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For the 10th consecutive year, we now celebrate our annual Mercury Awareness and Mercury-Free Dentistry Week. With us again is Charlie Brown, executive director of Consumers for Dental Choice and former attorney general for West Virginia.
As in previous years, during this week of August 23 through 29, 2020, we will double your donations to Consumers for Dental Choice, matching it dollar for dollar up to $150,000. I’m committed to doing this annual fundraiser because eliminating dental mercury is such an important effort for both human and environmental health.
Over 20 years ago, Brown committed his life to this advocacy, to help improve the lives of millions of people, and your generous donations are what allow him to continue this crucial humanitarian work.
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He’s made great progress this past year, which he details in this interview. You will be delighted to know your past donations have been put to good use, and it is thanks to you that this stellar nonprofit group has been able to have such a sustained impact.
This has in part been accomplished through the founding of the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry, a coalition of nonprofit groups from all over the world, which elected Charlie Brown as its president. As explained by Brown:
“We were able to go nationally to international. We were able to shift from dream to reality and the international successes have come one after another. Those that read our stuff have seen that. Eight countries just in the past year have either ended amalgam totally or have announced a specific phase-out date.
The push-back on the United States is huge. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration knows it's way behind and that's why, under our unrelenting pressure, they reopened the FDA rule [on dental amalgam]. We certainly see a different approach from the FDA now than the silence, which has been deafening, for so many years.”
Internationally, the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry’s success in including amalgam as a plank at the Minamata Convention on Mercury — a global treaty to protect human health and the environment from the adverse effects of mercury signed in 2013 that went into effect in 2017 — has led to actions by governments across the world. Notably, the 27-nation European Union in 2018 banned dental amalgam in children under 15 and in pregnant or breastfeeding women.
Health Canada also passed guidelines years ago against the use of amalgam in children, pregnant women and in those with kidney disease but, regrettably, Health Canada seems to have lost interest in using its own guidelines.
Ten governments have gone further and implemented either immediate bans or a precise phase-out date. In the past year, the Philippines, Ireland, Nepal, Slovakia, Finland, New Caledonia, Moldova and the Czech Republic have all joined Norway and Sweden in the winner’s circle.
It gets better: At the third Conference of the Parties of the Minamata Convention in Geneva in November 2019, all Parties to the treaty (well over 100 countries, including the U.S. and Canada) were instructed to redouble efforts and accelerate the phase-down of amalgam.
To facilitate the global phase-out of amalgam, the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry helped create centers to coordinate the implementation of mercury-free dentistry in each region. There’s the Asian Center for Environmental Health in Bangladesh, the European Center for Environmental Medicine in Berlin, the African Center for Environmental Health in the Ivory Coast, and the Latin American Center for Environmental Health in Uruguay.
A specialized campaign is tailored to the island states in the Caribbean, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. All of this is coordinated by Consumers for Dental Choice, which serves as Secretariat to the World Alliance. The ultimate goal of the Minamata Convention is the total ban on amalgam everywhere.
“We are nonstop implementing and I make it my point to do that by finding the best environmental group leaders to implement the program on the ground. None of this can be done by me showing up in the country. I do go to many countries, but we show up to work with an excellent team on the ground of experienced people who do their job and know how to win.”
Following these international successes, the Chicago Declaration to End Mercury Use in the Dental Industry was created in the U.S. The declaration was signed by 50 organizations, including the Sierra Club, Clean Water Action, Greenpeace and Learning Disabilities Association of America. With these signatories onboard, the FDA finally sat up and took notice.
“We were able to meet with the FDA director for the center for devices. They agreed to reopen the rule. They had full hearings in November of 2019,” Brown says.
“We brought a team of 16 experts, city and county commissioners, professors, a former dean of a dental school, the National Medical Association representative, the Children's Environmental Health Foundation, Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice, four different lawyers, each with a different legal angle on this and so on.
And they listened. In fact, the experts at the end of that hearing recommended the FDA break its silence and get the word out that this material is mercury and has some serious health effects.
More so they said, ‘The FDA needs to get much more specific for the vulnerable,’ including children … Here is FDA's chance to catch up. Those who listen, probably say, ‘Well, we've been down this road before. FDA is starting and stopping.’
That's true. But this time we were much readier. We had our camera man there. We videoed every minute of it so they couldn't say ‘this happened’ when it was really something else. We followed up, to the top of the agency, again ... We are interacting with the team.
FDA has now created a team to look at this issue. The Chicago Declaration continued to weigh in as did an expert in environmental justice issues, pointing out the real disparate use of amalgam in children, [especially] children of color and other low income children, Indian reservations, Medicaid, as well as lower income adults — those in prisons, soldiers and sailors, those who are left behind.
We have no excuse. We have no excuse for treating our soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines this way. We think FDA, this time, is about to turn over a new leaf. If they don't though, we've got a multitude of strategies going on in the states and we've already turned up the heat there.”
Brown expects we’ll get a ruling from the FDA by the end of 2020. If not, action within various U.S. states have redoubled. For example, the petition by Consumers for Dental Choice to the Maine dental board resulted, this year, in an official rule that all pro-mercury dentists — those still using amalgam — must provide written disclosure about the mercury in amalgam to all patients, parents or guardians.
The patient must sign this disclosure, acknowledging they understand the risks before having amalgam placed in their teeth. That will undoubtedly cut back usage substantially.
“That's now the law in Maine. We've now headed into Wisconsin. We've headed into Connecticut. We are heading other places to be on the offensive and get disclosures, or in the case of Wisconsin and Connecticut, more than disclosures,” Brown says.
"Connecticut actually requires, mandates, mercury fillings in people on Medicaid. It's just morally, legally outrageous. But we've got a really good partner there and we're going after them.”
Interestingly, Wisconsin actually has a law banning the sale of any product with elemental mercury aimed at children. Brown’s team is focused on applying this law to dental amalgam use, arguing to state officials that the law means use of this mercury product must end in Wisconsin children.
On the international level, coming up in 2021 is the fourth Conference of the Parties of the Minamata Convention. The stars of the show could well be the African Region. Its 51 governments sponsored an amalgam phase-out amendment in Geneva last year, and are poised to do the same in Bali, Indonesia, next year. Brown comments:
“They've been wonderful. They are united. They want amalgam to end. They proposed that the third Conference of the Parties to end amalgam, and we got a very good compromise. We didn't have the votes yet to end it, but we are building to have the votes in the 2021 session, which will be in Indonesia, November 2021.
We bring a great team there, but we work through the governments who support us. The entire African governments does. But I think they're going to have a lot of allies. The EU campaign is in high gear and here's where we are with the EU: They have already ended it for amalgam for children, pregnant women and breastfeeding women.
Five of the countries in the Union have ended it, but now they are making the decision whether to phase it out [in all 27 EU nations]. I was at a conference in Brussels in January of 2020. I was the only non-European invited. And the indication from the European Commission is they want to phase this out. They are poised to make a recommendation.
They're a little late because of the [COVID-19] pandemic, but they will make a recommendation. There's the European Commission, European Union and the European Parliament. The three have to agree. It starts with the Commission, and we have a really great campaign.
We work with the European Environmental Bureau [and] the European Center for Environmental Medicine. We also have nonprofit groups that we work with in Spain, Poland and Sweden and so on. And we intend to work, just like we did in 2016, to get the first law passed, which set up the process.
We won that by going to the parliament. This year, under whatever the procedures are for going to parliament, maybe it's all virtual, we will do that. But we intend the European Union to win the campaign in 2020 and get an end date [for amalgam].
We don't know what it will be, but we want to get an end date. And the indications are, we've got the momentum to do that. If we get the European Union and the African region, that's a huge part of the world …”
We’ve also seen major victories and forward movement across Asia. Indonesia has promised to end amalgam this year, but they’ve already stopped promoting it for public health. Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the world, and its version of Medicaid is far larger than that in the U.S. If they can end the use of amalgam, so can the U.S.
Use of amalgam will cease in three years in the Philippines and in five years in Nepal — they serve as guides for the continent. Vietnam ended amalgam for children and for pregnant and breastfeeding women, and is working on a “road map” for amalgam’s total demise.
Bangladesh ended all use of amalgam for its entire armed forces and their families, and most of its dental schools. They now teach only mercury-free dentistry and have banished the teaching of amalgam from the curriculum. Here is a great success story from the Central African nation of Cameroon, all done at the local level:
“We're seeing all kinds of progress, both huge and on the micro level. The Cameroon Baptist Convention has hospitals all over the country. I've gone to the headquarters and met with the chief medical officer. She's a dentist. She ended amalgam in Cameroon for the entire system 12 years ago. She didn't need us,” Brown says.
“I asked, ‘How did you think of this, Dr. Theresia?’ She replied, ‘I read and read and read, and I [decided], we're going to stop using it.’ And they did. It isn't like you need a high-income country to do this. You need willpower.
The U.S. FDA still needs a little more willpower, but we're working around them as well as right at them. And we're going to see this happen here too … [We’re going to] make sure that whatever guidelines they issue are not going to be ignored because of the American Dental Association trying to sabotage … as they've done before.”
What about the two nations with a billion-plus people? Brown has made India a major priority for the World Alliance, partnering with the nation’s leading environmental group on a national campaign, and engaging a “model state” campaign in the eastern India state of Odisha.
The campaign is bearing fruit. The Indian Railway, the largest employer in the world, which employs thousands of dentists for its workers, is ending amalgam use. If the world’s largest employer can end amalgam, it is less complicated for smaller employers to do the same! The World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry also has allies in China.
“It is true they have a law on nonprofit groups that basically doesn't allow us to come in and participate,” Brown says, “but we work through our allies. China recognizes nonprofit groups have a role and environmentalists have a role. They allow them, they respect them.
They listen to them because China knows they've got to do things about the environment. Our partners in China are quite active. China, as you know, is very much top down so we have to convince the government in Beijing, almost exclusively.”
As you can see, significant progress is being made. We’ve come a long way in these past 10 years. With your continued support, we can end the health scourge that is dental mercury, worldwide, thereby improving the health of literally billions of people.
This is the time to show your support. When you donate this week, I'm going to double your contribution, dollar for dollar, up to $150,000. We need to empower dentists who really understand health, and through that understanding provide the type of care that you and your family need and deserve. We need to eliminate this poison, and to do that we need to bring Consumers for Dental Choice across the finish line. We’re almost there.
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Consumers for Dental Choice is a verified 501(c)(3) corporation, which means any donations to this campaign are tax deductible. For many of you, that means you not only can leverage your donation by my doubling any amount you give, but you also can get up to a 40% tax deduction on your donation. It's a win, win, win all around.
Also, if you’re a dentist who is still using amalgam, please consider removing it from your practice immediately. Not only is it harming your patients’ health, dental amalgam is also a significant source of environmental mercury pollution. As explained by Brown:
“There’s no excuse anymore. First, it's a primitive pre-Civil War product that harms. It [requires the removal] of good tooth matter. The alternatives are so much better because they're minimally invasive. They focus on the life of the tooth, not the life of the filling.
The dentists who use amalgam are also putting their own staff at risk … And they are the polluter who's not paying. They are putting this pollution into our environment and saying, ‘We don't want to pay for this. Let the taxpayers pay for the mercury I'm putting in the environment.
Let the funeral director buy equipment [to block mercury emissions] before he does cremation. Let the landlord have the mercury stuck in the pipes. Let the fishermen not fish.’ It is irresponsible and unnecessary.”
On the home front, you can help this movement by using only mercury-free dentists. They understand the risks of mercury, refuse to expose their patients and staff to mercury vapors and protect our environment from mercury pollution. How do you find one? Here are several organizations with lists or information:
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Dental Amalgam Mercury Solutions (DAMS) (offers a packet of information) |
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International Academy of Biological Dentistry & Medicine (IABDM) |
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Dr. Mercola Interviews the Experts
This article is part of a weekly series in which Dr. Mercola interviews various experts on a variety of health issues. To see more expert interviews, click here.
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.”
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.”
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.”
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 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
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.”
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.”
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:
1. Eliminate processed carbohydrates, sugars, grains and vegetable oils — “I think that from a food perspective, those are the key evils that are really wreaking havoc on our metabolism,” he says. The worst culprit of them all is probably vegetable oils. “Polyunsaturated vegetable oils are highly oxidizable and very metabolically damaging. So, start with them,” Saladino says.
For more information about this, see “New Study Tells Why Chicken Is Killing You and Saturated Fat Is Your Friend,” which features Saladino’s interview with science journalist and author, Nina Teicholz. Saladino also reviews the mechanisms by which vegetable oils wreck health in greater detail in this interview, so be sure to listen to it in its entirety, or read through the transcript.
2. Eat animal foods — As noted in the paper,12 “Immune Function and Micronutrient Requirements Change Over the Life Course,” published in the journal Nutrients, nutrient deficiencies that can compromise immune function include vitamins, A, C, D, E, B2, B6, B12, folate, iron, selenium and zinc.
These vitamins are primarily found in animal foods, which is why shunning animal foods tends to lead to nutrient deficiencies. Even folate is found in organ meats in highly bioavailable form. “If you want to have a robust immune system, you want to be metabolically healthy. You don't want to be insulin-resistant and you need to have nutrient adequacy in your diets,” Saladino says.
“How do you get nutrient adequacy? You get these micronutrients from bioavailable sources in organ meats and in the muscle meat of animals.” If you cannot stomach the idea of organ meats, consider using a desiccated organs supplement, such as those Saladino sells.13
3. Time-restricted eating — Compressing the window of time in which you eat down to six to eight hours a day, eating your last meal at least three hours before bedtime, is another very powerful strategy to improve your insulin sensitivity.
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.”
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.”
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.”
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:
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.”
