In this episode, I talk with Dr. Kelly about the differences between people's immune systems and how they differ between young and old people, and what we can do to strengthen our own immune systems. I also talk about a new virus, SARS-CoV-2, and how we can all be prepared for it. I hope you enjoy this episode and that it makes you think about how important it is to be proactive in order to protect yourself and your loved ones during this weird time in our lives. If you or someone you know is struggling with anxiety, insomnia, or another medical problem, please talk to a doctor if you can. I understand that being able to see a doctor and receive treatment is a privilege that not everyone has. Thank you so much for listening and supporting this podcast, and I hope that you can find something helpful in this episode. Stay safe out there, and stay strong! XOXO, Sarah Sarah is a public health nurse and public relations professional, and is passionate about public health and public service. Sarah and her team are dedicated to protecting the public health, education, and public safety, and providing the public with the most up to date information about the most effective ways to protect the public at every level possible. She is dedicated to providing the most accurate, up-to-date information on public health practices, practices, and practices to help keep the public informed and prevent preventative action to prevent disease, prevent preventable disease and promote public health. . Sarah has a passion for public service, and access to the best possible information about infectious disease prevention, and treatment, and she is committed to making the most efficient use of resources available to the public, so that we can be the public can have the best access to access the most comprehensive care and access the best care possible. I am so much more information about everything you can access the information we can access, and most effective practices, so you can make the most of every opportunity to be the most impactful possible access and access access, not less of what matters most effective in the most affordable and affordable access and access is the most accessible access to information, not only the most efficiently, affordable, affordable access, affordable and effective access, access is not only possible, and the most convenient access, so you will benefit from the best practices, not least of all of us can access everything you need to get the best of it, everywhere.
00:00:42.000Well, we've been talking and we've been talking about immune systems and this is one of the main things that I wanted to talk to you about.
00:00:49.000All we're hearing is shelter in place, wear a mask, don't touch anybody, don't go outside.
00:00:56.000But we're not hearing, what can you do to strengthen your immune system?
00:01:00.000And I think that as a public health, a public service, you know, health thing, this is one of the most important things that I think you can really focus and concentrate on and an actual thing that you could be proactive about during this weird time.
00:01:16.000Well, definitely, I think focusing on lifestyle factors that you can possibly modulate your immune system and strengthen it is important.
00:01:28.000What's interesting is that the immune system You know, after doing just so much, of course, the past, like, couple of months, I've been nothing but, like, reading about the immune system and trying to understand, of course, this new virus, SARS-CoV-2.
00:01:43.000But I've just learned so much, you know, over the past couple of months.
00:02:28.000This is what surprised me, and it's not totally going to answer your question, but we can totally get to that.
00:02:33.000But one of the main things besides age that regulates the immune system is previous exposure to viruses.
00:02:41.000So I thought that was really interesting.
00:02:43.000And in particular, one virus, the cytomegalovirus, CMV. Did you know like between 50 to 80% of the U.S. population has it, like at least by the time they're like an adult?
00:03:45.000It's totally different between young and old.
00:03:58.000Oftentimes, these vaccine studies are used to kind of test the immune response and, like, how robust your immune response is because you're given a vaccine and there's all different types of vaccines, you know, pieces of an antigen or all different types of, you know, ways that you can expose someone to a vaccine.
00:04:15.000Bacteria or virus, but you have a response to it and the response is, you know, involves your adaptive immunity.
00:04:22.000You make what's called neutralizing antibodies that, you know, basically eventually bind to the virus and neutralize it, prevent it from entering the cell.
00:04:30.000So people that have CMV that are young have a really robust response to the vaccine, much better.
00:04:36.000But older people have the complete opposite where it's like, you know, deleterious.
00:04:47.000This virus, it's stuck with you lifelong and it kind of reactivates every few years.
00:04:53.000And like every time it reactivates, it kind of trains your T cells, which are part of your immune system, to become focused on that CMV. And so as you get older, your T cell population becomes more focused on fighting that virus and less so on other viruses that you're exposed to.
00:05:11.000But this virus doesn't have any symptoms?
00:05:14.000Most healthy people don't have any symptoms with it.
00:05:18.000So what I'm wondering, and the reason I'm even going here, it has nothing to do with taking vitamin C or zinc, and we can talk about that stuff, and vitamin D, but I just thought it was so damn interesting because we hear all these Stories in the news where, you know, some people are asymptomatic.
00:05:35.000Some people are, you know, then some people are just really getting, you know, hard hit.
00:05:40.000And these people, let's say they're more age matched, right?
00:05:43.000We know that elderly people are more prone to severe form.
00:05:46.000But it just made me think, what if this, you know, previous viral exposure to something like CMV is also kind of shaping people's immune responses in some way.
00:05:58.000Surely people are going to be looking at that, but I just thought that was a really interesting thing to come across.
00:06:04.000And then the other sort of along the same lines as previous virus exposure is something that really seems to be something that is a main regulator of what your immune response is.
00:06:22.000So you mean by how many times you've caught the flu, how many times you've had...
00:06:38.000I mean, if you get a sample, like, there's been these zero surveys where they basically...
00:06:42.000That just means they'll get a sample of plasma and look for different antibodies, viral antibodies, and they'll find at any given point a person has, like, antibodies against 10 different viruses, just randomly.
00:06:53.000You know, so you're constantly being exposed to viruses.
00:07:45.000Cross-react with, so there's one that cross-reacts with the SARS-CoV-1, which has a very, it's very, the sequence is very homologous to SARS-CoV-2 virus.
00:07:59.000And it's also been showed that the SARS-CoV-1, the antibodies against the SARS-CoV-1 can neutralize the common cold one.
00:08:07.000So there's like cross-immunity happening between these other viruses, right?
00:08:10.000And so there's been some studies by the CDC on SARS-CoV-2 where they found basically that people that are infected with SARS-CoV-2 also boost their antibodies against the common cold one.
00:08:25.000So, you know, there's certainly, I think, a good hypothesis to be made that potentially, you know, one or two of these common cold viruses could – the antibodies you make against them could also somehow – Maybe, you know, interact with the SARS-CoV-2 virus,
00:08:59.000He's at UCSF. He's doing really large surveys where they're going to be analyzing CRF and people from blood donors and stuff and following them over the course of several years to see – just basically understand more.
00:09:15.000Now, what is the speculation, if there's any sort of uniform speculation as to why, when you hear about prisons, where a lot of these prisoners...
00:09:24.000I don't know if you've seen that there's a video going around where one prisoner had SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, whatever, and spitting into a cup and then passing it around to all these other inmates so they could all get it so that they get released.
00:09:40.000Because they're releasing people, especially California, which is so wacky.
00:09:45.000And there's been some really high-profile releases of these horrible people that should be in jail probably forever, and they're releasing them.
00:09:56.000What would cause, other than something like that, what would cause all these prisoners to not just be positive, that makes sense, but to all be asymptomatic?
00:10:07.000Is there any speculation as to why these large groups, there was another one that was a meatpacking plant where most of the people were asymptomatic as well?
00:10:15.000I wasn't aware of the meatpacking one being asymptomatic, but I did read about the one in prison and it was like, Blowing my mind.
00:10:39.000So there was a study done at the CDC, I don't know, a month ago, maybe a little more, where they measured like, they did this nasal pharyngeal swab test in a nursing home.
00:10:50.000And 13 of them tested asymptomatic, like they had no symptoms, but they tested positive.
00:10:56.000But then they went back a week later and 10 of those people had symptoms and three were asymptomatic.
00:11:02.000So unless, like, there's another, like, if you test someone and they're asymptomatic at that time of testing, they could be pre-symptomatic, right?
00:11:10.000In other words, like, you have to go back a week later and see if they have symptoms.
00:11:20.000I don't know if they went back and tested a week later, if it was just like a single time.
00:11:24.000But this is what got me thinking about this whole thing was, you know, in the prisons and jails, I mean, they're in close quarters, and you got one virus that someone's exposed to, and they all get it, right?
00:11:36.000So, like, what if there's, I don't know the CMV, you know, percentage there, but what if the coronaviruses are going around there?
00:11:42.000What if Some common cold coronavirus has gone around and those antibodies that they've made to neutralize that beta coronavirus are somehow helping with the SARS-CoV-2.
00:11:58.000Do you know if they immunize people, vaccinate people when they go to jail?
00:12:03.000I was trying to figure that out as well because the tuberculosis, one of the types of vaccines they do for TB... I think they do it in Japan and some other countries where they've got a really low death rate.
00:12:18.000That's a clinical trial that's now going on where they're trying to test.
00:12:21.000But I was trying to figure out, is there a vaccination?
00:12:24.000I would imagine it would be simple for them to do that.
00:12:26.000You're entering into prison, they just vaccinate you.
00:12:41.000But the whole, the thing that I just think that I would like to see more research and I'm just hoping, you know, that CDC and other people are investigating these other, the cross immunity, right?
00:12:52.000Like, if there's antibodies that you're making against another coronavirus, beta coronavirus, that's in the same family as this SARS-1.
00:12:59.000No one's had SARS-1 in the United States, right?
00:13:05.000But the common cold, that's very common, right?
00:13:08.000So if 15% to 30% of the common cold is composed of coronaviruses, we know at least two of those coronaviruses are in the same family that have been identified to make...
00:13:20.000At least in one case, there's been neutralizing antibodies, so there has been cross-immunity.
00:13:26.000Let's get some animal studies started on that, you know?
00:13:29.000Speaking of animal studies, there was an article that I was reading yesterday that was saying that they're hoping that they've found some antibodies in llamas that they're hoping they're going to be able to...see if you can find this...
00:13:44.000Because of these antibodies in llamas, they're hoping they can either transfer them to people or learn something about how these antibodies are created.
00:14:12.000And the United States published an article this week in the journal Cell that highlights the potential use of llama antibodies to prevent COVID-19 infections.
00:14:21.000Antibodies from a four-year-old Belgian llama named Winter show promise in blocking coronavirus from infecting cells, according to research from the University of Texas, Austin.
00:14:32.000The National Institutes of Health and the Ghent, how do you say that?
00:14:38.000Studying earlier forms of the coronavirus, researchers have found an antibody in winter that effectively attached itself and neutralized spike protein in SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV.
00:14:50.000Researchers believe the particular antibody, which has been found in other llamas as well, can be injected into an uninfected individual to protect them from getting infected with the new coronavirus.
00:15:02.000Yeah, so I think there's lots of avenues for therapeutics, in addition to repurposing drugs.
00:15:11.000So monoclonal antibodies, you know, being able to basically identify antibodies that do neutralize SARS-CoV-2 virus, whether they come from llamas or humans, you know, and basically identify the specific antibody that can bind to that spike protein that you just mentioned,
00:16:19.000It's probably enough to, like, if you're a healthcare worker, your first-line, you know, first responder, people that are definitely, like, being exposed to large doses of the virus, that could be a promising area.
00:16:35.000But also, I think, even just treating patients, like, that have already been infected.
00:16:39.000So that's also another – so like in combination with some of this other stuff like remdesivir, which is – it's not like a silver bullet, but it seems like it's also promising probably with a combination of other factors as well.
00:16:54.000But yeah, the monoclonal antibodies is a really...
00:17:24.000So basically, when your body is exposed to a pathogen, like a virus, your innate immune system, the first line of defense, like neutrophils, things like that, are making hydrogen peroxide, trying to kill the virus.
00:17:36.000But then in the background, your adaptive immune system, and I'm just totally generalizing, is also working in the background.
00:17:44.000And part of that adaptive immune response is to produce antibodies.
00:17:50.000So you have memory B cells that are making antibodies that are specific to bind different regions, epitopes on the virus, and neutralize them, prevent them from getting inside of the cell.
00:18:00.000And so that adaptive immune system usually takes about seven days after you're exposed to the virus, right?
00:18:08.000The problem is antibody-dependent enhancement.
00:18:11.000So sometimes a neutralizing antibody is an antibody that can bind to the virus and neutralize it, stop it from entering your cell, right?
00:19:00.000The antibody binds to the virus and can basically change its conformation and allow the virus to get into the cell better.
00:19:06.000So then you become like, you know, you get like a higher viral load and then you don't have antibodies to neutralize it.
00:19:11.000And it just, you know, it could be more, it could be, it could lead to death.
00:19:15.000The other thing that happens is the antibody binds to the virus, doesn't neutralize it, but it like makes this crazy immune complex that like, It activates your immune system to just go haywire, and it causes all sorts of pathology, and that's what happened with the RSV toddlers.
00:19:28.000So there's a few viruses that this happens with, and unfortunately, coronavirus is one.
00:19:33.000Like, this has been identified with the SARS-CoV-1 virus, and I think marriage as well.
00:19:41.000So this is also a problem with vaccines.
00:19:43.000So giving the vaccine people's immune response, some people can have that antibody-dependent enhancement.
00:19:50.000And that's what was shown to happen with the SARS-CoV-1.
00:19:53.000There were some non-human primate studies that did that.
00:20:34.000And it's funny because it's kind of connected to this antibody-dependent enhancement.
00:20:38.000There's been quite a few different, like, forms, like, mutations that have been identified.
00:20:44.000But two particular in that spike protein region, that's, like, an important region because antibodies bind there and because that's the region, like, that, you know, the virus uses to get into the cell.
00:20:55.000And so there's been two major, like...
00:21:01.000Strains that have been identified and one of them, so it's in the spike region and it's an aspartate to glycine mutation.
00:21:07.000And basically in Asia, in China, the predominant form is the aspartate, the original quote unquote form.
00:21:16.000And then in Europe and also in North America, this other form, the glycine mutant, is predominant.
00:21:23.000And there's been studies that have shown...
00:21:26.000Looking at like, okay, looking in parts of Europe, different countries in Europe that have this predominant form, that basically there's a higher mortality rate.
00:21:36.000But they didn't actually measure infected patients.
00:21:38.000So, you know, it's kind of like correlation.
00:21:40.000But what's interesting is that there's actually been a genetic link to this mutant.
00:21:45.000So there's studies, there's been some large-scale genetic studies that have found that Asians...
00:21:51.000About 20% of Asians have basically a nucleotide change in a gene that encodes for a protease that's involved in this, you know, basically in allowing this virus to get into the cell.
00:22:04.000But that basically prevents them from having this mutant that's predominant in Europe and also in New York and North America in general.
00:22:12.000That's interesting because my friend Michael who got it, his mom who got it, who's in her 70s, is Asian.
00:23:15.000It's interesting how in Asia and China particularly, I mean, about 1% of the population, it's like less than 1% has the other mutation.
00:23:22.000The glycine mutation that's in New York, it's in most of the United States, but that Less than 1% of the population in China has that form.
00:23:59.000And I think that eventually there's going to be therapeutics that are identified, you know, multiple ones maybe.
00:24:08.000And I think vitamin D is going to potentially play a role there.
00:24:11.000But I mean, just like things like remdesivir and the monoclonal antibodies, and then you eventually like, you know, a vaccine will, you know...
00:24:45.000There's been some data, and this was also identified with SARS-CoV-1, that people with type O blood, they make antibodies, they make type A antibodies, whereas people with type A blood,
00:25:06.000And so the type A antibodies were identified.
00:25:09.000So there's been studies looking at people with type O blood or type A blood and also type B. In type O blood, there's like less frequency of getting COVID-19.
00:25:21.000So as opposed to having a severe form, it's just like you're less likely to contract it even.
00:25:27.000And it's thought because the type A antibodies that people with type O blood make We neutralize the—they basically bind to that region, that spike region, and neutralize the antibody and prevent the virus from entering the cell.
00:25:40.000So that's—at least that was the mechanism that was shown with SARS-CoV-1.
00:25:44.000So it's thought, oh, well, the same—we're seeing the same— You know, pattern where people with type O are protected from SARS-CoV-2.
00:26:16.000You kind of just take it with a grain of salt.
00:26:19.000Where these clots are like, you know, there's clots in people that are healthy and young, certainly people that have severe cases, people like older people, people that are pre-existing conditions and stuff.
00:26:31.000And the type O blood, people have lower levels of this von Willebrand factor, which basically is involved in clotting.
00:26:40.000And it's been shown that that von Willebrand factor also is higher in people with SARS-CoV-2.
00:26:48.000It was shown to also be that with SARS-CoV-1.
00:28:17.000Because he said his body's going to stop working because it's going to let the ventilator do the breathing for him and it's going to give up.
00:28:24.000And what he was talking about after the fact, what Michael was talking about was how that is proven to be correct in New York and that some people A monstrous number.
00:28:35.000Like, 80% of the people that put on ventilators wind up dying.
00:28:38.000I've had friends that are physicians that have, like, you know, in New Orleans, I mean, same thing, where it's like, you know, there was someone on my team, we were doing some research on this, and I didn't sort of dive into the whole thing, but he was telling me that ventilators do actually,
00:28:56.000like, cause more damage to the lungs, and, like, he'd been reading some studies to, like, confirm that, and he was pretty certain that That ventilators actually cause damage and actually could induce damage, where it's making it worse.
00:29:12.000I don't know all the specifics of that.
00:29:13.000All I know is that looking at the statistics, if you go on a ventilator, surely it seems like the outcome's not very...
00:29:20.000It doesn't seem like it's going to be very good.
00:29:22.000Right, but it's hard to say is that the cause of it or is it just that they're so fucked up by the time they get on a ventilator they just wind up dying?
00:29:45.000They've looked at patients that have died and their vitamin D levels.
00:29:49.000And basically like in the Philippines, you know, people that for like every standard deviation increase in vitamin D levels, serum vitamin D levels, you know, the people had like an 8% or were eightfold I think?
00:30:26.000Countries that have been affected the worst, and they all have low vitamin D. And it's like, okay, well, anyways, that's a correlation.
00:30:36.000In Indonesia, patients that died, almost 100%, it was like 98 point something percent of patients that died with COVID-19 were vitamin D deficient.
00:30:50.0004% of patients that died from COVID-19 were vitamin D sufficient.
00:30:58.000So basically, they were all vitamin D deficient, all the ones that are dying.
00:31:21.000You know, 70% of the U.S. population has insufficient vitamin D levels, which is considered blood levels less than 30 nanograms per milliliter.
00:31:32.000This is something that your body can generate naturally if you're exposed to the sun on a daily basis.
00:31:50.000Vitamin D deficiency is what makes it worse, and then you're staying inside, so you're not getting any vitamin D. Yeah, you're becoming even more deficient, you know, like somewhere like 28% of the US population is actually deficient, like less than 20 nanograms per mil, you know, like that's defined deficiency.
00:32:06.000So there's a lot of people in the United States, as you mentioned, you make it from the sun.
00:32:11.000So particularly UVB radiation, there's a reason why I want to talk about this.
00:32:15.000You make it from UVB radiation exposure, you know, basically, it's made in the skin.
00:32:20.000And but you know, there's certain times of the year, depending on where you live in a more northern latitude, where That UVB isn't even hitting the atmosphere.
00:32:28.000You're not making vitamin D. Also, if you have darker skin, melanin protects you.
00:32:33.000People with darker skin, people from maybe Africa or India or South Asia, They're more equatorial regions.
00:32:40.000They're closer to the equator and there's more UVB radiation throughout the year.
00:32:47.000And so as a protective mechanism to not get burned, you have melanin, which protects you, right?
00:32:53.000The problem is that melanin also blocks your ability to produce vitamin D. But if you're out in the sun all the time, in a place where you're getting UVB radiation, it's not a problem.
00:33:24.000And you put them in Sweden or in Minnesota or in the UK, a place where UVB radiation doesn't hit most of the year, and you don't give them a supplement.
00:33:34.000What happens is they become severely vitamin D deficient, severely.
00:33:38.000And what happens when you take – I mean you can flip this over and say, okay, what happens when you take the guy from the UK, the Brit, and put him in Australia?
00:33:47.000Like, without any sunscreen or without a hat.
00:34:30.000We're at work, in our office, in our cubicle.
00:34:33.000So the CDC, you know, obviously there's been studies showing that African Americans are more hit, but they didn't really correct for tons of like other factors because socioeconomic status is important, other health factors, you know.
00:34:44.000But there was a big study just released not long ago from like the National Office of Statistics in Britain or something like that.
00:34:53.000I don't know what their official name was, but they released some statistics from England and Wales.
00:35:01.000And the, I don't know what the correct name to say, I mean, the blacks there basically living in England and in Wales are four times more likely to die of COVID-19 than whites.
00:35:14.000When they adjusted all that data for socioeconomic status and for other health factors, they were two times more likely to die.
00:35:20.000So clearly socioeconomic status and other health factors are playing a role, but there's something else unidentified.
00:35:26.000And I think it's vitamin D. I think that, you know, so...
00:35:30.000The vitamin D, I'm not saying that vitamin D is going to prevent you from getting COVID-19 or it's a treatment, although I am involved in a clinical study where we're going to be testing a very small open-arm study we can talk about.
00:36:08.000And also in Sweden, there's a huge population of Somalis that have migrated to Sweden.
00:36:14.000And they have been identified as being severely vitamin D deficient because a lot of the Somalis have also – like autism rates are really high there.
00:36:23.000And there's this link between – I published a link also between vitamin D and autism.
00:36:27.000So there's been studies looking at vitamin D levels in the Somali population.
00:36:31.000I mean they are so deficient because you're taking – again, you're taking someone who's supposed to be – who's evolved to be getting a lot of sun – But not burn from it.
00:36:42.000And then putting them in a place where they can't get any vitamin D from the sun.
00:36:46.000And if they don't get a supplement, they're going to be deficient.
00:37:11.000Because vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin and it's been shown to be 50% less bioavailable.
00:37:17.000So after you make it in your skin, it's stored in fat and it's released basically into the bloodstream and then it gets converted into a hormone.
00:37:26.000This hormone regulates more than 5% of the protein-encoded human genome.
00:37:58.000What is happening to people when they are vitamin D? Like, what's happening in vitamin D deficient?
00:38:06.000What is happening in the body that's causing their immune system this hormone deficiency, not having this vitamin D? Whether it's through sun exposure or diet?
00:38:15.000I mean, there's vitamin D receptors on, like, your immune cells.
00:38:19.000And the reason for that is because when the hormone, vitamin D hormone, binds to the receptor, it activates all these genes and the genes do stuff that regulate immune function.
00:38:29.000You know, there are studies that have shown people, and I love these studies because...
00:38:35.000Because they basically take away people's complaints about, you know, there's lots of epidemiological studies showing that low vitamin D is associated with disease X, Y, or Z. And everyone's like, well, you know, they're not in the sun as much, so they're not as healthy, they're not as physically active, they're not whatever,
00:38:50.000even though those confounding factors are usually corrected for.
00:38:55.000At the end of the day, it's an association, right?
00:38:57.000And everyone's like, correlation's not causation, which is true.
00:39:00.000But sometimes you've got to look at the full body of data, you know?
00:39:06.000So there are people that have variations in genes that cause them to genetically have lower vitamin D. And so this is called Mendelian randomization, where you can take a person that's That has a genetically – like they're genetically low vitamin D. So you're not categorizing them based on their vitamin D levels.
00:39:23.000You're categorizing them based on their gene.
00:39:26.000And those people are more likely to die from respiratory infections just based on that gene alone.
00:39:32.000So yeah, that gene that it's known to lower – it lowers vitamin – it leads to lower vitamin D levels.
00:39:37.000And so like those people are more likely to die from respiratory infections than people that don't have that, which – It's a great way of kind of randomizing people by their genes as opposed to doing a randomized control trial.
00:40:00.000The people with low baseline vitamin D levels, so people that were deficient, they were 50% less likely to have a respiratory tract infection if they were taking the vitamin D supplement.
00:40:28.000So the tolerable upper intake has been set by the Nutrition Board and the Institute of Medicine to be 4,000 IUs a day.
00:40:37.000But there's been studies that have shown that people that have taken 10,000 IUs a day for multiple years haven't had any hypercalcemia or had problems.
00:40:56.000It's best to like get a vitamin D blood test.
00:40:59.000And I think that personally, there has been a trend.
00:41:03.000So people that have blood levels higher than 60 may have just a little bit higher calcium levels, but not much, not like it's not like Anything to be hugely concerned about.
00:41:14.000But there are studies also showing that either vitamin K1... So there's been a meta-analysis looking at 12 different studies, I think, where vitamin K1 or vitamin K2 were given.
00:41:25.000And both of those improved bone mineral density and prevented any hypercalcemia.
00:41:31.000Because when you take vitamin D, you absorb calcium better.
00:41:34.000Like something crazy, like 40% more dietary calcium is being absorbed.
00:41:41.000Calcium can easily form a precipitate in general, and particularly when phosphorus is around.
00:41:48.000And phosphorus is another thing vitamin D does increase the absorption of.
00:41:53.000But again, like I said, it's really hard to find any studies where vitamin D is causing...
00:41:59.000You know, hypercalcemia unless it's like really, really high dose for a while.
00:42:04.000I personally think taking the vitamin K... And what's interesting about the vitamin K1 versus vitamin K2 without going into too much of a tangent is basically the vitamin K1... Normally, it goes to your liver and it's involved in blood coagulation.
00:42:19.000But when there's enough vitamin K1 around, it stays in the periphery and it moves calcium, periphery being the bloodstream.
00:42:26.000It moves calcium out of the bloodstream and takes it to places where it's supposed to go, like the bones and the muscle.
00:42:31.000Vitamin K2 usually stays around in the periphery.
00:42:57.000So I'm getting a lot of K1. Vitamin K2 is not as, it's not as readily found in like the western, I mean it's like the food that's highest in it is that fermented soybean natto.
00:43:09.000But it's like small quantities and like cheese.
00:43:11.000Do you ever get concerned from the high volume of leafy greens?
00:43:15.000Do you ever get concerned of oxalates or getting kidney stones or anything along those lines?
00:43:43.000There's a big reason I think that vitamin D is so important.
00:43:46.000It's for the lung function and the respiratory function.
00:43:49.000But what's really interesting is that, you know, the very receptor that this SARS-CoV-2 virus binds to to gain entry into the cell, it's called ACE2, that very receptor plays a really important role in preventing lung Lung damage and basically preventing acute lung injury,
00:44:10.000preventing acute respiratory distress syndrome ARDS. And what's been shown with SARS-CoV-1 is that, because SARS-CoV-1 also binds to that receptor, ACE2 it's called, and that's how it gets into the cell, just like the SARS-CoV-2.
00:44:23.000When it binds to the receptor, it, like, it attaches in, like, through this, like, weird endocytosis mechanism.
00:44:30.000It takes the receptor in and decreases the receptor, what's called down-regulates.
00:44:34.000Down-regulates the receptor, so you end up having less ACE2, which causes, like, can cause severe lung injury.
00:44:41.000Not having the ACE2, it plays a big role in protecting.
00:44:43.000That's been shown in multiple studies.
00:44:44.000Like, so the SARS-CoV-1 virus does that.
00:44:47.000It's thought the SARS-CoV-2 also does it because it goes through the same, enters through the same receptor.
00:44:52.000And it's been shown that like if you, for example, if you give mice lipopolysaccharide or something that's going to cause lung injury, and then you give them vitamin D. So the lung injury itself also causes the ACE2 receptor to decrease.
00:45:07.000And so it's like this vicious cycle of like making the damage worse.
00:45:11.000But if you give mice vitamin D before that happens...
00:45:14.000The ACE2 receptor increases and it protects them from the lung injury.
00:45:18.000But you give the vitamin D to control mice that don't have the lung injury, it doesn't do anything to the ACE2 receptor levels.
00:45:26.000It's not like, you know, drugs, the way drugs are designed is they like, they target a certain molecule and they boom, they like do their thing.
00:45:34.000They either increase it or decrease it.
00:45:35.000A lot of times with hormones, vitamins, things like that, they maintain homeostasis.
00:46:06.000It also causes like kidney problems and all sorts of things, right?
00:46:10.000But the vitamin D increased the ACE2, but only in the hypertensive rats, not in the normal control rats, again.
00:46:16.000So, you know, and then there was another study that was like some other messed up diabetic animal model where the vitamin D actually didn't increase the ACE2 receptor, but it increased what's called soluble ACE2, which is in like...
00:46:30.000It's in the periphery, and that actually potentially could bind SARS-CoV-2 virus and prevent it from – it's like sequestering it, preventing it from entering the cell.
00:46:38.000That's actually being explored as a potential therapeutic.
00:46:40.000So the bottom line here is that sometimes you'll hear this ACE2 receptor, and that's how the virus gets in, and it's like, I don't want that.
00:46:50.000I want less of that because that's how the virus gets in.
00:46:52.000But, like, biology is always way more complicated than just a simple – Taking it out of a big picture, right?
00:47:00.000You know, so like the ACE2 receptor, the ACE2 is part of the renin-angiotensin system.
00:47:07.000It's also like when you decrease ACE2, all these signaling cascades happen and it's like ACE2 is important for producing pro-inflammatory cytokines at the end of the day without getting into all the stuff, you know, specifics.
00:47:20.000So it causes massive inflammation to have a decrease.
00:47:33.000Can you imagine if vitamin D really did help?
00:47:35.000Like, if there was something that could be given along with the other stuff from Desivere, whatever, whatever it's going to be the stuff that we identify.
00:47:50.000So yes, as you mentioned, you don't want to take too much vitamin D. You don't want to overdose on it.
00:47:57.000But I think in the short term, particularly in the short term, and particularly in people that have already been infected, it may be wise to try giving your patient, like if you're a physician dealing with this,
00:48:13.000it may be wise to try and see their vitamin D levels and perhaps give them some.
00:48:42.000So there are clinical studies, unfortunately not a ton of them in the United States, that are looking...
00:48:47.000Randomized control trials looking at vitamin D, the effects of vitamin D on already, you know, patients with COVID-19.
00:48:54.000Which what would be great is like giving them to like...
00:48:57.000First responders or healthcare workers and seeing, like, how does it – what role does it play in prevention?
00:49:03.000Because that's really the easiest thing, right?
00:49:06.000I'm involved – a friend of mine, Dr. Eric Gordon, he's put together, so I kind of – with his help, I've – Helped him design an open-arm trial, very small, 40 patients, where he is going to be giving them 50,000 IUs every five days of vitamin D. So it's like a weekly dose because a lot of times these people are severely deficient and so you want to give them a higher dose.
00:49:32.000And doing 50,000 IUs weekly isn't something that's necessarily going to be toxic or anything like that.
00:49:38.000And then we're doing some other things, vitamin C, I think it really should be explored.
00:51:39.000Like, a month before all this lockdown happened, so I got my data back pretty recent.
00:51:44.000And I still hover around 50 nanograms per mil, even though before I was taking 4,000.
00:51:50.000Generally speaking, 1,000 IUs will raise your blood levels by about 5 nanograms per mil.
00:51:56.000And there are people with different variations in genes that are related to vitamin D metabolism where they have lower levels and they need a higher dose.
00:52:03.000The only way you're going to know that is by, of course, measuring your vitamin D levels multiple times.
00:52:07.000And then potentially even doing, like, a genetic analysis, you know, as well.
00:52:45.000I think it's mounting data and I think that eventually something will come out and it's going to, just like the randomized controlled trials, showing that it protects against respiratory tract infections.
00:53:19.000I think it's a really good hypothesis.
00:53:21.000I want to believe it because it's easy, it's safe, and I think people need vitamin D anyways.
00:53:27.000I mean, you know, so of course I want to believe it, you know.
00:53:32.000But, like, there was this interesting study where African Americans who are very deficient in vitamin D, they were given a vitamin D supplement for like a month and It decreased their epigenetic age by like two years.
00:54:04.000So what's indicative of their suffering from this vitamin D deficiency, this alleviates that suffering and then puts the body in homeostasis.
00:54:41.000So if you have the Dr. Rhonda Patrick pyramid of supplementation for preventative symptoms of COVID-19 or preventative measures dealing with COVID-19, that's your base?
00:55:33.000So I think that in this case, people are motivated, especially people in my parents' generation that are older because they're more scared.
00:56:32.000The interesting thing about vitamin C is there's oral and then there's intravenous vitamin C. And the intravenous vitamin C is what seems to be really relevant right now.
00:56:44.000But I think the most interesting thing that I learned really had to do with the pharmacokinetics, which is basically like...
00:56:53.000How much vitamin C raises your plasma levels and is there a saturation point where you can eat 20 grams of vitamin C but still only get to this certain point versus what you do if you inject it into your veins intravenously?
00:57:11.000So what's interesting is that most people that are just like eating, let's say that people are just eating like five, somewhere between five to nine servings of vegetables or fruits a day.
00:57:23.000Those people have anywhere between like 70 to 80 micromoles of vitamin C like per liter.
00:57:29.000So it's micromoles per liter in their blood.
00:57:33.000If you take like a 200 milligram supplement, you only raise your levels to like 90. So it's not much over that like baseline.
00:57:39.000Most people that aren't eating that many servings probably have around 50, which is still considered normal, 50 micromoles or micromolar.
00:57:49.000And then what's interesting is that like, but those levels you take, if you take 200 milligrams, it doesn't do much.
00:57:56.000If you take a gram, it can raise you up to like 130 or something.
00:58:01.000If you take three grams, it can raise you to 220. And that's like the maximum level you can get from oral supplementation.
00:58:14.000But here's the other interesting thing is that if you don't take it multiple times throughout the day, if you only take it once, You'll peak at around five hours after.
00:58:24.000I think there's like a really nice graph on my website on the topic page.
00:58:28.000It shows it's like you'll peak like five hours after, but then you go down steadily and over 24 hours, you're back to normal, your baseline.
00:58:35.000But if you take it like, you know, four times a day, you can stay at 220, like the whole time.
00:58:43.000And the reason that's important is because a lot of studies looking at oral Vitamin C consumption and like, for instance, the common cold, incidence of the common cold, really depends.
00:58:54.000Like there's huge variations in the results and it all really seems to come down to dose.
00:59:00.000And when you know the dose and how that's changing your blood levels, like if you're only taking 200 milligrams, which some studies are doing, It's barely doing anything over your baseline.
00:59:28.000Oh, it totally overcomes all those saturatable mechanisms.
00:59:32.000And it's not only more effective, it's a completely different What dose do you recommend for intravenous vitamin C? Jamie, can you pull up foundmyfitness.com and there's a vitamin C topic page so that way I can answer that question better?
01:01:10.000The intravenous vitamin C is a completely different game because It literally generates hydrogen peroxide.
01:01:19.000When you get doses above, when you start to max out over that plasma level, 220 micromole, the vitamin C itself, so vitamin C kind of cycles between being oxidized and reduced.
01:01:33.000It's called dehydroascorbic acid, dehydroascorbate, and then ascorbic acid or ascorbate.
01:01:38.000Dehydroascorbic acid is the oxidized form and hydrogen peroxide is generated.
01:01:44.000Which is really interesting because it's one of the mechanisms by which at least it's thought that intravenous vitamin C kills cancer cells.
01:01:52.000It also has been shown to like kill viruses and stuff in a variety of different studies.
01:01:58.000But that's interesting because your neutrophils generate hydrogen peroxide.
01:02:02.000So the intravenous vitamin C is like generating hydrogen peroxide.
01:02:05.000At the same time, it's also acting as an antioxidant for your own neutrophils.
01:02:15.000You know, in clinical studies, but also it's been shown that the hydrogen peroxide does not damage the normal cells.
01:02:20.000Like normal healthy people, given intravenous vitamin C, it's generating hydrogen peroxide, but there's no oxidative damage happening in people's like lymphocytes and stuff.
01:02:29.000So it's not like damaging your own cells.
01:02:31.000And how often would you do this if you could?
01:02:34.000Well, the studies, you know, it depends on what virus you're looking at.
01:02:38.000But I mean for you personally, just for health benefits, how often would you take it?
01:02:42.000If you just had access to it every day, how often would you take intravenous vitamin C? You know, it's something because if you if you look at the graph, it's kind of a trans intravenous vitamin C is transient.
01:02:52.000So it's like it's having it's not something that like necessarily needs to be done all the time.
01:02:57.000It's something like I was I was interested in doing it like my mom was my mom had just gotten sick and like common cold, you know, she had like a runny nose and stuff.
01:03:07.000And so I took her we went to get the IBC and they did it was 10 10 grams that we did.
01:03:14.000And I took it because I was like, well, she's sick and I've been around her and like, I don't want to get sick.
01:03:18.000So, you know, I thought, why not try it?
01:03:21.000And, you know, so, you know, the intravenous vitamin C, maybe there's like a reason to do it, but it's not something that I'm certain that people need to do on a daily basis.
01:03:32.000It's different than like vitamin C, you know, normal vitamin C you do need.
01:03:44.000I'm sorry to interrupt you, but do you believe it's important to take it orally as well as IV? Well, the IV is totally different.
01:03:55.000The IV is really being used as a therapeutic treatment.
01:03:57.000Like it's a therapeutic treatment more, you know, the IBC, where it's been shown to help with like, for example, at least in the hospitals in San Diego, it's routinely used for sepsis.
01:04:08.000Like friends of mine, you know, use that for treating sepsis and there's been...
01:04:13.000Large randomized controlled trials showing that it dramatically reduces mortality with sepsis.
01:04:19.000So, like, that's, especially in combination with thymine as well, like, huge differences in people dying from sepsis, which is obviously very relevant now, but hasn't been shown.
01:04:30.000I mean, there are clinical studies that are ongoing right now, some in China and some in the United States looking at IVC potentially to help treat sepsis.
01:04:42.000You know, it'll be interesting to see the data from those trials, whether or not there's going to be an effect, it's not known.
01:04:48.000But the fact that it has been shown to improve sepsis outcomes in multiple studies.
01:04:56.000It's also been shown, obviously, cancer is a big one.
01:05:00.000Linus Pauling was deemed a nut, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist who basically is the vitamin C guy.
01:05:08.000He, back in the 70s, was championing intravenous vitamin C for cancer patients because he was claiming it was curing them, quote-unquote, curing them.
01:05:17.000I wasn't quite doing that, but it was improving the outcomes of cancer patients.
01:05:21.000And there's all these studies from the Mayo Clinic came out and they were like, nope, doesn't do that.
01:05:25.000Turned out they were using oral vitamin C, which is like comparing apples to oranges.
01:05:30.000But now there's been so many studies, a lot.
01:08:00.000There's another meta-analysis that looked at 200 milligrams up to, like, 200 milligrams up to two grams.
01:08:06.000And that study kind of just lumped everything together rather than the other study, like, okay, what happens is two grams in one, and they did all these sub-analysis, and that was great because they, like, got to the bottom of it.
01:08:34.000So I think that people designing clinical studies, like, that needs to be in their mind before they design their trial.
01:08:41.000Okay, what am I trying to measure here?
01:08:43.000Like, I want to get, I need to, like, I need a measurable, like, I need something to measure.
01:08:48.000I need that to change, right, to get an outcome.
01:08:50.000Like, if you want, you're trying to, like, see what effect vitamin C has on whatever outcome, you're going to want to raise someone's plasma levels, right?
01:08:58.000I guess it's good at the end of the day to know that 200 milligrams doesn't do anything because then you go, okay, well, 200 milligrams doesn't do anything.
01:09:05.000But it's also good to know that, oh, wait, if I take a higher dose, there is an effect.
01:09:10.000So, you know, making this general statement that, oh, vitamin C supplementation doesn't do anything is accurate in some respects.
01:09:18.000Yeah, 200 milligrams, it doesn't do much for the common cold.
01:10:57.000Again, I don't know that the intravenous vitamin C is necessary.
01:11:00.000There's also interesting effects on, like, fat oxidation.
01:11:03.000Like, it affects fat oxidation because it's important for carnitine, which isn't necessary for oxidizing fat.
01:11:10.000Like, there's been clinical studies where people are, like, burning more fat when they're exercising if they have vitamin C and if they have low vitamin C levels or not, like, burning as much fat.
01:11:19.000I think it's because it's the carnitine.
01:11:20.000I thought that was really interesting.
01:11:34.000You know, important for immune function as well.
01:11:37.000And elderly people are more, zinc deficiency is not really common in the U.S. Most, you know, zinc is found in, it's really high in oysters, but not a lot of people with oysters.
01:11:46.000Red meat, poultry, you know, if you eat enough of that, you should be getting enough zinc.
01:14:23.000And I always think of, like, because cellular senescence happens in the melanocytes that, you know, are responsible for pigment.
01:14:29.000So I always think about, oh, the senescent melanocyte is, like, secreting all this pro-inflammatory stuff that's now accelerating the age of my other nearby hair follicle melanocytes and it's causing them to...
01:14:41.000Anyways, quercetin's been identified to clear away senescent cells, so that's kind of cool.
01:14:50.000No, that's just my analogy for people to understand why senescent cells are bad because they age other nearby cells by secreting all this stuff, pro-inflammatory cytokines.
01:15:00.000One thing I forgot to ask you about vitamin D deficiency is red light therapy.
01:15:08.000What would that have to do with vitamin D? I don't know.
01:15:11.000Do you know about these red light machines that people stand in front of?
01:19:28.000When I hit the hill, I'm like, wow, this is crazy.
01:19:31.000Either I'm getting in better shape, and I know I am for sure, but it's also...
01:19:35.000I gotta think the sauna has a big impact, because it feels like I'm on a drug.
01:19:38.000It feels like I'm on, I don't know what EPO feels like, but I would imagine it would feel something like this, where the increased cardiovascular benefit is very noticeable.
01:20:50.000Because they're one of the sponsors of the podcast, but I love it.
01:20:52.000I would love to have something to measure it without having to take my watch in there because I don't like sitting like it's like you know well the whoop strap measures it really well and it'll give you like you could actually mark it down as an activity and it'll show you what your heart rate so it's you had a mountain of data it's really good that's cool yeah let me It's also great for sleep.
01:22:35.000That means everything's probably functioning better because it's such an enormous part of your body.
01:22:39.000When you look at your musculature, the large percentage of it is from the waist down.
01:22:44.000And when I'm doing legwork, most of what I'm doing is kettlebells, but I'm doing lunges and presses and squats and all these different things with heavy kettlebells.
01:22:55.000So it's a lot of weight that your muscles are pushing.
01:22:58.000Dan is always trying to get me to do squats like I don't know what back when I was in grad school I was doing squats and I was using the stuff and then I was doing I guess what are they called leg presses yeah and I like injured myself and in this I want to call it sciatica what's the other one that's like sciatica there's another sciatica is is a nerve that comes from your discs like right here yes well you know what that's from though I don't know what it is,
01:25:42.000So you can get all the leg work that you get from squats, but you don't get the pressure on the discs.
01:25:46.000And then the Reverse Hyper is a machine that he actually invented.
01:25:50.000Louis Simmons invented it because he had a herniated disc and the doctors are telling him, hey, we have to operate on you because you have this compressed disc.
01:25:57.000And so he's a very smart guy and he knows so much about physical fitness and weight training.
01:28:03.000But it's a great machine and it's just really specifically good for back health, lower back health, decompressing it, and even strengthening it because you can do those back extensions.
01:28:15.000So you hook yourself into it and then you just lift your back up and down.
01:29:09.000With this shelter-in-place thing, because I like to do outdoor runs and I don't have a treadmill or anything like that.
01:29:15.000I finally got a jump rope and it came in right when the beaches opened up.
01:29:20.000I'm good at jumping rope and I should have been doing that, but I was sauna-ing every day.
01:29:25.000I do some ballet stuff, but I need to do resistance training.
01:29:30.000Muscle mass is important for aging, for Sure, and bone density.
01:29:36.000Lifting weights increases bone density, tendon strength, so many different variables that are so huge because as your body gets older, those are the things that go south.
01:29:45.000Yes, and I'm going to be 42 next month.
01:29:49.000I'm 52, so that should make you feel better.
01:32:53.000So I think it was 2014. But, like, the sauna, you know, it's just been, like, something...
01:32:59.000I came on your podcast the first time when we talked about it and then, of course, continued to...
01:33:05.000You know, publish videos and articles and stuff.
01:33:07.000And I'm writing a review article for peer review publication right now.
01:33:11.000But there's a woman who reached out to me.
01:33:15.000She had done her, I think her PhD, either her PhD, I don't know.
01:33:21.000I'd say psychology, but she had done it with a guy I interviewed on the podcast, Dr. Charles Rezon.
01:33:25.000He's the guy who showed that like a single hyperthermic treatment, which was with a device that raised the core body temperature like almost three degrees, could have an antidepressant effect.
01:33:37.000Well, she reached out to me and like the FDA shut that whole machine down.
01:33:40.000Like, no, you can't use that for research anymore, which kind of shut down the whole sauna depression, you know, research area.
01:33:46.000So she basically, she has gotten some funding and she's doing a pilot study with a new device, which is something you can like buy off Amazon where it's like a sauna, like your head's out, but like it's like a tent, like a sauna tent.
01:34:00.000Yeah, my wife had one of those before we had a sauna.
01:34:03.000Yeah, so it's different, but it's something that she's got to prove that it's safe before the FDA will allow her to even continue on to study how it affects depression.
01:34:14.000And so I've been able to help with connections I've had, help fund new studies she's going to be doing where she's going to get depressed patients.
01:34:27.000To basically be exposed to this sauna and it's like an intense like she's like this intense protocol where like she's like it's like an hour long and they get really hot and people are giving them wet towels because like it's like it's like imagine being it's like 140 degrees Fahrenheit so it's an infrared but they're in there for like an hour you know and they're getting they raise their core body temperature they're measuring that rectally so um But she's going to measure the effects on,
01:34:52.000So it's really exciting because, and they're going to do like a dose response where they're going to see how many, the Charles Rezon, Dr. Charles Rezon showed one, just one single session could result in an antidepressant effect six weeks later.
01:35:05.000She's going to try to do eight sessions where she's going to see if these people can handle...
01:35:33.000It was like this device that basically is sort of like a far infrared thing, but it would raise your core body temperature through infrared, right?
01:35:51.000So infrared saunas, the main difference between infrared saunas and like the regular dry saunas that you and I use is that the regular dry saunas are heating the ambient air, right?
01:36:02.000And that's then raising our core body temperature through that mechanism.
01:38:19.000I mean, like I said, ours is really small, and so like, I mean, you're breathing like it's like burning you there's a direct formula too between the percentage of humidity and then the increased temperature the way it feels like if it's at 180 but you have 10% humidity it's like feels like yeah there is i don't know what that formula is absolutely there's a formula and In a lot of the studies coming out of Finland,
01:38:43.000many of the people there are doing the humid saunas as well.
01:38:49.000So, I mean, I guess they're called Finnish saunas, which means they're using the hot water and steam.
01:38:55.000It would be amazing to have an outside sauna that's right next to a frozen lake, like the way they do it.
01:39:21.000But so you go and you do these different, they have all these different types and I don't remember and they're like whipping each other with like birch wood, you know, which it's interesting.
01:39:31.000Yeah, the Russians like to do that too.
01:40:10.000He had us do this like – there was like two tents and it was a conference that I gave a talk at and so some people paid extra to like go to this event that was after it.
01:40:21.000So there was like 30 or so people there and they were – from all around the world.
01:40:25.000There was only like three Americans, me, Dan and some other guy.
01:42:11.000So anyways, I'm in the sauna, everyone's naked, and the guy who's my friend, he's still my friend, he's an interesting guy, but he had people come and started doing yoga, and they're naked too.
01:43:19.000Then he had some whipping technique with the birch wood, and he wanted, like, to demonstrate it, so he had, like, one of the Britain girls, like, and she was laying...
01:43:26.000I mean, it was just, like, it was too much.
01:44:24.000As soon as someone's talking about cleansing toxins, we're like, fuck off.
01:44:27.000I was, like, so put off with the toxins and stuff.
01:44:30.000Like, it's funny because the sauna, like, that's, like, the one, like, for years, like, all the benefits about sauna were always about toxins, right?
01:45:27.000Well, it's just they say things that they don't really know what the fuck they're talking about, and they say it with such authority.
01:45:33.000And I've had those conversations in public saunas before, too, where people start getting into the toxins and the whole sauna, and I'm just sitting there quiet, and I'm just like...
01:45:43.000Okay, let me start to tell you some benefits, like some real benefits, cardiovascular.
01:45:47.000Did you know that it actually mimics exercise?
01:45:49.000Like, literally, like, that's been shown.
01:45:51.000It's been, like, compared, like, 25 minutes in the sauna, 25 minutes on a stationary bike.
01:45:55.000And same things are happening, you know, like...
01:46:10.000The antidepressant effect that I feel from the sauna that Charles Rezon published and that Dr. Mason will hopefully carry on the torch I think it's real, and I think that there's potentially multiple mechanisms,
01:46:26.000immune modulations, but also just the fact that BDNF. There's a study showing that hot baths do increase BDNF. BDNF? Brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
01:46:39.000Why would you think everybody would know what that means?
01:47:15.000But there's studies now showing that it regulates what's called neuroplasticity, which is like the ability, like your brain, your brain changes, you know, with the changing environment.
01:47:25.000But you have to be able to adapt to that, right?
01:47:27.000Like children are really good at that.
01:47:28.000Like they have a lot of neuroplasticity.
01:47:31.000But neuroplasticity is associated with depression.
01:47:34.000Like, not being able, like, stressful conditions and stuff like that.
01:50:14.000And one of the first experiments that I was doing, like one of my first projects, was we were taking the human amyloid beta gene And injecting them in these worms, these nematode worms that only live, like, 14 or 15 days.
01:50:29.000And we're making them form amyloid plaques in their muscle.
01:50:32.000So, like, basically, you look at these little worms under a microscope.
01:50:35.000So they're only, like, half a millimeter.
01:50:38.000And as, like, they get older and they're aging, they don't move as quickly.
01:50:41.000You know, they're kind of slower, a little more decrepit.
01:50:43.000But anyways, you give them this amyloid beta.
01:50:45.000And after, like, a couple of days, they become paralyzed, where they're, like, laying in their little Petri dish plate on the E. coli food you're giving them.
01:50:53.000And they kind of just move around just to feed, like their nose is just moving around.
01:50:57.000And so when we would give them tons of heat shock proteins in addition to the amyloid, totally reversed it, like completely.
01:51:19.000So the sauna, I know of one study where people that Sat in a 163 degree Fahrenheit sauna for 30 minutes, had heat shock proteins, their levels were 50% higher over baseline, which is great.
01:51:34.000And that usually, like, animal studies show that they can stay elevated for like 48 hours after that.
01:51:39.000There's a hot bath study where they also elevated, it wasn't quite as high, but it was like, you know, 40 or so percent higher than baseline levels, and it was 104 degrees.
01:51:48.000But this study, instead of doing it from the shoulders down, where I told you about the depression, it was like only 20, 30 minutes, it was like from the waist down, so they had to stay in there for an hour.
01:51:57.000It's like a jacuzzi, you know, where you're sitting there from the waist down and like, that's hot.
01:52:01.000Like staying in 104, that's pretty hot.
01:52:55.000So, I mean, there's differences in, I mean, so it depends on how long you're staying in a cold, you know, water, like cold shower, like actually being submerged, like from like, if you're like in the ocean or something or a lake and you're like from your shoulders down,
01:54:06.000But the cold shock, you were asking me cold shock proteins.
01:54:08.000That hasn't really been measured in humans.
01:54:10.000What is measured most of the time with cold shock is norepinephrine release.
01:54:14.000And norepinephrine in plasma, and there has been studies correlating norepinephrine in plasma upon cold exposure, norepinephrine release in plasma in the brain, where it's involved with mood and focus and attention.
01:54:28.000So there's been studies where you could do a two-minute cryo Whatever the average temperature, it's really cold.
01:56:44.000Yeah, it makes a big difference for me.
01:56:45.000But I also just I think it might be a little too much before like I'm always trying to regulate how much activity I do with whether or not I'm be exhausted when I do a podcast.
01:57:00.000Because I used to do yoga, and then I would come out, I would get out of yoga at 11, or at 10.30, and I would do a podcast at 12, and I was like, oof, I think I better wait till 1. Because I'd just be so, because 90 minute yoga classes into 105 degrees is fucking rough.
01:57:25.000Well, I would wonder, and I know there's supposedly some sort of Harvard study that's ongoing right now measuring all sorts of markers in people that have done hot yoga.
01:57:37.000And whether or not it mimics heat shock proteins that are created in the sauna.
01:57:41.000Because the thing is, you are getting this incredible cardiovascular exercise because your heart's beating like crazy.
01:57:47.000And you're not doing cardio per se, but your heart rate gets jacked because of the heat and the stress.
01:58:47.000I think once we move the sauna to our home where it's not like the office, people that are sedentary and people that are sedentary for whatever reason, maybe they're sedentary because they're disabled or maybe they're sedentary because they've had a lifetime of being sedentary.
01:59:01.000It is just hard to get them motivated to go exercise.
01:59:37.000But like the sauna, that's kind of my goal is to get her doing...
01:59:41.000And we'll have to start slowly because you have to adapt.
01:59:44.000The heat shock proteins help with that.
01:59:46.000The more times you're exposed to heat stress and the more adapted you are, the heat shock proteins increase quicker.
01:59:53.000And so it's part of the adaptation process as well of being able to handle the heat stress.
01:59:57.000But I want to get her to do that because any cardiovascular...
02:00:03.000Improvement is going to help her mood.
02:00:04.000It's going to help her, you know, all-cause mortality.
02:00:07.000That's been shown, you know, four to seven times a week, 40% lower all-cause mortality.
02:00:13.000Cardiovascular-related mortality is 50% lower.
02:00:15.000You know, so, like, I think that's a really cool thing about the sauna is that you can get people that are disabled, people that can't go for a run, you know?
02:00:23.000I mean, I still think exercise, I mean, it's just the best thing ever.
02:01:04.000But there have been studies, at least were localized heat on people that had a limb immobilized.
02:01:11.000I don't remember what limb it was, but after a week, people that had the heat treatment, local heat treatment, had almost 40% less muscle atrophy.
02:01:21.000In animal studies, and I remember I shared this animal study in an article I wrote years ago before the human study came out, and there were critics, well, it's animals, and blah, blah, blah, you can't say it does this, and I would get on the mechanism, and they showed it was heat shock proteins, and I was so happy when that human study came out,
02:01:43.000There's just a few of those guys that you're just like, maybe I just do a big comprehensive search of the literature and understand things and don't have that exact study just yet, but I know that it's going to help with muscle atrophy.
02:01:58.000Well, people love to dismiss things, don't they?
02:02:24.000You know, I'm doing 140 characters, whatever the chain, I don't know what the characters are now, but I'm doing a small number of characters.
02:02:32.000And if it happens to be a non-randomized controlled trial, then, you know, it's just correlation doesn't, you know, doesn't equal causation.
02:02:39.000It's like, sometimes I just share a story because one, I think it's interesting, or two, because I I've read a bunch of, you know, evidence surrounding this topic, you know, about all the other clinical evidence, all the genetic evidence, all the animal.
02:03:32.000This is what I tried to explain to a friend of mine who was on the podcast, who read the comments, and I go, you just have to stop and think.
02:03:38.000Okay, even if just 1% of all of my people that go from Instagram, like if you're reading the Instagram comments, 1% Just one, which is probably really conservative,
02:05:29.000Like you'd get into discussions with people like, what am I doing?
02:05:32.000I think it's important to be critical.
02:05:34.000And I get like, you know, there's there are people that are really trying to like, You know, prove something.
02:05:39.000And there's all sorts of incentives for being hypercritical.
02:05:43.000Well, if you had rational people who are kind folks who have interesting viewpoints and they looked at something and they found something to be wrong with that and they handled it with, you know, grace and some sort of modicum of dignity and kindness,
02:06:03.000Like if you were having a discussion with a good friend and the good friend was looking at something that you said and said, I disagree because of this.
02:06:09.000Look, I have conversations with good friends all the time and even on the podcast where I disagree with them.
02:06:26.000You know, and that's what a lot of people are doing, and they're just getting their rocks off.
02:06:29.000And I feel like now, for a while, during the pandemic, when it started and the lockdown started, people were nicer.
02:06:36.000There was less social justice outrage, there was less this.
02:06:40.000But now, it seems like as time's gone on and people are getting more frustrated and more desperate and more depressed because they're locked up, it seems like it's ramped up.
02:09:54.000Yeah, I thought I should, but I've decided to just accept where this is, and then when comedy clubs are about to open up, Then I'll start writing again.
02:10:04.000But I'm just accepting where this is, and I want to have an honest take on it.
02:10:09.000I don't want to be manufacturing a take or trying to come up with some sort of a hot take on how I feel.
02:10:16.000But I want to know how I really feel about this.
02:10:17.000And how I really feel about this is very different now versus the way it was in March.
02:12:10.000There's your diet that's included in it, your vitamin D status.
02:12:15.000The other interesting thing, and there's been no studies with SARS-CoV-2, but there have been influenza studies showing that viral dose, it's really interesting studies that have been done where, I don't know who volunteers for these studies, but like, sign me up to get influenza.
02:12:58.000I think one of the strains was like they could do a certain dose like 10 to the 7 in tissue culture or whatever units where it's 70% of the people would get like symptoms ranging from fever, you know, cough and all the influenza, you know, flu symptoms.
02:13:13.000But then when they went down to from 10 to the 7, let's say they went down to 10 to the 5, only like 10% of people were getting symptoms.
02:13:21.000So like it's kind of interesting that viral dose At least with influenza.
02:13:26.000And there's actually been some other studies, I think measles also.
02:13:29.000It is a thing, not something that you want to like go and experiment with yourself.
02:13:35.000But, you know, that's another possibility, right?
02:13:46.000Their actual job is to be around infected people and they're intubating these people and they're doing chest compressions.
02:13:57.000They're getting it right in their faces.
02:13:59.000Some of them, they have poor PPE, especially in the beginning when you're seeing these people that were using makeshift masks and trying to...
02:14:08.000Yeah, I think with the masks, you know, for people, I mean, reopening the economy and, you know, some places have been more successful, you know, like, you know, even like Japan and stuff where, you know, the wearing the mask, like the cloth mask doesn't do much to prevent you from breathing in maybe a respiratory droplet or something or aerosol.
02:14:41.000But maybe to open up the economy again now, maybe everyone could wear a mask if they're going to be inside around a bunch of people, grocery stores, theaters.
02:14:50.000It's certainly better than keeping the economy closed.
02:14:53.000It's better than keeping the economy closed.
02:15:19.000Eventually they'll identify one that, you know, works.
02:15:21.000What kind of a timeline do you think they have for something like this?
02:15:23.000Oh, I think that, I think things are gonna, I mean, I think that these therapeutics can start, the monocle, so like remdesivir has already been identified and there may start to identify other ones like the pancreatitis drug, pancreatitis drug in Japan.
02:15:36.000I mean, there's a lot of different repurposing drugs that are being investigated.
02:15:40.000And I think over the next couple of months, and then Regeneron's already doing one of these monoclonal antibodies, I think in the next couple of months, we'll have more therapeutics than we have right now.
02:15:54.000People will be less scared of getting sick because They'll have, you know, they'll have a better idea of, oh, we have some more, you know, things that can therapeutically treat this, you know, successively.
02:16:04.000Hopefully, people are going to start looking at the vitamin D. I really like that.
02:16:09.000If not, just I hope people are going to, you know, take their vitamin D or ask their doctor to take it, you know.
02:16:15.000But yeah, I think that in a couple of months.
02:16:16.000So like, can you wear a mask for a couple of months?
02:16:18.000And like, here's why it's not going to work to just have the people that are vulnerable wear the mask.
02:16:22.000Because the cloth mask isn't going to prevent them from getting...
02:16:25.000The aerosolized droplets, if you're spreading it and asymptomatic, which it's been shown, if you are asymptomatic.
02:16:31.000That CDC study I mentioned a while ago about how pre-symptomatic versus asymptomatic, after a week when they came back to measure the people again, they found that out of the 13, 10 of them actually did get symptoms.
02:16:41.000The other three that were asymptomatic were shedding as much virus that could make them basically...
02:16:50.000Contagious and, you know, basically able to transmit to others.
02:17:26.000It's real weird with this disease because some children are getting sick, but it's a very small number.
02:17:31.000But many children are getting in contact with this disease.
02:17:35.000And how many of them are asymptomatic but are spreading it?
02:17:39.000So there have been quite a few studies looking at children that are asymptomatic, children that have mild symptoms, and children that are symptomatic.
02:17:48.000And so far, the studies have shown, for the most part, that children even that are asymptomatic are shedding as much virus as both children that are symptomatic and adults that are symptomatic, meaning they're able to transmit it.
02:18:15.000And I mean, I think first of all, the first year it hit me hard because I wasn't sleeping, you know, because you have to like, every three hours, you got to feed, you know, feed the baby.
02:18:24.000That's a giant factor in your immune system.
02:19:24.000I mean, New York City got hit pretty hard.
02:19:27.000But, you know, we have been on lockdown, so that has to be accounted for.
02:19:32.000I would like to see, in New York City, particularly when they were getting hit, you've got to think, this is New York City in January, which is January.
02:19:42.000I wonder how much the vitamin D deficiency varies, depending upon winter.
02:19:48.000So winter, there's been tons of studies, sons of studies.
02:19:52.000Tons of studies showing that vitamin D levels are much lower in the wintertime.
02:19:56.000It also correlates, there's been studies correlating it with seasonal defective disorder and all that.
02:20:00.000But yes, January, all those, vitamin D deficiency is lower for sure.
02:20:04.000But I would like to see a study on whether or not it varies between the East Coast and the West Coast because over here we do have all these sunny days and people are outside.
02:20:22.000I would like to see I mean, they're cold and grumpy, I'm sure, but also maybe they're just not feeling well because vitamin D deficiency plays a factor in that as well.
02:20:36.000And I would also like to see something done on whether or not that contributes to how many people get sick over there.
02:20:42.000Because when I lived on the East Coast, when I lived in New York, I got sick way more than I get sick out here.
02:20:46.000I'm for sure healthier, more cognizant, definitely more proactive.
02:20:51.000I think all of those things play a role.
02:20:52.000Personally, I think that there's been enough evidence showing that vitamin D plays a role in particularly respiratory infections.
02:20:59.000Psychosocial stress, like stress, cortisol, that dampens the immune system.
02:21:04.000So when you are stressed, basically you're not in a good situation to fight off, as you were mentioning with your friend.
02:21:11.000When you're stressed out, your immune system is dampened and you are more susceptible to illness, for sure.
02:21:20.000You know, so I think all those things and then the sleep.
02:21:23.000Yeah, that's why it's so rough with all these people stuck inside and stressed out, you know, all this the financial pressures that people are experiencing right now because of the lockdown.
02:21:38.000It's horrible and it's not getting better.
02:21:39.000I hope, I just hope, I hope that, you know, we can reopen the economy in a very safe manner where we don't have, like, flare-ups that, you know, we don't want to be set back to, like, shelter in place again, like, full on, you know?
02:22:52.000You know, I don't, you know, I'm not sure.
02:22:54.000What factor do you think play, like when we're talking about saunas before, one of the things, this is a respiratory disease, and this is something where you're breathing in these particles.
02:23:06.000And from what I understand, this is a vulnerable virus in terms of the temperature that it can survive in.
02:23:15.000But if it's in your nostrils or if it's in your respiratory tract and you're breathing in that heated sauna air, does that have any effect at all on viruses?
02:23:26.000I think that hasn't really been studied.
02:23:33.000If the virus is, like, right in your nostrils, I don't know, maybe, but I think it's already, like, getting...
02:23:40.000If it's already getting inside, you know, the respiratory, you know, area, like, your body's kind of maintaining homeostasis, so, like, the heat that you're breathing in...
02:23:48.000Would you be able to kill some of it off that way, though, and reduce the viral load?
02:24:25.000The respiratory illness connection, there have been correlation studies out of Finland showing that people, actually I think this study was men, only men, that use the sauna two to three times a week, they're 27% less likely to have pneumonia after correcting for,
02:24:41.000and if they use the sauna 47 times a week, they're 41% less likely to come down with pneumonia after correcting for socioeconomic status, physical activity, cholesterol, Lung, you know, smoking, COPD, like asthma,
02:24:56.000all those like, you know, lung disorders.
02:24:58.000So, you know, the sauna does seem to be associated with lower incidence of pneumonia, but it's thought to be because of immune, you know, perturbations and also like the, there's the heat shock proteins and all those things like help, there's like an antioxidant effect in the lungs,
02:25:16.000So heat shock proteins also do have antiviral activity against at least influenza A. So the heat shock proteins directly can activate your innate immune system, but they also have antiviral activity against influenza virus.
02:25:32.000So, you know, I think that the heat stress in the sauna does help.
02:25:37.000Now, there's another study that did look at humidity and the effect of humidity on basically like the ability of your epithelial cells and your airway and nostrils and stuff to filter out.
02:25:49.000Particles and particulate matter and viruses and stuff.
02:25:52.000And humidity actually made a big difference.
02:25:55.000The more humid, the better that was acting.
02:25:59.000Basically, you're able to filter out stuff.
02:26:09.000When the whole thing started, when the lockdown started, I was getting the sauna really hot, and then I was pouring a bunch of water on it, nose breathing.
02:26:17.000Big, long, deep nose breathing, and it was burning.
02:26:28.000And I would take these long, deep nose, and the whole inside of my nose would be like stinging and everything, but I was like, it's got to be killing these things.
02:26:35.000It feels like it's killing your nose, though.
02:26:37.000But then, you know, I was talking to a doctor about it, and he's like, well, you know, I was like, would it, I was at Osterholm, right?
02:28:33.000I think that's the point with those guys.
02:28:35.000It's the other thing that happens is, and then we'd go into this ice bath and there's like this bath right outside and we like did all this ice.
02:28:40.000And like I said, I was like trying to impress Rick.
02:28:42.000So I was like staying in the ice bath as long as I could, you know.
02:28:47.000So then I get back into the sauna and like getting back into this like 210 or 20 degree sauna and you feel like it's like room temperature because you were just in this ice bath.
02:29:27.000One day we're all going to die, and then the sun's going to explode, and it's going to create carbon, and it's going to create more life forms.
02:29:34.000I think Gabby, Laird's wife, she has a podcast.
02:29:47.000I don't know if the name's changed or not, but I thought that was so awesome because she named it after the sauna because the truth comes out.
02:30:24.000I mean, I was trying to impress Rick, so.
02:30:28.000So what is the benefit of it being that hot, though?
02:30:30.000Is there any benefit to that over 180?
02:30:33.000Well, I mean, I think that you could just stay in for...
02:30:35.000So the thing is that, like, with most of the studies that have been done looking at the benefits on cardiovascular health and all-cause mortality...
02:32:37.000The thing about the sauna at 210 degrees, too, one of the things that was happening to me, I was just getting headaches, and my throat was burning.
02:33:22.000Like it hurts and then so then the next day I would like look forward to doing it to see if I could do it easier again And then I'm like in this weird loop that my own brain creates which is really bad that I'm very addicted to Trying to conquer things.
02:34:17.000Yes, it is used as a, like if you're eating it, you know, I think it could cause like...
02:34:22.000Like the erythritol kind of thing effect where it's like too much GI distress.
02:34:27.000But when you're chewing gum or using toothpaste, many studies have shown that it kills anaerobic bacteria like streptococcus mutants that cause cavities and dental decay.
02:35:00.000Like, you know, I've just – I've got like a bad oral microbiome or something that I've just – for years, I don't know.
02:35:07.000I shouldn't have cavities because I don't need sugar.
02:35:08.000But anyways, I had – so he goes, you have two cavities.
02:35:11.000They're at the point of no return where, you know, like you – they're – I guess they penetrate the enamel a certain amount and they're like, you have to like – Get them out.
02:35:21.000And so the way I am is I always like to look into everything before I do anything.
02:35:26.000It's like, okay, this is not my field.
02:35:28.000I told him, I'm like, I'm going to do some reading research and see if I can find, you know, if there's any possibility that I don't have to get a filling, right?
02:35:36.000And he's like, okay, well, if you find anything, please send it my way.
02:36:49.000Anyway, so I was like, I've got to find something other than Thompson, Maine.
02:36:53.000So I came across this xylitol stuff, and I started doing research, and then I found all these studies.
02:36:58.000And not only did I find studies that basically kills these bacteria that cause cavities, the S-mutans, pregnant women that chew xylitol gum By the way, the studies were with gum, not the toothpaste.
02:37:12.000And pregnant women, if they were like six months pregnant, the study started at six months, and they chewed this xylitol gum all the way up until anywhere between the baby being six months, and there were some studies that went out like a year.
02:37:24.000And then they met, the researchers measured the oral bacteria of the toddlers, and then they measured them multiple years out as they became children.
02:37:34.000And the mothers chewing it, chewing the gum, it lowered the incidence of the S-mutans in the children.
02:37:42.000Because, you know, mothers kiss their kids and you transfer oral bacteria.
02:37:46.000And so their, like, their chewing the xylitol gum had a positive effect on the child's oral microbiome.
02:42:34.000Different people have different results when it comes to CBD. And some people find that CBD with THC benefits them more.
02:42:42.000And some people find that it's just the CBD itself.
02:42:45.000But the CBD MD the company that I use what I really like is they have a bunch of Muscle creams and like stuff that you rub on the outside of sore muscles.
02:42:55.000That stuff's fantastic It's really good penetrates into the skin and just really good at alleviating soreness and I had a so like one of my old colleagues science colleagues was telling me that like they were measuring some samples from like different CBD products and like The majority of them didn't actually even have much CBD in them at all.
02:46:43.000But what I really wanted to talk to you, the reason why I wanted to bring you in here is this conversation that we just had to talk about what are the methods you can use to help boost your immune system, keep your body healthy.
02:47:38.000Well, it's like when I'm stressed out, particularly it flares up, and it happens like when I'm shifting from one sleep stage to the next where I am asleep, but somehow I wake up, but I'm not awake,
02:47:54.000but I'm moving my body, and I think that someone's in the room and that they're going to come get me, and I freak out and I scream.
02:48:01.000And it's happened where I scare Dan, of course.
02:49:06.000Like, I went through one episode where what happens when someone has a night tear is, like, if someone else sharing the bed with you, like, tries to stop you or help, like, because I'm still asleep, I'm not aware that that's my husband doing that.
02:49:20.000And I really think someone's trying to get me.
02:50:20.000Because I've had multiple incidents when I was nursing my son, back when I was nursing my son, where he was on a nursing pill, and I'm very relaxed, of course.
02:52:14.000And so this mouthpiece, the Sleep Appium mouthpiece, it sits in my mouth and the tongue depressor keeps my tongue from sliding back and closing my airway.
02:53:02.000I thought I had that at first because I was like, am I just like freaking out because I'm like not getting enough oxygen or something, you know, but they had me do a pulse oxymor thing and...
02:53:10.000A lot of wrestlers and athletes, football players get it because your neck muscles get really big.
02:53:17.000And when your neck muscles get big, if you have a big tongue, and I have a big tongue, when I lay down, it closes the airway.
02:53:28.000Well, they get fat and all this extra tissue.
02:53:31.000It's one of the ways that there's operations that they do to try to alleviate it and they just cut out some of the tissue inside your mouth and then they also cut out your tonsils.
02:54:05.000and there was this guy behind me and he was a kind of a heavy fellow and he was uh he was really snoring loud he was laying on his back and really snoring loud and then he would go without breathing for multiple seconds and i filmed him and i uh i i told him when he woke up i go hey man i go do you know you have sleep apnea and he's like no i go listen i go i have it too i go but you got to do something about it i go you hold your breath For long periods of time.
02:56:26.000So I do the Philips Hue, where at like 5 o'clock, all the lights in our house go red.
02:56:32.000That makes a huge impact on my son and his sleep cycle because children are really sensitive to light because they don't have cataracts and stuff.
02:56:41.000And so the melatonin is not being produced.
02:56:46.000So if we go travel or go to my in-laws or somebody and they have the lights on, I'm like going around the house turning them all off because I want my son to go to bed at a normal hour.
02:56:54.000Do you watch, if you're looking at your screens, do you use blue light blocking glasses?
02:56:59.000So I have, like, all the apps and stuff, and most of the time, like, and I turn my iPhone screen is, like, down, and I have the black background and all that.
02:57:13.000I might have to because when I actually get a chance to watch TV, like, it doesn't happen much because right now my son falls asleep at, like, nine, and he wakes up at six.
02:58:48.000It's like, okay, this is like the morning, and your circadian clock starts.
02:58:53.000And then, you know, so you become sleepy when you're supposed to become sleepy, as long as you're not in tons of, you know, bright light at night.
02:59:00.000But that's been probably the biggest...
02:59:03.000By the way, you know what's actually...
02:59:05.000I was talking about my glucose monitor, my continuous glucose monitor.
03:00:06.000But I most of the time constantly wear it sometimes because it's like the sensor lasts for 10 days and I have to change it and sometimes I like...
03:00:56.000And so I was up to like when fasting blood glucose would get up sometimes to like if I wouldn't exercise, like wake up in the morning and I'm like 106, 107, 109. Wow,