Health & Fitness

In this interview, Mario Novo, doctor of physical therapy, discusses the many health benefits of blood flow restriction (BFR) training. It’s a phenomenally easy way to take control of your health, especially if you’re elderly. I don’t know of any intervention that will improve your health as dramatically.

BFR training was developed by Dr. Yoshiaki Sato in Japan over 50 years ago. In Japan, BFR training is known as KAATSU, which translates into “additional pressure.” It’s a perfectly descriptive name, as the KAATSU device consists of inflatable bands that provide additional pressure on your limbs.

Sato is now 73 years old and in fantastic shape for any age. He’s a really strong testament to the fact that it works. But it’s not just for strength building. Metabolically, BFR will radically improve your health and decrease your risk for sarcopenia and most other age-related diseases.

BFR in Physical Therapy and Limb Salvage

BFR didn’t arrive in the U.S. until 2010. In the years since, it’s become increasingly popular, not only among fitness experts but also among physical therapists such as Novo. Novo is also the owner of the Lifters Clinic,¹ which specializes in strength and conditioning.

“At this point, I have about 12 years of experience in the world of rehab,” Novo says. “As most people who have ever experienced rehab know, when you’re in rehab, there’s a huge recommendation, and often with very good reason, for you to use very light loads.

This could be after post-injury, post-surgery or post-fracture, when exercising with heavier weights may place healing tissue at a greater risk … In the world of physical therapy, we’ve always relied on light-load training …

The San Antonio Military Medical Center has a facility called Center for the Intrepid (CFI). In that facility was one of my mentors, Johnny Owens, who … was tasked with understanding how to operate within a department known as ‘limb salvage.’

He was in a similar environment of rehab, but his patients were in a very critical state, where if they weren’t cared for appropriately, they were going to have an amputation. He had heard about KAATSU training. He had heard about how these light loads, these low-intensity exercises, are being used to increase muscle mass.

At the time, they were having trouble with certain drugs on the market to reduce scar tissue, which would help provide a more appropriate environment for collagen, but also for muscle building because one thing we’ve discovered in this process of building bigger muscle is that it’s a pathway that is very specific, and as we get older, we really rely on exercise and nutrition to stimulate it.

Once it’s stimulated, it shuts down other pathways used for making scar tissue. One would imagine when you’re hurt, your body is going to choose a path that provides protein that is not very dynamically or calorically expensive to build; hence, scar tissue, versus building muscle, which is very expensive to build. Same with collagen to a degree.

At the time, he said, ‘You know what? People are using these bands. They’re increasing muscle size. As a result of them increasing size, they are, by definition, shutting down this scar tissue pathway. There may be a way that we can start applying this in this limb salvage department, where the biggest issue we have is scar tissue.”

Owen’s experimentation with patients at CFI confirmed BFR training helped inhibit scar tissue formation and salvage more muscle. Aside from boosting strength, BFR also helped reduce pain associated with arthritis and nerve injuries.

BFR for Post-Fracture Recovery

Around 2012 or 2013, BFR was adopted by the National Football League (NFL), where it was applied for post-anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury, reconstruction and repair. A couple of years after that, BFR’s benefits for bone breaks also became more widely appreciated.

“One of my first jaw-dropping experiences with [BFR] was in 2015, when a player from the New York Giants came to see me after having had about 16 weeks of a malunion to a metal device put on his tibia. He had had a fracture. They attempted to put this metal device to help prevent the fracture from increasing in size.

His body was not grafting or growing onto the metal device. The screws were loose. This obviously is a large risk to him and [caused] a lot of pain. They tried bone stimulators. They tried different drugs to help uptake bone marrow nutrition, aquatic therapy, land-based training, using something that’s called an AlterG, which looks like a treadmill, but it reduces your body weight so you can stay active at a lighter impact.

Nothing was working … At that time, I was certified underneath Johnny. I just started applying a surgical tourniquet … Applying the tourniquet reduces the amount of oxygen available for his legs to continue to keep doing exercise, which means we can take very light-load exercises and have the environment in his muscle look more like if he was doing moderate- to higher-intensity exercises.

When we perform exercise at higher intensities, we consume more oxygen to continue to fuel contraction. But at a given point, our muscles and the process of contracting and using oxygen and using adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is an energy source we all use, will begin to produce byproducts.

End of the story is, we apply BFR for this gentleman. In four weeks, he grafts onto the piece of metal. And the doctors like this. It’s fantastic. He went back out, played for a little while. He didn’t like the metal plate being in there. They took it out. We saw him again for another four weeks, and [he had] full complete closure [of the fracture].

That kind of started this huge boom, looking at BFR for not just muscle, not just strength, but also potential benefits for post-fracture …

All the NFL, the National Basketball Association (NBA), the Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Hockey League (NHL), soccer — predominantly in the U.S. and Europe — all divisional universities and some division teams are now getting on board. They all now have BFR as a modality that’s used in physical therapy.”

BFR Is Now a Standard Rehab Modality

In 2018, the American Physical Therapy Association approved BFR as an indication for rehab, making it part of physical therapists’ scope of practice. So, it’s not an alternative medicine or an alternative modality. It’s indicated for knee pain, for example, including knee pain associated with osteoarthritis (OA).

It’s also a tool used to address osteopenia, sarcopenia, high blood pressure and diabetes. It may also be useful in the treatment of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-stroke. Unfortunately, it still does not have a reimbursable current procedural terminology (CPT) code (a medical code used for billing), but eventually, there will be.

How BFR Affects Your Physiology

There are two primary types of muscle fibers: Type 1, the slow, endurance-type fibers; and Type 2, the fast-twitch fibers, which are primarily anaerobic and use glucose, not oxygen. Type 2 fibers are larger than Type 1 and tend to kick in when the oxygen supply runs out and the Type 1 fibers are exhausted.

The activation of Type 2 fibers generates lactate as a metabolic byproduct. The lactate builds up because the BFR bands don’t allow the lactate to diffuse systemically. This buildup of lactate provides many of the metabolic benefits of BFR.

With age, or when you’re injured, exercising intensely enough to maintain health can be a challenge. This is where BFR shines, as the light load required doesn’t overstrain you, while still providing benefits you’d normally only see with heavier exercise loads. Novo explains:

“BFR can benefit muscle tissue by increasing the amount of muscle hypertrophy. That means, at a very fundamental level, we’re increasing the health of the muscle. We’re helping the muscle to have to rely on less insulin, to allow for energy — carbohydrate and sugar — to make its way into the cell.

That can provide other benefits, such as reduced blood glucose levels and reduced blood pressure. Obviously, less reliance on insulin also means less inflammation generally in the body. Other benefits seen at the level of the muscle have to do with the muscle and its ability to become more resistant to forces being placed on it.

As the muscle gets bigger, it doesn’t only get bigger in the proteins that contract, but it also gets bigger in the proteins that just provide structural support for the muscle, which means your muscle gets better at resisting the day-to-day loads you place on it. It does that through a very particular mechanism of a pathway called mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR).

The one specific to muscle, mTOR complex 1 (mTORC1), is activated when muscles are stressed. When you stress a muscle, it experiences something called mechanotransduction. It’s a fancy word for, ‘I provide a mechanical stress on the muscle, and it provides a chemical signal to itself and to the brain.’ As a result, your brain will begin to contract more and more muscle …

Some people, when they retire, they just retire to the chair. Then they find themselves [asking] ‘Why can’t I move fast? Why am I losing my balance? Why am I unable to mow my lawn?’

There are a lot of changes happening, but fundamentally, a lot of them are happening in the muscle, because muscle is so metabolically active and requires good supply of regular nutrition, a good supply of exercise. If we’re not doing these things, we’re missing out.

BFR can help activate this mTOR pathway that helps to grow more and more muscle … You’re also building more capillary networks as muscle becomes more and more stressed.”

Benefits of Lactic Acid

As mentioned, BFR significantly increases lactic acid, which can cross the blood-brain barrier. Once you release the bands, the lactate travels in your blood to your brain, where a monocarboxylate transporter shuttles it into your brain to use it for fuel.^2,3 It also increases brain derived neurotropic factor (BDNF),⁴ a brain growth factor that contributes to neuroplasticity and enhances cognitive performance.^5,6

BFR also downregulates a hormone called myostatin, which is a negative regulator of muscle growth and mass.^7,8,9 In other words, when your myostatin levels are high you cannot grow muscle. This is important because the elderly have levels twice as high as the young.¹⁰

In the past, lactate was traditionally viewed as a metabolic waste product, but today it is understood that lactate is an important molecule that is responsible for many metabolic processes and results in many structural adaptations. It is even referred to as a pseudo-hormone.¹¹

The lactate that your Type 2 muscle fibers generate during BFR actually down-regulates the production of myostatin and helps improve skeletal muscle loss. Amazingly, BFR can decrease your myostatin levels by 45%,^12,13 which has been shown to increase muscle protein synthesis.^14,15,16 Novo explains:

“A simple way to view this is like a light switch. When you are in a state of injury, your body will shut off the mTOR building pathway, which will allow myostatin to become more active. Myostatin is a member of the TGF-beta family that is largely linked with the formation of scar tissue, another part of protein but not metabolically expensive.

In the military, they were already experimenting with drugs. One of them was losartan, in combination with platelet-rich plasma (PRP) to address the rate of scar tissue formation. What they noticed was that while administering losartan, which is a myostatin inhibitor, they were able to see [increased] rates of muscle growth and decreases in scar tissue.

The problem though was side effects. So, the next thought was, ‘What else inhibits myostatin?’ Exercise. As a result of inhibiting myostatin, it allows for the light switch to go on and allow for mTOR to become active to essentially aid in muscle building.”

KAATSU Versus Other BFR Devices

One of the greatest areas of controversy when it comes to BFR centers around the equipment used. KAATSU uses a special inflatable cuff device that can provide pulsed and continuous pressure.

When KAATSU was initially introduced into the U.S. in 2010, the device had a price tag of $16,000. Most physical therapists could not afford it so they used surgical tourniquets that already had FDA approval for surgery to substitute for KAATSU. Novo uses these wider tourniquet-type bands or devices.

KAATSU uses thinner inflatable elastic bands, so they stretch as you exercise. As a result, your blood flow, including your venous return, is not completely obstructed. The Delfi surgical tourniquet system Novo uses, which involves a static, nonelastic, wider band, is controversial in that it causes a near-complete obstruction of blood flow.

KAATSU leaders are quite opposed to it for this reason. One major concern is that the wider bands may increase the risk of blood clots. Another is that it could potentially create a hypertensive crisis in susceptible individuals. The KAATSU bands, because they’re elastic, doesn’t seem to cause that. Novo addresses these objections, saying:

“With BFR exercise, thus far we’ve not seen any increases in a clot formation or a deep vein thrombosis (DVT). There are studies that look at formations of tissue plasminogen activator (TPA), a clot-busting enzyme that has been viewed with BFR …

Mind you, the [BFR devices] used in the military are attached to a computer. So those systems actually regulate the pressure. Pressures go up and pressures go down [during the exercise]. So, as you contract against it, it pumps air. As you relax, it pumps it back up. In the U.S., the only company that does that is Delfi.

The device itself is essentially using the change in pneumatic pressure on the hose, right as your arm or your leg is pumping against the actual tourniquet. That change in air pressure is being read by the computer, and then the computer’s algorithm is adjusting the pressure as you exercise.

There’s another system in Europe called MAD-UP that does the same thing. But predominantly, a lot of the tourniquets used now in general treatment are round bladders that do give when you contract against them, but they’re not elastic. So, it’s not a hard cast-type bladder. It still has give to it. So, as you contract against it, the pressures will go up. And as you relax, the pressures go back down.

It’s different than an emergency tourniquet. That’s where KAATSU is right. We wouldn’t want to use an emergency tourniquet, which is essentially used for austere environments. Usually they’re made of canvas …

What we use in clinical care and in exercise are tourniquets that are very much in the same nature — they are meant to restrict venous flow. They’re meant to attempt to reduce arterial flow, but you have to understand that microcirculation is always occurring.”

To be clear, it’s important to not use a regular tourniquet, such as what you’d find in an emergency room, for BFR. Applied hard enough, the lack of elasticity could make it very dangerous, potentially causing a blood clot or nerve damage.

“Elastic BFR cuffs are safe to use. Tourniquets, austere tourniquets, that’s not at all to be used with this. Don’t apply it to yourself. Don’t apply it to anybody if you’re training them,” Novo warns.

BFR for Cardiac Rehab

Another magnificent benefit of BFR is its ability to promote the growth of new capillaries, thus improving your microcirculation, which is important for cardiovascular, heart and brain health. Your microcirculation tends to diminish with age, and BFR can go a long way toward maintaining healthy circulation.

In Japan, BFR is actually used for cardiac rehab, and in the U.S., Novo says there are some cases in which it’s been used to rehab after a heart attack. Like your brain, your heart can also use lactate as a form of fuel during ischemia or reperfusion injury. Novo explains:

“When we apply these BFR cuffs, we reduce the amount of blood returning back to the heart. That reduces stroke volume. Stroke volume is the amount of blood reentering the heart to be pumped out next. Stroke volume makes up one of the factors that allow us to understand cardiac output, with heart rate being the other factor.

Stroke volume times heart rate equals cardiac output. We would imagine that when we put these cuffs on — when we reduce blood flow, reduce stroke volume — that heart rate goes up to maintain cardiac output. Well, after a cardiac event, we essentially want the heart to work. It’s a muscle.

We want it to get a little stronger, but we don’t want it to have to pump so much blood that it’s put under more stress. It’s also that the tourniquets can reduce some of the stroke volume, hence reducing some of the actual stress volume that the heart stretches out to.

But the heart will have an elevation in heart rate that can actually help the heart to recover after the event — plus the benefit of the lactic acid acting as an energy for the heart to use during this period of time.

Chronically, we’re likely going to see benefits due to that same mechanism of reducing stroke volume and increasing heart rate, but then, in addition, down in the muscles, by improving the vascular network, which helps to have better oxygen diffusion and removal of waste products.

Ultimately, elderly individuals who apply [BFR] also get the additional benefits of increased strength and increased muscle size. Just putting on these cuffs and walking on a treadmill for 10 to 20 minutes a day … four to five days a week for four weeks, has very positive benefits for strength, size, cardiovascular function, blood flow into the actual limbs and, more importantly, improve measures of frailty. That means reducing your risk of falling …

And all of those positive benefits come by means of reducing sarcopenia, which is the normal age-related loss of muscle, and as well as reducing osteopenia, which is the, albeit not necessarily normal age-related loss of bone.”

Sample Protocol for Strength Building

While BFR is certainly ideal for the elderly, even competitive athletes stand to gain from it. According to the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), you need to use a weight that is 70% to 85% of your one rep max (1RM) if you want to build muscle and strength. With BFR, you’re using only 20% to 40% of your 1RM.

“The recommendations from the ACSM are quite well-researched,” Novo says. “When we train at those intensities, there are a lot of changes that happen to the tissue integrity of our body. Essentially, our body itself gets stronger at resisting those weights we use commonly.

When we’re not able to use those weights, using BFR can help to really set up a foundation to allow us to eventually progress back to them. With BFR, we can use weights that are as light as about 20% of your 1RM, or you would report as maybe being a 2 out of 10 in difficulty, where a 10 is only something you might be able to do one time.

A 2 is something that is relatively easy that you might be able to perform 30 to 40 times … If 2 out of 10 [is your] starting point, you’d want to progress upwards until you’re at about a 4 out of 10. That progression is necessary. Like with any exercise, we don’t want to be training at a weight that’s the same all the time, because eventually, we will plateau.

We want to kind of set forth a plan ahead of us, where we start at, maybe, body weight. We get used to what BFR feels like for about a week. We maybe do this for about three or four times that week.

We’ll mix it in where we have some exercises that are close-chain, like squats, some exercises that are open-chain, like knee extension and hamstring curls, and then throwing in some cardiovascular exercise; walking, riding a bike for five to 10 minutes.

By the time we get to Week 2, we want to try to start scaling that weight up. We’ve gotten used to it.

What it shows, also, is that your body becomes more metabolically resistant to the metabolic stress, because we have [both] mechanical stress and metabolic stress. BFR is high in metabolic stress, but your body will accommodate to it because of an increase in reactive oxygen species or heat-shock proteins …

Avoid [lifting to failure] in the second week … We don’t want to do that just yet, because at that week, if we start pushing failure … you’ll get really sore … Wait until you get to Week 3.

At that point, we’re going to really start working on going towards the higher weight, maybe 25% of a 1RM. Or we stay at 20%, but we’re now starting to hit failure. Failure allows us to increase in strength. That’s the key. If we’re not failing with BFR, we’re actually not increasing in much strength. A lot of that has to do with what defines neuromuscular strength.

Once we get to that 40% of that 1RM, we can start to pull back on BFR and start to expose ourselves to heavier loads without BFR. And then we can start mixing things. We call it the 80-20 rule, where at the beginning, 80% of the workload is going to be through BFR and 20% of the workload is not.

That 20% of the workload should work on things like isometrics, where there’s not a lot of movement occurring at the joint. There’s less muscle damage. But those isometrics are really beneficial for helping the bones and tendons to start catching up because, again, remember, with BFR, loads are lower.

You are increasing in neuromuscular strength, but your tendon doesn’t adapt the same way at all. Your tendons only adapt to pure mechanical stress. If the muscle’s contracting really hard, the tendons still has a lot more that it can tolerate … [Heavier loads] will help the tendon to start uptaking collagen and get thicker, so it’s able to keep up with the muscle …”

Now, if you’re elderly, it would be wise for you to revise this 80-20 rule to something like 60-40, where BFR makes up at least 40% of your fitness routine. The reason for this is because as you get older, your microcirculation diminishes.

By the time you’re in your 80s, you’re bound to have a fairly significant decrease is your w. For the elderly, having BFR make up just 20% of your exercise is likely to be too little, as conventional strength training has not been shown to increase microcirculation.

My BFR Recommendations

After careful review, it is clear to me that the KAATSU equipment is the best BFR equipment on the market, as it is the only one that allows you to do cycling or automatically cycling pressure on for 30 seconds and off for five seconds. You can review my comprehensive review on BFR from January 3, 2020.

The equipment used to be $16,000 when first introduced in the U.S. and even last year when I purchased mine it was $2,300. However, the new Cycle 2.0, which is the one I use every day, is now only $899.

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

More Information

Novo teaches formal courses on BFR around the country. At present, all live workshops are done through Novo’s company, The BFR Pros, which offers workshops for both performance and rehab. You can find more information about each class and register on theBFRpros.com.

“For right now, I am taking on individual clients so that they have a customized plan. You can access that by emailing me at Mario@LiftersClinic.com,” Novo says. “The [online] store will have cuffs that you can purchase. Some of these cuffs are water-resistant. I work with swimmers. They actually have some very good protocols for the pool.

As well, there are some good protocols for post-menopausal women that have osteopenia that incorporate aquatics into what they do with BFR. I’m really trying to find a way to work at that one-to-one level.”

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In this interview, recorded April 7, 2020, Dr. Andrew Saul, editor-in-chief of the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, brings us new updates and insights into the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since our March 17, 2020, interview, which focused on the use of vitamin C, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, made the prediction that SARS-Cov-2 would kill anywhere from 100,000 to 240,000 Americans,¹ which is still far less than the original prediction of 2.2 million.²

However, even that prediction has since been revised downward. April 8, 2020, a new model referred to as the Murray Model³ predicts COVID-19 will kill 60,000 in the U.S. by August.⁴ There's no doubt in my mind that there will be more deaths from the financial collapse than there will be from the actual infection. So, it's a sad state of affairs. As noted by Saul:

"Folks need to remember that in any given year, influenza escalating to pneumonia is a killer. And in any given year, there's around 40,000 to 65,000 deaths, depending who you listen to, from pneumonia.

This is an awful lot of people dying every year. COVID-19 is a serious disease, but it's not worth shutting down the world for. The stress from that is going to be a killer …

The people who die from COVID-19 are dying basically from SARS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or pneumonia. So, it doesn't really matter what virus does that. It matters if you die or not.

Many people are going to get COVID-19, and they're going to have a mild case. And, for those who have a typical case, they're going to have a miserable flu. They're going to be sick as a dog for a couple of weeks.

Well, welcome to humanity, because how many times have we all had a miserable flu in our lifetimes? Those who are really at risk from COVID-19 usually have multiple pre-existing health problems, or they have a demonstrably poor lifestyle.

They're overweight or they're smoking, or they have an impaired immune system, or they're elderly. And if you have a combination of those, anything can take that person out. So, we have to have perspective here."

Google, Facebook Censor Real Data

Unfortunately, if you're still using Google or social media platforms like Facebook, you're unlikely to locate sensible information about how to protect yourself from COVID-19.

I believe suppressing access to the truth — the information you need to upregulate your innate immune system — is part of the plan to control the discussion about treatment options. Clearly, Fauci is promoting a pharmaceutical agenda when he says there's nothing anyone can do until there's a vaccine or antiviral drug available. Saul provides the following real-world example:

"This is something you can verify with your own Facebook account. Try this little experiment. If you post the meme I have at DoctorYourself.com on Facebook, it will immediately be blocked.

Here's what the poster says: 'Dr. Enqiang Mao, who is chief of emergency medical service at Ruijan hospital in Shanghai, China, treated 50 patients with high dose intravenous vitamin C. They had moderate to severe COVID. 50 out of 50 recovered. There were no fatalities.'

This is a report from a senior physician, right from China, to my contact in China, Dr. Richard Chang, who is a board-certified himself and a Chinese-American, right there, reporting in firsthand. And this is labeled false news, fake news. This is demonstrably oppressive."

The good news is Chang is presenting his evidence before the National Institutes of Health. "I've seen his PowerPoint," Saul says. "He's going to run down why vitamin C is an antiviral, and how it can be used, and what doctors are doing."

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

Aside from Mao, Dr. Zhiyong Peng, chief physician at Zhongnan Hospital, who is doing a major COVID-19 trial in Wuhan City, China, has stated that intravenous vitamin C is successful. "The number of new cases of COVID in China is very low, it's gone way down, almost to the vanishing point," Saul says. "Yet this information, somehow, is not on the news. And this is the very thing America and the rest of the world so needs to know now."

Immune-Boosting Supplementation Regimen

Some New York hospitals are using vitamin C, though. A Northwell Health spokesperson has reportedly confirmed that vitamin C treatment is being "widely used" against coronavirus within the 23-hospital system.

According to Dr. Andrew G. Weber, a pulmonologist and critical-care specialist affiliated with two Northwell Health facilities on Long Island, vitamin C is being used in conjunction with the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin, which have also shown promise in coronavirus treatment.⁵ Saul notes:

"Northwell, which is the largest health care provider chain in New York state, [has] over 20 hospitals. It's difficult to get information out of them, but to their credit, their spokesperson has announced that vitamin C is being used. And Weber … has reported that the vitamin C works. He said, basically, as close as I can quote him, 'It's not getting more publicity because it's not a sexy drug.' I love that …

If you have vitamin C for prevention, you are much less likely to have a bad case of any kind of viral infection, including COVID-19. Doesn't mean you won't get it; it means that your immune system will be able to handle it, and that's what your immune system does …

In fact, people now are being told if they can manage this at home, [then] please stay home. Leave the hospital beds for those who really need them, and reduce risk of infection.

Remember, a hospital, by definition, is where we have our very sickest people with the greatest load of viruses and drug-resistant bacteria that you'll ever find … We don't live in a bubble, we live in a world of viruses, and they're constantly mutating, and they're constantly developing …

So, for prevention, the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service Editorial Review Board and the Japanese College of Intravenous Therapy both recommend 3,000 milligrams (mg) of vitamin C a day in divided doses, 400 mg of magnesium … 20 mg of zinc … 100 micrograms (mcg) of selenium … and 5,000 units of vitamin D, scaling down to 2,000 units of vitamin D a day after the first week.

That is a big difference. So, between the vitamin D and the vitamin C, we have something that will strengthen the immune system. When a person is in hospital, they are less likely to have access to supplements, at a very time when they're going to need them more.

This is why we have to push, and the only way to do that is for the family to get in there and make it happen. More and more doctors are willing to do it because of the studies … in New York … So, the cat's out of the bag … and it's not going to go back in. There is a precedent. Just say to your doctor, 'I want you to do what they're doing in New York' …

What we should learn from history is "have a strong immune system and you will survive." This is the way it works. And the emphasis now is on scaring people, and actually telling them in the media, "Don't take vitamin C, it won't help you. Don't take extra vitamin D, you don't need it. There's nothing you can do to build your immune system."

You'll actually see this on some news reports, and some newspapers. But, you'll also see others that are reporting that it's working in China and other parts of the world."

Zinc With Hydroxychloroquine

Some doctors are promoting the use of the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil) combined with azithromycin (Z-Pak) for seriously ill COVID-19 patients. Apparently, many are seeing good results, although not universally.

According to Newsweek, some Swedish hospitals have stopped using chloroquine due to severe side effects in some patients.⁶ That said, it appears one of the reason quinine drugs work is because it allows zinc to enter the cells. Saul comments on the use of hydroxychloroquine saying:

"I think if you can use a nutrient with a drug, you get better results than if you use the drug alone. Dr. Abram Hoffer, who was my personal mentor … said, 'Sometimes you need a drug. Sometimes the drug will get you that immediate result that you've got to have, but you have to have nutrition if you want it to stick.'

So, if you use medication and the nutrient, you're going to do better than if you use the medication alone … If the drug will help get the zinc to where it needs to go, that just makes good sense to me."

Since the drug is now being rationed to those who need it most, you'd be wise to take zinc preventively. Your body only needs a small amount of it, and knows exactly what to do with it. Your immune system, for example, requires it to function. The elderly, who tend to eat less and eat less wholesomely, have a greater need for zinc supplementation.

"This is in every nutrition textbook ever written," Saul says. "So, what we want to do right now is tell people, 'Don't worry about the drug unless you really need it. It'll be at the hospital pharmacy. But for the rest of us, let's stay out of the hospital by taking a step so we won't need the drug.'

It's not about avoiding doctors; it's about not needing them. And that means you have to get on the wagon here. We have to do this every day. We have to be sure we take our supplements and eat a good diet, and avoid the junk and continue to get our fresh air and exercise."

Ventilators May Do More Harm Than Good

In recent days, we're seeing more and more reports of doctors saying the use of ventilators may be misguided.⁷ According to Business Insider,⁸ 80% of COVID-19 patients in New York City who are placed on ventilators die, causing some doctors to question their use. As reported by STAT News:⁹

"What's driving this reassessment is a baffling observation about Covid-19: Many patients have blood oxygen levels so low they should be dead. But they're not gasping for air, their hearts aren't racing, and their brains show no signs of blinking off from lack of oxygen.

That is making critical care physicians suspect that blood levels of oxygen, which for decades have driven decisions about breathing support for patients with pneumonia and acute respiratory distress, might be misleading them about how to care for those with Covid-19.

In particular, more and more are concerned about the use of intubation and mechanical ventilators. They argue that more patients could receive simpler, noninvasive respiratory support, such as the breathing masks used in sleep apnea, at least to start with and maybe for the duration of the illness."

Some doctors have noted their patients' symptoms have more in common with altitude sickness than pneumonia.¹⁰ This situation highlights the problems inherent with strategic standard of care. We thought we had a serious ventilator shortage and industries such as the auto industry redirected their manufacturing capacity to making ventilators.

In the final analysis, it may turn out that ventilators are inappropriate for a majority of patients. A far better alternative may actually be hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

"Making the oxygen available in a way that's appropriate to the severity of the patient is the answer," Saul says. "We have to remember that our body is singularly good at taking in oxygen or we wouldn't be here. And our lungs have a huge amount of absorptive space. I mean, that's what they do. It's just an extraordinary system that we have.

Oxygen goes in by diffusion. You don't push it in; the body sucks it in because if you have more oxygen outside than you do inside, it just goes through. All you do is give a lot of absorptive surface. And if you flattened out all the little alveoli in the lungs, you'd have an enormous area …

So, by providing the oxygen and then see if the body will take it up, you've made the first step. That can be done preventively by fresh air and exercise and going out and playing …

If somebody needs more oxygen, and you want to give them a little pressure, if that makes the patient better, then you do it. But the idea that you've got to ram this oxygen like a supercharger on a Mustang is, I think, a little bit, shall we say, industry friendly …

[The alveoli] are tiny, tiny little sacks. They have some of the thinnest little membranes you've ever seen. Look at them under a microscope. They're very delicate. So, the last thing you want to do is add injury to insult."

Hydrogen Peroxide Therapy

Saul, along with Dr. Thomas Levy, recommend nebulized hydrogen peroxide therapy. Similarly, Dr. Robert Rowen has published a commentary¹¹ about the use of ozone therapy against SARS-CoV-2 infection. Both of these treatment alternatives are inexpensive and safe, and could be administered at home.

One point I want to stress after looking more deeply into this is that you may want to be careful about using regular 3% hydrogen peroxide, as they use proprietary stabilizers. By law, they're not required to disclose those chemicals. So, ideally, you'd want to use food grade hydrogen peroxide and carefully dilute it to a 3% concentration.

What to Do if You're Feeling Under the Weather

So, to recap, what can you do if you're suddenly feeling under the weather and suspect a viral infection? Saul recommends taking vitamin C to bowel tolerance.

"Take enough C to be symptom free, whatever the amount might be. Dr. Cathcart would say take vitamin C to bowel tolerance, and that's exactly what you think it means. The sicker you are, the more you hold. So, if you are really facing an influenza outbreak, you'll hold a lot of C before you get to bowel tolerance.

This is something that everyone can do at home. My grandchildren can do this. When they get sick, they manage their own case by taking vitamin C until they get to bowel tolerance. Use whatever kind of vitamin C you can afford … [and] take enough C to be symptom free.

The more frequently you can take the vitamin C, the better off [you'll be]. Vitamin C being water soluble is constantly lost … The more often you take it, the better results you will have, and you will need less to do so.

So, taking a small amount of vitamin C every half-hour is actually much better than taking a large amount of C twice a day. And taking a large amount of C twice a day is better than taking a huge amount of C every other day. So, the more often you take it, the friendlier it is for your body."

For acute infection, you may need to increase your dosage somewhat beyond bowel tolerance. Keep in mind that taking it more frequently, such as every half-hour, will allow you to take more before you hit bowel tolerance. Other alternatives include taking a liposomal vitamin C or getting an IV infusion of vitamin C. Liposomal vitamin C can achieve intracellular levels very similar to IV vitamin C at a fraction of the cost and inconvenience.

B Vitamins (Thiamine)

Thiamine (vitamin B1) is also important, and works synergistically with vitamin C. Any infection increases your body's need for thiamine. You can read more about this in "Vitamin B1 Is Vital to Protect Against Infectious Disease."

The recommended daily allowance for thiamine is well below 2 mg. For acute illness or short-term prevention, Saul suggests taking 50 mg to 100 mg of thiamine per day, ideally in divided doses.

"Thiamine is the vitamin that smells funny," he says. "When you open the bottle of your multiple vitamin, or your B complex, that smell is thiamine. So, when your urine smells like thiamine, you're probably getting more than you need, but that's not a problem.

Thiamine is safe, and you can excrete that. The excretion is an indicator of saturation. Thiamine, really, is best taken with the entire B complex. The B complex vitamins work better together.

For prevention, most people will get a B complex, B50 … Generally speaking, what I would tell people to do is take a look at the RDA, and you can do that on the internet in seconds, and take more than that. A B complex is this cheapest and safest way to do that."

Melatonin for COVID-19

Another strategy that appears useful against both bacterial and viral infections is hormone melatonin. I review this in greater depth in "Melatonin for Sepsis." Saul comments:

"Melatonin is a wonderful thing, because the safety studies are very encouraging. If you want to hurt yourself, melatonin will not do the job … Melatonin is inexpensive, it's non-prescription and, obviously, something that safe deserves a try … And a little bit of melatonin can go a long way.

The older you get, the less you make. Now, if you keep your bedroom dark at night, you will make more melatonin. I'm about to impart a piece of wisdom that makes me very unpopular very quickly with a large number of people, and that is if you go to bed early, you will make more melatonin, and you will sleep better.

If you go to bed at 7:30 or 8:00 o'clock at night, you will have a far better sleep than if you go to bed later, even if you have the same number of hours. The old adage is, each hour of sleep before midnight is worth two hours of sleep after midnight. There's something to that."

Nitric Oxide Helps Inhibit Viral Replication

Another strategy worth mentioning is nitric oxide, which appears to inhibit viral replication. To boost nitric oxide, you could use precursors such as arginine or citrulline, but exercise and near-infrared radiation (such as a near-infrared sauna) will also do the trick.

"Exercise is absolutely crucial. I'm so big on that, and I would like to underscore that this is something that doesn't cost a dime," Saul says. "What is missing from most discussions on COVID-19 is an appreciation of how far we have let ourselves go. We've been eating crummy food for a long time.

We've been doing behaviors for a long time that don't work. And sooner or later, the body is going to be weakened by that. Too much of the wrong thing, not enough for the right thing, and the immune system is going to be weak. And viruses, unfortunately, to put it very coldly, will thin the herd.

This is the way nature works … Now, this is a very harsh lesson from nature, but we would do well to learn it. If we let ourselves go, as my mother would say, 'If you do this wrong, and you know it, don't come crying to me afterwards.' We have to take responsibility, and right now the COVID-19 epidemic is pointing that out in a very, very strong way.

It is most unpleasant to see this, but bearing in mind that we are not a healthy nation, we have to immediately take steps to become one, or there will be another virus, because this is not the first, and it is not the last … It just makes my day when I learn about people that … are not watching the news, they're going out and they're getting well."

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Scientists have uncovered the formation of tuft cells during pancreatitis and the surprising role of these cells in immunity, using mouse models of pancreatitis. The findings could lead to the development of new biomarkers to test for pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer.

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Scientists designed a next-generation miniature lab device that uses magnetic nano-beads to isolate minute bacterial particles that cause diseases. This new technology improves how clinicians isolate drug-resistant strains of bacterial infections and difficult-to-detect micro-particles such as those making up Ebola and coronaviruses.

from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3aiD1by

A fever, cough and shortness of breath are some of the symptoms of COVID-19. The CDC is warning older adults and those with underlying medical conditions that they may have an increased risk for serious complications.¹

Based on current information, it's also believed that healthy pregnant women have the same risk as those without underlying medical conditions.² This is different from other coronaviruses and flu, which are more likely to infect and cause severe symptoms in women who are pregnant.³

Data show that if a woman has a severe COVID-19 infection during the third trimester it can affect the "time and route of delivery."⁴ The U.K. has declared pregnant women to be part of a vulnerable population, but according to Harvard Health, the declaration isn't based on clear evidence that they are at a higher risk.⁵

The main mode of COVID-19 infection is from person to person, via respiratory droplets that are produced when an infected person sneezes, coughs or talks.⁶ For this reason experts recommend you maintain a distance of 6 feet from other people. It's also possible for people to have no symptoms at all and still pass the virus.

Pregnant? Ask These Questions

A pandemic raises many questions, which is compounded when you're pregnant and protecting the health of your baby. While many of your plans can be put on hold, you can't reschedule having a baby. There is still new information for experts to learn about how the infection could affect a pregnancy, but doctors do know there is concern if you have a high-risk pregnancy.⁷

This includes women who have underlying medical conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes or lung problems. Pregnancy places a higher demand on pulmonary function, so women with an underlying respiratory condition may be at higher risk for infection and severe disease.

These conditions could include chronic lung disease, asthma and chronic heart disease. This is why prenatal care is an important part of delivering a healthy baby if you have these conditions. Otherwise, during the COVID-19 pandemic, experts recommend if you are not at high risk, and depending upon your trimester, telemedicine visits could be the best option.

However, if ultrasounds, evaluation of heart rate and respiratory rate and blood pressure are required, then a doctor's office visit is necessary. Dr. Elizabeth Zadzielski, chief of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Sinai Hospital, recommends being seen by your physician if you are 24 weeks gestation and beyond. By this time, it's important to be evaluated for potential problems. You also need an in-person examination if it's your first visit.

Take care to communicate changes with your physician, such as bleeding or decreased fetal movement, or if you believe you're having signs of preterm labor. Currently, there isn't enough evidence to determine if a mother can pass the coronavirus to her unborn child. However, the WHO states "To date, the virus has not been found in samples of amniotic fluid or breastmilk."⁸

Prevent Infection and Protect Your Health

Researchers believe up to 80% of people with COVID-19 will have mild symptoms or be asymptomatic.⁹ This is similar to studies done with influenza in England, which found the majority of those with flu were asymptomatic.¹⁰

This means you need to take care even with individuals who appear to be healthy. A vital step in this prevention is to practice excellent hand-washing with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. To be truly effective it's necessary to follow these simple steps you'll find more fully described in "The Impact of Effective Hand-Washing Against Infection":

• Use warm, running water and a mild soap. You do not need antibacterial soap.
• Start with wet hands, add soap and work up a good lather, all the way up to your wrists, scrubbing for at least 20 seconds (most people only wash for about six seconds). A good way to time this is to sing the "Happy Birthday" song twice.
• Cover all the surfaces of your hands and wrists, using friction by rubbing your fingertips against your palm and your fingers against each other.
• Rinse thoroughly under running water, continuing to apply friction.
• Dry your hands thoroughly, ideally with a paper towel.

In addition to hand-washing, avoid touching your face. The virus can easily be passed from your fingers to your nose, eyes or mouth. If your face does get itchy, use a tissue to scratch. Clean and disinfect surfaces in your home or at work. This may include tables, light switches, door handles, telephones, toilets, faucets and countertops.¹¹

Initially, world health leaders advised against wearing masks, claiming, "… masks could create a false sense of security that could end up putting people at greater risk. Even with the mouth and nose fully covered, the virus can still enter through the eyes."¹² However, recently the CDC changed their guidelines:¹³

"CDC recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission."

The WHO¹⁴ guidelines maintain face masks may help reduce the spread, but are not sufficient to prevent infection on their own. They recommend those who have coronavirus wear a face mask and self-quarantine to prevent the spread of the infection; those who are caring for them should wear a face mask while in the same room.

Maintain Your Health and Reduce Risk During Pregnancy

Taking supplements and medications during pregnancy have effects on your growing baby that are not always well understood or documented. For this reason, unless what you're considering is well studied — such as prenatal vitamins — it's best to avoid them. Even some commonly accepted medications have long-term consequences.

For instance, there is evidence that over-the-counter acetaminophen, commonly sold as Tylenol, may double the risk of autism and increase the risk of attention deficit disorder.¹⁵ Everything you eat, your growing child is also exposed to, so it's advisable to get as much nutrition from your food as possible as your only real defense against infections such as COVID-19 is a strong immune system.

In other words, forget junk and processed foods and instead shop along the outer walls of your grocery store, where you'll find whole food. Your gut microbiome is a vital part of your metabolism and health. During pregnancy, the function and composition changes throughout gestation, contributing to the outcome of your pregnancy.¹⁶

A few examples of nutrient-dense foods that support a healthy pregnancy include organically grown, non-GMO avocado, broccoli, wild-caught Alaskan salmon, berries and eggs. Some signs your gut microbiome may be imbalanced include constipation, diarrhea, gas or bloating, or indigestion.¹⁷

It is important to avoid medications to treat these conditions and instead use whole foods to balance your gut microbiome. These include fermented vegetables that add beneficial bacteria to your gut, bone broth, chia seeds and high-quality fiber foods, such as organic psyllium.

Vitamins D and C Are Crucial Elements to Health

Maintaining healthy levels of vitamin D during your pregnancy may be one of the most important things you can do. In a Cochrane systematic review,¹⁸ the authors found evidence that supplementing with vitamin D could reduce the risk of preeclampsia, low birth weight and preterm birth.

While vitamin D doesn't directly fight infection, it is essential to supporting a health immune system. In one review of the literature,¹⁹ scientists found vitamin D played a functional role in reducing the risk of upper respiratory infections, which flu and COVID-19 are.

Speak to your physician about having your vitamin D levels checked regularly throughout your pregnancy and during lactation, as the only way to know how much supplement you may need under your physician's care is to test. Seek to maintain levels above 50 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL), using sensible sun exposure if possible, for optimal health.

As I recently reported, in the last month, vitamin C is being used in large doses in New York, the epicenter of the virus in the U.S., to treat the COVID-19 infection. In patients who were treated with massive doses, the individuals responded significantly better than those who did not receive the vitamin. When used in high doses vitamin C is a potent oxidizing agent.

This action can help eliminate pathogens. Additionally, it is inexpensive and is currently under investigation for the treatment of sepsis, a factor in those who have died from covid-19.^20,21

However, large doses are necessary for treatment and should not be used preventively. To protect your health, seek out food high in vitamin C such as bell peppers, kiwifruit, strawberries, broccoli, tomatoes and snow peas.²²

What Are the Risks After Your Child Is Born?

As you get closer to delivery you may have some questions about the risk of passing the virus to your newborn and how to manage breastfeeding if you are infected. Thus far there have been only case reports and not studies of pregnant women who were infected with COVID-19.

Two case reports of a total of 47 women with confirmed infection showed none of the newborns had the infection.^23,24 Two other case reports found^25,26 the newborns demonstrated elevated levels of antibodies, but no clinical evidence of the infection.

In a fifth review with 33 pregnant women doctors found three newborns were infected and had clinical signs.²⁷ While the number of infants born without infection is encouraging, it remains essential to practice strategies to reduce infection.

If you test positive for the virus, Harvard Health²⁸ finds there is currently no evidence the virus is in breast milk. Therefore, breastfeeding should not expose the infant. However, since it is spread through droplets from the respiratory tract, mothers should wash their hands thoroughly before picking up their babies and wear a face mask to minimize the baby's exposure.

If you choose to express breast milk to maintain your milk supply, use a dedicated breast pump and follow all recommendations for proper cleaning each time you use the machine. Clean all parts that come in contact with breastmilk and with your hands. Wash your hands before touching the pump or any parts of the bottle or system and before expressing breast milk.²⁹

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Today, we continue to provide you information about the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of this recording, April 6, 2020, there are more than 1.4 million cases worldwide and 370,000 confirmed cases in the U.S., with New York City being one of the hotspots.^1,2 Here, I interview Shiva Ayyadurai, who has a Ph.D. in systems biology from MIT.

What Is Systems Biology?

His academic background gives Ayyadurai a slightly different perspective on this outbreak, as it focuses on the foundational causes of disease rather than the conventional medical paradigm that tends to focus on pharmaceutical remedies. Ayyadurai explains:

“The MIT department of biological engineering was created in 2003. The notion was … that you needed an engineering approach to biology as new advances or new discoveries were coming out in biology. That created the department of biological engineering …

One of the big things that took place in 2003 that led to the formation of that department was, in an ironic way, what occurred with the human genome project starting in 1993. We went into the genome project with a reductionist view of biology.

Biologists essentially thought that the number of parts meant complexity. We knew in 1993, a worm had around 20,000 genes. So, we said, OK, we're going to start mapping out the human genome. We were at least 25 times more complex. The notion was we had about a half a million genes.

By 2003, they only found 20,000 protein coding genes. That flipped biology on its head because it said, wait a minute, we have the same number of parts, and they thought genes were a reflection of complexity. That led to systems biology starting around 2003, which said, look, genes create proteins and these proteins interact. So, it's about all these interactions …

Today, that has led to this field called epigenetics, in which we know that the external environment, what we interact with, can turn on and turn off genes. I came back to MIT in 2003. I did four degrees at MIT in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering. My Master's was in design, but I always was fascinated with medicine.”

The Cytosol Platform

The project Ayyadurai took on for his Ph.D. thesis was to mathematically model the whole human cell. His work led to the creation of a platform called CytoSolve “cyto” standing for “cell.” This approach is different from biology, computer science and chemistry.

“Biologists are essentially distributed knowledge engineers,” he says, “and the thing they're trying to understand is this thing called the body. No different than aeronautical engineers trying to build the airplane. The difference is when we build an airplane, we actually know what we want to build. And we know the parts in biology, we're finding the parts, that's what they're doing.

Some biologists can win a Nobel prize just for looking at how two proteins interact. So, they're very focused on understanding these parts. So, imagine if we could create a technology where we could take those parts, integrate them, and then essentially let them be sort of focused in their silos.

But there wouldn't be this framework that you could integrate, where you could integrate these molecular pathways. And that really created cytosol. To me, it was a big circling back because I grew up in India where my grandmother practiced traditional systems of medicine.

In that system of medicine, they had diagnosis methods, they looked at you, they figured out your body type and they would figure out the right types of foods and medicines, herbs or even body work to get you back into balance. That was always seen as a ‘black art’ from a Western medicine [perspective].

[CytoSolve] lets us decipher what they were doing and actually understand these synergies. So that's what systems biology is about. It's taking an engineering systems approach to the body … It's literally understanding how to diagnose and assess and identify what the problem is, and then how to administer a prescription within a few minutes. It’s essentially an ‘AI’-type model.”

COVID-19 — Health and Economic Perspectives

As noted by Ayyadurai, the COVID-19 pandemic is not only highlighting our immune health but also our economic health. We're seeing the integration of medical policy and economic policy.

“I had a very interesting discussion with a leading economist,” Ayyadurai says, “and he had a serious concern about the fact that economists are being forced to backfill in a misguided health policy, which is occurring. What he meant by that is, [they’re being told to] just use quantitative easing, which is basically printing money, and that will solve the problem.

Now that entire process does two things. First of all, we have I think 10 million unemployment claims in March alone. In addition to that, you have the fact that we're going to print money, which … if you look, since 2008 and 2009, when quantitative easing started … that has essentially been the biggest transfer of wealth — to the 0.01%, again.

It is essentially a weakened earning power and the [weakened value] of the dollar. So that's what's occurred. Now we have this COVID-19, and we have this economic overreaction, in my opinion, from the fear-mongering. In many ways, it reflects the immune system.

The immune system fundamentally wants to operate well for you and maintain homeostasis, and it's the overreaction of a weakened and dysfunctional immune system that causes harm. Similarly, when you look at it from the economic standpoint, we have this unbridled overreaction, in my view. [We’re] not looking at what modern medicine is saying — that we should take a personalized medicine approach, right?

One size doesn't fit all. This is basically flatten the curve: Kick the can down the street. We're just going to wait until, when? Until the vaccine is produced or until a drug comes out. The assumption is that the immune system of all of us is equally weak. That's what this is based on. The assumption is that all of us are going to get it and all of us will suffer from it.

It's a very interesting model. Look at the person leading this health policy, Dr. Fauci. His background is from the pharmaceutical world … [and] when you look at the NIH and the CDC, these organizations are heavily, heavily influenced by pharmaceutical companies.

In that environment, the model has always been never to discuss immune health, what we can do to support the immune system. It's always under the assumption that there's this big boogeyman, that the virus harms your body. Most medical doctors, again, they're victims of this education.

Many of them are taught the virus literally comes and attacks your body, and that a vaccine or a pharmaceutical intervention blocks it. It's not taught broadly that [the problem is that] the dysfunctional, weakened immune system is not running on all cylinders.

One part of it can overreact, and that overreaction is what goes in and attacks your own tissues. So, the issue is, we're not having a discussion at all in the media about ‘How do you modulate that overreaction and support people's immune health?’”

Similarly, Ayyadurai notes, the economic collapse is “a result of precisely engineered governmental policies,” even though those policies, superficially, appear to be in the public’s best interest.

Is COVID-19 a Real Pandemic?

COVID-19 meets the technical definition of a pandemic, and the World Health Organization did declare it a pandemic. However, the death toll is nowhere near that of earlier serious pandemics that would legitimately justify the extraordinary measures being deployed by the U.S. government.

The Spanish flu in 1918 infected 500 million people worldwide, killing between 20 million and 50 million. The bubonic plague also killed 50 million people, wiping out a shocking 60% of the European population. This is typically what people think of when they hear the word “pandemic.”

COVID-19 presently affects a tiny fraction of the global population — about 1.4 million cases out of a global population of 7.78 billion³ — and even with a death toll of 81,000 worldwide,⁴ COVID-19 has had a miniscule impact, having killed a mere 0.00001% of the population.

Don’t get me wrong. Any death is tragic. But any given individual’s risk of dying from the epidemics of diabetes, heart disease or cancer, for example, is greater than their risk of dying from COVID-19. Why is death from lifestyle-induced disease and environmental toxicity more preferable and acceptable than death from an infectious disease?

Dying from a preventable medical mistake is also a greater risk, as that kills up to 440,000 Americans every year. Where’s the panic about that? Isn’t the idea that conventional medicine kills 440,000 people a year terrifying?! 1 in 5 elderly patients are also injured by medical care. Where are the calls to protect our aging loved ones from this threat?

Were health policies more aligned with truth, we wouldn’t have these chronic disease epidemics and far fewer people would die from preventable medical mistakes. More people would lead healthy lives were they properly informed about what’s harmful and what’s healthy.

Similarly, when it comes to COVID-19, there are simple strategies with which we can address this infection that does not require collapsing the global economy, creating unheard of unemployment and isolating everyone from human contact for weeks on end. You can find many articles detailing such strategies on my Coronavirus Resource Page.

As noted by Ayyadurai, systems biology tells us that one size does not fit all. “We need to move to the right medicine for the right person at the right time,” he says. But this knowledge has not been applied in this pandemic. Instead, everyone is being treated as though they’re high risk for severe infection and death and therefore need to take identical precautions. So, what’s really going on here?

“We have not said, ‘Hey, let's shut down the economy to address the fact that we have skyrocketing obesity taking place, skyrocketing diabetes,” Ayyadurai says. “So, the level of contradiction, the level of hypocrisy should wake up everyone to understand that there is another agenda.

There is another agenda afoot. I repeat what my mentor said: ‘When things don't add up, take a step back and ask, what is the other agenda?’ And the only thing in a common-sense way that reveals itself to me is power, profit and control. Power, profit and control.”

The Power, Profit and Control Agenda

Like Ayyadurai, I believe the fearmongering is being used to suppress dissent, to crash the economy and to issue medical mandates. “If you look broadly, there were massive uprisings, antiestablishment uprisings [in different countries]. Well, they're all gone now. We don't even hear anything about them,” Ayyadurai says.

He also believes this fearmongering and social isolation mandates will be used as a way to acclimatize people to accept state wants or what a few people deem is good for everyone. “That, I think, is the milieu being set up,” he says. “That's being teed up.” Indeed, it simply doesn’t add up when you look at mortality rates.

“There's another agenda,” Ayyadurai says. “That's what I see, because it doesn't make any rational sense [to crash the economy over COVID-19]. I think that's why a number of the videos, the tweets I've done have gone viral, because to everyday working people, it doesn't make sense either. They're trying to sort this out.”

Interestingly, this epidemic is taking place just a few months after Google began censoring holistic health news. So, people searching for sound nutritional strategies can no longer find them. Instead, they’re directed to Big Pharma-backed sites promoting conventional medicine.

The censorship isn’t even about squashing nonscientific views anymore. Educated health professionals are being banned left and right simply for posting peer-reviewed studies showing nutraceuticals work, or that drugs or vaccines don’t work — including Ayyadurai himself, who got kicked off Twitter the day this interview was recorded over a vitamin D post.

“It has essentially moved to a model of a finite set of people serving the interests of another finite set of people,” Ayyadurai says. “That's what's fundamentally going on. When we really look back at the history of ‘infectious diseases,’ what actually caused the real decline in infectious disease? …

That came from sanitation, vitamin A, nutrition, elimination of child labor, refrigeration [and] infrastructure at the political level … Well, how did we get that? This is one layer people need to understand from a human standpoint. It came about because in the late 1800s, there was a massive force of the American working class who were militant, and they fought for those rights.

People lived in squalor. No one cared for them. It was the uprising of those people and very, very powerful independently self-organizing systems, all over this country, that forced the elites to give them these basic infrastructures …

So, what I see is the ability for people to organize and demand their rights and get them. That is what occurred in the late 1900s, and we got massive gains. Now look at infrastructure today. Dirty water, dirty air, dirty food … and we look at them in synergy, how they affect our body. None of that's discussed, none of that.

I think the United States has a D+ in infrastructure. The roads, the bridges and the water systems [are all crumbling]. And when you don't fix these things in time, they affect all types of environmental things. The elite in this country do not want to address that. They want to always create a fake problem and a fake solution to consolidate power.

And that's why when you look at this [COVID-19] phenomenon that's taking place, it's a penultimate of it … You create massive amounts of fear so people will be willing — because they're under economic stress, under what they think is a health [threat] — to give up their rights.

And that's where I see this headed. So, this is an interesting convergence of … economic attack, attack on people's health, [and attack on] people's autonomy and freedom. Truth, freedom and health are all under attack …

They do not want any discussion about indigenous people's medicines that have worked for centuries. They don't want to talk about simple solutions … so, they suppress discourse, suppress debate, suppress freedom, and move everything away from the scientific method — which is a process where you actually have to prove stuff, which is what they claim they want to do to scientific consensus.

Freedom gets suppressed and now you can move truth to scientific consensus. So, you go from suppression of freedom to fake science or outdated science at best. And then that is used to create a fake problem and a fake solution.

And then, if you go to the health part, what that means is you diminish people's health, you control people's health, and now you have a populace which is so controlled, they don't have the strength to fight for their freedom. So, you have the attack on freedom, the attack on truth, and the attack on health.

All of those are interconnected. They too are a system from a systems perspective. Without freedom, you can't have truth. Without truth, you can’t have health. And without health we don't have the strength to fight for our freedom. And the way that truth actually is discovered should be through the scientific method. That's what's really been compromised, starting, I would say, in the late ‘50s.”

Postal Service Could Be Used to Protect Free Communications

To summarize, the three-pronged agenda is: Power, profit and control. To counteract that three-pronged threat, we need academic freedom and the freedom to discourse and debate.

From that freedom, we get truth, and from truth, we’re able to understand health, not only physical health but also in the broadest sense the health of our systems, our infrastructure and environment. With health, we gain the strength to fight for even more freedoms.

“For each one of those, there's a solution. For example, when you go to freedom, if you look at communication, right now we are heavily relying on Google, Facebook and three major telecom companies. So, basically, five CEOs control our communication. One phone call to them, and you can essentially shut down communication ...

What is the solution? Well, it's going to sound weird, but … the founding fathers of this country created an institution called the United States Postal Service. Why did they create that? Because the crown was not allowing each individual to communicate. So, the notion of ‘the press’ was all of us. There was no New York Times. Each one of us were supposed to be the press ...

If anyone interfered with your communications, [they got a] 20-year prison sentence. It was criminal. So, the entire postal service system was a decentralized environment enabling every American to communicate for pennies …

In 1997 is when email volume overtook postal mail volume. I met with the executives of the postal service. I said, look, you guys should be living up to what you were chartered to do, which is to protect free communications. Why don't you offer a public email service and public social media services … that would be protected by the laws of the Constitution? No one, including the government, could interfere.

They thought it was a ridiculous idea … In 2011, the postal services were going out of business. Why? Because all the best parts of the postal service were privatized into DHL and FedEx. So, I again hit them really hard. The inspector general, Dave Williams, called me up.

He goes, ‘Shiva, why are you attacking us?’ I said, ‘Look, you guys are not doing your job. You're not in the postal mail business. You were supposed to be in the communications business. You are set up as a quasi-organization to protect our rights. So anyway, I did two chartered reports for them.

My point is we need a digital rights act, and there is an institution [that can supply us with that]. It is the postal service, in my view. All these postal service locations could be converted to a mesh network. So, there is an opportunity to have a network by the people for the people. Now if someone wants to go use Google and Facebook and you can, but there needs to be a public common.

Those few elite would object to this and have the power and control to prevent that from being implemented. Definitely. That's why I believe we need to have a mass movement. Nothing has ever been given to us. People think slavery ends one day and we have freedom the next. Every point in human history has always been people chipping away at slavery to get freedom from the elite."

Decentralization Is the Name of the Game

Ayyadurai discusses many additional issues and goes far deeper than I can summarize here, so please, listen to the interview in its entirety. He has many fascinating insights, ideas and solutions. For example, about 50 minutes in, he discusses how federally funded research systems can be improved to ensure scientific integrity and prevent scientific fraud.

“We need to take power away from the academics,” he says, “and one way to do that is to force decentralization. That's a common theme here.” He also analyzes the health care model, and discusses how health care, as a system, can be improved while simultaneously being made far less expensive.

“Broadly, we need to decentralize health care. The concept of centralized health care — which is what the purpose of this [COVID-19 pandemic is] — is that next year everyone's going to be mandated vaccines,” he says.

“For them to crash the economy, to drive it into a depression, for them it's a relatively great return on investment. You make the fed print $6 trillion, but you're going to make $7 trillion to $8 trillion recurring revenue [by way of mandated, annual vaccinations] … So, we have to do whatever it takes to decentralize health care …

When you look at these things I've said, it comes down to one word: Decentralization … I think the opportunity here is to start educating people. It is supposed to be We the People, and this does not mean it's going to happen without struggle.

We may have to rise up and fight in ways that we haven't done before, just like those people did in the late 1800s, and the idea is to compel the thing. We need to build a broad-based movement bottom-up … And I think it begins with taking care of your health.”

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