in the US find that anywhere from 2 to 30% of certain populations have already been infected with it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Exactly.  Yup, exactly.  There is an actual number down here.  I had it highlighted earlier but, let’s see here, 99% false positive—

Evan Brand:  There’s a—are you talking about the paragraph right there at the top?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Here it is.  There it is, right there.  That’s more than 50 times as many viral gene test had confirmed and implies a low fatality rate.  So 50 times the amount of viral—meaning there are 50 times more people that had the antibodies than the viral gene test had confirmed.  That’s what I’m saying there.  So 50 times more people had antibodies which showed previous infection that were actually testing positive for the infection.  And then the Guardian right here, coronavirus antibody study in the California, right here in the county here at the high end, was 85 times, okay?  85 times, right there.

Evan Brand:  And people are listening and they’re like, “Wait a second.  What are you saying?  85 times?”  That the infection rate is 85 times higher than previously thought.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  For every 1 person that test positive with this PCR-DNA swab, they take the little swab, they put it to the back of your nose and hit the back of your throat, you test positive, right?  So when I say 50 times, that means that there are 50 other people that never had the infection symptomatically that are testing serologically positive for it.  Meaning they have an immune response showing that they got exposed to the infection.  Does that make sense?

Evan Brand:  It does.  But when people hear that, they go, “Oh my God! Well, 50 times more people are infected, well, I need to stay away from humans ever.  Don’t hug your mother for Mother’s Day.”  Those were some of the headlines.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  No, that means that this virus is not as virulent as we thought it is.  And maybe—so contagious is meaning, it is easy to spread, right?  I think the virus is very contagious.  It is easiness to spread.  That’s the R-nought number, right?  The virulence is how the strong the infection is, right?  So you have like a virus like Ebola, it kills 40% of people that it comes in contact with.  That’s strong virulence.  Ebola, not that contagious.  I think it only spread to a couple of thousand people.  So usually, in kind of virus world, there tends to be a correlation with the more virulent the virus, the stronger and the more chance that it can kill you, usually the less contagious it is.  Now, you have the Spanish flu of 1918, right?  Why was that a big deal?  Well, we didn’t have antibiotics, right?  So there’s a lot of post-viral secondary pneumonia that happens that if you don’t have antibiotics then a lot of times that’s the pneumonia that kills you.  Not to mention we had a second wave in 1918 because of people coming back, soldiers coming back from World War 1 in Germany that re-brought back the infection.  Not to mention I don’t think we really had a lot of the good sterile things like—we didn’t really have a lot of the hygiene things kinda fully dialed in back then either, and I know there were big, huge changes when they started doing hospitals outside and getting more vitamins.  That also made a huge game change there as well.

Evan Brand:  Well, good point.  I’m really glad that you pointed out that there is the issue of virulence versus how easy it can spread and those often get conflated together.  Those 2 things get kinda fused and mended.  So the media will make it appear that it is extremely virulent but it could just be low virulence, high contagion.  And that’s—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Exactly.

Evan Brand:  That doesn’t sell as many newspaper articles or ad clicks or whatever else.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Exactly.  I wanted to put a couple of studies that came out recently out there.  Vitamin D supplementation could possibly improve clinical outcomes of patients infected with coronavirus.  Now, these are observational studies, okay?  Meaning they didn’t do a clinical control.  They didn’t put—they didn’t do someone in a metabolic ward, gave him a virus and then gave him vitamin D, and then did the same thing to another group and gave them the virus and no vitamin D, and randomized it.  That’s like the double-blind placebo control study.  That’s not this.  This is observational and there’s always the healthy user bias.  What’s the healthy user bias?  The healthy user bias is people that take care of themselves and do the right thing and drink good water and get some sleep and move, and may also have good vitamin D, right?  So then people that have good vitamin D, they may be doing a lot of other things right that keep them healthy.  And so we may be seeing that in here, so it’s always possible.  But in the study, I’ll just put it up here and then people always ask like, “What’s the link? What’s the link?”  Right here.  This is the link, okay?  That’s the link right there.  We’ll try to put the links in below the video as well.  Let’s look at the study.  Let me just go right down to the conclusion.  The results suggest that an increase in serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D level in the body could either improve clinical outcome or mitigate the severe critical outcomes.  While a decrease in the serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D level could worsen clinical outcomes.  In conclusion, this study provides substantial information to clinical—to clinicians and help policymakers.  Vitamin D supplementation could possibly improve clinical outcomes of patients infected with COVID-19.  Further research should conduct randomized controlled trials in larger population studies to evaluate recommendations.  That’s I think very powerful right there.

Evan Brand:  And let me just point this was the same stuff that just a month ago people were getting flagged as fake news and videos were removed and whatever else and people were saying this early on, vitamin D, vitamin C, you and I were saying this and not us directly, but others had been told that this was like misinformation and whatever.  No, I mean, it’s coming out more and more to be true and it makes total sense.  We knew that from the beginning.  It’s just good to have some papers to back it up now.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah and basically, the cut off was vitamin D status below 30 ng/mL was associated with more severe disease and mortality in the Southeast Asian study, okay?  And then in general, one study gave adequate stats was 31.2.  So basically, when you went above 30 or 35, things definitely improved.  So levels above 34 is associated with an improvement.  So that was kinda the general gist.  So that’s just kinda highlighting that there and then if we can go here to this study, vitamin D level of mild and severe in elderly cases they found here most male and female subjects had 25-hydroxy vitamin D levels below 30.  Also, most of the subjects with pre-existing conditions had 25-hydroxy vitamin D level below 30.  So now the question here is, well, is it because they are sick and unhealthy?  Now they have a harder time getting outside and getting vitamin D.  So maybe the diseases are also causing them to have lower vitamin D and then the diseases themselves make them more susceptible to the infection.  So these are always—these I’m just talking about like like confounding variables, things that could be affecting the situation that we’re not really factoring.  So I’m just kinda spitballing, you know, off the cup with you guys.  Majority of subjects classified as severe 25-hydroxy vitamin D levels were below 30, 25-hydroxy vitamin D levels were negatively related although clinically—clinical trials could provide more meaningful findings are the causation that 25-hydroxy D levels in COVID-19 severity.  Basic healthy solutions such as vitamin D supplementation could be raised even in community levels and awareness of vitamin D benefits in fighting infections such as COVID-19 should be disseminated especially in the vulnerable elderly population.  So they found it important enough that we should be raising the awareness of vitamin D in our elderly population.  I think that was very, very important and powerful.  You wanna comment there?

Evan Brand:  Yeah, it makes sense.  Yeah, I just sent you a link in the chat from this New York Post story.  So let’s move on from vitamin D and if you need a good vitamin D source, we do have professional-grade formulas.  So you can—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Correct.

Evan Brand:  Get a hold of us, justinhealth.com or my website evanbrand.com.  What we like to use is vitamin D usually around 5,000 units depending on the case and then we have professional versions that are also gonna have vitamin K1 and K2, which are very beneficial and those can help with reducing any potential blood clotting issues because there have been a couple of papers, a couple of articles coming out on people having blood coagulation problems—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Correct.

Evan Brand:  And having more severity so the K1 and K2 would help in theory thin the blood a little and reduce risk.  But check out this New York Post one that—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Actually with Vitamin K though, vitamin K may actually increase the clotting.  So you may want to be a little bit careful on the vitamin K.  Some of the over-the-counter Naproxen is showing to be a little bit beneficial, maybe a little bit of white willow bark aspirin, baby aspirin, or maybe some natural white willow bark could be helpful or some higher dose like nattokinase enzymes.  So maybe the systemic enzymes could also be very, very helpful in kinda thinning things out.  So be careful with the vitamin K.  Now, if you’re getting it from food, from green vegetables or ghee or butter, you’re probably okay.  So I wanted to highlight that.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, I must have said it wrong. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Anything else you want to say?

Evan Brand:  I must have said it wrong.  Yeah, no you did good.  For some reason I was thinking that there was some issue with like the Coumadin and the vitamin K combo.  I guess we’re thinking that the blood—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  It inhibits the vitamin K.

Evan Brand:  It’s gonna mess it up.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:   It’s gonna mess it up.  Now again, like I would never say don’t eat your green vegetables or don’t eat your ghee because I think that there’s enough nutrition and antioxidants in those compounds.  Like in this study, we’ll talk about it.  They talk about sulforaphane actually helping with a lot of the cytokines and that inflammation.  Well, guess what?  That’s what the infection is causing.  So we wouldn’t ever wanna decrease the nutrients.  I just think you wanna hold those nutrients stable and let your doctor, you know, know about that if they’re gonna be adding a blood thinner in there.  It’s really only gonna matter if you’re doing something on the more like vitamin K inhibition side, right?

Evan Brand:  Okay, yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  There are other ways to thin out bloods besides that.

Evan Brand:  Alright, makes sense.  Alright, so check out that New York Post I sent you.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Okay, let’s take a look at that.

Evan Brand:  That was the Vitamin C one where basically this guy in the US, Dr. Weber, had basically looked at what was coming out of China and so he started implementing it in the US and you know, they’re talking about 23 different hospitals throughout New York.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Let me get it on screen.  Let me get it on screen here for everyone to see.

Evan Brand:  Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  So this is it here, New York Post treating with Vitamin C.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, and towards the bottom, he was talking about vitamin C levels in coronavirus patients dropped dramatically when they suffer sepsis and inflammatory response, so it makes all the sense in the world to try to maintain this level of it and there’s something else—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Vitamin C is administered in addition to such as the anti-malaria drug, that’s hydroxychloroquine, the antibiotic azithromycin, versus—and various biologics and blood thinners.  Yeah, it makes.

Evan Brand:  And then towards the top where his headshot is, go up where his headshot is, scroll up a little bit.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, so right there.  The patients who received vitamin C did significantly better than those who did not get vitamin C.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Really interesting.  Let me kind of dovetail on that.  So this is a study, actually out of China.  Medical Drug and Discovery, this is early March.  Can early and high intravenous vitamin D—vitamin C prevent and treat coronavirus?  So this is interesting.  So they’re talking about the acute respiratory distress syndrome and they’re talking about early uses of large dose of antioxidants and they abbreviated it as VC, vitamin C, may be an effective treatment for these patients.  Clinical studies also show that high doses of oral vitamin C provide certain protection against viral infection, which is great.  Neither of these things have side effects, which is awesome.  I mean, if you go too high on the vitamin C, you could get loose stool.  You may bypass that if you’re doing intravenous.  They talk about coronavirus and influenza are among the pandemic viruses that can cause lethal lung injuries, right?  The acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).  Viral infections could evoke cytokine storm that leads to lung capithelial and endothelial activation, neutrophil infiltration—that’s the white blood cells getting in there and lots of oxidative stress, right?  Which create reactive oxygen and nitrogen species.  What’s oxidation, everyone?  That’s a loss of electron, like when you’re in doctorate school, right?  You remember the saying OIL RIG, okay?  Oxidation is a loss of an electron and reduction is a gain of electron.  So when someone talks about oxidation, they’re talking about losing electrons and guess what?  We have antioxidants.  What’s an antioxidant?  Anti—it’s an anti-loss of electron compound.  So basically, they are donating electrons—they’re donating electrons when electrons are lost.  That’s what vitamin D—that’s what vitamin C is doing.  And so—so talks about it is usually accompanied by uncontrolled inflammation, oxidative injury and damage to the alveolar capillary barrier.  So what happens is with the capillaries, there’s the what’s called Boyle’s law where there’s gases exchanged, right?  Deoxygenated gases or deoxygenated blood is being exchanged with oxygenated blood and then it goes back up to the left atrium, back to the left ventricle and then that oxygenated blood goes, but if there’s inflammation and damage to the capillaries and the alveoli in the lungs, you’re not gonna be able to exchange oxygen.  That’s why you’re seeing this oxygen drop.  So increased oxidative stress is a major insult in pulmonary injury and it manifests with substantially high mortality and morbidity.  Now this is interesting, they talked about in the case report 29 patients with COVID-19 pneumonia showed an increase in C-reactive protein.  That’s a marker of inflammation.  It’s a marker of oxidative stress and they talked about that activation of the Nrf2 signaling plays an essential role in preventing cell injury from oxidative stress.  So Nrf is like this anti-aging path that people try to increase with magnesium.  They increase this with curcumin.  They increase it with bioflavonoids like resveratrol.  They increase it with compounds like milk thistle which help actually decrease a lot of this oxidation.  Alright, I’ll pause right there, Evan, so you can comment.  Go ahead.

Evan Brand:  No, I think you’ve hit it all but the best part of this paper is right there at the bottom of your screen there, which is showing that they’re doing—they’ve had 50 and I mean, I’m sure the numbers are much higher than now because more time has passed but that in the treatment of 50 moderate to severe cases, high-dose vitamin C was successfully used.  Doses vary between 10 and 20 grams a day and there was another part of this.  It may have been another paper I have but basically, it was showing that even 6 grams a day oral was enough to reduce the infection risk and/or to improve symptoms so it’s amazing.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Correct. 

Evan Brand:  Yeah, it’s right there.  Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Correct.  Yup, 100%.  I think what you said—and I’m putting all the studies up on screen because I know what we’re saying may be a little bit controversial in case people are watching a lot of mainstream news that may be like, “Well, why the heck haven’t we been—have heard about this stuff?”  Well, frankly it’s because certain governmental agencies they’re gonna, you know, tell the partyline in food and supplements and natural compounds really isn’t part of that which is kinda sad as this study over here showed, you know, they mentioned that vitamin D should be disseminated especially to the vulnerable population.  Meaning that information should be disseminated.  Research is saying it, so it’s not me saying it.  Of course, that’s kinda where my bias lies because I think vitamins, especially essential nutrients your body can’t make of course should be at adequate levels.  Let me go back to this study here.  So the oxygenation index improved in real-time so people were actually getting better oxygen exchange.  They were cured and were discharged.  In fact, high-dose vitamin C has been clinically used for several decades in recent NIH expert panel, and again I’m not saying by the way, right?  I’m not saying people were cured.  I’m saying the study said that.  So that’s not me speaking that, right?  We don’t ever cure disease, right?  Of course, only a drug can cure disease, right?  That’s my legal disclaimer there.  Alright, because of the development of the efficacious vaccines, antiviral drugs, because of the developments in these drugs, how they take more time to occur, right?  18 months for a vaccine.  Vitamin C and other antioxidants are among currently available agents to mitigate COVID-19 and then the acute respiratory disease syndrome.  Given the facts of the high-dose vitamin C is safe, healthcare professionals should take a close look at these opportunity.  Obviously, well-designed clinical studies need to be developed so you can create the right protocols.  But in general, there’s good data for this and I think this is a first-line thing that I have been saying from day 1.  We look at the nutrients we need to support our immune system.  What are the foundational ones?  Vitamin A, cod liver oil, vitamin C, you know, your leafy green vegetables and some of your low-sugar fruit but also get it supplementally so it’s more therapeutic.  Vitamin D, sunlight, some places mostly supplementation to get at that higher level, right?  My goal was about 50 ng/mL on the vitamin D.  So I think a good standard recommendation is 5,000 IU for every person.  It gets pretty decently standard.  You could go 10,000 if you’re lower and you need more of a bump and if you’re uncertain, get tested if you can.  But if you don’t wanna leave the home, at least 5,000 is a good starting point as well.  And then so vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin D and then we could use something like glutathione or an N-acetylcysteine precursor which have been shown to help with the oxidative stress and they also help decrease viral replication.  Not necessarily shown with COVID but it is showing with other viruses to decrease replication.  So that’s kinda like my foundational nutrient stack for anyone listening and then obviously, we can throw some zinc in there as well, 30 to 50 mg of elemental zinc per day.

Evan Brand:  That’s awesome.  Well, let’s wrap it up.  We talked longer than I thought we would on this thing but I am glad we kinda broke down some of these papers because people need to see this stuff and once again, this is not gonna be seen in headline, you know, 6 grams of vitamin D can reduce your risk X amount of percent.  That just won’t be there.  It’s gonna be death toll rises.  I saw one headline over the weekend, life changes as we wait for a vaccine, you know, it’s all this cure me, cure me stuff, but I’m not personally waiting for a magic cure to come.  I’m implementing all these strategies we’re discussing now to reduce my risk as much as possible.  So if I were to get it, you know, hopefully I’d be in that mild to possibly asymptomatic case period.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  You know, people talk about a vaccine coming, I mean, we’ve had 2 other coronaviruses in 2002 and 2003.  We have the SARS coronavirus and then 2015, we had the MERS.  So there’s been a lot—there’s been a lot of time that’s passed and we still don’t have a vaccine.  So people forget that.  So the fact that we don’t have a vaccine for other coronaviruses, odds are there probably won’t be one for this and also, we don’t have even a vaccine for HIV.  So, I’m not aware of any vaccine for an RNA-based virus.  So people can correct me in the description.  I’m not aware of any vaccine that is available for an RNA-based virus so the odds are looking at past history there probably won’t be one this time around but I could be wrong, right?  I know they’re doing different types of vaccines that are more like protein.  They are like taking a specific protein in the virus and they’re trying to make a vaccine that targets that protein but not necessarily attack the virus so they’re doing different things.  I think what’s really interesting is the—is if you have a lot of people that have antibodies, let’s go do platelet therapy.  Let’s go spin out the platelet.  Let’s do a blood transfusion, take the antibodies out of the platelets and then give them the antibodies in an IV.  I mean, I think that’s just a common sense first-line therapy along with all of the nutrients, right?  That we talked about and then maybe we play around with the hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc protocol as well if we need.  So I think we have some really good treatments, palliative acute treatments now where maybe a vaccine isn’t even necessary if we can get things under control and get an adequate amount of herd immunity.  It may be totally moot at that point once herd immunity is in place.

Evan Brand:  I saw the president talking over the weekend, people were asking like, “How can life go back to normal without a vaccine?”  And he just was like, “I think is gonna go away on its own without it, so maybe we don’t need it after all.”  But when you see headlines about, you know, X amount of states or X governor says that people must wear masks until a vaccine is created.  What if a vaccine does never come?  That means you’re gonna wear a mask for the next 5 years and what if those people choose not to get it?  Do the people who choose not to get it can’t go back to the grocery store?  Like what, I mean, it’s just, it’s weird.  They’re not really talking about that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Well, how did life go back to normal after the 1918 flu?  I mean, like 3 million died.  Do you know in 1918, Woodrow Wilson didn’t even shut down the economy?  They just kept rolling.  3 million people died.  How do we go back after that?  We did it.  How do we go back after a million people died in the Civil War?  We did it.  How do we go back to life after World World 1 and World War 2 in Vietnam?  We did it, you know.  I mean, our country, United States is a very resilient, very resilient country.  So I’m confident we can do it and I think there’ll be herd immunity in the background that will provide this extra buffer of support.  We didn’t even know about antibodies.  I mean, they actually were doing some antibody, you know, infusion back then in the 1918.  They really didn’t know what was going on.  They didn’t have the testing that we have now.  So we are lightyears above and beyond a lot of this stuff and I think we even—I don’t even think we had vitamin D supplementation back then.  So we are so ahead of the game.  I’m feeling really confident and I’m ready for people to get back to work.

Evan Brand:  Yup, I hear you.  Well, let’s wrap this thing up.  We are available around the world with people.  So we work by sending lab tests, unless it’s blood we send you out to a lab, but for the other labs we do, you do it at your home.  And so if you wanna reach out clinically, get help, boost your immune system up, if you just need to simply run some blood panels or we can look at CRP levels, and vitamin D and things like that, we are available to help facilitate that if need be.  So you could reach out to Dr. J at his website, justinhealth.com.  My website, evanbrand.com and we’re glad to be here for you.  So take good care.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Excellent, everyone.  Great chatting with y’all.  If you enjoy the podcast, put your comments down below.  Really excited to know what you guys think, what you guys are doing, what’s working for you clinically.  We appreciate you spreading the word to family and friends.  Sharing is caring and if you wanna write a review as well, evanbrand.com/itunes, justinhealth.com/itunes for a review.  We really appreciate it, guys.  You take care.  Have a good one.

Evan Brand:  See you later.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Bye. Buh-bye.

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/coronavirus-and-low-vitamin-d-levels-is-there-an-increased-risk-podcast-286

How to Boost Nitric Oxide and Oxygenation in the Body – Can Help with Viruses | Podcast #280

We have another episode of Beyond Wellness Podcast. In this episode with Evan Brand, we discuss nitric oxide, how nitric oxide works and helps our system, as well as improve oxygenation in our bodies. As we all know, many viruses can attack our lungs, making it harder to breathe. And on the functional medicine side, how does Nitric Oxide work in preventing viruses? Read the whole transcription below to find out!

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

2:03     Hypoxia

8:48     Nitric Oxide

16:56   Kidney Disease, Kidney Stress

27:35   Functional Medicine is Important

33:54  Boost your Nitric Oxide Production

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: All right, and we are live. It’s Dr. J here in the house. Today we’re going to be chatting about nitric oxide and vasodilation and how we can improve oxygenation in our bodies. Evan Brand, how are we doing today, man? 

Evan Brand: I’m doing really well. Let’s talk about the context of this topic. There was a video that you and I watched over the weekend, about a doctor up in New York City ICU unit. And he reported it was like a six minute video. He reported what he was seeing in the ICU, and saying that what the official narrative of the corona virus is saying and what it’s causing, versus the reality in the ICU looks different. This guy’s name here is Dr. Cameron Kyle side L. And the title of his video was does Covid19 really caused ARDS which is acute respiratory distress syndrome. He talks about here that he believes that we’re treating the wrong disease. And this is all quoted here, and that we must change what we were doing if we want to save as many lives as possible. And he goes into this video about how, what he’s seeing that with the ventilators, there’s all this talk about ventilators, ventilators, ventilators, he sees that it’s actually causing more damage because the muscles of these patients he’s seeing are actually working perfectly fine. And he’s saying what he is seeing does not look like pneumonia at all. Because the the way that the muscle function is looking, it’s it’s not pneumonia, and he says that it’s something else creating this hypoxia and he says something along the lines of it appears that these patients were dropped off at the top of Mount Everest, and they had no ability or no time to adjust to the high altitude. So he says this is almost like a high altitude sickness, and therefore the treatment that we are now implementing across the country and across the globe in the ICU is not properly addressing that hypoxia.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly, exactly. So hypoxia is basically lower oxygen levels in the blood. Now people at home can test that by getting a pulse oximeter. You know, once you start dropping below 90, I think a lot of these doctors are more like mid 80s to low 80s is more concerning. And I think you see even some of these people being in the 70s while in the hospital, so there’s some ways that we can kind of qualify and quantify it with a pulse ox, which is, which is really interesting to know. Now, the question is that ER Doctor, his video is quite interesting. We kind of walked away from it, where he kind of implied that the ventilator should be used, but they should be used kind of in a different manner. And that was really interesting because he didn’t really say how it should be used differently. So if any er doctors or people who are medical professionals that have experience using vents, I’m just curious right down below what kind of different setting options could be used. If this is not necessarily an acute respiratory distress. Issue, this is more of a hypoxia issue. How could that be used differently to help that situation? So I’ll pose that question for any of our medical allopathic listeners.

Evan Brand: Yeah, that would be awesome if we could get some answers because he didn’t provide the answers there. He just said, hey, what we’re doing, I think, is actually killing people. He didn’t say, flat out x equals y or X causes Y. But basically, long story short that the ventilators may be resulting in more deaths, because there’s too much pressure on the lungs because the person is breathing just the way they should plus the extra pressure of the vent is just too much and it’s damaging people. So-

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I heard that a doctor an anesthesiologist chime in and say, What about a hemo lung, and hemo lung is interesting because basically it’s going in at the carotid artery level going down to the heart and hemo lung is used for like lung transplants and heart surgeries. Basically, it takes the blood out of the heart, brings it into this little device and it re oxygenates it and then brings it back into the heart. So then when it when it goes up to the to the left atrium down to the left ventricle, it’s already oxygenated. So that was interesting because then it takes away all of the the breathing and the pressure on the lung and it oxygenates the blood right at the heart level, which I thought was interesting. And maybe that technology, maybe it’s too invasive. Maybe there’s not enough of those devices. And we’re already short with the events. And maybe that’s just more of an impossible feat. So anyone that has experience with the hemo lung, I’m really curious to know if that could be a good option to decrease the hypoxia as well.

Evan Brand: Yep, yep. So all that backstory leads into today’s conversation, which is, well, what are things that we can do on our end, maybe if you would call it preventative? Now what I say that what we’re going to talk about today is something that you would want to implement if you were in an ICU unit and try to save your life by taking extra beet powder, for example. No, that’s not what I’m going to say at all. But I’m hoping that just by learning about some of these mechanisms in the body, you can become more educated and then you can have strategies that you implement on a daily basis to boost yourself up. Increase the cell to cell communication that happens the vasodilation that happens the proper regulation of inflammation that happens the neuro transmission that happens there’s a lot of stuff that is related to nitric oxide. So let’s give some people just a little bit of background on nitric oxide, kind of how it works. And then we’ll dive into you know what goes wrong. If you are even just aging, just aging alone reduces oxide, we found.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And because we’re kind of talking about some of the corona virus stuff, right. And there’s some first line therapy that that’s really promising, ie the, the hydroxychloroquine or the chloroquine, which is which is interesting. And as well as combining it with the azithromycin and the zinc. And if you notice, a lot of people out there aren’t talking about the zinc component in this whole thing. So I think that is important. Also, if you’re in the hospital, I’m not sure what kind of requests you could make to some of these conventional Doc’s about intravenous nutrients. So I’m in the hospital, because this is acute which again, 90% asymptomatic, so I personally say If you have a 90% chance of being asymptomatic, well just be healthy enough and boost your immune system enough now, so you’re in that asymptomatic camp. But if I’m in the hospital right now, I’m going to be asking for IV vitamin C, I’m going to be asking for IV glutathione. Because a lot of these antioxidants are actually shown to improve nitric oxide levels to improve the effects of nitric oxide in the body. And then also we could supplement on vitamin E. And, you know, various plant based bioflavonoids and polyphenols are all going to be great because they’re really high in nitric oxide, nitrogen, and they’re also really high in a lot of antioxidant compounds. Just kind of as a side note, hey, you know, what kind of requests can you make? The problem is conventional medicine is so one track, it’s hard to kind of come in there and do a different standard of care than the conveyor belt standard of care that’s at your fingertips.

Evan Brand: Right, yeah, my grandmother was in the hospital for a fib atrial fibrillation. I spoke with the cardiologist about using motherwort Which is an herb that’s great for the heart, and it has some papers on it being shown to help reduce the incidence of a fib or the severity of any heart issues. And he just completely literally rolled his eyes at me and said, No, Evan, we have our medications in place. And I’m like, yep, she was on these drugs. She’s still in a fib. You’re not fixing the issue with your drugs, you’re not fixing the root cause. And they just blew me off and fed her her lunch, which I told you was a peanut butter sandwich with high fructose corn syrup in the cardiac department.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, the problem with a fib which is like the hearts not being in sync with its electrical contractions, a lot of that has to do with like, inflammation and high levels of insulin and not having good adequate levels of electrolytes. But a lot of times, they’ll put you on blood thinners, or like a beta blocker, or things like that. And that a lot of times can decrease the minerals and actually make the underlying mechanism worse, and then you’re kind of more reliant on the drug forever. And that’s the problem with a lot of the drugs is they actually the root cause mechanism is really not addressed. And then now the drug is needed more because that underlying root cause is actually made worse.

Evan Brand: Yeah, it’s crazy. So that’s pretty much what’s happened. And it’s really sad to see because, you know, there’s good strategies out there that you can implement. But as you mentioned, it’s kind of a one track, one track that you get of treatment and beyond that, and that’s also what this doctrine that video talks about what the virus issue is that because of the dogma associated with medical doctors, and he is one, that they’re not really willing to go outside of the box. So it’s sort of just here’s the protocol we’re doing. you implement this, but he’s saying you put people on the ventilator. 75 plus percent of them are dying. So if you get to that point, it seems that it’s just not working. But you can’t really switch the protocol because that whoever is above making the decision said that’s the protocol. So, anyhow.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly, exactly. So we’re going to be chatting about nitric oxide, which is basically nitrogen oxide and it’s double bond that kind of combines it and the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology Medicine was actually kind of looking at nitric oxides role in helping with cardiovascular disease. And so that’s very, very important because we’ve known for about 20 plus years this is a really powerful compound. And don’t confuse it with nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide is N2o both are gases, right? nitric oxide is going to be the vevo dilator opens the blood vessels that’s n-o double bond. And 2-o is nitris. And that’s the laughing gas that though a lot of times they’ll you do when you’re getting your to pool they’re drilling a cavity at the dentist’s office so don’t, don’t confuse the two of those. And again, some big building blocks to make nitric oxide are going to be a lot of the plant based nitrogen compounds like Evan mentioned, beetroot powder is very powerful in helping to provide more nitrogen and building blocks. Also a lot of your green leafy vegetables so a lot of your carrots are a lot of your salaries and to be really powerful out of your lettuces. Spinach, arugula, a lot of your green vegetables, celery in the beet root. Those are amazing, amazing compounds to help provide those extra nitrogens to improve nitric oxide levels in the body.

Evan Brand: Yeah. And people may say, Well, why powder? Why does it have to be a powder it doesn’t, you could eat just straight beets if you want to. But for me, I’ve had much better benefit and it’s a little easier for me, I don’t have to go and cook anything if I could just open up some organic, non hybridize beet powder. I’ll throw that in with a scoop of my electrolyte formula and drink it down. And these, these vegetables that are high in nitrates are what allow you to naturally increase the levels. So it works in the erectile dysfunction department as well. Many people have heard of nitric oxide if they’ve ever had an ED issue and they try to go on some of these nitric oxide boosters for that issue and it can help. I don’t know if the mechanism of some of the conventional drugs like five I work on nitric oxide at all, but I do know that beet powder and other amino acids that you could use arginine citrulline, these kind of things, a lot of them are in bodybuilding type formulas that those can help increase blood flow quite a bit.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I know Viagra was originally created in that was designed to help with angina with heart pain. And so yeah, it does. Things like Viagra are going to work on localized release of nitric oxide for sure. Yep, that’s definitely part of the mechanism. Now, the question is, there’s nutrients that run that, right, so the problem with the drug doesn’t provide any nutrient to have that pathway run better. So it’s kind of working by overriding underlying mechanisms, right? underlying mechanisms that are needed. So the problem over time is you tend to have to increase the dose. So whatever drug you’re using, because you weren’t fixing the mechanism, that’s why adding amino acids like citrulline and arginine are going to be helpful because Those are part of the building blocks to make some of these hormones or some of these, let’s just call them hormone like peptides to work in your body. And then also the building blocks in regards to nutrients. So a lot of these greens vegetables we talked about. And then the benefit of like a beetroot powder is just the concentration, you can just get a lot more of it in your body versus eating a couple of pounds of beats. You can kind of get it in a way that’s more therapeutic and easier to put in like a general generalized smoothie, if you will.

Evan Brand: Yep. And so why, why this conversation? Well, because not Justin and I did a whole podcast on some of the underlying causes, and some of the comorbidities associated with the virus and if people are ending up in really bad shape, or if it’s a fatal case, there’s a lot of these comorbidities him and I were talking about this before we hit record diabetes is massive, massive, massive, massive comorbidity put you at increased risk, also hypertension. And so guess what? Nitric oxide has a role and vasodilation therefore, if you have low nitrogen oxide production, which happens just as you age, just the aging process alone, you have reduced No, therefore, more likely to have hypertension. Hypertension is in the top five of the comorbidities of people that are in bad shape with this virus. So if you’ve got high blood pressure, you are at more increased risk. And we’ve got a study here 2014 Journal of Clinical hypertension, a single administration of an oral active, no supplement, decrease blood pressure, improve vascular compliance and restored endothelial function in patients with hypertension. So are we saying hey, this is going to get you off the hook? Not necessarily but to me, it sounds like a really, really good tool to have in the toolbox.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very interesting. Yep. Very interesting. Also, we know that things like low thyroid production, low thyroid hormone, are associated with things like low nitric oxide or low decreased nitric oxide synthase, which is part of the enzyme that makes nitric oxide and Evan kind of alluded to it earlier there was an artist In the New England Journal of Medicine that came out within the last two weeks that looked at a lot of these coronavirus patients up in Seattle area, and they saw almost 60% of them had type two diabetes or some kind of pre diabetes. Now why does this matter is high levels of insulin are going to impact your immune cells from gobbling up bad bacteria or viruses, right? We know Corona virus is a virus. And so phagocytosis is the natural process that your lymphocytes or neutrophils and monocytes may engage in to gobble up these viruses. So high levels of blood sugars and increase insulin. That’s gonna make it hard to gobble these critters up, but we know people that consume or that have high levels of insulin, what are they consuming? They’re consuming a lot more processed sugar, high fructose corn syrup, all those things, people that are consuming excess fructose, right? high levels of fructose are going to decrease nitric oxide, endothelial synthase, that’s the enzyme that helps make nitric oxide and your blood vessels so how Having high amounts of carbohydrate and lots of processed refined sugar. One is going to impair your immune system, which is going to make coronavirus, a bigger deal, which then will create that hypoxia. But number two, it’s going to decrease the enzyme activation of nitric oxide in your body.

Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s crazy. And we were talking about the age factor. So if you’re older as well, right? Originally, we were looking at all this stuff from Italy, we were saying, Oh, well, this is a an issue affecting older people. It’s also been found to affect younger people. Everybody says, well, oh my god, oh my god. Now it’s the young people affected too. But think about how many young, diabetic overweight and obese people we have in America. I mean, we are the most obese country in the world. So I don’t think it’s fair to look at these headlines and say, Oh my God, this guy was 33 years old because we have the most obesity and diabetes. in that age group. Anywhere I know India, the diabetes rates are going crazy high there as well. But that’s not the point. The point is that when you look at the headline you see younger people are dying. That’s not actually apples to apples, a younger person who is on a paleo template is going to be, in theory much healthier and less prone to severe complications if they have good blood sugar. And you talked about the the amino acids a little bit so like arginine and citrulline. Those are things that you and I use supplementally what happens is the your kidneys, I didn’t know this is actually something I learned today. The kidneys are what turned the citrulline into arginine. And then the arginine is the precursor to nitric oxide. And so when you throw extra supplemental amino acids in there, you’re just helping this whole pathway run better.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And it’s really interesting, right? Because so you’re talking about the the citrulline gets converted by the kidneys to origin is that correct? That’s right. And we know that guess what, guess where 80% of all kidney disease comes from?

Evan Brand: Hmm, I don’t know. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It comes from diabetes. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, I mean, Makes sense.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So high levels of blood sugar via excess fructose and crapple hydrates in our diet, that’s gonna put a lot of kidney stress. And I’m going to guarantee that with more stress on your kidneys, you’re going to have a harder time converting some of those amino acids like the citrulline to arginine and Argentines and help make that nitric oxide which is going to help open up your blood vessels. And so I wouldn’t be surprised the more kidney stress you have from excess carbohydrates, sugars slash fructose, and I’m not gonna I’ll go out in the limb because we already know the mechanisms there Evan, we know that issues like mold and heavy metals could also decrease nitric oxide and I wouldn’t be surprised if part of that mechanism is through stress on the kidneys. What do you think?

Evan Brand: Oh, it makes total sense. I mean, I had kidney pain. I know that was one of my symptoms. When I first got exposed to mold. I thought it was just like adrenal area but looking back it makes more sense that it was actually kidney so I did take some kidney support formulas astragalus and Agaricus, mushroom and some other things to help boost kidney function. Symptoms luckily went away. And also, one of the symptoms of mold exposure is increased urination, especially at night. So we talked a lot of people that talk about their they’re up in the middle of the night peeing all the time. That was a mold symptom. And I used to have it I was up four or five times a night peeing. And I no longer have that issue after detoxing and then supplementing with different nutrients for the kidney. So yeah, I think you’re, you’re definitely spot on.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. And I’m looking at a couple of studies here. There is a connection between low levels of thyroid hormone and low levels of nitric oxide and this one study here, that’s a review on the topic. But they’re definitely talking about more, you know, more studies on humans are needed, but there’s definitely a connection with adding in thyroid hormone and helping to improve nitric oxide levels. So this is kind of like the chicken or the egg thing. So I look at a lot of nitric oxide, things are like more downstream, meaning it’s like more of an effect than a cause. So we’re talking about it here. Because it plays a really important role with oxygenation and the corona virus and some of the disease symptoms that may occur. But people that are listening to this that are functional medicine people, we may be inadvertently helping your nitric oxide levels just by moving to a paleo template. By helping you break down your protein, maybe you’re getting more citrulline than your diet. By looking at your thyroid, maybe you have an autoimmune thyroid issue, right, maybe your thyroid is getting destroyed because you’re eating a whole bunch of gluten and dairy and processed food, and that’s exacerbating your leaky gut and exacerbating your autoimmune issue which could then be affecting your nitric oxide levels. So a lot of times, we may be fixing your nitric oxide by helping your thyroid or by fixing your gut permeability through a gut infection or by assessing mold in your home or heavy metals in your mouth or your environment. So, you know, you don’t have to break out fancy supplements every time a lot of times we may be doing this just via diet and other what I call upstream Functional Medicine system assessment to get to the root cause of the system’s upstream because above below inside out, if we deal with the system’s up here, the symptoms downstream, may improve. And a lot of times that may be through regulating nitric oxide through other upstream things not connected.

Evan Brand: Yeah, it’s crazy. I mean, we always talk about how everything’s one big spiderweb and it’s all connected. But the more we dive into these things and pull things apart, it really is true. One paper here we had showed that roughly 80% of dietary nitrates come from eating vegetables. And so beets are at the top of the list of being rich and nitrates. You’ve got the leafy vegetables, as you mentioned, like you’ve got a rubella chard, spinach, you’ve got broccoli, you’ve got turnips, cucumbers, carrots, cauliflower, and then also you mentioned from the protein as well so, grass fed beef, wild caught fish, pastured eggs, potentially raw cheese’s if you can tolerate them. Pumpkin Spice seeds, sunflower seeds, even spirulina, these are all going to be high and arginine and that’s going to help you as well. So this is pretty cool. I mean, it’s watermelon was on the list too, which is interesting watermelons really high, apparently in citrulline. So Mm hmm.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good. I wouldn’t be surprised to if we find a connection with thyroid issues and a lot of the oxygenation thing with the coronavirus in this one meta analysis. I think this is powerful because we know nitric oxide and it’s a benefits on cardiovascular disease. Right? We could probably ask our friend Dr. Jack Wolfson. On that I know he recommends a lot of nutrients that help improve nitric oxide levels. But in this study right here, the literature discussed in this review together with our published data and preliminary results related to nitric oxide regulation and hypothyroidism suggests that nitric oxide levels could be a reliable marker for thyroid dysfunction as well. So we know nitric oxide can contribute to cardiovascular but they’re saying hey, nitric oxide can also be used to assess thyroid issues. hypothyroid now I’m gonna guess it’s the low thyroid is probably driving the nitric oxide. I think they have the roles reversed here. But they talk about that, um, that literally giving thyroid hormone giving lt four, which I think is I think they’re referring to that as level thyroxine and T4 actually has been used as a therapeutic molecule for improving cardiovascular related disease via thyroid dysfunction. So Furthermore, the newly discovered role of thyroid hormone and the effects of lt four on no production may have broad implications in cardiovascular disease. So meaning what meaning oxygenation and heart health is connected to healthy thyroid. So we know there’s a connection between thyroid and nitric oxide, and that’s going to help with oxygenation. So if you have oxygen issues, and or health issues there, we got to look upstream to make sure the thyroid is not a problem.

Evan Brand: And make sense why we have the most number so far if you’re looking at the statistics worldwide, I mean, we have a ton of people, right, we’re very large country, compared to some of these other smaller countries that are running numbers. So there’s a lot of factors but you look at the health of the US as a general rule, we’re not anywhere close to a quote native diet. I mean, you look at Japan’s numbers, Japan has barely been affected at all based on the stuff I’ve been seeing and these are people who you know, they’ve got some of the oldest living people on the planet in Japan, they’re eating their native diet. I mean, they do do a lot of rice so they probably are higher carbohydrate but just in general, they’re eating real food you know, they’re doing fish quite often. You go down the street anywhere in America, you’re going to find a McDonald’s which is going to be hydrogenated oils, massive inflammation, you’re going to find high fructose corn syrup and everything. You get the little cinnamon cookies with your kids Happy Meal, that’s pure straight sugar, high fructose corn syrup. So it makes sense, right? When people say oh, well, we could have done this better. We could have done that better. I mean, look at the look at the the the template that we started with look at America’s Health template as a whole. We were sick as well. As a general rule, you’ve got the little bubbles like you go to like a health conference. And you’ll see everybody’s keto. And the women look great. And like, wow, this is what Healthy People could look like. I’m always amazed, aren’t you? When you go to health conferences, and you look at people you’re like, these are good looking people. These are healthy looking humans. Wow, what a relief from seeing, you know, if you go to, let’s say, a theme park, you’re going to see the average American, you know, massively obese, eating ice cream versus you go to a health conference, you’re like, wow, these are what all humans would have looked like, a couple hundred years ago, or even my grandparents who were farmers, they’re my great grandparents who were farmers. They look like these people.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% I’ve actually noticed the opposite to some people that health conferences are really unhealthy because, well, part of it is they’re kind of on their health journey themselves, you know, true and a lot of times it’s all about your starting point. You know, if someone was really overweight, but now they’ve lost 50 pounds, but there’s they’re on the right track. A lot of times people are kind of moving into that field because they’re a wounded they’re walking the path of the wounded healer That’s very true. Alex gray says. So sometimes everyone’s on a different journey. Right. And so I see that too. But yeah, I’ve seen it both ways for sure. And, you know, one thing I wanted to highlight from you is, you talked about citrulline. And there is a couple of studies on low citrulline levels and low citrulline. And its effect on nitric oxide. We know that but one thing they talked about, is it how people are dying from this coronavirus is typically acute respiratory distress syndrome, right? That’s kind of how everything manifests at the end, and they’re talking about nitric oxide playing a big role in that. And they talked about that nitric oxide substrate citrulline would be associated with end organ damage. So essentially, lower levels of citrulline increased more acute respiratory distress issues and sepsis and organ damage. So it seems like loneliness really protective. With this end stage disease failure that you’re going to see with these issues.

Evan Brand: That is crazy. I wonder if you could get that I mean, that’s problem is, is that readily available that you could get it in IV? If you’re in an urgent situation? Or you depending on drinking it, you know what if you’re in such bad shape, you can’t drink an amino acid blend, you know what I mean? It’s just tough. Like, how do you implement some of these things?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, I mean, if you were IV or worst case, you’d get some type of access port to the to the stomach or the intestines where you could dump the the freeform amino acids. Yeah, in that way. I mean, that’d be the biggest thing. I would, I would think I’m not sure what your options are. And that kind of a crazy surgical session-

Evan Brand: That’s the problem too, because when you’re in that, as that doctor mentioned, in the video we talked about in the beginning is that it’s very difficult. And he actually wrote in the comments too, as well, that he’s actually kind of closing up his ICU unit, and he’s returning just to the emergency room, because he says he doesn’t have faith anymore in the standard protocol. And he didn’t say, flat out but I’m kind of reading in between the lines that he’s unable to go off of the protocol and try other things. So that’s the problem is, let’s just say citrulline and Argentina. Are game changers and beet powder and they could significantly boost up nitric oxide to really help reduce the severity of this issue. If you bring that up to your doctor, first of all, they may laugh at you. And then secondly, they may say, Well, we don’t have that you got beet powder in your pocket, sir. What do you want me to do? You know, they’ll probably give you some kind of smart aleck answer like that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, exactly. 100%. And again, I just think conventional medicine isn’t really equipped to add some of these modalities and just because most of their modalities are going to be drug base.

Evan Brand: Well, they don’t have it on hand. They don’t have a pallet of beet powder in the back of the hospital.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly, exactly. And I really like to see you know, conventional medicine kind of get more hip with functional medicine principles in the emergency setting, right? Because we know a lot of integrative medical Doc’s for chronic disease. They’re starting to get hip with functional medicine because they’re understanding that they’re just treating their patients long term with drugs. And it’s very expensive, right? If you treat a diabetic with just Metformin and insulin, In all these different things, it’s very expensive, over 20 years, it’s gonna cost millions of dollars. But we could actually work on getting to the root issue and fix it with diet and lifestyle and specific supplements. So I wish we could see more of that mindset with the acute palliative care. I think we may see even better improvements.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I mean, you and I have several medical doctor friends, some that work in cardiology, some that are emergency room and I bring these issues up all the time, I say, hey, look, if you’ve got somebody coming in, and they’ve got maybe some slight elevated blood pressure, and they’ve got major anxiety, what’s your typical protocol, and it’s going to be like a benzodiazepine like Xanax, it may be some type of medication to get the blood pressure down, and then they send them home with like a psychologist or a psychiatrist referral so that they could then go get on an antidepressant. But instead, if I were in charge, if I saw slightly elevated blood pressure, something I thought the nutrients could handle, and there was a panic attack associated with it too. I’d say okay, well, here’s your shot a passionflower motherboard. thenI Which I will call me down and simultaneously reduce blood pressure. And then hey, here’s some extra magnesium. Here’s some extra Foley. Here’s some Hawthorne Berry, and we’re good to go.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% I agree. I think those are all good things. People talk about 5G and being a driving factor. It’s hard to say. I think the jury’s still out on that. I think the first place you want to look for issues with 5g is you’re going to see it in professional athletes, right? professional athletes are going to be in major cities playing, they’re gonna be playing at the highest level, and they’ll be being you’ll be bathed in 5g just based on being in a in a local Metro City area, you’re going to see decrease in athletic performance injuries. So look at the athletes first thing that’ll be the first litmus test of a decrease in physiology and function.

Evan Brand: Yeah, and let me add this to that. t mobile and sprint and at&t and all these people part of their advertising as they speak about, hey, next time you come to such and such arena, we’ve equipped it with 5g so they’re actually putting those small cell units on Around the actual arena for some reason, so I’ve seen that as a, as a promotional thing that those arenas are some of the first places actually to get the new technology. And then of course, it rolls out into major city hubs and then neighborhoods and then eventually suburbs and on and on.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, there’s always been 4g for the longest time so there’s going to be some of this stuff. My whole thing is you’re probably not going to get away from most of it. So just get healthier. So the healthier you are, the better you’ll be able to deal with it. My big concern is going to be like if you’re got a 5g Tower right on top of your work office or a school that your kids and that’s kind of my bigger concern because a lot of these technologies they’re they’re exponentially more harmful The closer you are so the closer you are to it. more detrimental so when you’re when you’re right on top of it, that’s where I’m really concerned the most.

Evan Brand: Yeah, distance is your friend to I saw there was a couple of guys I don’t know if this was an official study or just some, some testing they did out in the field. It was some guys out of New Zealand, I believe. They found that even just raindrops for example, reduce the 5g signals by over half over 50% reduction in signals just based on the rain. And they may have actually been researchers that were helping implement the rollout of this. They weren’t necessarily anti 5g people, but they were just reporting, hey, look, when a rain shower comes, you’re going to lose your signal. And potentially with some of the satellite stuff that’s being done. What about cloud cover is in the clouds, because I’ve had family members that have had satellite TV or radio and they say, look on a really cloudy day your signal gets cut down. So I think there’s a lot of variables and factors in this in the rollout might not go as smooth as planned, which if you think that it’s going to affect you, that may be good if the rollout is failing, and these environmental issues like even the leaves, think about the seasonal changes when all the leaves Come on the trees. We know that was some I think it might have been the same guys who did the rain study. They showed that when you tried to blast that type of frequency because it’s a higher frequency. It can’t penetrate as deep so it couldn’t penetrate through a tree that had full leaves on versus a tree that had no leaves. It could go Of course right through it. So just line of sight is very important when it comes to actually getting exposed to the so if you’re kind of living in a Rolling Hill topography, unless you’re on top of the hill and the towers on top of the hill with you, you’re in much better shape. So yeah, I agree with you. It’s tough. I mean, I think it’d be really cool if we could just go and point the finger and say this is it. It’s this, but it’s too difficult. I think it’s going out on a limb right now.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. I don’t think I mean, let’s look at Italy. They’re one of the country’s hit the hardest. I think there’s a lot of other natural, you know, I call it overcomes razor, right? more probable reasons why Italy got hit really hard. Right. So number one old old population, right 70, 75 plus lots of comorbidities that that’s your biggest risk factor. Number two, they waited a very long time to close down their border and we know how the social distancing and the quarantine has been effective at decreasing the exposure, right. And then also, number three, they just have a lot of a lot of Chinese companies actually bought a lot of Italian brands, but a big name Italian, you know, clothing brands. And what they did is they basically ship all the Chinese people up there to work in that northern Italy town, producing those brands. And they did that to keep the Made in Italy tag on a lot of the products. So there’s a lot I think over 500,000 Chinese citizens that are legal citizens up and up in that Italy area. So I think there’s a lot of traffic going back and forth. That’s probably the bigger variable that I think hit Italy. That outside of a variable of 5g that’s probably more likely of all the different things that’s that’s happening there.

Evan Brand: That’s a trip. That’s very interesting. We got two more things we need to talk about before we wrap it up. One thing is exercise in generals, of course going to boost nitric oxide production. Yep, so like interval training you and I were kind of talking before we hit record about hit training. So high intensity interval training, maybe just a quick sprint followed by a walk or if you have a row machine a hard row or if you have a cycle machine, hard biking and then resting, those things are really really shown to to increase nitric oxide. Hey, go ahead. Yep, I was just gonna say Dr. Mercola had like a three minute nitric oxide video that he promoted where you were doing like a lot of arm exercises and just pretty intense stuff to boost it up. I think it’d be cool to try it and do a nitric oxide test strip on your tongue. That’s one way to measure before and after. Probably not the bet the best or most accurate but that’s pretty much what’s available. There’s not many good ways to test this right now to prove it. Besides feeling your hands if you got cold hands and feet, like I have and then you drink beet powder and then your hands warm up boom, there’s your answer you increase nitric oxide.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. also things like infrared sauna and or red light therapy can kind of modulate and help improve a nitric oxide as well. We’ve already chatted about citrulline citrulline is an amino acid that’s a precursor that can be used to help improve nitric oxide and it can be used to bump arginine levels as well. And someone right wrote in on the message what about arginine and viruses. So yeah, there’s some data on arginine, feeding herpes and such. I’m not sure if that’s the case if you do citrulline because citrulline is a precursor. So your body may have some modulating mechanisms to prevent arginine from going too high to feed viruses. So I would if you’re going to lean on it and you have a herpes issue, then you may want to just lean more on citrulline and then just work on a lot of the other things and just keep in mind that the deeper stuff like the thyroid hormone, gut function, pre diabetes and metabolic syndrome issues with high levels of insulin from high levels of blood sugar, you mentioned some of the exercise full body functional movements are going to be powerful. And then also just keeping inflammation levels under control. You know, keeping the gluten in there, the refined kind of junky dairy and a lot of the refined sugar and processed foods are going to keep inflammation because inflammation antagonizes nitric oxide, right? inflammation is going to increase, you know, you’re going to have an increase in cytokines and interleukins and, and prostaglandins like prostaglandin, e two, and these things are going to cause more constriction, they’re going to cause the the vasculature to kind of pinch down tight, and then we’re going to have less oxygenation. So, in this time of coronavirus, being an issue, we really want to improve oxygenation. So these are strategies that we really want to make sure that we’re hearing to on the diet side lifestyle, side and supplement side.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I don’t want you to skip over it. That was an amazing paper that you found on the on the far infrared sauna therapy. So I’m just going to kind of quickly read off just a few more things that are in this paper here and then we’ll and then we’ll wrap it up. So there there is talk of improving into thelio function, peripheral blood circulation, increasing artery blood flow, alleviating fatigue and pain, reducing blood pressure, promoting capillary dilation. It also goes into heart disease. It goes into reducing cortisol and glucose. So they were saying here that far infrared therapy could help act as sort of an anti diabetes treatment, it really helps to reduce the blood glucose levels and cortisol overall, therefore improving the ability to respond to insulin, chronic chronic kidney disease. So let’s just say we talked about the kidneys a little bit today, talks about here too, that the function of the kidneys improves with sauna. So I mean, this is just amazing. I’m not going to say the sauna secure for everything, but wow, what a great tool.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, essentially sweating. I mean, saunas going to do it a little bit deeper, because the near infrared is going to penetrate deeper into the body. So you’re going to have a little bit more of that vaser dilating effects, but just getting good functional movements in getting some sweating, getting your body temperature up also is going to be helpful and then look deeper at the functional medicine principles, thyroid digestion, and, you know, look at potentially doing things like a lot of these vegetables and upping our In a lot of these things to help improve nitric oxide levels in the body.

Evan Brand: Absolutely. Well, let’s wrap it up if you want to reach out clinically, Dr. J and I are available. His website is JustinHealth.com. You can reach out worldwide we work, FaceTime, Skype, Zoom, phone, you know, we work virtually so we can send lab test to your door, you get those back to the lab, we review the results and then make a game plan to get you better. So that’s JustinHealth.com, my website for me Evan is EvanBrand.com. And please make sure you’re subscribed. We look at our subscribers and we’ve got a lot of you that are subscribed, but there’s a lot of people that just listen and are not subscribed. So what are you doing with your life, make sure you’re here because we’re trying to tie all the puzzle pieces together. We’ve covered the diabetes and blood sugar aspect of this thing. We’ve covered some of the immune support stuff, the cytokines stuff, and we were really trying to just build, build, build, stack it on, stack it on. So we’re going to continue to do that. So thanks for your support, and we’ll be in touch.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And just one last thing to kind of stack on there. I’ll reference other podcasts on the topic, but we already highlighted mold as being a potential deeper issue and then potentially heavy metals as well. And again, I wouldn’t recommend going after those right away. Unless you’re in an active moldy home that then we try to fix that. But you want to work with a good practitioner to prioritize these things. Because there can be a lot of, let’s say, rabbit holes that you can go down. And we always want to work on the order of operations, what’s going to give us the best results for the least time and effort?

Evan Brand: Yeah, exactly. You don’t want to get distracted and put all your money and effort into something that’s not the biggest piece of the puzzle. So that’s what we do. We try to analyze your case. Look at those puzzle pieces, arrange those in not only the correct order, but the order of importance of how big is it going to move the needle? So yeah, you’re you’re exactly right.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% anyone that has Corona or any other issues, put it down below want to know your comments. Any feedback that you guys have in regards to improving your nitric oxide levels are some of the strategies that we’ve already talked about and you’ve implemented want to hear your opinion and your thoughts down below. Really appreciate it. Hey Evan, it was great chatting with you, man. You have a great day.

Evan Brand: You too. Take care. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Stay healthy. 

Evan Brand: All right, bye bye.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye.

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/how-to-boost-nitric-oxide-and-oxygenation-in-the-body-can-help-with-coronavirus-podcast-280

Healthy Body & Mind: Self-Care While Social Distancing

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

I know it can be isolating and distressing to be cooped up in the house all day. It really throws a wrench into your normal routine, and is a constant reminder that things aren’t right.

Current events have the world in a panic, and as we know, being in a stressed state, or a state of fear and worry, can keep our cortisol spiked and actually cause a lot of harm in the long term.

Physical Health

With nothing but time on our hands, there is no better time to start focusing on our health!

Exercise: Depending on local regulations and the spaces available to you, there are a variety of ways you can get physical activity in each day. A local trail, a walk around the block, spending time in your backyard, or even doing body exercises in a room in your house are all options for getting in your daily dose of exercise.

Eat Healthy: Remember when you said you would eat healthier if only you had the time to cook? Well, the time is here! Search the web or any cookbooks you have around the house and find a couple of recipes that inspire you.

Work with a doctor: There is no better time to start working on your health. Stress levels are high, which can raise cortisol and affect more areas of our health. By working with a functional medicine doctor (I do my consultations with patients around the world  via online video calls) we can get to the bottom of any underlying health issues and come out of this world event stronger than ever before!

Earthing: Connect your feet to the earth to reduce stress and inflammation while boosting the immune system. A connection with nature is a necessity for healthy physical and emotional health.

Click here to start improving your health today!

Mental Health

Humans are social creatures and require connection with their community. While social distancing, connecting is not so easy. Video calls: With Skype, Facetime, Whatsapp, Google hangouts, and more there are a variety of apps you can use to connect with loved ones. Face time, even virtual face time, with friends and family can make a world of difference in improving mood, lowering stress, and feeling connected.

Limit your time on social media–while some social media can be a good thing (like fostering a connection with loved ones when you can’t physically spend time together) too much time on social media can affect mental and physical health.

Partake in a hobby: gardening, painting, reading, learning a language, playing an instrument… whatever it is you love to do (or have been wanting to try), there is no better time than the present!

Think positive thoughts: your thoughts shape your reality. At least 10 minutes of positive visualization per day can do a world of difference in improving your perspective.

It can be hard to get the support you need when social distancing from loved ones, especially if many in your circle are feeling fearful or stressed out. I want to remind you that I am only a call away and can help you improve your health through a remote consultation.

Click here for a one-on-one consultation from the comfort of your home today!

Self-Care Checklist:

• Exercise–at least once per day, move your body!
• Outdoor time–bonus if you’re barefoot!
• Text, call, or video call a friend or family member.
• Cook: at least one meal per day
• Limit time on social media–stop using electronics at least an hour before bed.
• Drink enough water
• Spend time doing something that brings you joy (besides Netflix/social media!)
• Take a walk–even if it’s just once around the block.
• Think positive thoughts

What would you add to this list? What offline hobbies do you enjoy? Have you tried any new recipes recently? Let me know in the comments below!

Click here to start improving your health today!

Natural Support Strategies for Viruses | Podcast #274

Today’s episode is all about viruses. Dr. Justin, together with Evan Brand, is going to explain what viruses are, how it affects people, and the natural strategies you can do to prevent this kind of disease. Check this podcast out for more information.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

1:19 What are Viruses

5:58 Vitamin C

15:11 Specific Herbs and Mechanisms

29:54 Diet and Lifestyle Strategy

34:23 Preventing Viruses

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live. It’s Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand. Today we’re going to be chatting about the coronavirus, it’s all over the news. We’re going to kind of break it down, look at the ins and now is it really that big of a deal? Is it not? And then it kind of natural strategies you can do the kind of help keep yourself and your family in your immune system revved up so you can attack it. Alright. And what’s going on, man? 

Evan Brand: Hey, not too much. You know, I thought this thing was going to go away. I thought it would be just kind of a quick news cycle, like some of the viruses are, you know, they hit the news and then two to three weeks later, they kind of die out but this thing is lived on for long enough. And I think we need to talk about it. And a lot of people clinically are asking us to, you know, we’ll look at lab reviews and we’ll go through all that and then people go Oh, I have one more question. Evan. What about Coronavirus? I’m like, okay, I’ve had to say I’ve had this question enough clinically that I think it’s better now that you and I just kind of create a more general public response to it to and things we could do to help people and and also to reduce fear because I think if you have an action plan and you have a little bit of knowledge, then you can be less fearful because fear fear is only going to stress your immune system and make you in worse shape anyway make you more susceptible.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Now, the corona virus is not a new virus that the variation of the Covid-19 a little bit different aspect of it. You know, there’s a couple of theories out there of how or why this came to be. This virus came about in the area of Wu Han and China from a biomedical lab by a warfare lab. And supposedly there were some interesting practices of the scientists selling some of the lab animals to street vendors on the street. And based on some of the eating practices of rats and mice and those kinds of animals being consumed. That could be one of the spreads. Again, this is just kind of speculation, but these are things that are out there. So we have to at least address it. Now, in general, that’s kind of where a lot of the spread happened. And again, the strength or the death rate and the virulence of the infection seems to be worse in China than it does here. We’ll talk about that. But in general of what’s a virus, a virus is basically an intracellular parasite, right? So imagine like a parasite in your gut, it’s inside your gut like Giardia or blasto. Right? intercellular means it’s a parasite that’s actually inside of yourself. So it’s actually 100 times smaller than bacteria. And they have no characteristics of a living cell and they have to basically be in your body to survive, right? Once a virus is on like a general surface, it only has an hour or two, maybe 24 hours to live. And when you have more summer and more UV light, it actually changes the environment and makes it harder for the virus, one to travel in the air droplets, but two, to even survive. So the fact that We’re getting closer to spring is actually going to be really helpful for the virus not being able to hang around as long.

Evan Brand: Yeah, it seems like when the virus stuff hits the news and people are talking about outbreaks or endemic areas, it seems like it’s always wintertime. So that makes sense. So I think this thing is probably naturally just going to kind of disappear over the next month. But you still want to have somewhat of a preventative or maybe a protection plan in place. And Justin and I talk about adaptogenic herbs and mushrooms and things like that all the time. So this conversation today won’t be that different, because some of the stuff we do just in a general immune protocol is already beneficial for this as well.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, there’s some just common sense things that can be done to help right number one, if you’re over 60, maybe avoiding crowded areas, flying on airplanes, those kind of things because nearly everyone that’s died in the country, which I think at this point, March 9 2020, it’s right around 18 to 20 people And most of them or have been in a nursing home up in Washington State. So it’s older than 60. Anyone that’s gonna have more compromised lung area because that’s tends to be where the virus is going to hit. It’s going to hit that lower lung, right. The flu typically is the upper part of the lung, the coronavirus will be more the lower part of the lungs the hard part of it is about a one to two week incubation period. So you can have the virus not show symptoms, but potentially spread it to others. So the hardest part is the incubation where the virus is in your system but you’re not expressing symptoms. So you know, right now quarantines and to be the easiest thing along with just general hygiene practices, washing your hands, avoiding airplanes, definitely avoiding cruise ships, those kind of things. In the meantime, especially if you’re older, if you’re younger. The chance of this being an issue is gonna be slim. Continuing to wash your hands have a good healthy sanitizer on board. So if you’re touching things, you’re not touching your face the biggest way it’s gonna be spread his hands to food, hand to mouth, hand to eye, hands to mucous membrane, that’s the biggest way it’s going to spread outside of someone coughing within six feet of you. And again, a mask is not really going to be helpful, unless you’re continuously inside of six feet. And people coughing, coughing on you that are sick. So like people that are in a healthcare setting, doctors, nurses, right, those kind of people definitely need mask, you aren’t gonna need a mask unless you know you’re sick. And you have to be out in a public area and you’re trying to prevent people from getting your virus that’d be the only reason to really need a mask right now.

Evan Brand: Yeah, that makes sense. Makes sense? Yeah, that’s all some articles about that. Like, don’t run out and buy a mask. And you know, a lot of people just they think about fear. They think, Okay, what do I do? What do I do? What do I do and they panic. I had a lot of people thinking, Well, what do I do? Do I just take more vitamin C? The answer is, yeah, you can. I saw I don’t know if you saw this, too. There was like a picture that going around of like semi trucks worth of vitamin C being shipped into China. Did you happen to see that picture?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, they’ve talked About the vitamin C over in China, I’ve seen a couple of Chinese doctors interviewed on YouTube that they’re they’re buying boatloads of high quality vitamin C, and they’re shipping it over there. And it’s helping. So vitamin C, of course. And again, someone asked, you know, is it safe to fly? I mean, I think it’s totally safe to fly. But if you are over 60, and you may have a compromised immune system, I would personally hold off for the next couple of weeks to a month, at least let spring in the warmer temperatures come up before you do so if you’re in that strong risk factor, and you have a weaker immune system, if not, you know, just be careful, keep your hands washed, keep some sanitizer on you. Be careful with touching your face, those kind of things. Those kind of common sense principles are going to be great. And then also just keeping your diet solid, lots of clean fluid, water, filtered water, no junk in there, keep the refined sugar and processed carbs out that will suppress and compromise your immune system. So I think that’s, I think that’s really, really important.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I was gonna say we could spend maybe a couple minutes just on the basic stuff and then we could talk about some specific herbs or nutrients, but as you mentioned the diet, right like so, not going crazy on sugar, anything that’s going to suppress the immune system, trying to manage stress. Like if you’re somebody who is, let’s say you’re working 60 hours a week, that’s too many hours, you know. So that’s obviously going to deplete your immune system on a general basis. But especially now if you’re trying to be in a like proactive protective mode, working 60 hours staying up too late, not sleeping, those are all important things to address.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now there’s a little bit of a stereo going on here and the US or death toll right now is right around 20 ish, it can be plus or minus two or three either direction. The Health and Human Service Secretary Admiral Brett’s [inaudible] just said that this was over the weekend. He said that the death rate the mortality rate is somewhere between point one to 1%. Much much, much much lower than where they thought it was. They thought it was two to 3%. So it’s actually at around the flu level or less. And again, over 10,000 people have died of the flu this year already, you’re looking at 20 or so with the corona virus. So statistically, the mortality rate isn’t even close yet people are definitely talking about a lot more. So there’s a lot more media hysteria behind it. But not that big of a deal. If you’re comparing mortality to mortality, really not that big of a deal. And the same things that we’re going to be doing, that everyone should be doing that are worried about the flu, because that’s killing far more people are the same thing you should be doing for the coronavirus. So just kind of a little bit of hysteria behind there. And we just want to dissolve that based on these statistics. And again, part of the reason why I think the mortality rate was higher in the beginning is because there’s not really a set way to test the corona virus. The kits have kind of been dialed in now. So now there’s more ability to test it on like the flu which is easier to test. And then number two is a lot of people that have gotten the corona virus and their immune system has knocked it out. So okay, if you have 100 people that come down with With the corona virus, but let’s say 200 really did, but the first hundred never showed symptoms, or if they showed symptoms, it was minor. Well, that kind of matters. And that skews the rate that that makes the mortality rate look higher. And that’s why I think the data is starting to turn back a little bit showing it’s more between point one to one, which is, you know, at around the flu or even less, again, not even close to something like SARS or MERS, or Ebola, which or other you know, pandemics in the past, this really isn’t that big of a deal. But if you’re in the higher risk factor group over then it’s over 60 you already have long weakness, then you know, those would be some of the big things I would say is off planes off cruise ships, do all the really good things washing your hands. We’ll talk about supplements here in a second. And then just real quick, what are the symptoms? Well, there’s a big overlap with the with the flu. So of course, fever, difficulty breathing are going to be big things. You’re also going to see cough you’re going to see a couple others headache, runny nose. Those are gonna be the big ones. You know, you’re kind of like shortness of breath, maybe chest pain, maybe a productive cough, fever, you know, fatigue, throat irritation, all those things are potential symptoms that you’re going to see big overlap with the flu, right?

Evan Brand: Yeah, I was diving into that too. Because, you know, with the amount of hysteria over it, I thought you would see some crazy symptom that’s popping up for people. I thought, Oh, man, you know, based on the amount of articles and meat, you know, TV time, this stuff’s getting. Yeah. And then you look through the symptoms and it’s like, okay, coughing, sneezing, you know, wheezing like, huh? Okay, so it just seemed that the, the amount of fear and like the videos that have been displayed of all these people walking around and like biohazard suits, it seems like the amount of fear being, you know, perpetrated was far greater than the symptoms I saw.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and my biggest thing is people want to get tested, but it’s like, well, what’s really going to be done anyway? I’m not sure anything different. That’s going to be done anyway. So I don’t understand why it matters. There’s outside of just having the stats and outside of maybe making more of an effort to quarantine yourself, but you should be making an effort to quarantine yourself anyway if you have the flu to. So, right- 

Evan Brand: You’re saying you’re saying if you did get a conventional test that says that you were positive, that conventional treatment, there’s not really a treatment because there’s no specific vaccine for it, for example. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly, there’s no specific thing that they’re going to be able to do outside of the fact of a lot of times viral issues could potentially lead to an ammonia and if it’s kind of an ammonia that’s bacterial induced after the fact antibiotics could be used. But outside of that, on the conventional side, there’s really nothing now on the natural side, there’s a lot of things we can do. But I mean outside of just quarantine and washing your hands and being mindful of coughing and maybe being separated from your family. Those are probably be the best things that you could do but those are kind of common sense things anyway, I’m not sure how knowing you have the coronavirus changes that especially if you think You already have the flu to begin with, because those things should already be practiced. Yeah. So, in general, most people when they die, they’re going to die of pneumonia. Right? And that’s basically swelling and fluid in the lungs. So easy things that we can do off the bat. Well, do you want to start talking about some of the things we can do to support the immune system and help the lungs?

Evan Brand: Yeah, so we mentioned vitamin C as in Charlie, vitamin D is always going to be helpful. Now, I don’t have any specific paper on this for coronavirus, but the nebulized glutathione that you and I’ve talked about for mold detox seems like a great thing for me because I’ve had clients with COPD, which would be someone in the higher risk category for this. And the people who’ve done nebulized glutathione that have had COPD they’ve reported they feel much, much better. And these were people who were previously on inhalers who were able to get off inhalers. So like I said, I don’t have specific data saying this is specific for coronavirus, but I could just say based on other symbolism Lady lung issues with people the nebulized glutathione has been very, very helpful. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, the the nebulized glutathione has shown to be very helpful when there is lung inflammation. So if you are more susceptible getting glue to fire up, you could nebulize it to get it right in that tissue which will help with the inflamed tissue, which is what this Corona virus is doing, it’s really going to be inflaming that tissue. Now we can also increase vitamin C, Vitamin C is very helpful. We know right here. This is the 20 year old study, but there’s dozens of them. The effectiveness, the effectiveness of vitamin C and preventing and relieving the symptoms of virus induced respiratory infections plural. They talk about vitamin C and megadose administrated before or after the appearance of cold or flu symptoms prevented the symptoms in the test populations compared with the control group and they gave people 1000 milligrams of vitamin C for the first six hours and three times a day after so they were doing basically three grams of vitamin C A Day in three divided dosage and they were doing that for the first three to four days. And they saw significant reduction in symptoms of the appearance of the cold and flu and even prevented symptoms compared to the control. So I think that’s pretty powerful. This is a total of 463 people between the ages of 18 and 30. So that’s interesting. So we know that these nutrients have an underlying mechanism of supporting the immune system. So we’re not just controlling symptoms, we’re up regulating the immune system. And it makes sense that the immune system will be able to do better with fighting the viral infection.

Evan Brand: That’s amazing. That was that much benefit at that dose because that’s actually kind of a low dose. I mean, that’s typically where you and I dose ourselves just as a kind of daily basis, not specifically fighting anything.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I’m going to be going just below bowel tolerance. So I’ll maybe at 6 to 10 to 12 grams of vitamin C if I get loose stools and I back off until my stool solidify. So I’m going to be doing a dose just below bowel tolerance because that means I’m at saturation. So that’s called the vitamin C calibration. We use keep on tapering your vitamin C up to your stools get loose, and then you pull back to the solidify that way, you know exactly kind of where your maximum levels are at.

Evan Brand: Yep, that’s awesome. All right. So do you want to go into some specific herbs? There’s several good options out there.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So a couple of things here. Let’s go into some of the mechanisms here. Alright, so, number one, let’s go into some of those mechanisms with the IGF one. Let’s talk about that briefly.

Evan Brand: Yeah, and I got to give credit where credit’s due so Stephen Buner amazing guy, he’s actually from my my city, local Kentucky. He’s out in New Mexico. Now he’s a guy who Justin and I’ve looked up to for a long time because he’s great with herbs when it comes to Lyme and co infections. So he wrote, he wrote out this document about Corona virus and he had some of the mechanisms outlined in here. And so, of course, he talks about how the Viruses get spread via coughing. And that’s sort of what viruses make you do because they know that they need to get to more hosts so that they can continue to thrive and survive. So kind of the mechanism of coughing that that’s the virus doing that so that it can basically replicate itself. Now, of course, he goes into a little bit of the issues with cytokine storms, and how this could spread through the body via the blood and sometimes cause septic shock. And so that, of course, is a risk but he mentioned it wasn’t so much for for this type of virus, but that there was a, there was an enzyme in the body called Ace 2. And this helps to regulate the renin angiotensin kidneys. Yes and help with the blood pressure. Yep. So spleen lymph nodes, kidneys, of course your electrolyte balance vascular system. That’s all in that RAS, and these viruses affect this Ace 2 pathway and So there are herbs you can use to protect this pathway number one, which is funny because I’m on this every day this was Buner’s number one recommendation was, I think you pronounce it- glysis? How do you pronounce the Latin name and this one is a glysarisa.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it’s basically licorice. Yep, yep. Yep, we have licorice. Chinese skullcap is excellent horse chestnut. Japanese knotweed, which is also resveratrol essentially, and, and even cinnamon are excellent ways to kind of modulate some of these pathways. And again, a lot of these pathways are intimidating. Just know that this is how the virus is causing damage and inflammation. It’s kind of like a burglar coming into the front door, the back door, the side window, right going up the second floor, right? So it’s just kind of talking about how the burglar or the invading virus is coming into the body and the damage it’s it’s causing now, do you have to understand the damage or understand that it’s what door it’s coming through. Not necessarily. We just have to kind of check off our boxes regarding all the strategies that are going to support our immune system from a diet and lifestyle standpoint. And then we look at all the strategies that we can do supplementally on top of that foundationally diet and lifestyle free, easy, simple. And then secondary supplements.

Evan Brand: Yeah, well said I love the analogy. Thanks for that. So you know, it’s also mentioned that the age to function tends to be less dynamic. The older people get to this part of the reason that you mentioned it’s more affecting older people’s just because of that pathway is not working as well. Therefore, you may need some additional herbal herbal support like the knotweed is great and Japanese knotweed is one of my favorites. I’ve been on it for months. And so I, I’m kind of already doing a protocol like this.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly, yep 100%. Now, let’s go over a couple of mechanisms. There’s a couple of things that I like supplementally. So of course, people in the chat are talking about certain nutrients like vitamin D, or zinc. Those are all excellent nutrients that can be used at higher levels to help We already talked about vitamin C in one study at three grams I think you can go up to bowel tolerance you know between three and 10 grams back off to your stool solidify. These are great. We talked about nebulizing glutathione. There’s a special a special kind of glutathione that we use. You can get it to Evan’s site also mine is JustinHealth.com/glutathione. It’s a glutathione that’s mixed with a sodium bicarbonate so it can be infused with salient solution if you put a nebulizer we’ll do 200 milligrams of that, you know one to three times a day in a nebulizer. We also can do some silver as well. Not a ton of studies on silver don’t get a crappy silver you’ll get you know you’ll see things online about [inaudible] turning blue. It’s only going to happen if you’re using really crummy silver. Using a silver that’s really small like around 10 part per million high quality. You’re going to be in a much better place using that but the silver can also be very helpful getting into your lungs and preventing the killing the virus or preventing the virus but it’s a little bit more controversial on the silver. So do You’re homework on that talk to your doctor about that one ahead of time. I don’t want to recommend it directly. I personally do it. But I’m not going to go out there and say everyone should do that. Now other low hanging fruit. So an acetylcysteine is a great amino acid, that’s a precursor to glutathione. That’s awesome. Now how it actually works is it inhibits the replication of the pro inflammatory molecule. So the virus comes in, it creates all this inflammation and it’s basically inhibiting the replication of these pro inflammatory molecules. Therefore, the antioxidant like NIC represents a potential additional treatment option that can be used to be kicked in considered in the case of influenza. And again, this is one study out of the Journal of biochemical pharmacology, and acetylcysteine. Again, the vitamin C study was the Journal of manipulative physiological therapy. We’ll put all these studies in the link below after this live video is produced. So n acetylcysteine is amazing at reducing the viral application, there’s a couple more I’m going to give Evan, a chance to Comment.

Evan Brand: Yeah, those are great strategies, I want to throw a Astragalus in there. Astragalus is something I usually start up in the springtime anyway, just for prevention. If you get bit by ticks in theory astragalus could help keep the immune system in a heightened state. So astragalus can be very helpful. And there are some mechanisms that can be involved with it, but I don’t think it adds to the conversation. So I’ll just say astragalus is a great immune support will often use blends of immune supports, like a straggler less along with some mushrooms. So reishi mushroom and Turkey tail, Shittake, Mittaki, there’s different profiles and compounds in different mushrooms. So of course, we could just say in general, you know, Justin, I really both like reishi mushroom, but there are others you can take in conjunction with it. And then if you throw in something like elder and astragalus, and some licorice and some vitamin C, some vitamin D, maybe some of the nutrients people are talking about like zinc. I mean, you’ve got a really good, strong, strong protocol. And another thing to to mention is there’s also Multiple mechanisms to the herbs. So for example, we talked about that whole Ace 2 pathway, but also the interleukin. So the cytokines that happen, which is like a inflammatory response due to the virus, for example, Japanese knotweed and skullcap, those also reduce inflammatory cytokines. So it’s cool because in conventional medicine, you don’t really get that you typically get one mechanism. But with herbs, you could have multiple mechanisms from the same nutrient.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly yep 100%. So and again, there’s studies for all this stuff that we’re talking about. In regards to the Astragalus, there’s a lot of different things. I’m going to pull up one study here that we can kind of go over with here to make sense of it all. So in general, this one study here which I will reiterate for you, it is by the Journal of animal science and biotechnology and they’re looking at the astragalus polysaccharides and their ability to enhance immunity inhibit the H9 and two avian flu and again, works comparing flu because it’s very similar to the corona virus same kind of same symptoms ish, same ish death rate. So it’s it’s hitting similar areas flu is more upper respiratory coronavirus is going to be more lower respiratory but you know some of the same effectiveness. So astragalus what they’re finding is it increases the expression of interleukin 2, interleukin 4, interleukin 6 interleukin 10. It promotes cell growth and enhances anti flu activity. So this is big, it increases the CD 4 and CD 8 lymphocyte count. CD 8 is going to be your natural killer cells. And your CD 4 is gonna be your helper cells. So it’s actually going to stimulate these immune responses. And then they’re also talked about here. Yeah, I think that’s good enough. We think I think we hit it. So really, it’s modulating the immune response. Some of these herbs are actually going to decrease viral replication. Others like mono Lauren, which is an extract and coconut Actually digest is the viral envelope. And kind of the viral envelope is kind of a cloaking mechanism that viruses use because they’re so tiny, so the immune system can’t see them. So my analogy is if you watch the movie, the Harry Potter series, right, Harry has his invisibility cloak, right? And he puts it on and he can walk around, no one can see him viruses kind of have this invisibility cloak around them. Things like mono lauren can actually help. Which then exposes the virus to the immune system. Now you have a better immune response. NAC, like I mentioned, decreases the viral replication. So it makes it harder for the virus to replicate, and then also create inflammation in the body, which I think is really important. And then there’s one more thing I wanted to highlight here. And then we have Reishi, right? Reishi very powerful. So one of the ways that eit produces these things called polysaccharides, and also triggerpenes. This is powerful. Now, these triggerpenes they have major effects on the neuraminidase pathway, alright neuraminidase, and they’re actually looking at creating lots of drugs to work the same way. We have herbs that have been done that have been used for a very, very long time on actually helping to activate this pathway. That’s the neuraminidase pathway. I’ll pull up the conclusion of this study here. I had the information set aside but I just lost sight of it. Give me a second. 

Evan Brand: One thing I want to say to you while you’re doing that is we often like to use stuff for the lymphatic system. So there are things like cleavers which could be very good for the lymphatics and then also for the spleen. Red root is one of my favorite herbs. So there’s a couple tinctures I used that have red root in there, and some other lymphatic support. So like I said, in general, I tend to do a lot of these things just on a daily basis. So that’s why if you are taking good care of yourself now you don’t really have to go into panic mode and think oh my god, what do I need to do because you’re already doing a lot for yourself. So I’m not saying if you’re If you don’t have a protocol now that you’re that you’re dropping the ball, but just in general, you want to have a good adrenal liver, lymphatics immune kind of built into your daily life. And then of course, taking care of your sleep, your stress your diet, and a lot of things won’t hit you. Like they would hit someone else.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And so basically with the neuraminidase pathway in the Reishi, it’s in to prevent make it harder for the virus to dock on. Right, because the virus has to dock onto your body, and then it kind of lives off your body, and then it’s going to just have effects on inhibiting the virus inhibiting the viral replication. So a lot of times, there’s three or four major mechanisms right. Number one is the docking of the virus number two is exposing the virus to the immune system. Number three is up regulating various immune pathways so we can kill the virus, right? And then those would be like the big three or four and then of course, the other ones would be diet and lifestyle things that prevent you from even having the virus to begin with, right whether it’s washing your hands or or just having a stronger immune response or body that the virus doesn’t even get into the body because our first line immune defense is strong enough to slough it off to begin with. Does that make sense?

Evan Brand: It does. I had someone asked me about homeopathic remedies for stuff like this. And I just, I’ve used homeopathic remedies a couple times in my life specifically Arnica for some swelling issues I had after a surgery. But beyond that, I would not go towards homeopathics I would go towards herbs that have proven mechanisms.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, proven mechanisms, not saying homeopathy can’t work or can’t help modulate the immune system or can’t help modulate drainage. I’m not saying that it’s just, you know, we know there’s a lot of herbs that have been around for generations that have proven benefits. So if you wanted to add homeopathy there, do it with other things as well kind of use it as a scaffolding for other things.

Evan Brand: Essential Oils would be in the same category. People may say, Well, I’m gonna, you know, diffuse this oil or that oil because it’s supposedly anti microbial or anti viral. I’m all for I’m a huge fan, but I wouldn’t depend on that solely if I were concerned.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And again, there are some essential oils like clove that have a proven track record or oil of oregano that have antiviral quality. So yeah, some of those things I think are great. It’s gonna be hard to get those oils in your body through a liquid unless you’re encapsulating it. And if you’re encapsulating it, that may be therapeutic. Right? I know peppermint oil is proven to be anti viral. I know. I think it’s in in vitro peppermint oil can kill HIV, you know, outside of the body. So a lot of those things do have an anti viral capacity to it maybe actually really good to dilute and wash your countertops down and to prevent any viruses and such so that could be good as well. So off the bat, one more thing I wanted to highlight. Infrared Sauna and heat are actually amazing. They work very similar at up regulating the immune system. So Infrared Sauna is going to mimic that fever response and it’s going to increase neutrophil infiltration and help the neutrophil kind of come in there and gobble up that pathogen. It’s going to help improve interleukin eight interleukin 17, it’s gonna help all these different immune things. Now you don’t really it’s gonna help with natural killer cells do you have to understand all the different cells that are happening now, if you jump in the sauna, and you get exposed to some really good 10 15, maybe 20 minutes, you bring some good quality mineral water in there with you your hydrate, you don’t lose your minerals, you’re going to have a really good benefit of bumping up that th one immune response, a lot of those cells are going to be more TH1 base, th two base will be more like parasitic allergy base. So we’re really trying to upregulate that TH1 antiviral, antibacterial immune response and warming your body up can really really help with that.

Evan Brand: Well said well said yeah, I love the sauna. I have one other thing on my head and then I lost it. But but the sauna is a great strategy. So I think that’s, that’s plenty. I think if you do everything we talked about, or even some of what we talked about today, you’re going to be in a lot better shape. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and take a look at my two articles what to do when you get sick part one and part two. Part One just talks about all The diet and lifestyle strategies that are foundational so hydration, clean water, no added sugar, no alcohol, keeping the carbohydrates down focus on higher quality proteins and fats. Excess carbohydrate, especially refined sugar will inhibit the immune system you know, every like one to two tablespoons will knock down your immune responses by a couple hours. And so more stress, more immune system more alcohol, more stress, more decreased immunity, more carbohydrate slash refined sugar, more alcohol, that and poor sleep that’s all going to weaken your immune response and make you more susceptible. And then of course things like sleep getting adequate sleep, washing your hands if you’re washing your hands a lot. I recommend Try not to use some of the triclosan based soaps because they’re gonna have a lot of antibiotic in it. So I just like to have a really good like essential oil. I like I’m a big fan of a citrus oil based on soaps. So then you can wash your hands slough off anything On your hands, because the big mechanism of how soap works is not necessarily killing it. But it just decreasing the stickiness of the bacteria or virus to your skin and then washing it down the drain, right. So really decreasing the adhesion on your skin. So hand washing sleep, is there anything else you want to highlight their Evan from a diet and lifestyle strategy? 

Evan Brand: Not in those categories, lomatium other cool herb, but in some people, it can cause a full body rash. And I don’t know much about lomatium when it comes to specifically this strain or this type of viral issue in general lomatium amazing immune support across the board. But I think even some of the other ones we talked about are are just as good.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolute really good points. Anything else you want to highlight? It’s a lot of things to this year. So looking at the stats, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Again, when you look at what’s happening over in China, the numbers definitely are a lot more scary. In general here in United States not as bad when you look at it next to typical flow. If you’re worried about flu, then you should be doing all of the same things to be on top of it. Again, it’s like 3800 confirmed deaths worldwide 110,000 cases today, March 9, it there’s like, here in the US, I think around 300 confirmed. And then death was right around 20. Yeah, so in the US now, it’s 554 and 22 deaths. So 554. And again, the incidences are going to be higher because they’ve just started to get the testing streamlined over the last two to three days. And now that that’s gone streamlined, more people are being picked up and testing. So there’s been a doubling from Friday at 252 today at 554. But a lot of that’s the increase in testing. The death rate went from 19 on Friday to 22. And again, most of it’s happening in a nursing home up in Washington State most of it so again, over 60 stay off airplanes day off a cruise ships Wash your hands, maybe do it for the next month. And again, if you’re over 60, but you’re healthy, and you have a good immune system, you don’t have any lung issues, then more than likely, it’s probably not going to be a big deal, but I would still probably stay off of the cruise ships. I know a lot of the cruise lines are making, they’re having a lot of precautions right now. Read an article this morning, everyone has mandatory washing of hands literally in front of the crew before each meal. Everywhere they go, they sanitize the whole entire table. Table legs are washed before every meal. And after every meal. The bathrooms are cleaned every 30 minutes. So pretty amazing. They’re actually going through a lot of precautions to make the cruise ships more safe. So I’m hoping in the next month this will be good and of course UV light, right UV light get outside the more outside you are in nature where there’s good quality light, the less chance you’ll get exposed to a virus for sure.

Evan Brand: Yeah, not to mention nature booster and killer cells too. So go on a camping trip that may help you boost up your immune system quite a bit. It’s been shown it’s not even it might know it will it will boost In system for a month, there was a study on that, looking at people walking on a sidewalk in the city versus people walking in the woods. So people walking in the woods had their immune system boosted for over 30 days significantly higher than the city group. So it’s amazing what nature can do. And it’s like, duh, we shouldn’t have to have a study to say that, but we do. So it’s cool to call to reference it. Well, let’s wrap this thing up. Unless you had anything else you wanted to say.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I don’t want anyone to be scared here. I think you guys listening should do the same thing that you would do for the flu virus. That’s it. Outside of maybe staying away from international travel cruise ships, older with weaker lung issues, stay away from flying maybe for the next month. But outside of that, I think to do all the diet and lifestyle strategies, we’ll put all of our references and resources below so you guys have that. And you can take a look at our sources and I’ll be around for a live q&a here in a little bit. So if you guys are watching, I’ll be back in like 10 15 minutes and we can chat.

Evan Brand: Alright, so if you have any other questions you could put up there or if you’re watching on YouTube, put your comments there or message us, you know, you could look us up on Instagram and send us a message or a comment there. And then if you do want to reach out clinically we love helping people. You know, if you’re strong, you’re resilient across the board on a daily basis when stuff comes up like this, you’re going to be in better shape. So if you do want help with your health symptoms, you can reach out to Justin at his website, JustinHealth.com. My website, EvanBrand.com. And we’ll be back next week. So thanks for joining us.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, we appreciate the likes guys hit the bell, get notifications, sharing is caring. We appreciate it. Thank you guys for being here. And we’ll be back. Evan, take care.

Evan Brand: See ya. Bye bye. 

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3729712/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10543583/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19732754/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4549708/

https://www.stephenharrodbuhner.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/coronavirus.txt.pdf

https://www.sunlighten.com/blog/fighting-cold-flu-season-infrared-sauna-therapy

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/natural-support-strategies-for-the-corona-virus-podcast-274