Currently, global attention on health is at an all time high. With a virus in circulation, it is important that we take good care of our immune health. Dr. Justin, along with Evan Brand share top 5 antiviral herbs and nutrients that could help boost our immune system. Check this informational podcast below.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
5:20 Viruses
9:07 Nutrients for the Immune System
14:51 Antiviral Herbs
21:27 Silver
24:05 Importance of Good Health
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live. It's Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand, Evan, how was your weekend, man?
Evan Brand: Hey, man, it was pretty good. It was interesting. Of course, we went out to various stores and saw everything wiped out and I'm sure people don't need any more reminders that the stores were wiped out of toilet paper. And that was really it on, you know, just did the normal thing with the kids. So it was great.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's excellent, then yeah, I'm doing a little bit of social distancing because of the corona virus. I don't think personally, I don't think it's gonna be that big of a deal. I know. I think the the media and the hysteria is bonus out of proportion. You know, we have to compare these pandemic issues to previous pandemics to compare reaction. Do we have symmetry in previous reactions, right. And if we look at swine flu, H1N1 in 2009, we had over 1000 people in this country. die from that. I think I think even even more than that, I think over 100,000 in the World Book, we're only at like, what I think only how many thousand people have died of this. So far 6000? 6000 have died. And swine flu were over 100,000. And we had over a million people in this country with it. And we only have, I think 3500 and change. Now, number two is the big reason why I think it's not going to be as big of a deal. Because I'm reading lots of anecdotes on people that have had flu like illnesses over a month ago, and that were tested at the ER at their doctor's office, and that came back negative for flu. So my personal intuition, right knowledge, guided by experience is that this virus has been around a lot longer than we know. Chinese government doesn't have the best reputation of being transparent to the US government. So I don't expect the December timeline of, of when everything kind of came to fruition with this virus is being the correct timeline based on previous experience. So I think this virus has been around a lot longer. So a lot of anecdotal stuff. bonds people over a month ago having viruses that were flu like that were deeper respiratory based. And that did not come back positive for the flu. So I think it's been around a lot longer. I think the incident rate is a lot higher than we know. And so I think over time, as the testing gets better, we're going to see more, more people positive. And that's gonna drive down the mortality rate, right? Because we people aren't messing up the death rate, the death rates, the death rate, it's hard to ignore a person that dies and they're going to get tested and assessed for a virus so you're not going to mess that up. But what you're gonna mess up is the incident rate. Because unless you don't have strong enough symptoms, or that risk factor history, no one's gonna get your test and based on where the testing is limited right now. I think the incident rates a lot higher than we think it is a story on NBC last week guy gets coronavirus it you know I think at the princess diamond cruise ship. Well, his wife in the same quarters as him, didn't even get it. And part of the immune response we're going to talk about this here I'm going to do a YouTube video today is the corona virus is actually an RNA based virus. Okay, so most viruses, they're DNA based. So what happens is this little virus comes in, and it sticks itself to your cell and penetrates into the cell. And it sticks itself actually using these little Corona like clubs, hence the name Corona virus. And then it uses the ACE inhibitor, the ACE pathway, which is the same pathway that a lot of the ACE inhibitor blood pressure drugs use, and they transmit the RNA inside the virus to inside the cell. And that creates what's called a cytokine, storm or interleukin storm. And then that's where the initial flu symptoms actually come from. They don't come from the virus, they come from your immune response to the virus. And so then what happens there is, then then you start to have the symptoms. The problem is, a lot of people have a strong immune response or have a really good healthy cell membrane because adequate vitamin A, that virus literally just bounces off the person. It doesn't even get, it doesn't even get to drip the RNA into the cell. And so because of that, you're not going to really be able to detect an immune response to That person because there isn't even an antibody response to it. The body just deflected it off. Does that make sense?
Evan Brand: Yeah, it's interesting.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So like to look at an immune response, you'd have to have that virus invade, then your immune system makes that antibody response to it and kills it. But what if that virus can't even storm the castle wall? Does that make sense?
Evan Brand: Yep.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that's part of why so many people who've gotten the virus don't even have any symptoms, meaning they got exposed to it, but they got no symptoms at all. And that's part of the the theory that you know, I've been postulating and other people have been postulating to.
Evan Brand: Well, regardless of what it's going to turn out to be, we still want to be helpful in whatever way we can to people. So today's podcast is about antiviral herbs and nutrients that we could use. All of these have studies on them. And of course, we can't say specifically in the research. Hey, astragalus has been found to be anti viral against this specific Corona virus, but it's been specifically shown against influenza. And there's other types of viruses that we have studies here. So it's not going to be 100%, this herb for this virus, but if we can just assume that some of the same mechanisms are going on, then these herbs should still be helpful, and they're not going to hurt put it to you that way.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And people will talk about, you know, the fact that, you know, the flu virus is a is a has been around for a long time. But at the same standpoint, they're still tweaking the vaccine every year, because there is mutations that happen and part of what goes on with the flu vaccine is 80% of the time, it's wrong, because we're basing it off of the type of flu strains that happened in Asia the season before, and that's where we kind of predict the strains that we should adjust the vaccine to this year and the wrong 80% of the time. So we know that there's some mutation that happens right? And so the corona virus isn't the first one we got exposed to that with SARS, which is sudden acute respiratory syndrome, and MERS, which is Middle Eastern. respiratory send them. So those are two other Corona viruses. This is covid 19. So 19 other ones similar. So let's kind of just dive into we already talked about what's happening in regards to the immune response. So the things that we're trying to support is number one, the body's healthy immune response to it, and then away modulating the immune response. So we don't become, you know, more sick or more symptomatic because of an inappropriate immune response. I already addressed how cytokines and interleukins can actually make us feel kind of crappy, which is good, because we want to feel a little bit crappy. So we kind of stop and rest and sleep more, right? Well, we don't want to feel so bad that our immune response is actually worse than the virus. So I want to kind of draw a line in between nutrients that support our immune system, and herbs that enhance and support and stimulate our immune system. So let's draw a line. So some of the big nutrients that I can think of off the bat in our top 10 list is So as links are really important one, it's gonna be fine in a lot of animal products, not seafood, seafood, and that's going to have a major effect on our immune system. And it's gonna it's gonna have an effect on testosterone, it's gonna have an effect on testosterone, and hydrochloric acid. And our hormones plays a very vital role. We have what's called zinc fingers, which affects our DNA, adequate levels of zinc have a major effect on our epigenetics and our DNA. So zinc would probably be our number one, I think, on the nutrient side. Anything else you want to highlight on zinc or anything else?
Evan Brand: No, I would say that vitamin C is probably going to be number two, though. Yeah, it wasn't your number two.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I agree. They're actually doing studies on Covid 19 and vitamin C right now in China as we speak. So that is something that's real, and they're actually looking at that already. And we know that they're buying lots of vitamin C for a lot of these reasons, preventively. So we know intuitively something's happening there. I'm going to be very curious. See what the study pans out over the next couple of months in this?
Evan Brand: Yep. I don't think this is going to be in the nutrient category, but it's kind of both right because it is it is sort of an immune support, but it also does modulate things and it would be astragalus route. And I personally stay on astragalus pretty much year round, but I go higher dosing in the spring and summertime in case I get tick bites, but there's been some studies showing that when it comes to the herpes simplex virus HSV one, it was found to inhibit that virus. Another study showed that it inhibits the RNA replication that you were talking about. So it seems like it has a multi benefit, like it can be an adaptogen for the immune system, but it also can help inhibit replication of viruses.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, modulates the interleukin response and actually help stimulate the natural killer cell response which is really important. That's the first line of invaders. That's part of the reason why some of these viruses bounce off people because they have a really good th one immune response. These invaders can't even kind of set up shop to begin with.
Evan Brand: Yep, olive leaf. I love olive leaf-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I want to continue hitting some of the nutrients. So-
Evan Brand: Alright, go ahead.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So let's go to N acetylcysteine. We talked about this last week in particular, but ns little systems and amino acid, and it's also going to help with glutathione. So n acetylcysteine is gonna help with respiratory issues mucus, it's gonna support the lungs and acetylcysteine will also help occlude a thigh and we know low glutathione is correlated to weaker immune response and the ability to detoxify. And good bio actually helps with lung health. So we know NAC is vital for glutathione. And, and that's also going to make a huge difference on the lungs and the respiratory system. And NAC is also shown to be very helpful to decrease viral replication. So once the DNA of that virus invades your cell, it's going to replicate and if it's replicating and we can put things in there to hit the brakes on that viral replication. That's going to help immune system catch up.
Evan Brand: Yep, we could go into nutrients forever. I'm just thinking now my head spinning vitamin A higher dose of vitamin A could be critically important. Higher dose vitamin D could be critically important. Maybe 10,000 iu for most people would be just fine for vitamin D, we always like to have K1 and K2 added to it. The funny thing is a lot of the things we're talking about you and I do these all the time anyway, for people it's not like it's a different protocol. It's just, this is kind of the baseline stuff like we use glutathione on NAC combo all the time. Now it just becomes a bit more important. And, you know, vitamin D, for example, has been shown to reduce the risk of flu, other respiratory infections, including pneumonia, which as you mentioned, last time we talked about this, that's one of the main mechanisms that people are getting really really ill is when it progresses to a point of pneumonia. So vitamin D alone has been shown to reduce the risk of that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes, let me go back and hit vitamin A, according to what some of the research says are zinc, I should say. Zinc is very helpful for modulating the th one immune response, it helps modulate cytokine production and B lymphocytes, which a lot of times B cells are going to be the antibodies that we make, it's also helps to decrease cell replication of the DNA of the virus, which is very helpful. And it also helps with a pop ptosis. So it helps with program cell death, which is very important, right? We want to keep a lot of these cells from replication, right, the more they replicate, the more it's going to, it's going to put more stress on our immune system to kill them. So that's really important. And then we also know the more zinc deficiency occurs, you know, the harder it is to decrease replications we know zinc plays a big role. And then vitamin A is really important because number one, vitamin A plays a major, major role with the cell membrane, it makes that cell membranes stronger. And let's just say imagine, like the cell membrane is kind of like the castle wall. It makes it harder for invaders like viruses to get into the cell. So adequate vitamin A is going to really helped make that cell membrane nice and strong and more impervious to things coming in vitamin A also has an inflammatory role. It protects the epithelium, it protects the mucous membrane. So if the mucous membranes stronger, that's gonna prevent invaders from getting in that way. It also has an anti inflammatory role. It's in a module eight cytokines as well. So a lot of really, really, really important things. Vitamin A is going to help. So zinc vitamin A, we already talked about an acetyl cysteine. And its effects on viral replication in glutathione and mucus and lung health. And then you mentioned vitamin D, and vitamin D, makes a natural antibiotic called [inaudible], which is antibacterial. It's in a module a th1 and th2 immune response by helping the T regulatory cells and an overall turn that used to be supporting the immune system. Anything else you want to highlight on vitamin D, Evan?
Evan Brand: I mentioned that the K1 K2 I don't know if it would have any role in immune health, but we often use it together. So I would just say out looking at the store for a combo, the combo product is generally going to provide more value across the board and just a standard d3. And if you could go for something that's going to be like a soft gel or even a liquid, I've seen a lot of really low quality vitamin D supplements that are in tablets with a lot of fillers and binders. So, you know, keep in mind, the nutrient is not just the important part, you want to make sure you're getting quality and try to use stuff that doesn't have a bunch of extra garbage added to it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, that makes sense. I'd also say lysine is a big one. We see it with herpes viruses, but it's been very, very helpful to modular immune response, it helps deactivate a lot of the herpes viruses, it definitely plays a strong role in enhancing and strengthening the immune system and also helps with up regulating antibody. So that B cell antibody, the B cells that make your ITG IGA IGM, those antibodies are going to be strongly enhanced with a lysine and so very, very helpful at modulating the immune system and so on. Big I think nutrients that I would kind of highlight here because we want to draw a line between nutrients and herbs. I would say vitamin A, as an apple, vitamin D is in dog vitamin C as in cat, zinc, we could throw a lysine in there. And it was or anything and then zinc, I think we hit all five or six or six or five. A, D, C, Zinc, NAC. I think that's it. Those are the big five. Anything else you want to add there, Evan?
Evan Brand: We could do we could do plenty more. But I think that's definitely enough nutrients. I'm excited to talk about the herbs. Those are the things I think have been more powerful. So the next one after astragalus I was gonna-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And just to highlight, we talked about some of these herbs last week, some will be an overlap, some will be some new ones. So if you're listening to last week, we're gonna amend and update some of these nutrients here and herbs too.
Evan Brand: Yep, well said. So I was going into olive leaf. I love olive leaf. We use it all the time. So actually like part of my Candida protocol, we'll have a couple of herb combinations that will have olive leaf combined with say monolauren. So maybe I just stacked those two right on top of each other. Monolauren is a lauric acid coconut extract, it's been shown to be very, very potent as an antiviral and olive leaf, the main compound in it, I believe it's pronounced [inaudible]. And that actually prevents the virus from attaching to the cells. So we kind of talk about mechanisms a lot. And people say, Well, why does that matter? Well, because some herbs may prevent the replication of viruses, things like all of actually prevent the virus from attaching to healthy cells. So if you have multiple herbs, you see you've got multiple mechanisms, you're just making yourself even more resilient. So that's why I'm a huge fan of all of huge fan of astragalus monolauren, those are probably like my my top favorites.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Great. So we hit astragalus we talked about the immune a lot of these things are going to help with either immune modulation, natural killer cell antibody modulation, right the the infantry that comes in afterwards for us and help with viral replication. And then typically it's gonna modulate the inflammation from the immune response. Usually it's it's hitting things in about three to four different ways. And so most are going to fall into that category. So when you hear like things that that's kind of the mechanism how they're working. Now, cat's claws a really big one. We use cat's claw or cemento a lot with biofilms, they work really good, right? These are protective shields, bacteria and critters use. We also use it with a lot of lime and various co infections. But cat's claws are great at the immune system, helping with viruses, really enhancing the body's ability to deal with infections. And again, everything we're talking about isn't necessarily the tree anything A lot of it's a lot of the time it's just to support our own immune response to what's happening because our body is really the Ultimate Fighter. In all of this. Everything we're doing is just trying to give our body's immune system an edge to address the issue to begin with.
Evan Brand: I yeah, I want to just restate what you said because I think this is the the point that many people are missing which is the body has and humankind has dealt with viruses for forever. All we're talking about now is what can you do to try to gain the upper hand, it's not that these things are essential, these things are just going to improve your resilience.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So it's important to have the right mindset, a lot of people are selling like cures or solutions. And that's not going to be the case, but it's really going to be our body to begin with even antibiotics. When the infection gets cleared, it's still not the antibiotic, right? It's the antibiotic lowering the level of the infection, and then the immune system can kind of come in and play right, it gives a really, it's like, if we're using a lifting analogy, it really gives a very helpful spot. When you're kind of low in that bench press. It really gives you that little spot to kind of get up through that sticking point for sure. So akinesia will be one of my next favorite ones. And again, when we're doing a lot of these herbs, a lot of times we want to make sure the whole root is present. So a lot of times with akinesia, you'll see a lot of flower present. I want the whole root, I want the whole root. I find that has a lot more of the The immune modulating alkaloids that really have the immune benefits, so akinesia is, is excellent and how it reduced virus virus levels, it inhibits the growth of bacteria inhibits the growth of viruses, it's also going to modulate with the inflammation caused by that immune response caused by the cytokines and interleukins-
Evan Brand: Yeah, and when you're looking at a supplement label, most people listening are probably already expert food label readers and expert supplement label readers but you should just see in parentheses it should say something like root or aerial parts meaning flower, so you want to see something that's like a whole complex.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, a little bit better. And some have a combination, which is fine, too. Mm hmm. Yep, exactly. And buy from reputable company because when you buy raw material, you can buy the McDonald's version or you can buy the grass fed local farmer version, right. You want to buy the highest quality, cool. Next oil level right now we use oil of oregano, a lot more when we're dealing with fungal overgrowth, certain certain gut infections, really good antimicrobial, antifungal qualities also, whatever I can now also as antiviral qualities, I like it a lot. It's going to knock down viruses, the karva call compound and the oil of oregano is very, very, very, very potent, very potent. And it's going to have fireball in there and karva call which are going to which are going to be the main ingredients there. And it's going to have, you know, immune modulating benefits, as well as killing benefits is going to actually help kill parasites, bacteria and can potentially kill viruses too.
Evan Brand: Oregano is amazing. I mean, it's like one of the most broad spectrum if we ever have a client where, let's say they just have some kind of symptom we can't resolve related to the gut, maybe they had a combination of viruses and bacteria and parasites and fungus all in one. If something doesn't work, the first round will come in and do oregano oil, and it really acts as the it's it's the generic spot treatment. I guess you could call it because it may not fungus down a little bit. It may not bacteria viruses. So I mean, really you can't go wrong with it. Well, once again, I think quality is key. So as you mentioned, you do want to make sure you get something standardized for the Carver crawl that way you're, you're getting something that's potent enough to work. A lot of people say well I have oil of oregano essential oils, no, that's not the same thing. You're going to want something like what we use, which is going to be an encapsulated version that's much more potent, and we use emulsified olive oil. So that allows it to spread out and hit the whole intestinal tract as opposed to you putting a drop of oregano oil in your water and drinking it. That's not what we're talking about.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and I'll tell you people that use a lot of the oil of oregano essential oils, I had a parasite in Mexico one time and actually had an oil of oregano essential oil. The problem with it was I could not get enough down my going down my throat without burning my throat seriously, it was so bad. So if you have it, what you can do is get a nice capsule and pour it into it. And that can be very, very helpful because it's hard to get enough in your system without burning the crap out of your Throw in your upper gi. So having a good encapsulation will be nice. A lot of the capsules you get over the counter will still open up pretty fast. And so you may still feel it in your stomach, a lot of the capsules that we're going to use are going to be more a little bit more gelatinous. So it buys more time to actually open up in the in the small intestine versus the stomach. Yep. Well, that's the difference. Yeah. So we hit oil of oregano, we hit astragalus, we hit ekinasia, we hit olive leaf, I would say one of the next ones would be silver. I mean silver has amazing benefits at knocking down viruses and bacteria. Intuitively, we've known this for a long time. That's the reason why we've made our forks and our knives out of silver, where it's because we've known that using these type of things to handle our food actually has decreased food poisoning and had antibacterial antimicrobial effects on our food. That's why we've used silverware for hundreds of years on our food. And you hear lots of negative stories about silver and a condition called our argiria. Which is going to be you know, you turn Blue so to speak. Again, this is not going to happen in high quality silver products that are, you know, 15 or less part per million, you're not going to see it. A lot of these issues are people consuming silver that is way higher on the part per million side. And a lot of times it's homemade. I've had patients and people tell me like, yeah, I make my own silver, I get like some, some sterile silver coins and I put it in a salient solution. I run a current through it, I'm like, holy crap, you have no idea how much silver is in there as a level of parts per million. So if you're consuming silver, make sure you choose a high quality company. And you know, we actually know the parts per million on there. So you know, it's the molecule small enough for your body to still excrete it.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and the stuff we're using, it's not expensive. It's not like silver cost $100 a bottle either. So why people would do that as opposed to just buying a professional brand who does it right. I don't know.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, the naturopath named Dr. David and he talked about this one time and I remember at a conference, he literally took a liter of Silver, and he just chug the whole thing on stage. Everyone's like, holy crap. He's like guys, yeah, good silver, you're never gonna see it being a problem. I was like, Alright, and then the next day he was totally fine. But he consumed a whole liter of silver. That's insane. But yeah, so his premise of it was Yeah, it's really just about the quality of silver. It's really about the quality and how much how big the molecule is.
Evan Brand: Yeah, well, I gotta run I've got a contractor that just came over to my house but that was the last thing I wanted to mention. Anyway, if you didn't hit it, I think we hit it over.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Great. I'm glad we hit it. And again, for people that are having struggling with immune issues or health issues and they want to dive in deeper Evan and I are in the trenches dealing with patients all the time from all over the world. So Evan’s website’s EvanBrand.com they'll be able to console link there. I am Dr. J. at JustinHealth.com, feel free to schedule online. We're here to help and if you enjoy the content, put your comments down below what you guys think any questions about your experience with using certain nutrients and antiviral herbs to support and enhance your immune system. We're really curious To know and if you enjoy the content, make sure you share it with friends and family. We really appreciate it. Anything else you want to say, Evan?
Evan Brand: Yeah, we deal with these type of issues every day all day helping people become more resilient. So now people are just realizing how important it really is to take good care of yourself. This just gives you more reason to not eat bad foods this gives you more reason to go to bed on time this gives you more reason to have healthy relationships and remove bad people from your life. So things like this really shouldn't change your life that much but if anything, maybe it puts a spotlight on some of the sore spots of your life that you need to improve upon the sleep the stress the work stress their relationships, you know, so please use this time to build yourself up not beat yourself up or or think you know, negatively, just build yourself up. That's my that's my message.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And excellent anyone listening. I'll be back in a few minutes for another live Q&A session. So a lot of questions here. Love to hit them up on the backside. Ever man, you have a great day and we'll talk to you man.
Evan Brand: Same you take care.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Take care. Bye.
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