Health & Fitness

As every year during our annual Fluoride Awareness Week, Fluoride Action Network (FAN) founder Dr. Paul Connett is here to provide us with a progress update. FAN has been instrumental in reducing fluoride exposure in North America and in many countries throughout the world over the past 20 years.

As in previous years, we ask that you consider donating to this worthy organization that is spearheading the daunting task of eliminating water fluoridation around the world. As usual, Mercola.com will match your donation, dollar for dollar, up to $25,000 during Fluoride Awareness Week.

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

Fluoride Lowers Children’s IQ

From the very beginning, one of Connett’s driving concerns was the possibility that fluoride might be lowering children’s IQ.

“Two Chinese studies were published in 1995 and 1996, in English. I was very concerned, and felt strongly that if there was any evidence that fluoride lowered intelligence of children, then there's no way you would put benefits to teeth above that and continue water fluoridation,” Connett says.

Ten years later, in 2006, the National Research Council looked at the toxicology of fluoride.¹ At that time, there were six IQ studies and, based on those six studies along with many animal studies, the NRC concluded that fluoride did in fact pose a threat to the brain. By 2008, there were 18 such studies.

In 2012, a distinguished team, partly from Harvard University, did a review² of 27 IQ studies; 25 from China and two from Iran. Strikingly, 26 of the studies showed children with higher fluoride exposure had lower IQ than the children with lower fluoride exposure.

“The bombshell came in 2017. Up to that point, we had about 60 studies that had shown a lowering of IQ, most of them from China, but also some from India, some from Iran, some from Mexico,” Connett says.

US-Funded Study Confirms Decades’ Long Suspicions

The bombshell study^3,4 Connett refers to, known as the “Bashash study” (named after the lead author, Morteza Bashash, Ph.D.), was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the Environmental Protection Agency.

It followed pregnant women and their babies for 12 years. They measured the fluoride in their urine, which reveals total exposure, regardless of the source or sources, and they found a strong relationship between the fluoride level in mothers’ urine and IQ scores in their children at the ages of 4, and between 6 and 12.

It’s important to realize that it’s not the concentration of fluoride in the water (measured in mg per liter) that is significant for health. What matters is the dose you get in milligrams per day, and the dosage (mg/day divided by the individual’s body weight), and these depend on a variety of fluctuating factors.

“The NIH is a parent of the Public Health Service, so they've been promoting fluoride for years and years (since 1950). So, I believe they put a lot of money into this study thinking that it would prove, once and for all, that crazy people like me and others were absolutely wrong about the notion that fluoride lowers IQ in children.

But lo and behold, they gave us very, very strong evidence that it is. And that the most susceptible age, as far as fluoride's impact on the brain, is during fetal development.

It turns out the placenta does not protect the fetus from fluoride, and, as you know, up to about six months of age, the blood-brain barrier is not fully formed in the baby. So, the fetus is very susceptible to this impact of fluoride.”

The first response of the American Dental Association was that the findings didn’t apply to the United States, since it was done in Mexico City. However, this ignored the fact that human beings are human beings, by measuring fluoride in the urine they had a measure of total exposure, regardless of the source. It really doesn’t matter if the fluoride comes from water, other beverages, food or toothpaste.

Canadian Researchers Confirm ‘Bombshell’ Results

In 2019, the NIH study was replicated in Canada,⁵ and they too found that higher fluoride levels in maternal urine were associated with lower IQ in their offspring. The only major difference was that based on maternal urine levels only boys appeared to be affected, not the girls. But when the mothers’ fluoride exposure was calculated from ingestion (i.e. from food and beverages) there was a relationship between that and the children’s IQ for both boys and girls,

“Now, this study, unlike the first one, the Bashash study, got a certain amount of coverage,” Connett says. “[It] was published in the journal of the American Medical Association, Pediatrics. That's one of the major pediatrics journals in the world, and the editors of this journal went to extreme lengths.

They knew this was controversial. Hats off for them to take it on. They knew it was going to be consequential, so they doubled up on the peer review process, they double checked the statistics, so they were confident when they launched it. They even ran an editorial saying the steps they'd taken.

They had two of their editors, the editor of JAMA in total and the editor of JAMA Pediatrics did a 20-minute podcast explaining how astounding the results were. They said, ‘Oh, we had no idea that fluoride caused any problems to health.’ I don't know what they'd been reading. But anyway … it was a bombshell for them to suddenly find that fluoride could be damaging the brain of the fetus.

They also ran an editorial from David Bellinger, one of the world's experts on lead's neurotoxicity, and he said ‘The measurements here are akin to what's happening with lead.’ In other words, it’s very, very serious, and that got a lot of coverage around the world.

But the other side was organized and they quickly got some ‘experts’ — none of them actually experts on fluoride or toxicology or neurotoxicity — who said all the right things to dampen people's concern about this study.”

Two Other Important Studies

“There are four studies that people need to know about,” Connett says. To learn more about each, see Connett’s video commentaries on FluorideALERT.org FAN.tv page. Aside from the two already mentioned, the two other ones are:

• The Riddell study, published in 2019, found a nearly 300% increase in ADHD prevalence in adolescents in Canadian communities with fluoridated water supplies, compared to those living in non-fluoridated communities. “Science never stops,” Connett says. “You have to entertain the notion that an ugly fact can destroy a beautiful theory, in this particular case, we got a lot of ugly facts, but the big one is the fact that fluoride could damage children's brains.”
• The Till study, which compared the IQ of children who had been bottle fed as babies in fluoridated communities (and thus would have gotten fluoridated water in their formula) versus non-fluoridated communities. Here, they found a large IQ difference.

FAN Lawsuit Against EPA on Fluoride Underway

November 22, 2016, a coalition including FAN, Food & Water Watch, Organic Consumers Association, American Academy of Environmental Medicine, International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology, Moms Against Fluoridation and several individuals, filed a petition^6,7 calling on the EPA to ban the deliberate addition of fluoridating chemicals to U.S. drinking water under Section 21 of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). 

As explained by Connett, the TSCA allows citizens and nongovernmental organizations to petition the EPA to remove toxic substances found to pose a threat (an unreasonable risk) either to the general population or a subset of that population.

The petition was made on the grounds that a large body of research demonstrates fluoride is neurotoxic at doses within the range now seen in fluoridated communities, and included over 2,500 pages of scientific documentation detailing these health risks. 

The EPA denied the petition⁸ February 27, 2017, on the grounds that it had failed to present “a scientifically defensible basis” to conclude that anyone had in fact suffered neurotoxic harm as a result of fluoride exposure. In response, FAN and its coalition partners filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, legally challenging the EPA’s denial of their petition.

This interview was taped June 2, 2020. FAN was scheduled to begin arguments in front of a judge June 8. FAN will explain the neurotoxicity of fluoride shown in these and other studies, and then the EPA’s industry experts, paid consultants who have also defended glyphosate and other toxins, will present their evidence. (see FAN’s web site FluorideAlert.org for a summary of the trial)

“But we have, for our lawsuit … some of the leading experts on neurotoxicity in the world,” Connett says, “including a couple that were involved in the studies I've been talking about.” That includes Bruce Lanphear, the EPA’s go-to person for information about the neurotoxicity of lead. Lanphear worked with Till on the JAMA Pediatrics article and the bottle feeding study listed above. Howard Hu, lead author of the Bashash study, is another expert FAN witness, as is Philippe Grandjean.

“I am very optimistic. [The EPA] doesn’t have the science. We do. And not only do we have the science, but we have some of the world's best experts testifying for us. So, unless these crafty lawyers for the EPA are able to muddy the waters, I think we'll have no trouble in demonstrating three things: One, that the preponderance of evidence that fluoride is neurotoxic is overwhelming.

Second, that it is a risk at the levels at which we add fluoride to the water. And thirdly, it's an unreasonable risk. Because even if your number one focus was reducing tooth decay, there are other ways of delivering fluoride, instead of this ridiculous notion of putting it in the drinking water and forcing it on your whole population.

I think we can demonstrate those three things. And I'm happy to tell you that my son, who started our webpage in 2000 and developed the largest health database in the world, bigger than other fluoridating governments, by the way, is going to be the lawyer fighting this case,” Connett says.

You can now view the transcript of Michael Connett's brilliant summary statement

The End of Water Fluoridation Is Inevitable

If victorious, the EPA will likely appeal, as this is a classic stall tactic. “There's no agency in the United States that is better at dragging its feet on controversial issues,” Connett says.

“They dragged their feet for over 18 years on the reassessment of dioxin, an issue I was very close to, and they still didn't resolve the issue. They're very subject to industry pressure, and their way of resolving issues is just delay, delay, delay.

But, I do believe that if a federal court, having heard both sides, declares that fluoride poses an unnecessary risk, an unreasonable risk to the developing brain of our children, that that news will ricochet around the fluoridating world — Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Canada, Israel, Malaysia, and a few other countries where they still fluoridate. It's going to have a huge impact.

And I think the citizens will be able to use this as ammunition to say to their health departments, ‘Come on. Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this when you've got this scientific information … done by top notch scientists. Why on earth would you continue this practice when you know that if you want fluoride, you can simply brush it on your teeth and spit it out. What is your rationale for continuing this?

By the same token, to the professional bodies, to the AMA, the ADA, the APHA and all those other organizations that have endorsed fluoridation for years and years and years, why would you continue to support this? Why would you reveal to the public that you have no scientific credibility?

That you don't read the science, that you don't keep up with the science on an issue like this? When you're going to the public and saying again and again and again that fluoridation is safe and effective, when you've got this evidence right there in front of you?

One more thing … Possibly the most important agency for reviewing the toxicology of toxic substances is the National Toxicology Program (NTP). Back in 2016, FAN asked the NTP to do a systematic review of the neurotoxicity of fluoride. This was before the court case and before we went to court.

After three and a half years they came back, having reviewed all the animal data and the human data, and in their draft they said, ‘Based upon the literature, the presumption is that fluoride is a neurotoxic substance. Based upon studies done on children in several different countries, the presumption is that it is neurotoxic.’

Not that it's definite; but you would have to presume, based upon all the literature, that this is a neurotoxic substance. So, that’s a huge vindication for our case. But, because it's a draft and not a final version, we can't actually use it in the court case. Still, this is very useful for us going forward, in addition to whatever the court rules.”

Ending Water Fluoridation Still Met With Strong Resistance

While FAN has successfully ended water fluoridation in many areas, it’s still very difficult. One of the reasons for this is because those who want it to continue always point to reviews by government agencies “which, as bogus as they are and unscientific as they are, carry a lot of weight,” Connett says.

In Ireland, they refer to the expert committee. In New Zealand, they refer to the ministry of health and in Australia to the National Health and Medical Research Council. In the United States, they refer to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.

All of these agencies have promoted water fluoridation and are not good judges of whether there are problems or not. Hopefully, a court win against the EPA will facilitate and speed up the process of getting fluoride out of drinking water. A win would also set another important precedent:

“We've been able to bring this to court under the Toxic Substances and Control Act, which has a clause [stating] that any group or individual can petition the EPA to remove, to ban, any particular use of a particular chemical in the United States if they can show it's an unreasonable risk to the population, or even a subset of the population.

We … along with Food & Water Watch are the first groups to ever do this. So, it's establishing a very important precedent, which is really worrying the chemical industry. It’s a big concern of ours, because behind the scenes I'm sure they're trying to muddy the waters in every way they can. But it's a huge precedent. I hope that our victory will also shoot adrenaline into the veins of all these other [health safety] groups …”

Another Fluoride-Related Issue To Be Tackled

In our interview, Connett also discusses the fluoride pollution released during recycling of lithium ion batteries, such as those used in electric cars. Lithium ion batteries contain fluorinated polymers like polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) and an electrolyte called lithium hexafluorophosphate (LiPF₆).

When heated during the recycling process, these fluorinated compounds break down to produce hydrogen fluoride, and many fluorinated byproducts which are toxic and difficult to capture. Like PFOS, these chemicals stick around for so long they’re known as “forever chemicals.”

As it happens, a lithium ion battery incinerator is being built near Connett’s home, across the road from a residential area and adjacent to a little league baseball field. “It is an absolutely insane, unethical siting,” Connett says, noting that there really is no safe place for such facilities. It’s the recycling process itself that needs to be modified, which is what Connett is fighting for now.  

“What this has done is fortuitous. It has brought together nearly all the strands of our activism. I've had 35 years fighting incineration and dioxins [and] 24 years fighting fluoridation. Now we're meeting hydrogen fluoride and fluorinated by-products in spades. At the very least the problem will be: What do you do with the sodium fluoride that's left over in the effluent, the waste water?

I hope someone doesn't suggest putting it in the drinking water. Because also in that waste water you'll have a PFAS, a polyfluorinated alkyl substance (used in some of the batteries), and my wife has spent many, many years maintaining a database on these PFAS … She's been concerned with that for a long time. So, we've been able to draw on three different strands of our activism to help our local community.”

Avoid Fluoride to Optimize Your Health

Eliminating water fluoridation will go a long way toward protecting the health of all people, but especially children. Sacrificing children’s brain function for a theoretical benefit of less tooth decay is unconscionable.

Aside from making sure you do not drink fluoridated water, or use fluoridated water to mix infant formula, to reduce your exposure, avoid drinking excessive amounts of tea, which tends to be high in fluoride.

“Mix it up,” Connett says. “If you must drink tea, then drink tea, drink coffee, drink herbal tea. Mix it around. Not too much tea. Also, avoid animal bones. Don't eat the bones from sardines and pilchards. Don't eat the bones from chicken. Avoid mechanically deboned meat.”

Call to Action — Donate Today!

Again, for more details on the four studies Connett highlights in this interview, see his video commentaries on FAN.tv page. There you can also find a webinar lecture by FAN’s senior scientist, Chris Neurath, in which he explains the neurotoxicity of fluoride. To help spread the word, you can print out a FAN pamphlet to share with family, friends and local community bulletin boards.

In closing, if you’re concerned about the health effects of fluoride, please support FAN with your tax-deductible donation today. Mercola.com will match your donation, dollar for dollar, up to $25,000 during Fluoride Awareness Week.

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

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Return guest Dr. Paul Saladino is a board-certified psychiatrist and also board certified in nutrition. He wrote “The Carnivore Code,” which just came out in an updated second edition. In this interview, he discusses the impact metabolic health has on COVID-19 outcomes.

He’s done a magnificent job explaining the science that supports the natural lifestyle strategies that optimize our immune systems to defeat not only COVID-19, but also most other infectious agents.

“The psychiatry was a jump-off point for thinking about how immune function and metabolic health affects mental health,” he says. “I quickly realized that everything in the body was connected and I couldn't just focus on the brain without focusing on the rest of the body, and that has led us to where we are today.

I think that as we are faced with coronavirus, it's a reminder of the metabolic health and how critical that is. I think so much of the media focus right now is on the next drug or the coming vaccine … but all of those strategies kind of miss the point. [They’re] just Band-Aids …

No drug is going to protect us from the next infection and the next infection. And one of the things that we're going to talk about today, which is so eerie, yet revealing, is all of this data suggesting that coronavirus susceptibility is intimately connected with metabolic health.”

Immunometabolism Is an Important Field of Medicine

We've long known that metabolic health is crucial for robust immune function. Saladino believes immunometabolism — the connections between metabolism, metabolic health and the immune system — is easily one of the most important, if not the most important, field in emerging medicine.

Saladino reviews NHANES data¹ from 2009 to 2016, which reveal 87.8% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy, based on five parameters. That data is over four years old now, so the figure is clearly greater than 90% of the population today.

That means virtually everyone is at risk for Type 2 diabetes and all the chronic diseases associated with insulin resistance, which run the gamut from cancer to Alzheimer’s.

“[NHANES] use criteria that we use to define metabolic syndrome,” Saladino explains. “They use a waist circumference of less than 102 or 88 centimeters for men and women respectively, a fasting glucose of less than 100 milligrams per deciliter, hemoglobin A1c of less than 5.7, a systolic blood pressure less than 120, a diastolic blood pressure less than 80, and triglycerides less than 150, in addition to an HDL of greater than 40 for men and 50 for women, as criteria for metabolic health.

What they found — and this is really the point that is so striking — is that only 12.2% of people met that criteria. That means 87.8% of people are metabolically unhealthy or have at least one of these metrics that suggests that they may have some degree of metabolic unhealth.”

Similarly, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that as of 2016, 39.8% of adults over the age of 20 were obese. When you include those who are overweight, that percentage skyrockets to 71%, and excess weight typically correlates with metabolic dysfunction and impaired health.

“Now, it's not so much an indictment on our population; it's an indication, it's a real call-to-arms to say, ‘This is what we should be talking about,’ and it's a real jumping-off point for discussions about how metabolic unhealth has repeatedly been connected with worse outcomes, [be it] COVID-19, MERS or seasonal flu. It's a huge piece of it, and I haven't really seen much media coverage of this at all.”

Insulin Resistance Is a Modern Plague

Indeed, while the media reports that the comorbidities include obesity, diabetes, age and being of color, they don't discuss the underlying problems, which are vitamin D deficiency and insulin resistance. As noted by Saladino:

“Insulin resistance underlies many of those comorbidities, and I'll show data to suggest that as we age, more of the population becomes insulin-resistant, probably because we become a little less resilient to nutrient deficiency and we become a little more sensitive to the lifestyle factors that make us insulin resistant in the first place.

With aging, we see a direct correlation with insulin resistance. But the immune compromise, the insulin resistance that comes with aging, is not inevitable. It's an assumption, because 88% of the population are metabolically unhealthy.

The narrative here is very important because if we can escape the immunologic sort of dysfunction and insulin resistance that so often accompanies aging, then we can totally change our lifestyle.”

Metabolic Age Is More Important Than Biological Age

Saladino discusses the results of a Nature Medicine study² published in 2019, which looked at immune age and metabolic age using high-dimensional longitudinal monitoring:

“You can look at multiple measures of immunologic aging by looking at different varying proportions of immune cell subsets. This is all very esoteric and it looks complex, but the takeaway is that immune aging is associated with relative changes in different types of immune system response.

What's very interesting is we see the same types of immune system response changes mirrored in people who have more severe coronavirus outcomes … One of the classic changes associated with insulin resistance, obesity and metabolic syndrome — these are all synonyms — is overactivation of the innate immune system, with decreasing activity in the adaptive immune system.

Characterized another way, we can look at the cytokines associated with different T-helper subsets. What we generally see … is that certain cytokines for T-helper 2 tend to predominate over T-helper 1, and you get changes in the way the innate and adaptive immune systems are responding to invaders. And that's what we see in people as they age.

That's associated with activation of different inflammasomes, like the NLRP3 inflammasome, which is associated with that innate immune system. The innate immune system is always activated; it's dendritic cells, macrophages, natural killer cells, neutrophils.

The adaptive immune system is T cells and B cells. So basically, what we see in immunologic compromise, what we see in insulin resistance, is that the innate immune system gets overactivated at the expense of the adaptive immune system.

You might say, ‘Oh, that's good. One part of the immune system is more activated.’ But what you have happening is that the adaptive immune system isn't able to be activated properly, and the resolution of the inflammation doesn't happen in the way it should.”

So, the overarching principle is that it's not your biological age that matters so much, but rather it’s your immune and metabolic age. The good news is those are more malleable than we are led to believe. From that perspective, we can address COVID-19 in completely different ways.

“It's a lot of fear-based messaging, saying, ‘Here's a new spike of the virus.’ ‘It's popping up here, it's popping up there.’ But nobody's really talking about what you can do to change your susceptibility to this virus,” Saladino says.

“What I want to empower people to understand is that this immunologic tolerance, this insulin resistance paradigm, has not been discussed at all despite the fact that there are tons of evidence that it's really, really important.”

Cytokines

Cytokines are small proteins secreted by cells in your innate and adaptive immune systems. They serve to regulate diverse functions in your immune response. Cytokines are released by cells into your circulation or directly into your tissues.

The cytokines locate target immune cells and interact with receptors on the target immune cells by binding to them. The interaction triggers or stimulates specific responses by the target cells.

In response to bacterial and viral infections such as COVID-19, your innate immune system generates both proinflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines.³ The inflammatory response plays a crucial role in the clinical manifestations of COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 triggers an immune response against the virus, which, if uncontrolled, may result in lung damage, functional impairment, and reduced lung capacity.^4,5,6,7

The SARS-CoV-2 viral infection-related inflammation and the subsequent cytokine storm in severe cases plays a crucial role in patient survival.⁸ The extensive and uncontrolled release of proinflammatory cytokines is termed the cytokine storm. Clinically, the cytokine storm commonly presents as systemic inflammation and multiple organ failure.⁹

Immunologic Tolerance Rises as Insulin Resistance Falls

One scientific article¹⁰ that speaks to this is “Association of Blood Glucose Control and Outcomes in Patients With COVID-19 and Pre-Existing Type 2 Diabetes,” published in Cell Metabolism, June 2, 2020.

What it found was that when blood sugar is well-controlled and there's less glycemic variability, people do better when contracting COVID-19. When they have high levels of glycemic variability, which is indicative of insulin resistance, they fare much worse.

“So there's really no question at this point that glycemic variability, overall metabolic status, overall metabolic health are critical,” Saladino says. The common mistake here is that you don’t want to get that control back using drugs. Your best bet is to get it back using natural lifestyle strategies.

Another paper¹¹ that demonstrates the impact of insulin resistance on COVID-19 was published in Cardiovascular Diabetology, May 11, 2020. It found you can use the triglyceride to glucose index (TyG index) as a gauge to predict the severity and mortality of COVID-19.

“Imagine that. There's an association of the insulin resistance marker, the TyG index — this is fasting triglycerides, fasting glucose — with the severity and mortality of COVID-19.

This should be, in my opinion, mainstream news headlines, and the headlines should be, ‘You can be stronger against coronavirus. You can have a stronger immune system. You can decrease your risk of having a severe coronavirus outcome.’ But instead it's mostly fear, it's ‘Hide in your homes. What's the next drug that's going to save us?’ … Cardiovascular health is immune health. That is immunometabolism.

What you do to improve your heart health is also what you do to improve your immune health, is also what you do to improve your brain health, is also how you decrease your risk of Alzheimer's, is also how you decrease your risk of seasonal flu and every other single infectious illness that you will all encounter for the rest of your life. It's one thing; not 60 different drugs … which is why the [conventional] paradigm doesn't work.”

Low LDL Associated With Greater COVID-19 Severity

Interestingly, Saladino cites research showing that low levels of LDL cholesterol are associated with greater COVID-19 severity. LDL and total cholesterol levels were significantly lower in COVID-19 patients as compared to healthy subjects. “To me, this is a really interesting [finding] in two ways,” Saladino says, adding:

“In ‘The Carnivore Code,’ I challenged the LDL-centric hypothesis of cardiovascular disease and I share a lot of data about how important LDL actually is in the immune system. I think that's exactly what we're seeing in this study.

When your body is doing an immunologic thing, when your body is fighting a pathogen, it totally makes sense that the LDL would be a part of that, in either LDLs consumed, or those who have lower LDL are more susceptible to infection.

This is something we see over and over, and there are even genetic syndromes of very low LDL, specifically one called Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome involving a genetic polymorphism in an enzyme that makes cholesterol.

People with that syndrome have very bad infections and they can be rescued by giving them egg yolks. So these people are given cholesterol in the form of egg yolks, or they're given supplemental cholesterol, and they do much better.

It's pretty clear that cholesterol, which is packaged into this LDL lipoprotein particle, is intimately involved in the immune response. And so, in someone who is metabolically healthy, a higher LDL above 100 or 150, or even 200 mg/dL might not be the horrible thing that we've all been taught it is, especially if the HDL, the triglycerides, the triglyceride to glucose index, that glycemic variability, are all pointing toward metabolic health …

It's about context. This LDL is a valuable immunologic particle and we can't just get myopic, looking at LDL. We have to think about it in terms of all these other measures.”

Top Strategies to Improve Your Metabolic Health

Considering the fact that your metabolic health determines your COVID-19 risk, it would be a sound idea to implement strategies that will improve your metabolic flexibility and insulin sensitivity. Saladino’s top recommendations for achieving that include:

Eating a Varied, Real Food Diet Is Key

In short, eating real food, in a time-restricted window, is your surest bet to beat insulin resistance. Also remember to give some consideration to your macronutrient ratios.

As explained by Saladino, while a low-fat, high-carb diet may reduce your insulin resistance, you’re at high risk for nutrient deficiencies in the long term, as so many of the most bioavailable vitamins and minerals are found in animal-based fats.

“I think the sweet spot is eating an animal-based diet. Not exclusively animals for all people, but realizing that animal foods have been incorrectly vilified. They're an integral part of the human diet, including organ meats.

Also include some of the healthiest carbohydrates, the nonprocessed carbohydrates, into your diet occasionally, and don’t go either low-carb, high-fat all the time or low-fat, high-carb all the time. Having a mix, but having a robust amount of protein throughout … I think that's a sweet spot for most people.”

Low Glutathione May Increase COVID-19 Severity

Saladino also cites a recent hypothesis highlighting the potential role of glutathione in COVID-19. The paper,¹⁴ “Endogenous Deficiency of Glutathione as the Most Likely Cause of Serious Manifestations of Death From Novel Coronavirus Infection (COVID-19): A Hypotheses Based on Literature Data and Own Observations,” is written by a Russian medical doctor and Ph.D.

What he found was that the reactive-oxygen-species-to-glutathione ratio was able to predict the severity of COVID-19 and the patient’s outcome. When the patient had a low ROS-to-glutathione ratio, the patient had a very mild case. The fever disappeared on the fourth day without any treatment whatsoever.

When the ROS-to-glutathione ratio was high, the patient developed air hunger on the fourth day, experienced significant fever, hoarseness, myalgia and fatigue persisting for 13 days. A patient with even higher ROS and lower reduced glutathione had critical disease requiring hospitalization for COVID-19-related pneumonia. According to the author:¹⁵

“Based on an exhaustive literature analysis and own observations, I proposed a hypothesis that glutathione deficiency is exactly the most plausible explanation for serious manifestation and death in COVID-19 infected patients.

The major risk factors established for severe COVID-19 infection and relative glutathione deficiency found in COVID-19 infected patients with moderate-to-severe illness have converged me to two very important conclusions:

(1) oxidative stress contributes to hyper-inflammation of the lung leading to adverse disease outcomes such as acute respiratory distress syndrome, multiorgan failure and death;

(2) poor antioxidant defense due to endogenous glutathione deficiency as a result of decreased biosynthesis and/or increased depletion of GSH is the most probable cause of increased oxidative damage of the lung, regardless which of the factors aging, chronic disease comorbidity, smoking or some others were responsible for this deficit.

The hypothesis provides novel insights into the etiology and mechanisms responsible for serious manifestations of COVID-19 infection and justifies promising opportunities for effective treatment and prevention of the illness through glutathione recovering with N-acetylcysteine and reduced glutathione.”

Glutathione, Zinc and Selenium

As noted by Saladino, these findings also tie into the issue of zinc and its importance for proper immune function, as zinc helps mitigate the oxidative stress reaction. The question is, why do these people have such low glutathione in the first place?

Saladino believes it’s probably due to underlying nutritional deficiencies such as glycine deficiency, or oxidative stress caused by smoking, heavy metal toxicity, EMF exposure, eating lots of processed vegetable oils or insulin resistance. Any of these could cause low glutathione.

To improve your glutathione, you need zinc, and zinc in combination with hydroxychloroquine (a zinc ionophore or zinc transporter) has been shown effective in the treatment of COVID-19.

N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), meanwhile, is a precursor of glutathione, and may protect against coagulation problems associated with COVID-19, as it counteracts hypercoagulation and breaks down blood clots.

Selenium is also important, as some of the enzymes involved in glutathione production are selenium-dependent. Saladino cites research showing an association between regional selenium status and the severity of COVID-19 outcome cases in China. The lower the amount of selenium in the hair, the lower the cure rate was.

“Why is this? It's probably because glutathione peroxidase and thioredoxin reductase are selenium- dependent enzymes, and these enzymes are intimately connected by controlling this antioxidant redox system,” Saladino explains.

“So, what we're seeing is this huge immunologic injury, this imbalance of the innate and adaptive immune system, we're seeing insulin resistance, and we're seeing diffused oxidative damage, and all that stuff can probably be controlled with lifestyle. That's the huge takeaway.”

One of the best ways to increase glutathione, though, is molecular hydrogen. It is my absolute favorite as it does so selectively and will not increase glutathione unnecessarily if you don’t need it. You can view Tyler LeBaron’s excellent lecture on the details of how it does this in “How Molecular Hydrogen Can Help Your Immune System.”

More Information

We cover a lot of ground in this interview, far more than has been summarized here, so for more details, be sure to listen to the interview. Saladino is a wellspring of well-researched information. We also review:

• The use of quercetin in lieu of hydroxychloroquine, either of which needs to be taken with zinc, at the first signs of symptoms.
• The hazards of oxalates, found in many plant foods and the benefits of a carnivore diet.
• Links between COVID-19 and pulmonary vasculitis — A new hypothesis suggests SARS-CoV-2 attacks the endothelial cells that line the blood vessels surrounding the lungs' air sacs, or alveoli, causing fluid leakage and blood clots. According to Saladino, low glutathione may be at play here as well.
• How you can improve your insulin sensitivity in as little as nine days by eliminating all fructose.

To learn more, be sure to visit his website, CarnivoreMD.com, and pick up a copy of “The Carnivore Code,” now in its updated second edition. He also has a great podcast called “Fundamental Health.” On the social media platforms, you can find him by searching for @carnivoreMD.

“If those who are susceptible to COVID-19 due to insulin resistance and diabetes are able to use this as a wake-up call and change their metabolic health, they will change the quality of life for the entire time that they're living,” Saladino says.

“My dad is a perfect example of this. He’s 70 years old, a retired internist, and I'm going to get him a continuous glucose monitor. He's not as metabolically healthy as he should be, but I'm encouraging him to improve his metabolic health.

And the beauty of that might just be that if coronavirus is the impetus, if coronavirus is the trigger that he needs to change his metabolic health — to use a continuous glucose monitor, to show himself his glycemic variability and understand how much risk that puts him at, or just to give him an indication that he's a little insulin-resistant because he's eating bread or vegetable oil, or not getting enough nutrients.

If he makes the change, he's decreasing his risk of coronavirus, but he's also decreasing his risk of seasonal flu, diabetic complications, coronary artery disease, hypertension and stroke. I mean, the list goes on and on. That's what you and I are about, and that's what I think it's all focused on.”

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Dr. Ken Redcross is an internal medicine physician with a concierge practice in New York. He wrote the book “Bond: The 4 Cornerstones of a Lasting and Caring Relationship with Your Doctor,” and in this interview, he shares his views on the prevention of COVID-19 through natural means.

“My specialty is the patient/doctor bond and relationship,” he says. “That leads to house calls. That leads to making sure that the patient has access to me 24/7 and that's the way I think it should be. Patients should feel like a doctor is a member of their family and so that's what I do …

It’s about four things: Trust, respect, empathy and communication. If you give that to each patient you're blessed enough to touch, then things tend to go well … My career has spanned over two decades now and, obviously, I've never seen anything like this [pandemic]. A big part of my practice are house calls.

So now, I am literally making house calls to patients who have COVID-19 and, quite honestly, especially early on, belonged in the hospital, but there was no room here in New York … I'm really, truly in the epicenter [of the epidemic in New York].” 

Some of the patients Redcross saw were concerned about going to the hospital out of fear of being exposed to COVID-19, saying they’d rather take their chances at home. Fortunately, Redcross was able to help educate many of his patients about proactive measures they can take, even if they opted to stay at home.

Vitamin D Optimization Is a Crucial Component

Redcross works with a very diverse group of patients, including Blacks, who are most adversely affected with vitamin D deficiency. Statistics have shown that the African-American community is also disproportionately at risk for severe COVID-19, and vitamin D deficiency may in fact be at the heart of this disparity.

I believe getting the word out to all communities, and especially the Black community, that vitamin D is essential for health and vital in the fight against this virus, and Redcross agrees.

Other disparities that also play a role are more difficult to address than vitamin D. For example, many income-restricted individuals live in ‘food deserts’ where healthy whole foods are hard to come by, and have limited options that include fast food or processed foods that are devoid of nutrients, creating a recipe for insulin resistance and all of the health ramifications that go along with it.

While this isn’t the reality for all, diet and income are factors that should be taken into consideration when addressing the health needs of the Black community. Aside from vitamin D deficiency, insulin resistance is one of the primary risk factors for severe COVID-19 infection and death, as discussed in “The Real Pandemic Is Insulin Resistance.”

Transitioning to a low-carb diet high in healthy fats and time-restricted eating are two of the most effective remedies for this, but they take time to implement and reap the benefits of. Clearly, they’re strategies that will protect your health in the long-term, but more acutely won’t have a major impact.

Another part of the nutritional approach to protecting your health is to eliminate your use of industrial vegetable oils that are high in omega-6 linoleic acid, which I believe is actually worse than carbohydrates. Redcross agrees that this is an important part of the conversation he has with his patients.

Vitamin D, on the other hand, is something that can strengthen your immune system in a matter of a few weeks. Dosing is an important factor, however, when you’re taking an oral vitamin D supplement. It needs to be high enough.

The ideal way to optimize your level is to get sensible sun exposure, but if you’re dark-skinned, you may need upward of 1.5 hours of sun a day in order to maximize conversion of vitamin D in your skin. Many don’t have the luxury of that much time.

“Five thousand IUs [of oral vitamin D] is that magic number for me,” Redcross says. “I cringe when I go over the counter and see 1,000 and 2,000 because it's not enough to get to those optimal levels.

If I put on my Western medicine hat, when you look at the parameters it'll say that the vitamin D level should be 30 ng/mL. But if I put on the better Eastern medicine hat, which is the truer hat, we get to that 40 to 60 ng/mL range …

No matter what, I'm always talking about 5,000 [IUs of vitamin D], because when [they take] 5,000 IUs, and I get lab testing after that, it tends to be in that optimal range of 40 to 60 ng/mL. That's the sweet spot where I feel like everything is better clinically.”

Why Vitamin D Recommendations Are Too Low

Indeed, it’s important to realize that when health authorities caution against exceeding a vitamin D dose of 4,000 IUs, their recommendation is based on the dosage required to prevent rickets. It has nothing to do with the dosage required to support immune function and prevent other chronic diseases.

Unfortunately, as noted by Redcross, many medical authorities are “still blind” to these facts. Redcross, on the other hand, recommends vitamin D supplementation to most of his patients.

He starts by getting a baseline reading of their vitamin D level, and continues to check their levels with regular testing while also tracking their clinical symptoms and subjective observations. Many report a sense of improved general well-being once they get their levels up.

“My whole goal in my practice is not to have to use my prescription pad,” he says. “So, when I can use something like vitamin D to make that big a difference — so that if their mood is better, maybe I don't have to reach for an antidepressant necessarily. Maybe there are some alternatives that could make a big difference in their lives that way, and naturally.”

Many of his patients tend to have vitamin D levels around 20 ng/mL at baseline. Very few have sufficient levels, especially among the elderly. In addition to his regular concierge practice, Redcross also offers affordable health care at a local assisted living facility, where he advocates for vitamin D optimization.

If you have a loved one in a nursing home, taking the time to talk to the medical management about vitamin D testing and supplementation could make a big difference in the general health of all the residents.

“When I'm looking at that population, I see [vitamin D deficiency] all the time. So, I'm pretty regimented by making sure, every three to six months, that I'm staying on top of it, correlating that with them clinically, as well, and seeing how they feel,” he says.

As it pertains to COVID-19, researchers in Indonesia, who looked at data from 780 COVID-19 patients, found¹ those with a vitamin D level between 21 ng/mL (50 nmol/L) and 29 ng/mL (75 nmol/L) had a 12.55 times higher risk of death than those with a level above 30 ng/mL. Having a level below 20 ng/mL was associated with a 19.12 times higher risk of death.

Other research^2,3 suggests your risk of developing a severe case of, and dying from, COVID-19 virtually disappears once your vitamin D level gets above 30 ng/mL (75 nmol/L). To ignore this seems foolish in the extreme, especially since vitamin D supplementation is both safe and inexpensive.

“It's going to be interesting over the next few years. Even over the beginning of my career to now, we're getting more and more traction with vitamin D. We're learning more and more, and I can only imagine, in the next five to 10 years, where we're going to be using vitamin D in order to get well and heal,” Redcross says.

The Role of Magnesium and Vitamin K2

Importantly, other nutrient deficiencies may be at play if you’re having a hard time improving your vitamin D level. One of them is magnesium, which is required for the conversion of vitamin D into its active form. Without sufficient amounts of magnesium, your body cannot properly utilize the vitamin D you’re taking.^4,5,6,7

According to a scientific review^8,9 published in 2018, as many as 50% of Americans taking vitamin D supplements may not get significant benefit as the vitamin D simply gets stored in its inactive form, and the reason for this is because they have insufficient magnesium levels.

Research¹⁰ published in 2013 also highlighted this issue, concluding that higher magnesium intake helps reduce your risk of vitamin D deficiency by activating more of it.

Another cofactor is vitamin K2, as it helps prevent complications associated with excessive calcification in your arteries. In fact, relative vitamin K2 deficiency is typically what produces symptoms of “vitamin D toxicity.”

Research by GrassrootsHealth, based on data from nearly 3,000 individuals, reveals you need 244% more oral vitamin D if you’re not also taking magnesium and vitamin K2.¹¹ What this means in practical terms is that if you take all three supplements in combination, you need far less oral vitamin D in order to achieve a healthy vitamin D level. Redcross notes:

“I absolutely love magnesium, for so many reasons. I'll tell you a quick story. I trained in Columbia Presbyterian in New York many moons ago. As a resident, I had an intern who was treating to replete a patient's potassium. No matter what, it remained low.

I asked the intern, ‘Did you also supplement with magnesium at the same time?’ When the intern did that, magically the potassium came back up. That was because magnesium is a vital cofactor. So, even back then, we understood how important magnesium was. And it's even more important for vitamin D to get to its active state …

So, magnesium is a big important thing. That's what I tell patients — that every vitamin D is not created equal. I like to make sure that it has a cofactor like magnesium in there, which is necessary for energy and so much more. It's in almost every cell that we have.

My magnesium of preference is magnesium bisglycinate. I like it because it's got great bioavailability. It tends to be easier for patients to take. I don't get too many calls about GI upset or anything. So, it tends to work for them. That's the magnesium that I like to start with.”

Types of Magnesium

Aside from magnesium bisglycinate, other variations include:

• Magnesium glycinate, a powder with low solubility. Glycine is an important amino acid and precursor for glutathione.
• Ionic magnesium found in molecular hydrogen tablets. Each water-soluble tablet has about 80 mg of highly bioavailable unbound magnesium ions, which is about 20% of the recommended daily allowance.
• Magnesium threonate is another excellent choice as it seems it can efficiently penetrate the blood-brain barrier.
• Magnesium malate, which dissolves very well in water. Malate is an intermediary in the Krebs cycle, so it likely contributes to ATP production.
• Magnesium citrate also dissolves well and has a pleasant citric acid taste.

Being a Source of Inspiration

Redcross not only has a positive impact in his local community in New York, but he’s also been able to get his message of health and wellness out in the media, which is an important component.

“One of the important things when I do that is that it's all about inspiration. I don't believe in doom and gloom. No matter what, I see a silver lining in everything,” Redcross says.

“So, whenever I'm doing any of this stuff in the media, it's important that people leave inspired and happier than they were when I first got there. I think everyone's ready to hear a positive message. When you turn on the TV, unfortunately everything is negative … I don't believe in negativity. And even when you talk about disease, I really feel it's more dis-ease than an actual disease and a label.

I think the thing that's important here is that we are talking about something like vitamin D. Vitamin D is so important, and guess what, your body makes it naturally … It's really a pro-hormone, and that's a pretty big deal … So, make sure you're going out and getting tested, and getting tested regularly to make sure that that's a part of your everyday habit and behavior to stay healthy and whole.”

Take-Home Message

While the death toll from COVID-19 in the U.S. has sharply declined since its peak in mid-April — declining from 2,666 deaths the week of June 13, 2020, to 906 deaths for the week of June 20¹² — authorities predict a reemergence this fall.

We can significantly blunt any reemergence by optimizing our vitamin D levels, and this strategy is bound to be particularly important in African-American communities, nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.

To aid in this educational effort, I created two vitamin D reports — one comprehensive science report and one easy to digest summary for the layperson — both of which can be downloaded below. The first is more for health care professionals and those who doubt the science of the recommendation.

The second was specifically designed to give you the nuts and bolts of the message in an easy to share, highly readable format. We need an army to take this message to the public, especially those at greatest risk, the elderly and those with melanated skin. This document should help you to spread the message.

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

I urge everyone to share this information with your friends, family and community at large, so that we can minimize additional outbreaks. If you have a family member or know anyone that is in an assisted living facility, you could meet with the director of the program, share these reports and encourage them to get everyone tested or at least start them on vitamin D.

Additionally, you could talk to your Black friends, co-workers and those in your community — who are also at disproportionate risk — and provide them with important health information that could save many lives quicker than any vaccine program.

“It's a must-read document, to be honest, just the way it's laid out, for consumers, for my patients and that sort of thing. I love it and I appreciate you sharing that with me as well,” Redcross says. “Let's continue to fight the good fight and know that this too shall pass.”

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Iron is an essential nutrient, integral to hundreds of biological functions including oxygen transport, DNA synthesis and energy metabolism. Almost every cell in your body contains iron.¹ Plants, bacteria, animals and even cancer cells cannot survive without it.^2,3

Plants use iron to make chlorophyll, while animals and humans need it to make hemoglobin, a protein in your red blood cells used to transport oxygen. Approximately 6% of the iron in your body is bound as a component to proteins and 25% is stored as ferritin.⁴

Having too much or too little can have serious consequences. Yet, what many people and physicians do not realize is that an excessive amount of iron is more common than having a deficiency.

Doctors may check for iron deficiency as it relates to anemia, but iron overload is a far more common problem. Adult men and non-menstruating women are at risk of having dangerously high levels of iron. When left untreated, excess iron can damage your organs and contribute to the development of heart disease, diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases and cancer.⁵

High Levels of Iron Linked to Shorter Life Span

Researchers have linked iron overload to several medical conditions, and now find that people age at different rates when they have excess amounts in the body. European scientists gathered data from an international database to test this theory.⁶

The set of data was equivalent to about 1.75 million lifespans.⁷ They looked at the total number of years lived (life span), the total number of years marked by good health (health span) and living to an old age (longevity).⁸ The researchers identified 10 loci in the genetic sample that appear to influence aging.

The majority of the loci were associated with cardiovascular disease. Based on statistical analysis, the data suggested "that genes involved in metabolizing iron in the blood are partly responsible for a healthy long life."⁹

The new information is exciting as it suggests a modifiable pathway to explain biological aging and chronic disease rate differences among people. The researchers noted that high iron levels can reduce "the body's ability to fight infection in older age,"¹⁰ which may be yet another reason that age is a factor in infectious disease severity.

As Paul Timmers from the University of Edinburgh says, the data also offer a reasonable explanation for the association between red meat and heart disease. While cholesterol has been blamed in the past, in a growing number of studies, no association has been found between cholesterol and heart disease.¹¹ Timmers commented:¹²

"We are very excited by these findings as they strongly suggest that high levels of iron in the blood reduces our healthy years of life, and keeping these levels in check could prevent age-related damage. We speculate that our findings on iron metabolism might also start to explain why very high levels of iron-rich red meat in the diet has been linked to age-related conditions such as heart disease."

Excess Iron Impairs Mitochondrial Function

Researchers have known since the mid-1990s that when iron is bound to a protein such as hemoglobin, it plays a part in cell metabolism and growth.¹³ But when it is free, it kicks off a reaction producing hydroxyl free radicals from hydrogen peroxide. This is one of the most damaging free radicals in the body and can cause severe mitochondrial dysfunction.

Hydroxyl free radicals damage cell membranes, protein and DNA. Other research has shown excessive iron promotes apoptosis and ferroptosis in cardiomyocytes.¹⁴ Apoptosis is the programmed cell death of diseased and worn-out cells and, as the name implies, ferroptosis refers to cell death that is specifically dependent on and regulated by iron.¹⁵

Your cardiomyocytes are the muscle cells in the heart that generate and control contractions.¹⁶ In short, this tells us that excess iron can impair heart function. These are two ways iron overload can lead to cardiomyopathy, which is a leading cause of death in patients with hemochromatosis.

Excess iron also affects blood pressure and other markers of cardiovascular disease, and glycemic control in individuals with metabolic syndrome. One study was done with 64 participants who had a diagnosis of metabolic syndrome.¹⁷ The participants were randomly assigned to two groups. In the first, they gave blood at the beginning of the study and again after 4 weeks.

Researchers regulated the amount of blood given and each person's iron level. They measured systolic blood pressure, insulin sensitivity, plasma glucose and hemoglobin A1c. The group who gave blood showed a significant reduction in systolic blood pressure and had lower blood glucose levels, hemoglobin A1c and heart rate. There was no effect on insulin sensitivity.

In an earlier study, scientists removed blood in individuals who had chronic gout.¹⁸ Twelve participants with hyperuricemia gave blood over the course of 28 months to maintain their body at the lowest amount of iron stores possible, without inducing anemia. The data showed a marked reduction in the number and severity of gout attacks. Removing blood was also found to be safe and beneficial.

How Do High Iron Levels Build Up?

Men and non-menstruating women have a higher potential for iron buildup since the body has limited ways of excreting excess iron.¹⁹ With the genetic disorder hemochromatosis, the body accumulates excessive and damaging levels of iron.²⁰ When this is left untreated it contributes to many of the disorders discussed above.

Hemochromatosis is a prevalent genetic condition in Americans. It takes two inherited genetic mutations, one from your mother and one from your father, to cause the disease. In one study, researchers estimated 40% to 70% of people with the defective genes will eventually have iron overload.²¹

It is also easy to get too much iron from your food, particularly when it's "fortified" with iron. Iron is a common nutritional supplement found in many multivitamin and mineral supplements. Many processed foods are also fortified with iron.

For example, two servings of fortified breakfast cereal may give you as much as 44 milligrams (mg) of iron, rising dangerously close to the upper tolerance limit of 45 mg for adults.²² However, the upper tolerance limit is well over the recommended daily allowance, which is 8 mg for men and 18 mg for premenopausal women.²³ It's easy to see how you might consistently eat too much iron.

Another common cause for iron excess is the regular consumption of alcohol.²⁴ Alcohol increases the amount of iron you absorb from your food. In other words, by drinking alcohol with foods that are high in iron, you will likely absorb more than you need.

Other contributing factors include using iron pots and pans, drinking well water high in iron, using multivitamins and mineral supplements together or eating processed foods.

You Can Help Severe Blood Shortages and Help Yourself

Routine blood donation may be one of the simplest and quickest ways to reduce your ferritin and iron overload. Blood donation may also save the life of someone else. The American Red Cross collects blood at both permanent and mobile locations. According to the organization, more than 80% of what they collect comes from blood drives on college campuses and at workplaces.

Unfortunately, one of the consequences of COVID-19 has been a reduction in the number of blood drives and blood donations across the U.S. This has led to a severe shortage.²⁵ Chris Hrouda, who serves as president of the Red Cross Biomedical Services, expressed his concerns to a reporter from the Press Herald:²⁶

"In our experience, the American public comes together to support those in need during times of shortage and that support is needed now more than ever during this unprecedented public health crisis. Unfortunately, when people stop donating blood, it forces doctors to make hard choices about patient care, which is why we need those who are healthy and well to roll up a sleeve and give the gift of life.

We know that people want to help, but they may be hesitant to visit a blood drive during this time. We want to assure the public that blood donation is a safe process, and we have put additional precautions in place at our blood drives and donation centers to protect all who come out."

Blood donation is a safe and effective way of managing your iron stores and helping someone else. The Red Cross answers questions about your eligibility requirement on their website.²⁷ They recommend that you wait at least eight weeks between donations so your body can completely restore your blood volume.

If you are unable to donate blood because of a health condition, consider therapeutic phlebotomy. While your blood won't be used for a donation, they may do the procedure and then dispose of the blood.

If you can't find a place in your community for the services, your insurance policy may pay for routine therapeutic phlebotomies with a doctor's prescription.²⁸ In either case, whether you donate the blood or it's thrown out, the amount they take is the same.

To donate, you only need a blood donor card, a driver's license or two forms of identification. People who are at least 17, weigh at least 110 pounds and are in generally good health are eligible.

Yearly GGT and Iron Screening Tests Advisable

Another way to measure the impact of iron toxicity and the effect on mortality is the gamma glutamyl transpeptidase test, sometimes called gamma-glutamyl transferase (GGT). GGT is a liver enzyme that is involved in the metabolism of glutathione and the transport of amino acids and peptides.

It can be used as a marker for excess free iron, and as an indicator of your risk of chronic kidney disease.²⁹ Low levels of GGT tend to be protective against high levels of ferritin.

When both ferritin and GGT are high, you have a higher chance of having chronic health problems and/or early death. As with many lab tests, the normal references vary among the labs. Normal laboratory ranges are often far from ideal and those used for GGT may not be adequate for preventing disease.

As I've shared before, the range of ideal to "normal" GGT can be wide. To fully understand your risks, you'll need both the ferritin and GGT levels tested. For more information on ferritin and GGT, including healthy ranges, see "Donate Blood: You May Be Saving Your Own Life."

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