Health & Fitness

The only consistent thing about COVID-19 testing and reporting so far is their inconsistency. Head-scratching "errors" have plagued us from the get-go, and it sure doesn't seem to be getting any better. I guess it just goes to show that even with access to incredible data-crunching technology, human ineptitude will ensure no one becomes the wiser.

Faulty or contaminated tests have been used and reporting guidelines have been changed and updated multiple times, virtually eliminating any possibility of accurately tracking infected cases and deaths.

Most recently, a July 17, 2020, study^1,2 in the International Journal of Geriatrics and Rehabilitation concluded half of all nucleic acid coronavirus tests distributed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided inaccurate results — 30% being false positives and 20% false negatives.

Suspicions that many were dying with SARS-CoV-2 infection rather than from COVID-19 have circulated for many weeks, and now Florida has admitted a young man listed as a COVID-19 death actually died in a motorcycle accident.³ It just so happens he tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection. Things like that surely do not inspire public trust.

Mainstream Media Distortion of the Testing Truth

Perhaps the most egregious misrepresentation of reality is the media's conflating a positive test result with the actual disease, COVID-19. These tests only test for the virus directly (PCR tests) or antibodies to the virus. COVID-19 is NOT a positive test; it is a clinical diagnosis of someone infected with SARS-COV-2 exhibiting severe respiratory illness characterized by fever, coughing and shortness of breath.

The media is intentionally confusing a positive test result with COVID-19 to deliberately mislead the public into believing the disease is far more serious than it is. They know better but consciously choose this despicable practice. A recent example would be CNN's article, "Florida Has More COVID-19 Than Most Countries in the World."⁴

They refer to the positive test as a "case." This is beyond stretching reality to suit their nefarious purposes. A case is NOT a positive test result but, rather, a person that has a positive test result and is seriously ill. But you would never know it by reading their article.

Further down in their fear-mongering article is a subhead, "Florida Has Surpassed Italy in COVID-19 Cases, Too." But at the very end of the article they finally admit the truth: Even though Florida surpassed Italy in "cases," they had nearly 90% FEWER deaths — the metric that really counts, unless your goal is to perpetuate needless fear into the population.

Some Labs Appear to Only Report Positive Results

One of the latest scandals was highlighted in a July 11, 2020, Twitter post⁵ by a user named Rebel A. Cole. A suspiciously high number of laboratories in Florida are reporting^6,7 100% of tests as positive. Cole wonders whether this means many labs are now only submitting positive results, omitting negatives altogether.

Cole points out that the results from labs reporting only positives account for 34% of the 10,360 new cases on July 11. "Without these, today's 'percent positive' would fall from 12.6% to 8.7%" Cole said.

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The same anomalous trend was also reported in the Alachua Chronicle, July 7, 2020:⁸

"It looks like North Florida Regional and Shands are reporting at least some negatives, but we now know that UF is not reporting negatives in employee testing to the state. 

By law, all test results by physicians, hospitals, and laboratories are required to be reported to the state, but the list of labs reporting 100% positives indicates that's not happening — or perhaps tests performed by an employer are not covered by the order …

If negative tests aren't reported, they aren't added to the total number of tests. That makes the reported positivity rate higher than the actual positive percentage of all tests performed. This can easily be seen when you look at the hospitals reporting 100% positive tests.

If they reported 50 positives with 100% positive tests, for example, the number of tests reported to the state is 50. If they did 500 tests to get those 50 positives, 450 tests were not reported to the state and were not added to the total number of tests reported by the state."

Confusing matters further, the Florida testing report⁹ states that "A person can be tested by more than one laboratory and can have both positive and negative results."

In other words, while each positive test result is counted as a "case," a single person may actually have two or more test results. Let's say one individual tests positive twice or even three or four times. They're now counted as two or more "cases" when in fact it's just one person.

Add to that the fact that in many areas, "assumed" cases — obtained through contact tracing — are counted as "positive cases" as well (or have been in the past), even without laboratory confirmed testing.¹⁰

After a local Fox News affiliate contacted several of the Florida labs reporting 100% positive test results, some of them confirmed "major errors" in their reporting. And they're no small errors. Orlando Health confirmed its positivity rate was not 98%, as reported to the state, but rather 9.4%. Similarly, Orlando Veteran's Medical Center corrected its positivity rate from the reported 76% down to 6%.¹¹

Several States Report Only Positive Results

KHN.org actually reported¹² this problem all the way back on March 25, 2020, warning that some states had chosen to exclude negative test results from their reporting, thereby giving us an incomplete and misleading picture of the spread of the disease across the country.

"Several states are reporting only positive COVID-19 test results from private labs, a practice that paints a misleading picture of how fast the disease is spreading," KHN wrote.

"Maryland, Ohio and others are posting the numbers of new positive tests and deaths, for instance, but don't report the negative results, which would help show how many people were tested overall.

'This matters because it gives you a false sense of what is going on in a particular location,' said Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute.

He said states should be required to report both positive and negative results for review by public health experts. 'They should all be pulled together,' Topol said. 'It should be automatic.'"

Tests Are Reliably Unreliable

Aside from single individuals being counted as multiple "cases" if they have more than one positive test, the accuracy of the tests themselves have also come under question numerous times. For example, in June, Texas noticed an abnormal number of positive test results, which threw the accuracy of the tests into question. As reported by Dallas News:¹³

"The state is no longer using a laboratory that has tested 14,000 Texans for the coronavirus, after it turned up an abnormal number of positive results during state-ordered testing at nursing homes and in community surveillance …

It is not clear whether all the lab's test results will be thrown out from state tallies or just a portion. A spokeswoman for HHSC declined to name the lab, saying only that it was a private one."

Low Prevalence = Higher False Positive Rate

As explained by Dr. Deborah Birx during an April White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing, COVID-19 tests are "not 100% sensitive or specific," and that when prevalence is low in the community, the false positive rate will be high.

"If you have 1% of your population infected, and you have a test that's only 99% specific, that means that when you find a positive, 50% of the time will be a real positive and 50% of the time it won't be," Birx said.

In other words, if the prevalence of infection in the community is 1%, about half of all positive tests will be false positives. Depending on the manufacturer, the test may return even higher rates of false results.

Some Tests Have High False Positive Rates, Others Negative

July 6, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned¹⁴ clinical laboratory staff and health care providers using the BD SARS-CoV-2 Reagents for the BD Max System test that the test had an increased risk of false positives.

The test is designed to detect viral nucleic acid from the SARS-CoV-2 virus in nasal swabs, providing results in two to three hours. "In one study, the manufacturer found approximately three percent (3%) of results were false positive results," the FDA said.

False negatives occur too, although it appears to be more difficult to find data on the prevalence of false negative test results. May 14, 2020, the FDA issued a public alert¹⁵ warning people that the Abbott ID NOW point-of-care test had a high false negative rate. The FDA started reviewing the test after receiving 15 adverse event reports.

"The agency has been working with Abbott … on a customer notification letter to alert users that any negative test results that are not consistent with a patient's clinical signs and symptoms or necessary for patient management should be confirmed with another test," the FDA said.

While there seems to be no reliable way to assess just how many positive test results are in fact false positives, as testing continues to climb, it seems clear the number of false results is likely to be quite high.

Meanwhile, hospitalizations and actual deaths have dramatically declined. The week of July 4, a grand total of 522 Americans died with or from COVID-19. The week of July 11, the death toll was down to 181, and that's for the entire nation.¹⁶

Mortality peaked the week of April 18, with 16,897 deaths, and has dropped by the thousands every week since. At this point, I think it would be safe to say we're out of the danger zone and should allow life to return to some semblance of normal.

False Positives Lead to Misuse of Medical Resources

False positives do more than fuel fear-based media rhetoric. In India, false positives are endangering patients who are actually sick by taking up much-needed hospital beds. As reported by Times of India:¹⁷

"… the dead virus is lingering on in some patients, throwing up false positive reports in those who have completely recovered and are in no danger, either to themselves or to others. This is keeping hospital beds occupied longer than strictly required and denying beds to patients who genuinely need them …"

While hospitals typically discharge patients once their symptoms have resolved, many are wary of leaving without proof that they're no longer infectious, as many family members, neighbors and even some housing complexes will not allow access to potentially infectious individuals.

"Both RT-PCR and TruNat tests are so sensitive that they can catch traces of the dead virus protein, causing the false positives, said Raja Dhar, Fortis Hospital pulmonologist.

'These patients are unlikely to transmit the virus and can safely be sent home. But they are reluctant because of the social pressure. Many plead with us to defer release until they test negative,' Dhar told TOI."¹⁸

Antibody Tests Are Equally Unreliable

Antibody tests are also turning out to have their share of quality problems. In a letter to the editor¹⁹ published in the July 1, 2020, issue of American Family Physician, Drs. Mark Ebell, deputy editor for evidence-based medicine for the journal, and Henry Barry, review some of the available data:

"Cellex, the first antibody test approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the virus, has a reported sensitivity of 94% and specificity of 96% ... 

When assessing whether patients had a previous infection and may be immune, it is important to avoid false-positives so that patients do not think they are immune when they are not.

Table 1 summarizes the false-positive rates at various population prevalence for the Cellex test and for a hypothetical test that is 90% sensitive and 99% specific.

At relatively low population prevalences, which likely reflect current conditions in the United States and elsewhere, we would argue that false-positive rates are unacceptably high with the Cellex test."

Ebell and Barry point out that many of the antibody tests that have provisional approval from the FDA still have not even been evaluated for accuracy. They also recommend that labs report test results "in a way that reflects the local population prevalence based on widespread testing and include the false-positive rate," as this information "is needed to help family physicians better inform shared decision-making regarding previous infection and return to work or school."

At present, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone including that data in their reporting, and the way things are going, I wouldn't hold my breath in anticipation of such helpful numbers being included in the future either.

Viral and Antibody Test Results Have Been Combined

Aside from false positive viral and antibody tests, back in May the CDC also admitted it had combined test results from the two different tests in its national reporting.²⁰

Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told The Atlantic,²¹ "You've got to be kidding me. How could the CDC make that mistake? This is a mess." Indeed. Several states were also found to have comingled results from the two tests for varying amounts of time, including Pennsylvania, Texas, Georgia, Vermont, Virginia and Maine.²²

At the state level, an idiotic error such as this has significant consequences as states use these data points to determine when it's "safe" to reopen their economies and allow people back to work.

Common Cold Antibodies Can Trigger False Positive Test

Still, there's more. June 30, 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admitted that prior exposure to coronaviruses responsible for the common cold can result in a positive COVID-19 antibody test, even if you've never been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 specifically.²³

The saving grace there is that studies^24,25,26 suggest antibodies produced following exposure to coronaviruses that cause the common cold also appear to provide some general and long-lasting resistance against SARS-CoV-2.

One such study,^27,28 published May 14, 2020, in the journal Cell, found 70% of samples from patients who had recovered from mild cases of COVID-19 had resistance to SARS-CoV-2 on the T-cell level, but so did 40% to 60% of people who had not been exposed to SARS-CoV-2.

According to the authors, this suggests there's "cross-reactive T cell recognition between circulating 'common cold' coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2." In other words, if you've recovered from a common cold caused by a particular coronavirus, your humoral immune system may activate when you encounter SARS-CoV-2, thus rendering you resistant to COVID-19.

Another study²⁹ discovered SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies are only found in the most severe cases — about 1 in 5. So, a negative antibody test doesn't necessarily rule out the possibility that you've been infected and didn't get sick. In fact, this finding suggests COVID-19 may actually be five times more prevalent than suspected — and five times less deadly than predicted.

COVID-19 Lethality Has Been Massively Overestimated

Other research supports the hypothesis that COVID-19 lethality has been grossly overestimated. Data from a still-ongoing study^30,31 by Wake Forest Baptist Health found that, so far, between 12% and 14% of people tested in North Carolina — about 1.47 million people — have antibodies for the coronavirus.

This means they were exposed to the virus, got infected and fought it off, all while experiencing few or no symptoms. Based on these data, the overall death rate appears to be around 0.1%.³² John Sanders, chief of infectious diseases at Wake Forest Baptist, told WFAE 90.7:³³

"We can … say the death rate is lower than we have estimated. The severity of symptoms is lower than we estimated and the vast majority of people who were infected are going to do fine."

An overall mortality rate of 0.1% is right in line with statistics cited by Stanford University's disease prevention chairman Dr. John Ioannidis as well, who in a June 27, 2020, interview with Greek Reporter said:³⁴

"0.05% to 1% is a reasonable range for what the data tell us now for the infection fatality rate, with a median of about 0.25%. For people younger than 45, the infection fatality rate is almost 0%. For 45 to 70, it is probably about 0.05-0.3%."³⁵

31% of Tested Florida Children Are Positive for Coronavirus

July 14, 2020, the Florida Sun Sentinel reported that 31% of 54,022 children tested in the state were positive for coronavirus. "The state's positivity rate for the entire population is about 11%," the Sentinel said, implying that children in Florida are nearly three times as likely to be positive for the virus.

But, knowing how unreliable the tests are, how could health officials and the media possibly take the 31% positivity results seriously — especially considering that studies are showing that the virus affects children differently and less severely than it does adults?³⁶

Do Positive Tests Even Matter at This Point?

If the vast majority of people who test positive for COVID-19 infection have no symptoms, don't feel sick and don't look sick, is COVID-19 really a "deadly" disease? Or, is it more like HPV — a viral infection that most people have without knowing it, and which 90% are able to eliminate without treatment?

To highlight just a single case, Texas Rangers outfielder Joey Gallo has tested positive for COVID-19 twice, yet he never developed any symptoms. He's also had several negative tests. "It was weird, it was hard to get real answers on if I really had it or not," he told KSAT.³⁷

"The 26-year-old All-Star slugger missed the first week of the Rangers summer camp and isolated from teammates for two weeks after two positive tests that sandwiched a negative result during intake testing," KSAT reports.

"He had two negative tests on his own outside of the MLB testing program, but wasn't cleared to join the team until consecutive negative tests under the protocol …

Gallo's positive results were by the saliva test, though he was negative on a swab test. He said he is 'now on edge' when going through the testing and gets nervous every time he has to do a saliva test."

Continued Testing Now Merely Drives Irrational Fearmongering

The primary justification for the tyrannical governmental interventions of COVID-19 was to slow the spread of the infection so that hospital resources would not be overwhelmed, causing people to die due to lack of medical care.

These interventions were not about stopping the spread altogether or even reducing the number of people that would eventually get infected. They certainly were never meant to prevent all death. Logic dictates this simply isn't possible, under any circumstance.

The stay-at-home orders and business closings were only intended to slow down the spread so that, eventually, naturally-acquired herd immunity — the best kind — would prevent it from reemerging.

Now all of a sudden, the narrative has changed. There's no talk about flattening the curve anymore. The media rarely even mention the all-important death statistics. Instead, headlines warn of skyrocketing "cases," meaning completely healthy people who happen to test positive and who are unlikely to spend so much as a day in bed feeling poorly.

At the same time, people with simple upper respiratory infections can legally be classified as COVID-19 cases even without confirmed lab results,^38,39 which artificially inflate the "case" totals even more.

The only rational reason for any of the government interventions is to continue to erode your personal freedoms and civil liberties and transfer wealth to those in control. It's all fearmongering based on a combination of wildly manipulated data and flawed tests. Hopefully, local and federal leaders will wisen up and start issuing saner guidance sooner rather than later.

Time will tell if the July 14, 2020, White House Coronavirus Task Force decision to remove COVID-19 data collection from the CDC will have any effect. As of July 15, all U.S. hospitals are directed to bypass the CDC and "send all coronavirus patient information" to a non-public Health and Human Services database in D.C. instead.⁴⁰

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The beet has long been part of human history. Some of the oldest archaeological evidence dates the consumption of beets back to the Third Dynasty of Egypt, and Greek records show beets were cultivated around 300 BC.¹ Historical beetroots were long and thin, often resembling a red carrot. The modern cultivar didn't appear until the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe.

Originally, it was the beet greens that were consumed and not the fibrous roots.² These were occasionally used for medicine. The first record of the roots being eaten was in 1542 in either Germany or Italy. In 1747 a chemist from Berlin discovered how to extract sucrose from beets, leading to the development of the beet sugar industry, which uses fewer resources than sugarcane.

Ancient Romans believed beets were an aphrodisiac, as did the Greeks and Italians.³ They are nutrient-dense and easy to grow, making them appealing to backyard gardeners. The plants prefer full sun and a well-prepared, fertile soil.⁴ Since they develop a tap root, the soil should be free of rocks.

Most varieties take from 55 to 70 days to come to maturity. They can be stored in the refrigerator for up to a week and can be frozen, canned and pickled. The green tops are edible and full of important nutrients like vitamins K, A, C, magnesium and copper.⁵ However, the current sugar beet crop is over 90% GMO.⁶

Support Your Heart Health With Beets

They may not be a common addition to your menu planning, but it might be time to consider adding beets for their nutritional benefits and unique flavor. Beets can actually increase your production of nitric oxide (NO), which relaxes arteries and reduces blood pressure.⁷ High blood pressure is one of the health conditions that raises your risk for severe disease with COVID-19.

Scientists believe it is the nitrates naturally found in the root that help lower blood pressure by being converted to NO, which is a vasodilator. Scientists have been interested in the action of NO as it also has a significant effect on the ability of the arterial system to deliver nutrients and oxygen.

Researchers have identified how the body converts nitrite into nitric oxide.⁸ In a 2013 study published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, scientists discussed this pathway, along with the many health benefits that may be realized by eating beets.⁹ Some of the vegetables with the highest nitrate content include rocket, spinach, lettuce, radish and beetroot.

In a more recent study, researchers evaluated the differences in the effect beetroot juice had on younger and older adults.¹⁰ Their hypothesis was it would improve cognitive and cardiovascular function, with a greater potential in older adults. The team engaged 24 participants: 13 younger adults and 11 who were older than 50 years.

The participants drank 5 ounces of either beetroot juice or placebo. The study team measured plasma nitrate and nitrite concentrations along with heart rate, blood pressure, cognitive function and mood. After drinking the juice, the older group had a greater elevation of plasma nitrite; they also had a more pronounced reduction in diastolic blood pressure than the younger adults.

Systolic blood pressure was lowered in both groups, which pointed to potential improvements in heart health that the root vegetable may offer.

Nitric Oxide and Your Respiratory System

In a 2018 study, researchers measured exhaled nitric oxide in individuals who had consumed beetroot juice. The researchers were interested since "Deficits in NO are linked to loss of bronchoprotective effects in airway challenges and predict symptoms of respiratory infection."¹¹ It's possible, in other words, that raising exhaled NO could help protect your lungs from infection.

The team looked at the effect of beetroot juice on the flow rate of NO in men and women, as well as cardiovascular indicators and mental state. The measurements were taken at 45 minutes and 90 minutes after drinking 2.5 ounces of beetroot juice.

After drinking the juice, the participants increased their flow rate of NO by 21.3% in 45 minutes and by 20.3% in 90 minutes. One week later, the group drank a different beverage that was given as a control and the participants measured less than a 1% increase in NO flow rate. The researchers concluded:¹²

"As NO serves a key role in innate immunity, future research is needed to explore the potential clinical utility of beetroot and dietary nitrate to elevate FENO50 and prevent respiratory infection."

Beetroot Juice May Boost Physical Performance

The volume and speed of oxygen delivery to the body may also help physical performance and endurance.¹³ Exercise physiologists have researched nitric oxide in the hope that it could enhance athletic endurance and improve performance.¹⁴

In one paper published in the journal Sports Medicine, the authors wrote of the interest in the two pathways that the body uses to develop nitric oxide as it relates to exercise physiology, improving tolerance and reducing recovery time.¹⁵ While the authors of several past studies assessed the ability of adding NO in a healthy trained population to improve performance, their conclusions were not consistent.

In some studies, dietary supplementation improved performance and in others there was no effect. The authors of this paper hypothesized the training status of the participants may have been the factor that linked a positive effect with nitric oxide supplementation.

Additionally, most of the past work had been in a group of young males, suggesting further research is necessary so that it involves people in other populations, such as females and the elderly.

There Is No One Food That Protects Health

While beets are packed with nutrients, it's important to remember there is no single super food that protects your health and offers your body complete nutrition.¹⁶ Your body requires a variety of nutrients to support daily function and help protect against disease.

As I have talked about in the past, nutrient deficiencies can significantly impair your body's ability to function and can increase your risk for illness or disease. It's important to steer clear of processed foods that are high in sugar, high in calories and nearly devoid of nutrients.

You can find your healthiest foods around the perimeters of the grocery store aisles in the produce, dairy and meat sections. Remember while supplementing with a multivitamin may help fill nutrient gaps, it will never take the place of eating real food. Consider buying foods that have a longer shelf life, such as turnips, beets and hard squashes.¹⁷

According to Cape Cod Healthcare, in the days after you come home from the grocery store, it's a good strategy to first eat the foods that have a shorter shelf life, like salad greens, tomatoes and cucumbers; save the vegetables with a longer shelf life for later. Another option is to grow some of your vegetables at home, whether indoors in pots or outside.

There are several vegetables and herbs that do well in pots, including lettuce, basil, cilantro, onions and garlic. In fact, you may be able to grow enough to contribute to your dinner salad every evening.

Meal Planning Eases Panic Buying

Cooking creatively can be challenging, especially when your stress level may be higher than normal. It helps to develop a meal plan for the week and make your grocery list to fit the plan. This helps you stay within budget and reduces the number of impulse buys at the grocery store. Buying foods to fit your meals plan may also help you keep from panic buying.

Accept the fact that you may have some cravings for comfort food and try to make those foods at home, in order to cut down on the amount of processed food you eat. By making healthier food choices you'll support your overall health and reduce your risk for illness.

Eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, as well as grass fed dairy and meat, is a smart way to lower the risk of nutrient deficiencies. While you're spending more time at home, you have a great opportunity to add fermented foods to your diet plan. They are easy to make at home using fresh vegetables, and preparing them yourself gives you control over the flavor and texture.

By using a starter, you'll find that the fermented foods you produce at home offer your body a wide range of bacteria that help promote the health of your gut microbiome. Read more about the benefits of fermented foods as well as tips to make your own at home in "Flavorful Fermented Foods Have Healing Properties."

However, please understand that you certainly do not want to overdo beets as they are loaded with oxalates and can harm your health. I personally don't eat them but if you do decide to use them certainly use them in moderation.

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A second antimalarial treatment is being seriously considered and evaluated for its efficacy against COVID-19. The treatment is from the plant Artemisia annua, which most people know as sweet wormwood or sweet Annie. Research over the past few decades has revealed multiple health benefits from this plant with an uncommon name.

Another plant in the same family, Artemisia absinthium, has a different history. It has been used in the development of absinthe, an alcoholic beverage which is up to 80% alcohol prepared by macerating the leaves and distilling them.¹

However, it is the Artemisia annua, or sweet wormwood, that is a current focus of research. Sweet wormwood is a traditional Chinese medicine that has been used for more than 2,000 years. Research by Chinese scientists in the 1970s initiated what the World Health Organization calls “one of the most important advances in malaria control in modern times.”²

Wormwood and sweet wormwood belong to the Asteraceae family, which includes coneflowers, dandelions, ragweed and goldenrod.³ The plant is adaptable, hardy and in some cases considered invasive. Gardeners often plant it for the sweet-smelling foliage and its yellow flowers.⁴

Artemisia Annua May Hold One Key to COVID-19

Researchers isolated a class of compounds in sweet wormwood that demonstrated activity against cancer, schistosomiasis and malaria.⁵ More recently, it was discovered that the plant is bioactive against certain viruses such as cytomegalovirus, hepatitis B and C, and members of the herpes family, including herpes virus type 1 and Epstein-Barr.⁶

Following the SARS outbreak in 2003, researchers began evaluating the effectiveness of Chinese medicinal herbs against the virus.⁷ Four extracts showed promise, including Artemisia annua.

Building on this and other research, scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Germany collaborated with those at Freie Universität Berlin to carry out laboratory studies evaluating the bioactive compounds in the plant against SARS-CoV-2. Peter H. Seeberger, who was one of two scientists who oversaw the research, commented:⁸

"Having worked with compounds derived from A. annua plants, I was familiar with the interesting activities of the plants against many different diseases, including a range of viruses. Therefore, we felt that exploring the activity of this plant against COVID-19 was worth the undertaking.”

Stronger Antiviral Activity With Coffee

Seeberger was also encouraged by the international collaboration as scientists work together to find compounds that may improve the treatment and management of people with COVID-19. He said:⁹

“Given the encouraging results of Chinese colleagues in 2005 and similarities between the new virus and the one that caused SARS, plant extracts and artemisinin derivatives need to be tested as quickly as possible. This international collaboration makes this possible.”

After demonstrating antiviral capability in the lab, researchers moved to testing sweet wormwood in a human trial. They are using a cultivated line of seeds developed by ArtemiLife Inc. from Kentucky. The researchers found that when the compounds were extracted from this particular line, they demonstrated the strongest antiviral activity.

Klaus Osterrieder from Freie Universität Berlin conducted the activity assays in which they discovered that using an ethanolic extract of Artemisia and coffee produced the best results. When tested alone, the artemisinin didn’t demonstrate much antiviral activity. Osterrieder found the results remarkable:¹⁰

"I was surprised to find that A. annua extracts worked significantly better than pure artemisinin derivatives and that the addition of coffee further enhanced the activity.”

If they find success in the human trials, it may mean the discovery of a treatment for COVID-19 that meets many criteria. These include being widely available, relatively inexpensive, effective and safe.¹¹

Pick-the-Winner Study Design Scales Up Traditional Research

The extract is being added to an ongoing University of Kentucky clinical trial in which researchers are evaluating experimental treatments for COVID-19. In the race to find a viable treatment, clinical trials are taking on unique designs.

In this case, the researchers developed a “pick-the-winner” format that lets scientists quickly evaluate the results of the therapies being tested and move patients into clinical arms that appear to be working. Dr. Susanne Arnold, a medical oncologist from the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center, commented on the distinctive study design:¹²

“While there is no standard treatment for COVID-19, this trial gives us the ability to test multiple therapies rapidly in order to identify the most promising agents. This rapid assessment means that the trial can quickly include and test new therapies such as Artemisia annua.”

This study design is different from the remdesivir research that, according to The HighWire, appeared to be manipulated as the scientists changed the outcome measures, the number of study participants and the type of placebo used as the study moved forward.¹³

The adaptive U.K. wormwood study aims to move as many patients into successful treatments as possible as results are tabulated, while the data collection is ongoing. The treatments are also being reserved for patients assessed to be at high risk, who are either at home or in the hospital and have tested positive for COVID-19. Patients who have the symptoms but have not developed severe symptoms can also be included if they are in a high-risk category.

The researchers use a multidisciplinary committee to choose therapies allowed in the trial. Some of the criteria used to consider are those that “have excellent safety profiles and are readily available, rapidly scalable and relatively inexpensive.”

Those who choose to enroll in the trial are assigned one of four types of treatment, including Artemisia annua. Once the team has identified the most promising therapies from this study, they plan to enroll a larger number of patients in a traditional placebo-controlled trial.

Artemisia Annua Has a 30-Year History Treating Malaria

Artemisia annua has a long history of use as one of the best treatments for malaria.¹⁴ In a press release from Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, it was noted that artemisinin-based combinations are used throughout the world, they show little toxicity and are even used to treat malaria in newborns.¹⁵

There have been some reports of liver damage when using products containing artemisia annua.¹⁶ However, studies show the liver damage from sweet wormwood is both rare and self-limiting.¹⁷ The most severe cases reported were in people getting other antimalarial drugs with known hepatotoxicity. Symptoms appeared in days or weeks after starting Artemisia annua.

As the study at the University of Kentucky gets underway, the Malagasy Institute of Applied Research (IMRA) in Madagascar has already developed a product based on one of their traditional medicines from sweet wormwood. The director general, Dr. Charles Andrianjara, began work in January when COVID-19 was first announced.¹⁸

The group combed through their catalog of thousands of medicinal herbs collected since 1957. Their hypothesis was that if they could find a treatment for “the cough, respiratory difficulties, the aches, the fever, then we could treat the virus.”¹⁹

Some Concerned Monotherapy May Drive Malarial Resistance

The IMRA is well-respected in a country where many of the residents turn first to herbal medicine before looking for pharmaceutical drugs. They refined some and contributed to research that led to discovering pharmaceutical treatments that are internationally recognized, including a drug that helps with diabetes management and another now being used to treat certain cancers.

At the time of the announcement and launch of Covid-Organics (CVO) in Madagascar, fewer than 20 patients had used the treatment. This is likely since the country has had a low number of people with the virus — 405 confirmed cases as of May 22, 2020, as reported by Time.²⁰

The team had developed an herbal tea that combined Artemisia with other ingredients. Although the numbers were low, Andrianjara was encouraged since the remedies included in the tea have no known side effects. He went on to explain to Time:²¹

“’They have been thoroughly tested for toxicity, and they have been on the market for 30 years, so we already know their efficacy.’ He likens CVO to common Western treatments like painkillers, which some studies show do not work on everyone. ‘You can give 20 people paracetamol. It won’t harm any of them, but it won’t cure all of their headaches either. If CVO can cure 60% of the population, to me that’s good. It’s not the best, but it’s good.’”

This relatively nontoxic compound is the cornerstone of a combination therapy that has significantly brought down the number of deaths from malaria. Kevin Marsh from the University of Oxford has been studying malaria in Kenya for decades. He worries about the resistance the parasite may develop to artemisinin if it's used in Africa as a monotherapy.²²

When used to treat malaria, a second drug is included in the cocktail to reduce the potential for drug resistance, although the question of resistance is not clear as others don't believe it will be an issue since pharmacies in Africa have sold artemisinin monotherapy for many years.

After the announcement of CVO, several African nations requested information about shipments to their countries.²³ This prompted a statement from the World Health Organization on May 4, 2020, in which they expressed concern and rebuked unsubstantiated claims, writing:²⁴

“… caution must be taken against misinformation, especially on social media, about the effectiveness of certain remedies. Many plants and substances are being proposed without the minimum requirements and evidence of quality, safety and efficacy.

The use of products to treat COVID-19, which have not been robustly investigated can put people in danger, giving a false sense of security and distracting them from hand washing and physical distancing which are cardinal in COVID-19 prevention, and may also increase self-medication and the risk to patient safety.”

It’s Not Clear What’s in the Madagascar Brew

Health officials gave three reasons for their concern over the promotion of an herbal remedy like CVO to prevent and treat the novel coronavirus.²⁵ At the time of the promotion there was no scientific evidence to show the extract could work in humans. The fear is this would give users a false sense of security, leading people to stop social distancing and hand-washing.

The second concern was that the herbal tea or capsule can contain a cocktail of other bioactive compounds that may have side effects not associated with artemisinin. And third, widespread use may trigger resistant strains of malaria for people living in regions where the disease is endemic.

Chemical & Engineering News reports southeast Asia currently has an artemisinin-resistant malaria parasite, and signs of rising resistance are appearing in Papua New Guinea, Guyana and Rwanda. The African Union has requested that the government of Madagascar explain, scientifically, how the wormwood-based cocktail works.²⁶

Andrianjara’s statements are the result of observation from a handful of patients. It will also be difficult for others to validate the effects of CVO as the IMRA has not released the ingredients. While it is being promoted by the country’s president, the Madagascar National Academy of Medicine has not cleared it for distribution.

However, as some contemplate where the profit is being funneled from the sale of CVO, it is important to note that unlike remdesivir, which is being sold for $3,100 for a full course of treatment,²⁷ the cost to consumers for sweet wormwood treatments is relatively low. Covid-Organics can be found in almost every supermarket for the equivalent of 20 cents for a single serving and $1.50 for a box of 10 tea bags. Adrianjara suggests²⁸

“Instead of researching something new that costs a lot of money that we cannot afford, let’s go back and revisit our traditional knowledge. We have a lot of wealth in our traditions and culture, and maybe we don’t exploit it enough.”

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In this interview, Dr. Chris Knobbe, an ophthalmologist, discusses some of the eye-opening information found in his book, “Ancestral Dietary Strategy to Prevent and Treat Macular Degeneration.”¹

Knobbe is the founder and president of the Cure AMD Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to the prevention of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which is the No. 1 cause of blindness among the elderly. His book is a comprehensive treatise on the historical progression of AMD and provides compelling evidence that this is a disease caused by processed foods.

“It is manmade, processed, nutrient-deficient and toxic foods that are driving all the chronic diseases,” he says. “They're driving heart disease, stroke, hypertension, cancer, metabolic syndrome, obesity [and] macular degeneration …

When I say processed, manmade, nutrient-deficient, toxic, or processed foods, that is really just four things. It's really fairly simple. It's the nutrient-deficient foods which are refined: Wheat flour, refined added sugars, polyunsaturated vegetable oils and trans fats.”

Although we did not discuss these dietary issues and its connection to COVID-19 risk because the interview was done before March, it is still very relevant. We now know that eating processed foods, especially vegetable oils, will increase insulin resistance and metabolic inflexibility, which is one of the two largest risk factors for COVID-19, the other being vitamin D insufficiency.

Vegetable Oils Responsible for Emergence of Heart Disease

Refined flour, sugar, trans fats and vegetable oils are relatively recent additions to our food supply. Refined sugar has been around for a few hundred years, but it was consumed in really low amounts until the late 19th century. Vegetable oils emerged after the American Civil War. Refined white wheat flour came about in 1880 and trans fats in 1911.

“Those foods are what is driving almost all of our chronic metabolic and degenerative diseases,” Knobbe says. “Over the past year or two, I really dug into the history of most of these chronic diseases. For example, heart disease was an extreme medical rarity in the 19th century.

We have data from a paper by Jones and colleagues [published] in 2011. What they showed was that in the town of Boston in 1811, there were no known heart attacks.

Only 2.6% of that population in Boston died of sudden death. So even if we thought every single one of those was heart disease, which they weren't, but even if you wanted to say that they were, it's only 2.6% …

Sir William Osler, a famed physician, was one of the founding members of Johns Hopkins Medical Center. In 1897, he published a paper in which he reviewed his previous 21 years of hospital experience, and he noted maybe around a half a dozen cases of angina — chest pain that might be related to heart disease — but not a single myocardial infarction, not a single heart attack.

Some 13 years later, in 1910, he recounted 208 additional cases of angina, which he attributed to the stress of modern day life. In 1900, from the Jones paper, heart disease accounted for 12.5% of deaths, but that was known not to be coronary artery disease … That was cardiac valvular disease, which is driven by infectious diseases like rheumatic fever, syphilis and endocarditis. It wasn't heart attacks.

In fact, 1912, James Herrick published a paper on the first known heart attack in the United States with documented autopsy evidence. What's staggering is that 30 years later, in the 1930s, heart disease became the leading cause of death. It was virtually unknown in 1900. Nobody knew what a heart attack was in 1900. Nobody had seen one …

By 2010, 32.3% of people in the United States are dying of heart disease. But if you go back, what we're going to notice is that vegetable oils and trans fats, margarines, those things were replacing animal fats. That is the major driver of this, I believe.”

Diet Has Increased Cancer and Diabetes

Knobbe also reviews the historical data on cancer. Of the 942 people who died during 1811 in Boston, only five died of cancer. That’s 1 in 188 deaths. By 1900, cancer killed 1 in 17 people. Today, cancer accounts for 31.2% of deaths in the U.S., or nearly 1 in 3.

The same exponential growth can be seen in Type 2 diabetes. In the 19th century, any form of diabetes was extremely rare. One of the first studies on diabetes was published in 1935. In 1935-1936, 0.37% of Americans had diabetes. By 2015, that rate had risen to 9.4%. That's a 25-fold increase in 80 years.

The situation may actually be even worse than that, though, as the 9.4% rate refers to documented full-blown clinical diabetes. If you add in prediabetes and insulin resistance, then nearly 9 in 10 Americans are affected. According to recent NHANES data,² 87.8% of Americans are unhealthy based on five parameters of metabolic health, so virtually the entire population is at risk for and headed toward Type 2 diabetes.

Shocking Rise in AMD Prevalence

Macular degeneration became discoverable following the invention of the ophthalmoscope in 1851. The ophthalmoscope was in broad use by 1880. By 1900, there was 140 versions available. By 1914, there was over 200 versions of ophthalmoscope in use around the world.

Yet, between 1851 and 1930, there were no more than 50 cases of AMD reported in all the world's medical literature. It was virtually unknown. Prevalence began to increase in the 1930s, and by 1975, an estimated 4.5 million Americans suddenly had macular degeneration. By 1994, 15 million had it, and as of 2020, estimates put worldwide prevalence at 196 million. In 20 more years, it’s expected to hit 288 million.

“I've done the same thing with metabolic syndrome and with myopia, nearsightedness. They all track essentially the same. We see all of these go from rarity in the 19th century and early 20th century to staggering numbers today, and the prevalence continues to increase,” Knobbe says.

Metabolic Dysfunction Is Common Denominator

The common denominator that all of these diseases share is mitochondrial dysfunction caused by processed foods. Hopefully, knowing this will inspire and motivate you to change your eating habits. Once you realize what these foods are doing to you at the molecular level, you’ll be more excited about healthy choices.

“As I mentioned, what's happened is we have replaced nutrient-dense, healthy, safe, organic foods with nutrient-deficient, toxic, dangerous ultra-processed foods. As of 2009, 63% of the American diet was made up of those four foods — added sugars, refined white wheat flour, vegetable oils and trans fats …

In the year 1900, when everybody was healthy, 99% of added fats in the diet were animal fat — lard, butter and beef tallow. But by 2005, 105 years later, 86% of the added fats in the diet of Americans are vegetable oil-derived. They include vegetable oils, margarine [and] butter substitutes. Ultimately, all of those come from these dangerous vegetable oils that don't provide healthy fat-soluble vitamins, and are extraordinarily toxic.

What we now understand is that it is mitochondrial dysfunction that ties together all of these chronic diseases — heart disease, cancer, stroke, hypertension, obesity, metabolic syndrome, macular degeneration …

When you consume a whole lot of these edible seed oils, vegetable oils or omega-6 — that's all the same thing — then those oils, those omega-6s, oxidize and break down into toxic aldehydes. So, when we try to metabolize these, when we try to burn these for fuel, or we store them, what happens is they create a catastrophic peroxidation cascade.

They cause oxidation in fats, proteins [and] carbohydrates in your cells and cellular membranes everywhere. Ultimately, what this does is it damages a molecule called cardiolipin … a phospholipid in your mitochondria. It's a scaffold upon which the electron transport chain of your mitochondria depends. When cardiolipin is altered … it damages it.

What happens is that the mitochondria are no longer able to hold a proton gradient. They lose that proton gradient, and this causes loss of energy. The mitochondria then become sick; they’re not producing energy properly. Well, without energy, everything begins to fail. One of the first things that happen is that you can't properly burn fats for fuel, and you become more carbohydrate-dependent.”

The cardiolipin is only found in the inner mitochondrial membrane. In the lecture above, Knobbe illustrates the chain of events that result in mitochondrial dysfunction.

High-PUFA Diet Triggers Catastrophic Peroxidation Cascade

Paradoxically, the cardiolipin molecule depends on linoleic acid, and linoleic acid is the primary omega-6 in our diets. However, in a high-linoleic acid diet, the linoleic acid in the cardiolipin molecule ends up being destroyed. So, what gives? Knobbe explains:

“When you're consuming a high-PUFA diet, it's like having a house full of little tiny papers, and when you're welding or something, sparks are flying. You're going to catch the house on fire when you consume all these vegetable oils because you're going to be filling up your fat cells, tissues and membranes with linoleic acid, these omega-6s, and they're very fragile.

You're going to start this catastrophic peroxidation cascade, and you're also going to destroy the linoleic acid in the cardiolipin molecules where it is critical. Subsequently, you lose energy in your mitochondria, make your mitochondria sick, and then you become sick. This is how we become tired, fatigued, and we're gaining weight all at the same time.

I think most people are interested in how to lose weight. But by far, a million times more important is to be healthy, and this is how we get healthy. The same things that make you healthy also make you leaner.”

Another important variable here is the influence of carnosine, a dipeptide — two amino acids put together — made up of beta-alanine and histidine. Carnosine is only found animal products. It serves as a scavenger or sink for reactive carbonyl groups, intermediaries that go on to form advanced lipoxidation end-products and emulsification end-products.

If you can grab these carbonyls before they attack proteins and fats, you can essentially stop the vicious cycle resulting in catastrophic peroxidation. This is yet another reason why I do not recommend diets that exclude animal products and meat, as they will lower your carnosine level, and carnosine is a really important nutrient to limit the damage from oxidation products. It's also important for mitochondrial function.

Toxic Aldehydes

Knobbe has been studying the toxic aldehydes that result from these omega-6 fats. When you consume an omega-6 fat, it first reacts with a hydroxyl radical or peroxide radical, producing a lipid hydroperoxide. This lipid hydroperoxide then rapidly degenerates into toxic aldehydes, of which there are many.

Examples include 4-hydroxynonenal (4-HNE) and malondialdehyde (MDA), as well as oxidized linoleic acid metabolites such as 9-HODE, 13-HODE, carboxyethylpyrrole and acrolein.

“Most of my research in terms of what these do is focused on what's going on in the eye,” Knobbe says, “but these are extraordinarily dangerous molecules. For example, HNE has been tied to virtually every single chronic disease there is, including heart disease, atherosclerotic disease, Alzheimer's, macular degeneration, obesity, Type 2 diabetes.

All of those have been connected to HNE, and it’s been called a causal factor. It is that powerful. These are extraordinarily dangerous molecules at very low concentrations. MDA is an extreme toxin. It’s cytotoxic. It is mutagenic. It's carcinogenic.

The oxidized linoleic acid metabolites, like the 9- and 13-HODE, they are driving oxidized LDL, for example, which is a huge player in atherosclerosis. Carboxyethylpyrrole, in the eye, induces autoantibodies … They attack the retina directly. We see these more than double the numbers in people with macular degeneration. So, we have a major driver there.

Acrolein is the toxic aldehyde that is in cigarette smoke and vegetable oils. To give you an idea, an average cigarette produces 18 to 98 micrograms of acrolein when you smoke it. A large french fries, roughly, 154 grams of french fries from a fast food restaurant … produce 1 to 1.5 milligrams of acrolein.

So, let me put this in perspective. Eating a large french fries can give you the same amount of acrolein as smoking 17 to 26 average cigarettes or up to 83 cigarettes lowest in acrolein. Now, they both can cause lung cancer, for example.

Here we can see that you're getting a much larger dose of acrolein from eating french fries than you're ever going to get from even being near smoke.”

Knobbe also points out what you lose out on when eating vegetable oils, namely fat-soluble vitamins. Animal fats such as lard, butter and beef tallow provide not only healthy fats but also essential vitamins such as vitamins A, D and K2. “Let's face it, meat is the most densely nutritious food that most anybody in the United States ever gets,” Knobbe says.

One of the benefits of eating meat is that it is loaded with carnosine, which is a dipeptide consisting of beta-alanine and histidine. This is a terrific scavenging agent for advanced lipoxidation endproducts (ALEs) like the fats discussed above.

If you’re excluding meat from your diet and consume large amounts of industrial processed oils, you’re setting yourself up for metabolic disaster. Without a doubt, low carnosine and high aldehydes is a prescription for premature death from chronic disease. At the very least it would be wise to take a carnosine or beta-alanine supplement.

Your Body Can Recover

While the good news is that you can recover your health by eliminating these unhealthy omega-6-rich oils from your diet — essentially ditching processed foods — the bad news is they have a rather long half-life.

According to Knobbe, polyunsaturated fats from vegetable oils, seed oils and trans fats are mostly stored (opposed to being used for fuel), and have a half-life of 600 to 680 days. That means it will take quite a few years to empty your body stores of these damaging omega-6 fats.

“I quit consuming these fats in 2011,” Knobbe says, “and I think it was 2015 or 2016 before I started hitting a lot better health. But now, at age 59, I can weightlift, sprint, run stairs.

I do so many of the things I could do when I was in my 20s. I wasn't headed that way back in 2011. I was headed for absolute disaster. I mean, I may have not even been alive today if it weren't for beginning to understand all this and changing my diet.”

In the interview, Knobbe also discusses how his arthritis was traced back to oxalates, which are found exclusively in plants. Ironically, many of the plant foods that are praised for their healthiness have the highest amounts of oxalates and can wreak havoc on those with arthritis or other autoimmune conditions.

“Oxalates can precipitate out in your joints, tendons, muscles, perhaps arteries and drive all sorts of chronic inflammation, so arthritis, myalgias, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, all of these disorders may be driven by oxalates,” he says.

“In 2011, when I was 50 years old, my arthritis was so severe. I was in a devastated condition … [Dr. Mercola] referred me to Sally K. Norton, who is perhaps the world's expert in this area. I’m now … changing my diet to get lower in oxalates, and I'm doing better and better all the time. I really believe that it may not be long before I am arthritis-free …

I think I would eat 1 or 2 cups of spinach in salads three or four times a week. That’s massive doses [of oxalates]. Most people shouldn't get more than 150 milligrams of oxalates in a day. Many days, I would be getting 1 to 1.5 grams, so maybe about 10 times as much as what's recommended.

Over decades, you accumulate these [oxalates]. They're stored in your tissues. The good news is that they're water soluble, and they can leach back out, but it too can take years. So, I'm apparently on a slow recovery, kind of like getting rid of polyunsaturated oils in your body. It'll happen, but it's not going to happen overnight.”

Macular Degeneration Strongly Linked to Processed Food Diet

Aside from improving your overall health and avoiding chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, avoiding sugars, refined wheat flour, vegetable oils and trans fats is also crucial for the prevention of AMD. Knobbe reviews research showing the connections between a processed food diet and AMD.

In Southwestern rural Nigeria, 0.1% of the adult population over the age of 50 have macular degeneration. A mere 240 miles away in Onitsha, Nigeria, the prevalence is 3.2%. The difference between these two populations is their food supply.

The people in Southwestern rural Nigeria do not have access to processed foods. They live off native traditional foods. The people in Onitsha, Nigeria, do have access to processed foods, but at far lower amounts than what we get in the U.S.

Barbados, meanwhile, has a macular degeneration rate of 24.3% — 243 times higher than the Africans of Southwestern rural Nigeria. What stands out about Barbados is the fact that it’s known by nutrition researchers all around the world as a Mecca for processed food. They import almost all of their food.

“You and I know what that means. It means it's all sugar, refined flour and vegetable oils. That's what you can package up and send across continents, people can eat it months later, and it's still called food,” Knobbe says.

“That's what these people are eating, and they have a ‘world profile’ of metabolic disease in Barbados, metabolic syndrome, obesity, heart disease, cancer, Type 2 diabetes and 24.3% macular degeneration prevalence — 243 times greater than the Africans of Southwestern rural Nigeria who can't get processed foods.

All three [populations have] the same West African heritage. How could we in any possible way conclude that that's about aging and genetics, which is the primary belief system about macular degeneration today?

… Similarly, in 1969, New Zealand’s macular degeneration prevalence for people over 50 was 1.3%. In 2014, macular degeneration prevalence in people over the age of 45 was 10.3%. That's an eight-fold increase …

Their vegetable oil [intake] in 1960 was less than 1 gram a day. By 1991 onward, it was around 20 grams a day. So again, we see a huge increase in vegetable oils, and we see a massive increase in macular degeneration prevalence.”

More Information

To learn more about how your diet influences your risk of AMD and other chronic diseases, be sure to pick up a copy of Knobbe’s book, “Ancestral Dietary Strategy to Prevent and Treat Macular Degeneration.” More information can also be found on CureAMD.org.

“If you want to reach out to me, you can go to the contact link for that and send me a message. I answer every single message,” Knobbe says. “I'm in this to help people, and I love it.”

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Siim Land has written an excellent book called “Metabolic Autophagy: Practice Intermittent Fasting and Resistance Training to Build Muscle and Promote Longevity.”¹ It’s a valuable synergetic companion to “Fat for Fuel,” as it delves into some areas I did not cover. It compiles and presents all the basic science you need to know in a digestible format.

Here, we discuss his latest book, “Stronger by Stress: Adapt to Beneficial Stressors to Improve Your Health and Strengthen the Body,”² which came out July 26, 2020. It reviews the really important concepts of hormesis and antifragility.

“Part of the reason I wrote the book was to help people become more resilient and more robust, because the world we live in is full of unpredictable challenges,” Land says.

“Pandemics and viruses are part of them, but there's also other potential dangers like global warming or fluctuations in temperature, different kinds of physical challenges that have been a part of the human condition for eons.

The modern human has become somewhat more fragile towards those things, and this kind of goes to show why most people just overreacted to the coronavirus and were really scared.

The book itself was meant to create more resilient people in the face of these unavoidable challenges of life, because you can't really avoid them. You can't create this bubble society where everything is perfect. We all come across different kinds of stressors all the time.”

Stronger by Stress

As it pertains to COVID-19, evidence suggest if you can get two key variables right — a vitamin D level of at least 30 ng/mL (75 nmol/L) and metabolic flexibility — your chances of getting sick from SARS-CoV-2 infection is fairly remote. But improving your resilience against stress is also important.

“If your body is unfit or lacking key nutrients, then even the smaller stressors in your life are going to become more dreadful. You're going to experience chronic stress, and you're going to overactivate the sympathetic nervous system, even if you're stuck in traffic or if you spill a cup of coffee or whatever it is.

These small stressors can become really massive if your body is incapable of dealing with those stressors. On the other hand, if your body has been exposed to the right amount of stress at the right time, then it has also built up this higher level of stress adaptation and resilience. So, the small stressors are becoming literally meaningless. You have a bigger capacity to face even the larger stressors.”

What Is Antifragility?

Antifragility is a term coined by economist Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book, “Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder.” The term describes a state that is the opposite of fragility. Antifragility describes how stress makes you stronger rather than breaking you down or apart.

“[Antifragility] isn't precisely the same thing as robustness or resilience,” Land says. “Something that is robust is something like a piece of stone or a metal. You can heat it, you can drop it on the ground. It’s not going to break, but it's going to stay the same, it's not going to change, whereas something that is antifragile is going to gain from the stress.”

Time-Restricted Eating Builds Antifragility

One of Land’s favorite tools for health and longevity is intermittent fasting, or more accurately termed, time-restricted eating, and one of the reasons for this is because it allows you to become metabolically flexible and insulin sensitive, which builds your antifragility.

“A [2019] study in the New England Journal of Medicine found intermittent fasting mimics a lot of the same effects of calorie restriction. It can actually be somewhat more beneficial because it not only has life extension benefits, but it also turns on certain key defensive mechanisms inside a body that make it more antifragile and also provide additional health benefits.

One of those things has to do with autophagy, but there's also things like increased glutathione, increased NRF2, sirtuins and NAD and many other longevity-boosting and immune-strengthening pathways that get activated when you're fasting that don't necessarily get activated when you are restricting calories.”

So, time-restricted eating is a great way to get the benefits of calorie restriction without experiencing the negative side effects from it, because extreme and prolonged calorie restriction can also leave you vulnerable and more fragile by triggering muscle loss, for example.

That will actually shorten your life span and make you more vulnerable to potential dangers in your environment, such as falling and breaking your hip. Intermittent fasting can sidestep these negative side effects.

Time-Restricted Eating for Muscle Building

A persistent question surrounding intermittent fasting is what the best strategy is. Should you eat just once a day, or can you get away with two or more meals as long as you eat it all within a certain time window? And, if so, how long can that window be? Land comments:

“I think there isn't inherently much difference between eating one meal a day or doing the 16-to-8 type of intermittent fasting where you eat twice a day within eight hours because, already, if you're fasting within one 24-hour period, then the fast itself isn't substantially different. The amount of autophagy wouldn't matter that much either in such a short timeframe, as long as you're still healthy.”

Now, if your intention is to build muscle, having two meals a day, within a six- to eight-hour window, would make more sense. Having just one meal a day is likely better if you are seeking to lose weight, but might be challenging.

This is likely for the simple reason that you’re only going to build muscle when you activate mTOR, and to activate mTOR you need to introduce protein and leucine or branched-chain amino acids, along with some healthy carbohydrates.

If you eat twice, six hours apart, you can activate mTOR twice a day, thus allowing you to get better muscle-building benefits. As explained by Land:

“What determines your muscle growth throughout the 24-hour period is the balance between mTOR stimulation and autophagy. So, if you're eating only once a day, then the amount of mTOR stimulation is relatively small compared to eating twice a day or three times a day.

That's why if someone has the goal of increasing their muscle mass, maintaining muscle mass or preventing sarcopenia, then for them it is much wiser to incorporate more frequent meals. For them I would say that a 16-to-8 type of fasting where they eat twice a day is perfectly suitable, and is actually better than the one meal a day.

It becomes increasingly more difficult to maintain muscle mass if you're already predisposed to sarcopenia and you're eating once a day, because there's a threshold of how much mTOR you can stimulate per meal, and how much muscle protein synthesis you can create per meal as well. It doesn't have to mean that you start eating six times a day. Increasing the eating window is generally a better idea.

For most people, I would say that the 16-to-8 type of fasting, where they fast for 16 hours and eat within eight hours, is a really good balance between getting a daily stimulation in autophagy, while at the same time also stimulating enough mTOR and being able to build muscle."

I found this advice personally helpful as I was pushing my eating window to four hours, but after Land related this commonsense strategy, I extended it to six to eight hours, which actually is easier on the kidneys. Also, as noted by Land, pushing your eating window to be excessively narrow can backfire and slow down your metabolism.

In the context of stress adaptation and antifragility, if your body becomes too accustomed to the fasting because you’re eating only one meal a day all the time, then that can eventually slow down your metabolism and lower thyroid functioning. This in turn makes you more prone to insulin resistance, which is exactly what you’re trying to avoid by eating just once a day.

Carbs Aren’t All Bad

While carbs have gotten a bad rap, they are still an important part of your diet. In fact, when you're seeking to stimulate mTOR, carbs may be just as important as protein, because insulin secretion is a powerful activator of mTOR.

I believe carb cycling can be highly beneficial in this respect. If you’re chronically low-carb, it will provide you with significant benefits initially, but long-term, it can backfire. Land explains:

“Carbs can be useful for muscle growth, but they're not a necessary part of it. You can stimulate mTOR and build muscle with protein only … but the insulin is still a very powerful anabolic hormone and it does help. It is possible to build muscle with a low carb or a ketogenic diet, but at the same time carbs can be also useful.

I do believe that chronic ketosis isn't necessarily the best solution either, especially for metabolic flexibility because there are a lot of studies showing that chronic ketosis can eventually lead to insulin resistance or some mild forms of it …

I believe a more flexible approach is better in the long-term because you're able to still use both. You're still able to become a fat burner while at the same time you don't become insulin resistant towards carbs either, and you can incorporate both.

In practice that would mean that people can do some form of cyclical keto diet, where they eat keto on some days but also incorporate some days where they eat more carbs to kick themselves out of ketosis, as well as break this mild insulin resistance that may develop. I myself like to eat keto on days where I'm not working out.

So, on my rest days where I don't have a lot of physical activity, then it's perfect to stay in ketosis and eat low carb because my body isn't burning that many carbs for fuel either, whereas on days where I do high-intensity training or some resistance training, or on days when I want to really stimulate mTOR, and on those days, I'll just have more carbs because the body uses carbs and glycogen during a workout.

If you eat carbs after a workout, then the body is already primed to use those carbs more efficiently instead of storing them as fat or instead of developing diabetes from it. So, it's a perfect time to strategize or time your carbohydrate intake around your exercise.

Your body is the most insulin sensitive after a workout because the muscle contractions activate the glucose transporter GLUT4. Then you don't even need insulin to shuttle carbs into muscle cells either. So that's why having some carbs around a workout itself won't necessarily be harmful as long as you are still metabolically flexible and you have metabolic health.”

Land’s explanation above caused me to change my own carb cycling to a more optimal schedule. While nothing is set in stone and listening to your body is important, if you are not insulin resistant, I believe cycling in carbs once or twice a week and remaining low-carb, below 50 grams per day, the rest of the week is a good strategy, as nutritional ketosis has so many profound metabolic benefits.

That said, if you’re already insulin resistant, as 90% of the population is, or diabetic, then adding carbs will be counterproductive, so it’s important to assess your individual situation. If your metabolic flexibility is already good, then being on a restrictive low-carb diet isn’t really necessary anymore.

Hydroxy Methylbutyrate

One excellent reminder in Land’s book is the importance of hydroxy methylbutyrate (HMB), a metabolite of the branched-chain amino acid leucine, which is the most potent stimulator of mTOR. To activate mTOR and boost muscle protein synthesis, you need a significant quantity of leucine, at least 3 grams.

I have a kidney damage from mercury poisoning that limits me from eating high amounts of protein. The beautiful thing about HMB is it doesn’t stress the kidneys. After reading “Stronger by Stress,” I started adding HMB to my breakfast as I wasn’t getting the minimum dose of leucine needed to activate mTOR. Since then, I’ve noticed a significant change in my body's ability to create more muscle mass. Land comments:

“Using leucine or HMB can be really useful for getting more protein synthesis from less protein. You can get away with eating less protein and still getting the benefits of the mTOR stimulation. But I would say that leucine itself could be better than HMB by itself.

HMB has some anticatabolic effects, but most of those effects are mediated by leucine and mTOR itself. You could use both, but if you want to get more benefits from the mTOR and muscle growth, then leucine is probably more important than HMB.”

The Benefits of Heat-Shock and Cold-Shock Proteins

“Stronger by Stress” also delves into the science of heat-shock proteins and cold-shock proteins, activated by exposure to heat and cold respectively. Heat-shock proteins repair misfolded proteins and RNA, increase glutathione and promote autophagy, among other things.

Cold-shock proteins also activate antioxidant defense mechanisms, and lower inflammation and oxidative stress. Born and raised in Estonia, Land is familiar with the cold, and embraces cold exposure for its physical conditioning and mental toughness benefits.

“If you are habitually engaging in cold exposure throughout the entire year, then the winter itself becomes a piece of cake. It becomes less stressful on yourself and it becomes less damaging. You're able to adapt to it faster than normal people.

If you're constantly using central heating or you're using the heating in your car and you're never really exposed to the cold for any longer than a few minutes, then you're missing out on the benefits of the cold shock proteins. You're also making your body more vulnerable and more fragile, back to the original point that we talked about.

So that's why I do it. The mental aspect is also really great. I used to take a cold shower every morning, and it really helped me develop more self-discipline and self-control.

The rationale for me was that if I'm able to start the day with a cold shower, then anything else for the rest of the day is going to be that much easier because I already climbed over this initial challenge.”

Muscle Building Is Essential to Avoid Sarcopenia

In the interview, Land reviews some of his recommendations for high-intensity resistance training, such as doing multiple sets, split training and other strategies that are also covered in his book. As noted by Land, maintaining muscle and keeping physically active is probably one of the best things you can do to extend both your life span and health span.

Age-related muscle loss, called sarcopenia, is a significant threat to health that virtually no one can escape. Use it or lose it applies here, and muscle is far easier to lose than gain, and its lost much faster than you can build it.

For this reason, I strongly recommend strength training for all ages, especially the elderly. The good news is you can effectively build muscle without risking injury from heavy loads by using blood flow restriction (BFR) training. In Japan, where the technique was developed, it’s known as KAATSU. You can learn more about the fascinating history of BFR in my interview with Steven Munatones, who brought this fitness system to the U.S.

It’s important to realize that sarcopenia is not just cosmetic, and it’s not just about frailty. Your muscle tissue, which makes up about half of your body’s tissues, is a metabolic organ, an endocrine organ. Your muscle tissue makes cytokines and myokines, and is a sink for glucose.

Insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes accelerate sarcopenia, and research shows glucose fluctuations are independently associated with this condition. As noted in one 2019 study,³ “glucose fluctuations were significantly associated with a low muscle mass, low grip strength, and slow walking speed.”

The effectiveness of BFR for the prevention and reversal of muscle wasting is directly addressed in an April 2019 study⁴ in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle:

“Muscle wasting leads to significant decrements in muscle strength, cardiorespiratory, and functional capacity, which increase mortality rates. As a consequence, different interventions have been tested to minimize muscle wasting.

In this regard, blood flow restriction (BFR) has been used as a novel therapeutic approach to mitigate the burden associated with muscle waste conditions.

Evidence has shown that BFR per se can counteract muscle wasting during immobilization or bed rest. Moreover, BFR has also been applied while performing low intensity resistance and endurance exercises and produced increases in muscle strength and mass.

Endurance training with BFR has also been proved to increase cardiorespiratory fitness. Thus, frail patients can benefit from exercising with BFR due to the lower cardiovascular and join stress compared with traditional high intensity exercises.

Therefore, low intensity resistance and endurance training combined with BFR may be considered as a novel and attractive intervention to counteract muscle wasting and to decrease the burden associated with this condition.”

BFR Summary

For a detailed discussion about the benefits of BFR and how it can be done, see “Build Muscle Faster, Safer and Easier With BFR Training.” In brief, BRF involves exercising your muscles while partially restricting arterial inflow and fully restricting venous outflow in either both proximal arms or legs.⁵

Venous flow restriction is achieved by using thin elastic bands on the extremity being exercised. By restricting the venous blood flow, you create a relatively hypoxic (low oxygen) environment in the exercising muscle, which in turn triggers a number of physiological benefits, including the production of hormones such as growth hormone and IGF-1, commonly referred to as “the fitness hormones.”⁶ 

It also increases vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which acts as “fertilizer” for growing more blood vessels and improving their lining (endothelium).

I believe BRF is one of the best strategies available to address the epidemic of sarcopenia,⁷ and for most people who are not competitive athletes it may be the only form of resistance training they need. Land, like me, is a big fan of the KAATSU system,⁸ and uses it every day.

“If I'm not doing an actual workout with them, then I'll just use the KAATSU cycle, the on and off pressures. So even if I'm not doing an actual exercise with them, then I'll still do the cycle to pump more blood into the muscle and accelerate recovery.

On other days, I'll use [the bands while doing] biceps curls and pushups. With the legs, I'll do squats and lunges, or just regular walking. I really enjoy them and I find that they accelerate recovery. Even if it's not for the exercise performance, I think the cardiovascular effects are still worthwhile.”

Bad Fats Are Worse for You Than Sugar

Land also discusses the benefits and importance of omega-3 fats, and the hazard of vegetable oils and oxidized, rancid fats. It’s important to realize that both omega-3 and omega-6 oils are integrated into your cell membranes.

While omega-3s make your cell membranes healthier, omega-6 fats from vegetable oils wreak havoc with your cellular metabolism, and have a half-life of 600 to 680 days, as explained in my interview with Dr. Chris Knobbe. I firmly believe, as does Land, that harmful oils and fats are far more hazardous to your health than added sugar and grain carbs.

“The aspect of lipid peroxidation itself is also accelerating aging and causes carcinogenesis and also leads the creation or the accumulation of lipofuscin, which is this age-related wear and tear pigment,” Land explains.

“Lipofuscin also begins to cause cellular damage and inhibits autophagy. Again, once you have bad fats stuck inside your cell membranes, then burning fat itself also becomes an inflammatory act.

So, if you are fasting while you have bad fats inside your cell membranes, then you are leaching those same bad fats into your system, and that's why you may get a lot of detox symptoms. You may actually feel worse from fasting or ketosis just because you're burning the wrong fats that are stuck inside your body fat.”

One simple way to tell whether you might have a lot of bad fats in your system is to look at your skin. The dark so-called “age spots” or “liver spots” many have are caused by lipofuscin. Those spots can eventually disappear if you clean up your diet.

More Information

We cover a lot of ground in this interview, as we review many of the topics Land covers in his book. For example, we touch on the harmful impact of high iron, which in conjunction with lipid peroxidation is particularly disastrous; the importance of sleep and nose breathing; and how to avoid mouth breathing while asleep.

We also discuss senolytic therapies — strategies that remove senescent (old, damaged) cells, thus providing antiaging benefits. One of the most effective senolytic therapies, in Land’s opinion, is intermittent fasting. Cyclical ketosis also helps clear out senescent cells, and certain compounds, such as curcumin, EGCG, quercetin, resveratrol, sulforaphane and allicin have senolytic effects.

Because fasting is a powerful senolytic therapy, these compounds are best taken while you’re fasting. So, for example, provided you’ve eaten your last meal early enough in the evening, take your supplement right before you go to bed. That way, it can work for another several hours while you’re sleeping.

Land also discusses how autophagy and nutritional ketosis may help protect against EMF damage. To learn more about all of these topics that we’ve merely scratched the surface of here, be sure to pick up a copy of “Stronger by Stress,”⁹ which is a great follow-up to and continuation of “Metabolic Autophagy: Practice Intermittent Fasting and Resistance Training to Build Muscle and Promote Longevity.”¹⁰ Both are excellent and well worth reading. In closing, Land reminds us:

“It's important to engage in these small stressors that have a hormetic effect on a regular basis because they're not permanent. You're going to lose them if you don't use them. So, if you don't use the sauna, then you're going to lose your ability to tolerate heat. The same applies to exercise, to fasting.

Those things should be a part of your regular lifestyle. They are really beneficial for your overall longevity as well as just resiliency against stress. So, I personally feel that doing intermittent fasting, cold showers, heat exposure — all those things have helped me tolerate stress in other areas of life much better.

I'm able to tolerate stress from work, I'm able to tolerate stress from other people so I don't get triggered or I don't get angry at other people. I'm not stressed out from those things because my stress resiliency is much higher than it is in the average person.”

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