Health & Fitness

During a September 30, 2021, U.S. Senate hearing, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., went head to head with Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. Paul called out Becerra for ignoring the science of natural immunity.

Becerra, who is neither a medical doctor nor a scientist — Paul pointed out that Becerra doesn’t even have a degree in science — is traveling the country calling people “flat-earthers” for believing that if they’ve already had COVID they don’t need the vaccine, Paul said.

“We find that very insulting. It goes against the science,” Paul said. And, Paul added, Becerra is doing this in spite of an Israeli study^1,2,3 of 2.5 million people that found the vaccinated group was actually seven times more likely to get infected with COVID than those with natural immunity from a previous infection.

When Becerra said he wasn’t familiar with that study and “would have to get back” to Paul on it, Paul chastised Becerra for his ignorance, saying he was making decisions for 100 million Americans who already had COVID when he isn’t even keeping up with the science.

“You alone are on high and you’ve made these decisions, a lawyer with no scientific background, no medical degree. This is an arrogance coupled with an authoritarianism that is unseemly and un-American,” Paul said. “You, sir, are the one ignoring the science.”

Another Israeli study⁴ that included 700,000 people, posted August 25, 2021, on the preprint server medRxiv, found those with prior SARS-CoV-2 infections were 27 times less likely to develop symptomatic infection for a second time, compared to those who were vaccinated.

A June 11, 2021, Public Health England report⁵ also showed that as a hospital patient, you are six times more likely to die of the COVID Delta variant if you are fully vaccinated, than if you are not vaccinated at all.

October 4, 2021, Project Veritas released a video⁶ (below) in which Pfizer scientist Nick Karl states, “When somebody is naturally immune … they probably have more antibodies against the virus,” correctly explaining that “When you actually get the virus, you’re going to start producing antibodies against multiple pieces of the virus … So, your antibodies are probably better at that point than the [COVID] vaccination.”

Yet another senior associate scientist at Pfizer, Chris Croce, is caught saying that “You’re protected for longer” if you have natural COVID antibodies compared to the COVID vaccine. Croce adds that he works “for an evil corporation” that is “run on COVID money.”

Natural Immunity Appears Robust and Long-Lasting

As noted by Paul, there are dozens of studies showing natural immunity from a previous infection is robust and long-lasting, something that cannot be said for the COVID shots. Natural immunity is typically lifelong, and studies have shown natural immunity against SARS-CoV-2 is at bare minimum longer lasting than vaccine-induced immunity.

Here’s a sampling of scholarly publications that have investigated natural immunity as it pertains to SARS-CoV-2 infection. There are several more in addition to these:⁷

Science Immunology October 20208 found that “RBD-targeted antibodies are excellent markers of previous and recent infection, that differential isotype measurements can help distinguish between recent and older infections, and that IgG responses persist over the first few months after infection and are highly correlated with neutralizing antibodies.”

The BMJ January 20219 concluded that “Of 11, 000 health care workers who had proved evidence of infection during the first wave of the pandemic in the U.K. between March and April 2020, none had symptomatic reinfection in the second wave of the virus between October and November 2020.”

Science February 202110 reported that “Substantial immune memory is generated after COVID-19, involving all four major types of immune memory [antibodies, memory B cells, memory CD8+ T cells, and memory CD4+ T cells]. About 95% of subjects retained immune memory at ~6 months after infection. Circulating antibody titers were not predictive of T cell memory. Thus, simple serological tests for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies do not reflect the richness and durability of immune memory to SARS-CoV-2. A 2,800-person study found no symptomatic reinfections over a ~118-day window, and a 1,246-person study observed no symptomatic reinfections over 6 months.”

A February 2021 study posted on the prepublication server medRxiv11 concluded that “Natural infection appears to elicit strong protection against reinfection with an efficacy ~95% for at least seven months.”

An April 2021 study posted on medRxiv12 reported “the overall estimated level of protection from prior SARS-CoV-2 infection for documented infection is 94.8%; hospitalization 94.1%; and severe illness 96·4%. Our results question the need to vaccinate previously-infected individuals.”

Another April 2021 study posted on the preprint server BioRxiv13 concluded that “following a typical case of mild COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2-specific CD8+ T cells not only persist but continuously differentiate in a coordinated fashion well into convalescence, into a state characteristic of long-lived, self-renewing memory.”

A May 2020 report in the journal Immunity14 confirmed that SARS-CoV-2-specific neutralizing antibodies are detected in COVID-19 convalescent subjects, as well as cellular immune responses. Here, they found that neutralizing antibody titers do correlate with the number of virus-specific T cells.

A May 2021 Nature article15 found SARS-CoV-2 infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma cells, which are a crucial source of protective antibodies. Even after mild infection, anti-SARS-CoV-2 spike protein antibodies were detectable beyond 11 months’ post-infection.

A May 2021 study in E Clinical Medicine16 found “antibody detection is possible for almost a year post-natural infection of COVID-19.” According to the authors, “Based on current evidence, we hypothesize that antibodies to both S and N-proteins after natural infection may persist for longer than previously thought, thereby providing evidence of sustainability that may influence post-pandemic planning.”

Cure-Hub data17 confirm that while COVID shots can generate higher antibody levels than natural infection, this does not mean vaccine-induced immunity is more protective. Importantly, natural immunity confers much wider protection as your body recognizes all five proteins of the virus and not just one. With the COVID shot, your body only recognizes one of these proteins, the spike protein.

A June 2021 Nature article18 points out that “Wang et al. show that, between 6 and 12 months after infection, the concentration of neutralizing antibodies remains unchanged. That the acute immune reaction extends even beyond six months is suggested by the authors’ analysis of SARS-CoV-2-specific memory B cells in the blood of the convalescent individuals over the course of the year. These memory B cells continuously enhance the reactivity of their SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies through a process known as somatic hypermutation. The good news is that the evidence thus far predicts that infection with SARS-CoV-2 induces long-term immunity in most individuals.”

Another June Nature paper19 concluded that “In the absence of vaccination antibody reactivity [to the receptor binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2], neutralizing activity and the number of RBD-specific memory B cells remain relatively stable from 6 to 12 months after infection.” According to the authors, the data suggest “immunity in convalescent individuals will be very long lasting.”

A September 2021 paper20 in the European Journal of Immunology assessed the persistence of serum antibodies following wild-type SARS-CoV-2 infection at 8 and 13 months after diagnosis in 367 patients. At 13 months, neutralizing antibodies against the wild-type virus persisted in 89% of cases, and SARS-CoV-2 spike immunoglobulin G (S-IgG) persisted in 97% of cases.

What Makes Natural Immunity Superior?

The reason natural immunity is superior to vaccine-induced immunity is because viruses contain five different proteins. The COVID shot induces antibodies against just one of those proteins, the spike protein, and no T cell immunity. When you’re infected with the whole virus, you develop antibodies against all parts of the virus, plus memory T cells.

This also means natural immunity offers better protection against variants, as it recognizes several parts of the virus. If there are significant alternations to the spike protein, as with the Delta variant, vaccine-induced immunity can be evaded. Not so with natural immunity, as the other proteins are still recognized and attacked.

Not only that, but the COVID jabs actually actively promote the production of variants for which they provide virtually no protection at all, while those with natural immunity do not cause variants and are nearly universally protected against them.

Those With Natural Immunity Have Higher Risk of Side Effects

In addition to having the best protection available, those with natural immunity also face higher stakes when taking the COVID shot, as their preexisting immunity makes them more prone to side effects.

An international survey²¹ published in mid-March 2021 surveyed 2,002 people who had received a first dose of COVID-19 vaccine, finding that those who had previously had COVID-19 experienced “significantly increased incidence and severity” of side effects, compared to those who did not have natural immunity.

The mRNA COVID-19 injections were linked to a higher incidence of side effects compared to the viral vector-based COVID-19 vaccines, but tended to be milder, local reactions. Systemic reactions, such as anaphylaxis, flu-like illness and breathlessness, were more likely to occur with the viral vector COVID-19 vaccines.

Based on these findings, the researchers called on health officials to reevaluate their vaccination recommendations for people who’ve had COVID-19:²²

“People with prior COVID-19 exposure were largely excluded from the vaccine trials and, as a result, the safety and reactogenicity of the vaccines in this population have not been previously fully evaluated. For the first time, this study demonstrates a significant association between prior COVID19 infection and a significantly higher incidence and severity of self-reported side effects after vaccination for COVID-19.

Consistently, compared to the first dose of the vaccine, we found an increased incidence and severity of self-reported side effects after the second dose, when recipients had been previously exposed to viral antigen.

In view of the rapidly accumulating data demonstrating that COVID-19 survivors generally have adequate natural immunity for at least 6 months, it may be appropriate to re-evaluate the recommendation for immediate vaccination of this group.”

Natural Immunity Has Become a Political Problem

By the looks of it, the refusal to acknowledge the reality of natural immunity appears to be rooted entirely in some sort of geopolitical agenda. There certainly are no medically valid reasons to claim vaccine-induced immunity is the only way forward. That narrative is clearly based on financial considerations alone. As noted by Ryan McMaken in a recent Mises Wire article:²³

“Since 2020, public health technocrats and their allies among elected officials have clung to the position that absolutely every person who can possibly get a covid vaccine should get one.

Both the Mayo Clinic website and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, for example, insist that “research has not yet shown” that people who have recovered from covid have any sort of reliable protection …

This narrative is reflected in the fact that the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates are a one-size-fits-all policy insisting that virtually all adults, regardless of whether or not they’ve already had the disease, receive a covid vaccine …

The regime has attached itself closely to a vaccinate-everybody-no-matter-what policy, and a sudden u-turn would be politically problematic. So it's no wonder there's so little interest in the topic …

Indeed, in a September 10 interview, senior covid technocrat Anthony Fauci claimed that the matter of natural immunity was not even being discussed at government health agencies …

But some physicians aren’t as obsessed with pushing vaccine mandates as Anthony Fauci, and the evidence in favor of natural immunity is becoming so undeniable that even mainstream publications are starting to admit it.

In an op-ed for the Washington Post²⁴ last week, Marty Makary of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine argues that the medical profession has hurt its credibility in pretending that natural immunity is virtually irrelevant to the covid equation.

Moreover, the dogmatic ‘get vaccinated’ position constitutes a lack of honesty about the data … The policy bias in favor of vaccines ignores many other facts as well, such as the relative risks of vaccines, especially for the young.”

COVID Jab May Damage Your Heart

Indeed, Israeli data show myocarditis (heart inflammation) occurs at a rate of 1 in 3,000 to 1 in 6,000 among men aged 16 to 24 who get the Pfizer shot.²⁵ This condition can cause symptoms similar to a heart attack, including chest pain, shortness of breath, abnormal heartbeat and fatigue.²⁶

When myocarditis occurs, it reduces your heart’s ability to pump and can cause rapid or abnormal heart rhythms that can be deadly. In severe cases, myocarditis can cause permanent damage to the heart muscle and lead to heart failure, heart attack, stroke and sudden cardiac death.²⁷

Another Israeli study²⁸ published in The New England Journal of Medicine, which looked at all age groups and genders, found the Pfizer mRNA jab is associated with a 3.24 times increased risk of myocarditis,²⁹ leading to the condition at a rate of one to five excess events per 100,000 persons.³⁰

Other elevated risks were also identified following the COVID jab, including lymphadenopathy (swollen lymph nodes), appendicitis and herpes zoster infection.³¹

While health authorities are shrugging myocarditis off as an acceptable and negligible risk, as most cases are “mild” and “transient,” some medical doctors vehemently disagree, noting there’s nothing “mild” or “transient” about myocarditis.

Among them is Dr. Charles Hoffe, a family physician from Lytton, British Columbia, who warned health officials about the ramifications of myocarditis.³² About his young, male patients, Hoffe explained, “They have permanently damaged hearts”:³³

“It doesn’t matter how mild it is, they will not be able to do what they used to do because heart muscle doesn’t regenerate. The long-term outlook is very grim, and with each successive shot, it will add more damage. The damage is cumulative because you’re progressively getting more damaged capillaries.”

Risk-Benefit Analysis Is a Personal Undertaking

If a person has a negligible risk of severe illness or death from COVID-19 — such as children, those who do not have chronic comorbidities and, really, anyone under the age of 60 — then the risks associated with the jab may well outweigh any potential benefit. But the only one who can really make that determination is the patient (or parent in the case of children). As noted by McMaken:³⁴

“In the real world … many medications — including these new vaccines — come with risks that must be weighed against potential benefits. These decisions can only be made at the individual level, where patients must make their own decisions about what substances to put into their own bodies.

In other words, blanket policies proclaiming ‘everyone must receive this medical treatment immediately, or else’ contradicts the realities of the uncertainties and varying risk levels that affect individuals.

The facts of uncertainty and informed consent were once considered a mainstay of medical ethics — and of any political ideology that actually respects self-determination and basic human rights. Unfortunately, the philosophy of ‘public health’ appears to be uninterested in such trivialities.

At this point, it would be embarrassing for the regime to admit what actual scientific inquiry has shown: that natural immunity is generally superior to receiving the vaccine. The regime doesn't like to be embarrassed, and neither do the countless doctors and nurses who have long toed the regime's political line. So expect more of the same.”

While we can expect irrational rhetoric from our so-called leaders to continue, we must never resign ourselves to their Orwellian version of reality. They’re wrong, and eventually, the truth will become so obvious that their narrative will simply fall apart.

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Social media has emerged as a primary source of news and other information for Americans, with 53% of adults stating that they “often” or “sometimes” get news from social media. Facebook is the most popular among the social media sites, with 36% of Americans choosing it as a regular source of news, according to a survey conducted by Pew Research Center.¹

Big Tech, including Facebook, however, is actively manipulating the spread of information by censoring and silencing whatever it deems to be “misinformation.” They use “fact checkers” for this purpose. Facebook has partnered with FactCheck.org,² which claims “to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.”³

But are the fact checkers truly independent? In a series of tweets, U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., questioned FactCheck.org’s independence, stating they’re funded by an organization that holds nearly $2 billion of stock in Johnson & Johnson, the maker of a COVID-19 injection.⁴ As Russel Brand said in the video above:⁵

“So Facebook, as one of the primary places where people in the world get their information these days has a kind of de facto commitment to objectivity that, if it’s not fulfilled — for example by having its fact checkers funded by Johnson & Johnson — that’s a serious issue.”

Facebook Fact Checkers in Collusion With Vaccine Maker?

Have you ever wondered who is behind Facebook’s fact checks? FactCheck.org is funded, in part, by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which holds nearly $2 billion in Johnson & Johnson stock. “Bless your heart if you think factcheck.org is an unbiased source of vaccine information,” Massie tweeted.⁶

According to FactCheck.org, they began a “SciCheck” feature in 2015 that was intended to “increase public knowledge and understanding of science and scientific research.” In December 2021, they launched SciCheck’s COVID-19/Vaccination Project, which, they state, aims “to increase exposure to accurate information about COVID-19 and vaccines, while decreasing the impact of misinformation.”⁷

Conveniently, SciCheck’s COVID-19/Vaccination Project was made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which not only holds billions of Johnson & Johnson stock but was founded by the late Robert Wood Johnson II — Johnson & Johnson’s president from 1932 to 1963.⁸ What’s more, its CEO, Richard Besser, is a former (2009) director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.⁹

FactCheck.org states, “The foundation has no control over our editorial decisions,”¹⁰ but Facebook’s “independent” arbiters are profiting from the vaccines. “Who pays the paychecks of the factcheckers?” Massie tweeted, again pointing out the glaring conflict that “The vaccine fact checkers at @factcheckdotorg, who claim to be independent, are funded by an organization that holds over $1.8 billion of stock in a vaccine company, and is run by a former director of @CDCgov.”¹¹

Fact Checkers Prey on Vaccine Information

Daniel Horowitz, senior editor at The Blaze, put it this way, “In other words, the vaccine companies control the flow of information about vaccines. Welcome to the world of ‘independent fact checkers.’”¹²

What happens when heavily conflicted “fact checkers” control the narrative on social media? Open debate is silenced and science is stifled. It’s comical that FactCheck.org has the gall to state, “[T]he views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation.”¹³

“In fact,” Horowitz said, “the views expressed almost assuredly do reflect the views of the foundation … have you ever seen the organization offer balanced coverage or flag a single post on the other side of this debate as false, no matter how outlandish the claim might be, including articles advocating experimental emergency use authorization vaccines for little children?”¹⁴

Horowitz is among those who, like me, have had information they shared censored if they questioned the science behind lockdowns and mask mandates. Other commonly “flagged” articles may discuss potentially lifesaving drugs like ivermectin or mention vitamin D¹⁵ and zinc for SARS-CoV-2. But nothing has been more heavily targeted by fact checkers than vaccine “misinformation.”

“Indeed, we all know the goal is to promote only positive information and zero concerns about the vaccine at all costs,” Horowitz stated. “Facebook, which is the largest promoter of their [FactCheck.org’s] work, has openly made this its policy.”¹⁶

The Corruption Runs Deep

NewsGuard is another self-appointed internet watchdog that sells a browser plugin to rate websites on nine criteria of credibility and transparency. It has also been tracking Facebook pages that it claims are “super-spreaders” of COVID-19 information.¹⁷ NewsGuard received much of its startup funds from Publicis Groupe, a giant global communications group with divisions that brand imaging, design of digital business platforms, media relations and health care.

Publicis Groupe’s health subsidiary, Publicis Healthcare Communications Group, and its several subsidiaries name Pfizer, Abbott, Allergan, Merck, Astra Zeneca, Sanofi, Bayer and what they describe as “40 clients in the life sciences industry which includes being a preferred partner with 13 of the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies.”¹⁸ In fact, the PR firm that created and ran Purdue Pharma’s deceptive marketing campaigns for the opioid Oxycontin is none other than Publicis.

At the beginning of May 2021, the Massachusetts attorney general filed a lawsuit¹⁹ against Publicis Health, accusing the Publicis subsidiary of helping Purdue create the deceptive marketing materials used to mislead doctors into prescribing OxyContin.

Overall, Publicis appears to be playing an important role in the global censorship of information relating to COVID-19, and Publicis Health admitted its involvement in this agenda in an April 2021 tweet, in which the they announced its partnership with NewsGuard, “to fight the ‘infodemic’ of misinformation about COVID-19 and its vaccines.”²⁰

NewsGuard is clearly in the business of censoring the truth and previously classified Mercola.com as fake news because we reported the SARS-CoV-2 virus as potentially having been leaked from the biosafety level 4 (BSL4) laboratory in Wuhan, China.

Seeing how Publicis represents most of the major pharmaceutical companies in the world and funded the creation of NewsGuard, it’s not far-fetched to assume Publicis might influence NewsGuard’s ratings of drug industry competitors, such as alternative health sites. Being a Google partner,²¹ Publicis also has the ability to bury undesirable views that might hurt its clientele.

NewsGuard’s health-related service, HealthGuard,²² is also partnered with the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — a progressive cancel-culture leader²³ with extensive ties to government and global think tanks that has labeled people questioning the COVID-19 injection as “threats to national security.”

A One-Stop Shop Pushing the COVID-19 Narrative

These connections, taken together, explain how views that counter the official narrative can be so effectively erased. One of Publicis’ selling points is “the power of one.”²⁴ It’s a one-stop shop, offering clients seamless end-to-end “marketing, communication and digital transformation, driven through the alchemy of data, creativity, media and technology, uniquely positioned to deliver personalized experience at scale.”²⁵

In addition to being a global hub for pharmaceutical marketing as a partner of the World Economic Forum,²⁶ which is leading the call for a Great Reset of the global economy and a complete overhaul of society,²⁷ Publicis is also linked to the technocratic, transhumanist deep state.

Censoring COVID-19 truth and manufacturing pro-industry propaganda simultaneously serves three key masters — Big Pharma, Big Tech and the deep state — as the pandemic is fueling a manufactured psychological operation designed to usher in the Great Reset, all while allowing Big Pharma to make a killing on pandemic vaccines and using the “need” for vaccination as justification for biosurveillance.

To put it another way, if Publicis and FactCheck.org represent the drug industry, and the drug industry wants you to think you’re helpless against COVID-19 without their expensive drugs and vaccines, what do you think Publicis and NewsGuard will rate as “misinformation”?

Preventive strategies and alternative therapies, perhaps? And it doesn’t matter how much science there is to support such therapies, because it’s not about science. It’s about controlling what you believe works.

Conflicted Entities Have Become Societal Regulators

Social and mainstream media have played an outsized role in deciding who is an “expert” worthy of sharing information and who is not, while those who question the “expert” data or ask for more evidence are vilified — a “dismissive, authoritarian approach ‘in defense of science,’” according to John Ioannidis, professor of medicine and professor of epidemiology and population health at Stanford University, in Tablet.²⁸

The end result is an altered reality in which heavily conflicted corporations have emerged as regulators of society instead of being regulated themselves:²⁹

“Other potentially conflicted entities became the new societal regulators, rather than the ones being regulated. Big Tech companies, which gained trillions of dollars in cumulative market value from the virtual transformation of human life during lockdown, developed powerful censorship machineries that skewed the information available to users on their platforms.

Consultants who made millions of dollars from corporate and government consultation were given prestigious positions, power, and public praise, while unconflicted scientists who worked pro bono but dared to question dominant narratives were smeared as being conflicted.”

Social media and its fact checkers are also skewing science itself via their conflicted “misinformation” labels.

Even healthy skepticism has become viewed as intolerable, while the COVID-19 science cult — made “out of science, expertise, the university system, executive-branch ‘norms,’ the ‘intelligence community,’ the State Department, NGOs, the legacy news media, and the hierarchy of credentialed achievement in general”³⁰ — has been held as gospel during the pandemic.

Increasingly, Big Tech is being trusted to dictate the truth, via conflicted fact checkers indebted to Big Industry through their funding. It’s dangerous to rely on any one source or group of individuals as authorities on truth, as it sets up the path for inevitable censorship. Even under the best circumstances, everyone is subject to their own biases, and when billions of dollars are involved, the bias is impossible to ignore.

Yet, it remains true that the path to the truth depends on continued scientific exploration, open debate, challenges and skepticism — all things that are now being challenged by fact checkers on social media and increasingly seen as anathema due to the authoritarian and conflicted control that has taken over during the pandemic.

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This article was previously published February 15, 2021, and has been updated with new information.

The tendency is to lose muscle as you age, a condition known as sarcopenia. If you don't do anything to stop it you can expect to lose about 15% of your muscle mass between your 30s and your 80s.¹ An estimated 10% to 25% of seniors under the age of 70 have sarcopenia and as many as half those over the age of 80 are impaired with it.²

Enforced bedrest, due to hospitalization, for example, can also have a dramatic impact on your muscle mass, even if you're younger. According to a 2015 review³ in Extreme Physiology & Medicine, you can lose 5.2% of your muscle mass in the first two weeks of bedrest. By Day 23, you can have lost up to 10% of your quadriceps muscle mass.

Not only are strong muscles a requirement for mobility, balance and the ability to live independently, but having reserve muscle mass will also increase your chances of survival⁴ when sick or hospitalized. Since muscle is lost far more easily and quicker than it's built, finding ways to continuously promote and maintain your muscle mass is of utmost importance.

The Crucial Role of NAD+

As reported by Science Daily,⁵ scientists recently discovered that Alzheimer's-like protein aggregates underlie the muscle deterioration commonly seen in aging, and that nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) is essential for combating this condition.

Their study,⁶ published in the journal Cell Reports, showed that protein aggregates (amyloid) could be blocked by boosting the levels of NAD+, a biomolecule that is also essential for maintaining mitochondrial function.

Higher levels of NAD+ were found to turn on the defense systems of the mitochondria and restore muscle function. Aggregated proteins have long been thought to be a contributor to brain aging, and this study proves aggregated proteins also contribute to muscle aging.

"The most prominent component of these protein aggregates is beta-amyloid, just like in the amyloid plaques in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease," said Johan Auwerx at EPFL's School of Life Sciences. "These abnormal proteotoxic aggregates could serve as novel biomarkers for the aging process, beyond the brain and muscle."

The study points out that NAD+ homeostasis is required to maintain proteostasis, i.e., the regulation of protein creation, folding, trafficking and degradation. It turns out that boosting NAD+ in later life will reduce amyloidosis (the buildup of amyloid) and mitochondrial dysfunction.

The importance of NAD+ for healthy muscle function is also reviewed in "Sarcopenia and Muscle Aging: A Brief Overview,"⁷ published in the journal Endocrinology and Metabolism. The paper highlights:

"… recent findings that describe key pathophysiological phenotypes of this condition, including alterations in muscle fiber types, mitochondrial function, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) metabolism, myokines, and gut microbiota, in aged muscle compared to young muscle or healthy aged muscle."

As indicated by the Cell Report study, this Endocrinology and Metabolism paper highlights the connection between sarcopenia and mitochondrial dysfunction in both skeletal muscle and motor neurons.

People with sarcopenia have been found to have both reduced mitochondrial oxidative capacity and inhibited NAD+ biosynthesis, and several studies have proposed that mitochondrial dysfunction in your neurons actually drive the development of sarcopenia.⁸

What Is NAD+?

NAD+ is a substrate for a number of important enzymes, including poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) and sirtuin 1 (SIRT1), which is known as a classic longevity protein. NAD+ is also essential in metabolic processes such as creating ATP in your mitochondria. It accepts and donates electrons and is used in oxidation-reduction reactions in the mitochondrial electron transport chain.

Interestingly, what scientists have observed is that NAD+ levels decline in most tissues over time, and is associated with aging in general and is therefore thought to play an important role in many age-related diseases.

According to the Endocrinology and Metabolism paper,⁹ researchers have shown that when the NAD+ salvage pathways in muscle are impaired, mitochondrial dysfunction and decreased muscle mass ensues.

NAD+ boosting molecules such as nicotinamide riboside (NR), nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN), nicotinamide (a form of vitamin B3 or niacin) and nicotinic acid (niacin) have all been shown to protect against age-related muscle disease.

How to Boost NAD+

Of those four, NMN is my personal favorite as it activates the NAD+ salvage pathway. As explained by Siim Land in an interview I did with him, which also reviews the importance of NAD+ in COVID-19:

"A lot of the NAD that your body produces is recycled through the salvage pathway. Very little (less than 1%) of it is going to come from food, especially tryptophan or niacin. The easiest way to prevent losing your NAD as you get older or as you get immunocompromised is to promote the salvage pathway."

I've previously recommended the use of NR over NMN but have since changed my stance. NR used to be considered superior because no NMN transporter — required to get it into cells — had been detected. We now know there is such a transporter, which gives NMN the advantage as it's also a more direct NAD+ precursor.

Most of the NAD+ precursor research is done with NR and that used to be my primary choice. However, as you can see from the image above, NMN converts to NAD+ whereas NR must first be converted into NMN before it can be converted into NAD+,¹⁰ so it makes more sense to use NMN for NAD+ augmentation.

The image above also shows how niacin (NA) also finds its way to become NAD+. Niacin is also a useful supplement to use in increasing NAD+ levels. You just need to limit the dose to about 25 mg, which most is a dose low enough not to cause any flushing. Higher doses are not likely as effective as NMN and exercise in producing NAD+.

The NMN transporter was discovered^11,12 shortly before my interview with David Sinclair, Ph.D., a professor of genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School. Interestingly, NMN is also Sinclair's favorite NAD+ precursor.

Sinclair is generally acknowledged for bringing the importance of NAD+ to the world with his experiments at MIT in the late '90s which connected NAD+ to sirtuin activation.

I believe one of the most effective ways of boosting your NAD+ level is to use NMN in suppository form, as this allows you to avoid most of the methylation of the supplement. Other alternatives include subcutaneous or intranasal administration, all of which are more effective than oral supplements.

Unfortunately, NMN is not sold in suppository form, so you would need to get silicone candy molds and use coconut oil to serve as binder for the NMN. The suppositories would need to be refrigerated as coconut oil tends to melt at 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Additionally, NMN is quite perishable, which is another reason to refrigerate it.

As for the other NAD+ boosters, I do not recommend using high-dose niacinamide because in high doses it inhibits Sirt1, an important longevity protein. As mentioned above, low-dose niacin (vitamin B3) of 25 mg can be used.

Low doses of niacin, along with NMN in suppository form — both of which are precursors to NAD+ — are typically sufficient. As an added boon, raising your NAD+ also appears protective against severe COVID-19. There are also NAD+ supplements available, but their price tags can be prohibitive.

Lifestyle Strategies Can Address Underlying Cause of Low NAD+

While supplements such as NMN can certainly be helpful, if your NAD is low, your best bet is really to address the underlying cause. The good news is that this can be done through simple lifestyle strategies such as exercise, sauna bathing, fasting, realigning your circadian rhythm and minimizing electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure.

One of the reasons exercise, heat exposure and fasting work to address low NAD+ levels is because they are catabolic stressors that activate AMP protein kinase (AMPK). AMPK, in turn, activates an enzyme called NAMPT, which governs the NAD+ salvage pathway.

Blood flow restriction (BFR) training can be particularly beneficial in terms of exercise. It has been shown to naturally increase your NAD level and is very safe for the elderly.

Your circadian rhythm, meanwhile, plays a role because it is controlled by longevity genes called sirtuins, SIRT1 in particular. If your circadian rhythm is misaligned, then sirtuins are not expressed, which in turn inhibits NAMPT, thereby shutting down your NAD+ salvage pathway.

Oxidative stress and inflammation also use up and deplete NAD+, and exercise, sauna and fasting all help to reduce these. As a result, less NAD+ is depleted. So, these strategies not only improve your NAD+ production, but also reduce your body's NAD+ consumption. The end result is a higher NAD+ baseline.

EMF exposure, which is the topic of my book "EMF*D," is one common source of oxidative stress, so it too increases your NAD+ consumption. It does this by activating PARP, a DNA repairing enzyme. Each time PARP is activated, it uses up 150 molecules of NAD+. Hence, reducing your EMF exposure can also be an important strategy to preserve and protect your NAD+ level.

Your body also uses up NAD+ to detoxify alcohol, so if nightly drinking is part of your routine, consider giving it up. To learn more about how healthy lifestyle strategies such as the ones mentioned here can improve your NAD+ level, consider reading through the paper "Healthy Lifestyle Recommendations: Do the Beneficial Effects Originate from NAD+ Amount at the Cellular Level?"¹³

NAD+ Is a Crucial Antiaging Component

So, to summarize, raising your NAD+ level and keeping it high has many important health benefits, from supporting mitochondrial function, which is crucial for general health and longevity, to protecting against severe COVID-19 and age-related muscle loss.

The great news is that this can easily be done by implementing the healthy lifestyle strategies reviewed above — exercise, sauna, fasting and recalibrating your circadian rhythm — while simultaneously avoiding things that deplete your body of NAD+, such as EMF exposure and excessive alcohol consumption. On top of that, supplements such as NMN together with normal doses of niacin can help boost your NAD+ in the short term.

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Body+Soul speaks to Gabriela Fearn about her rollercoaster journey with cancer.

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Friday 15 October is International Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. 

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Four weeks on a diet of highly processed food led to a strong inflammatory response in the brains of aging rats that was accompanied by behavioral signs of memory loss, a new study has found. Researchers also found that supplementing the processed diet with the omega-3 fatty acid DHA prevented memory problems and reduced the inflammatory effects almost entirely in older rats.

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Researchers have discovered how neurons in a small area of the mammalian brain help filter distracting or disruptive signals -- specifically from the hands -- to coordinate dexterous movements. Their results may hold lessons in how the brain filters other sensory information as well.

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More than a third of all medicines available today are based on active substances from nature and a research team has developed a procedure to identify small active substance molecules much more quickly and easily.

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Laser treatment has the potential to transform the management of glaucoma in Africa, and to prevent more people from going irreversibly blind, particularly in regions with high disease prevalence and incidence, suggests new research. Conducted in Tanzania, the research is the first randomised controlled trial exploring the use of the laser treatment, Selective Laser Trabeculoplasty (SLT), for patients with glaucoma in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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Lizards can regrow severed tails, making them the closest relative to humans that can regenerate a lost appendage. But in lieu of the original tail that includes a spinal column and nerves, the replacement structure is an imperfect cartilage tube. Now, a study describes how stem cells can help lizards regenerate better tails.

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At the beginning of neurodegenerative disease, the immune cells of the brain -- the 'microglia' -- take up glucose, a sugar molecule, to a much greater extent than hitherto assumed. These results are of great significance for the interpretation of brain scans depicting the distribution of glucose in the brain. Furthermore, such image-based data could potentially serve as a biomarker to non-invasively capture the response of microglia to therapeutic interventions in people with dementia.

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Normal human esophagus carries a high number of mutations, but tumors are rare, due to mutant cells eliminating early tumors.

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Although there has been evidence of our species living in rainforest regions in Southeast Asia from at least 70,000 years ago, the poor preservation of organic material in these regions limits how much we know about their diet and ecological adaptations to these habitats. An international team of scientists has now applied a new method to investigate the diet of fossil humans: the analysis of stable zinc isotopes from tooth enamel. This method proves particularly helpful to learn whether prehistoric humans and animals were primarily eating meat or plants.

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