Health & Fitness

If you’re told to quarantine in Australia, don’t expect officials to take your word that you’re staying home. Travelers who return to South Australia, one of the country’s six states, are being forced to download an intrusive app that uses facial recognition and geo-location to make sure you quarantine in your home.

Residents will be randomly contacted by the app to provide proof of their identity and location. They’ll have 15 minutes to respond, and if they don’t, or their location doesn’t match up with where they’re supposed to be, police will be at their doorstep.

"We don't tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes," Premier Steven Marshall said. Adding, chillingly, “I think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app."¹

Prison State Is Here: App Tracks Your Whereabouts

Right now, the app is part of a pilot program, with Australian officials testing just how far they can go to enforce their COVID-19 quarantine rules. Developed by tech firm Genvis Pty Ltd in 2020, the app is part of Genvis’ G2G suite of services, which were developed in partnership with the Western Australia Police Force.²

It started with the introduction of a QR code-based travel permit system that was used to manage travel restrictions that took effect March 2020. Since then, Genvis states on their website, it has “evolved into a comprehensive platform that powers much of Western Australia’s COVID response in support of the state’s elimination strategy.”³

This includes a G2G Pass, a “border management solution” that manages all travel into Western Australia, along with its G2G Now app, which they say has “helped more than 95,000 people quarantine at home in W.A. since September 2020.” As for how it works, Genvis states:⁴

“The app uses facial recognition to confirm the identity of people in quarantine and location services to verify their location. A full-scale quarantine management solution, G2G Now saves significant police resources and is an Australian first.”

In addition to “border management” and “quarantine management,” Genvis and the Western Australia Police Force seem to have a solution for all of their prison state needs, including:⁵

• COVID test registrations
• Real-time app-based reporting
• Exposed worker declarations

The oppressive G2G suite of products is being used not only by the Western Australia Police Force but also by the Northern Territory government and the Tasmanian government.⁶

Selfies Required to ‘Keep Communities Safe’

When prompted by the app, users must snap a selfie within the 15-minute timeframe, at their specified home quarantine address, lest police come knocking on their door. This is all to “keep communities safe,” Kirstin Butcher, Genvis chief executive, told Reuters. “You can't have home quarantine without compliance checks … You can't perform physical compliance checks at the scale needed to support (social and economic) reopening plans so technology has to be used."⁷

The move is being pitched as an improvement to the requirement that all international arrivals spend two weeks quarantining at a hotel under police watch, but confining a person to their home who has not committed a crime, and monitoring them with the threat of police force, is not something typically done in a free society.

“While the recognition technology has been used in countries like China, no other democracy has been reported as considering its use in connection with coronavirus containment procedures,” Reuters reported.⁸ However, this could easily change and could quickly morph into an app to monitor your whereabouts for all types of purposes.

It’s already starting. September 17, 2021, President Biden added measles to the list of quarantinable communicable diseases, meaning if you’ve been exposed, you could be required to quarantine.⁹ What other diseases will be added to the list, and what measures approved to enforce Americans remaining in their homes?

One of Genvis’ other projects is Milli, a “home safety smartphone app,” also built in collaboration with the Western Australia Police Force, that “analyses live home security camera feeds detecting people and vehicles.” If an “event” happens, an alert is sent to a user’s smartphone so they can “quickly review the information and take action if necessary.”¹⁰

The Milli app is in use in Western Australia, reportedly as a tool to reduce family and domestic violence. But it’s not hard to see how this invasive technology could easily be used for other types of monitoring and surveillance, with extreme violations to privacy. Many have voiced concerns over Genvis’ products, including the G2G Now app.

"I'm troubled not just by the use here but by the fact this is an example of the creeping use of this sort of technology in our lives," Toby Walsh, a professor of Artificial Intelligence at University of NSW, told Reuters. "Even if it works here ... then it validates the idea that facial recognition is a good thing. Where does it end?"¹¹

When Is Australia no Longer Free?

Australia has faced some of the tightest restrictions during the pandemic, and people are growing weary of having their personal liberty taken away in the name of safety. When a curfew was announced in the state of Victoria, scholar John Lee was asked if he thought it went too far, to which he responded, “To put this in context, federal and state parliaments sat during both world wars and the Spanish Flu, and curfews have never been imposed.”¹²

In New South Wales, the military has been used to enforce lockdowns, which have persisted for months, and when protests occurred, people were fined and arrested. Writing in The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf explained that Australia appears to have entered a police state and questions at what point it can no longer be called a free country:¹³

“Australia is undoubtedly a democracy, with multiple political parties, regular elections, and the peaceful transfer of power.

But if a country indefinitely forbids its own citizens from leaving its borders, strands tens of thousands of its citizens abroad, puts strict rules on intrastate travel, prohibits citizens from leaving home without an excuse from an official government list, mandates masks even when people are outdoors and socially distanced, deploys the military to enforce those rules, bans protest, and arrests and fines dissenters, is that country still a liberal democracy?

Enduring rules of that sort would certainly render a country a police state. In year two of the pandemic, with COVID-19 now thought to be endemic, rather than a temporary emergency the nation could avoid, how much time must pass before we must regard Australia as illiberal and unfree?”

People Are Protesting the Orwellian Policies

In Melbourne, people took to the streets in protest after being locked down in their homes for more than 220 days. In addition to schools and businesses being closed, residents have been subjected to curfews and confined to their homes for all but essential travel and exercise.

The protestors were met with police forces responding as though they were at war; protesting has also been outlawed, with dissenters risking arrest and fines of $5,000 or more.¹⁴ International media has largely ignored the growing protests and police state in Australia, while Australian media tend to favor the government narrative.

One Australian woman who attended the protests told KRWG media on the condition of anonymity, “I want my freedoms and democracy back, I want parliament to be open, I want discussion, I want full disclosure, I want dissenting voices to be heard. I came here from a communist country when I was 5, so yes I’m a true blue Aussie, but I also have that other background of what my parents escaped from.”¹⁵

At protests in Sydney over the summer, with residents in the midst of a months-long lockdown, police were also called in for enforcement and government officials called on individuals to report people who weren’t obeying social distancing rules.¹⁶

Outside of Sydney, protestors were increasingly taking to city centers to call for freedom and the truth. At an earlier protest in Melbourne, a banner read, “This is not about a virus. It’s about total government control of the people.”¹⁷ Multiple arrests were made at the Sydney protests, with police stating that crowds “broke through barriers and threw plastic bottles and plants.”¹⁸

In New South Wales, law enforcement stated that while they supported free speech and peaceful assembly, “the protest was a breach of public health orders.”¹⁹ About 5,000 people also demonstrated against COVID measures in Athens, Greece, with banners stating, “Don’t touch our children.”²⁰

Protests have also occurred in England over the NHS Covid app, which notifies you if you’ve been in close contact (defined as within six feet for 15 minutes or more) with someone who tested positive for COVID.

If you’re unvaccinated and get notified, you’re supposed to self-isolate for 10 days since the last contact with the positive person. If you don’t self-isolate after being notified, you can be fined £1,000 ($1,390) or more.²¹ In early August, the NHS changed how the app worked, notifying people of close contacts in the last two days instead of five, after so many people were “pinged” that it was pushing food producers, retailers and supply chains near the breaking point.²²

Tech Tyranny Is Increasing

A national security state isn’t only occurring in Australia. Measures toward authoritarian control and mass surveillance have been increasing worldwide, and in the U.S., Silicon Valley and the national security state are now fused, according to one of my favorite independent journalists, Whitney Webb.²³

The decades-long wars against domestic dissidence have always involved technology such as databases, and now it’s progressing to technology such as facial recognition apps. Webb wrote about “tech tyranny” at the start of the pandemic, revealing that a document from the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) — acquired through a FOIA request — said changes were needed to keep a technological advantage over China:²⁴

“This document suggests that the U.S. follow China’s lead and even surpass them in many aspects related to AI-driven technologies, particularly their use of mass surveillance.

This perspective clearly clashes with the public rhetoric of prominent U.S. government officials and politicians on China, who have labeled the Chinese government’s technology investments and export of its surveillance systems and other technologies as a major ‘threat’ to Americans’ ‘way of life.’”

As in Australia, many of the steps to implement the program are being promoted as part of the COVID-19 pandemic response, in the name of public safety. NSCAI is not only a key part of The Great Reset’s fourth industrial revolution, but also promotes mass surveillance, online-only shopping and the end of cash while noting that “having streets carpeted with cameras is good infrastructure.”²⁵

With increased surveillance comes loss of freedom, which is why people around the world should continue to peacefully rebel against technologies that threaten their liberties.

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This article was previously published February 6, 2021, and has been updated with new information.

On December 22, 2020, a nonprofit limited company based in Great Britain that calls itself the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH)^1,2,3 published a report titled "The Anti-Vaxx Playbook."⁴

It contains false and misleading information about the Fifth International Public Conference on Vaccination, which was sponsored by the 39-year-old U.S. nonprofit educational charity the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), and held online in October 2020. Promotion of the CCDH report resulted in the spreading of fake news and misinformation by mainline media outlets in Great Britain and the U.S.^5,6,7,8,9

NVIC's pay-for-view digital conference¹⁰ was transparently open to the public and featured presentations by 51 speakers from the U.S. and other countries discussing vaccine science, public health policy and law, informed consent and civil liberties.

Dedicated to "Protecting Health and Autonomy in the 21st Century," the conference was made available on February 2, 2021 for free viewing online. Go to NVIC.org¹¹ to access the conference website and watch all of the presentations.

CCDH Misinformation Campaign Designed to Discredit, Destroy NVIC

Influence Watch, which monitors individuals and groups that influence¹² public policy, describes CCDH as a "London-based advocacy group that targets accused 'hate groups' and individuals for de-platforming campaigns to remove them from major social media outlets" and "has ties to the left-wing British Labour Party and British left-progressivism."¹³

The anonymously funded CCDH also has an office in Washington, D.C. and the defamatory publicity campaign created in December 2020 was designed to not only discredit NVIC's four-decade public record of working within the U.S. democratic system to secure vaccine safety and informed consent protections in public health policies and laws, but to destroy our small charity.

The misinformation campaign was spearheaded by the CEO of CCDH, who is a political operative¹⁴ personally affiliated with Great Britain's socialist Labour Party.^15,16,17

The report deceived readers by describing NVIC's 2020 conference as a meeting "recently held in private over three days," which implied secrecy,¹⁸ even though the event was transparently open to the public just like the four previous vaccination conferences NVIC hosted in 1997, 2000, 2002 and 2009.¹⁹

One British tabloid read the report and described NVIC's public conference as a "private conference call" where "secret plans" were plotted to "launch the largest ever misinformation campaign about vaccines."²⁰

Last summer, CCDH published their first report alleging that Big Tech companies operating social media platforms make big profits by allowing individuals and organizations criticizing vaccine science, policy and law to message on their platforms,²¹ and should take stronger action to censor online public conversations about vaccination that do not conform with the "scientific consensus that vaccines are safe."^22,23

That July 2020 report was promoted by mainline media outlets in Britain^24,25,26,27 and the U.S.²⁸ However, CCDH's report published five months later in December 2020, which created fake news and misinformation about NVIC's conference, contained even more inflammatory rhetoric.

It demonized those who criticize vaccine safety as "malignant actors,"²⁹ and CCDH demanded that companies and governments virtually eliminate individuals or groups publishing information online that fails to align with government and industry narratives about vaccination and public health policy.

In that report, CCDH ordered Big Tech companies and governments to censor and punish dissenters, charging that "anything less than the dismantling of these individuals' profiles, pages and groups and permanent denial of service, now they know what is happening, is willing acquiescence."³⁰

On January 18, 2021, the anonymously funded CCDH once again publicly attacked the National Vaccine Information Center, this time for applying for a U.S. Paycheck Protection Program loan to secure the continued employment of NVIC's 21 workers during massive nationwide unemployment caused by lockdowns.

The British nonprofit company appeared to suggest that the U.S. government should not have been viewpoint-neutral in granting relief loans, but should have applied an ideological litmus test to NVIC's loan request that was made to retain employees during catastrophic economic hardship caused by lockdowns that have affected donations to charities.³¹

CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed said, "Lending money to these organizations so they can prosper is a sickening use of taxpayer money."³² Once again, mainline media outlets in Britain and the U.S. widely promoted CCDH's allegations.^{33,34,35,36,37}

Six months of orchestrated public attacks on NVIC by CCDH have generated hate mail to our small charity, which was founded and has been led by parents of vaccine-injured children for four decades.³⁸

Strong Freedom of Dissent History in US

I was born into a post-World War II generation in the U.S., a generation known for challenging the status quo and exercising the right to dissent, which is protected under the U.S. Constitution.³⁹

Whether it was advocating for the right to listen to rock 'n' roll and joining antinuclear protests in the 1950s,^40,41 or marching in support of civil rights and opposing an undeclared war in Asia in the 1960s,^42,43 or women fighting for equal opportunity and pay and consumer activists working for environmental protection and car safety laws in the 1970s,^44,45,46,47 or mothers protesting against drunk drivers⁴⁸ and choosing a drug-free birth and breastfeeding for their babies in the 1980s,^49,50 the baby boomer generation has been known for exercising freedom of thought and speech. 

Contentious social, political and health issues of the 20th century sparked heated debates on college campuses,⁵¹ where students could still explore, critique and openly search for truth, and in mainline newspapers, magazines and radio and television stations, where point/counterpoint examination of controversial topics was the hallmark of good journalism because public debate is the hallmark of free speech.

The America where I grew up in the mid-20th century was a beacon of hope for people living behind the Iron Curtain⁵² and in other totalitarian or authoritarian societies,⁵³ where exercise of freedom of thought, speech and conscience and the right to dissent and peacefully assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances had been eliminated, where people had been turned into silent indentured servants working to serve a small ruling class in control of the state.⁵⁴

Statists, who believe that economic control and planning must be in the hands of a highly centralized government,⁵⁵ are always afraid of the truth, afraid that people armed with knowledge will act together to challenge control of the state by a powerful and privileged few.

Without Debate, Without Criticism 'No Republic Can Survive'

I was in junior high school when President John F. Kennedy addressed the American Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961. He said:⁵⁶

"Without debate, without criticism no administration and no country can succeed and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy.

And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment — the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution — not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply 'give the public what it wants' — but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion."

He closed with these words:

"So it is to the printing press — to the recorder of man's deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news — that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help, man will be what he was born to be: free and independent."

That speech given 60 years ago was a ringing endorsement for freedom of the press. Yet, in the 21st century, it is becoming clear that there are political operatives and corporations seeking to censor freedom of thought and speech by citizen journalists publishing analysis and perspective on the worldwide web, an electronic communications network that has been the world's biggest forum for free speech over the past quarter century.^57,58

Right to Dissent, Freedom of Speech Under Assault in America

The right to dissent⁵⁹ and exercise freedom of thought, speech and conscience⁶⁰ is under assault in America,⁶¹ even though these cherished civil liberties are codified into the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution. And civil liberties are under assault internationally in other nations with representative democracies, as well.⁶²

Today, political operatives are pressuring government, media corporations and other institutions to eliminate freedom of speech, especially public conversations about vaccine science, policy and law.^63,64,65

Spirited public debate about vaccine safety and mandatory vaccination laws has been going on for more than two centuries.^66,67 What is the justification for censoring that public conversation now and punishing those who engage in it with economic and social sanctions?^68,69

And if the public conversation about vaccination and health can be censored, what topic will be the next one put on the "no fly" list?^70,71

NVIC: Working to Reform Vaccine Policy and Law for Decades

I am a co-founder and president of the highly rated nonprofit educational charity established in 1982 and known today as the National Vaccine Information Center.^72,73 Our mission is to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths through public education. NVIC does not make vaccine use recommendations. We advocate for the human and legal right to make informed and voluntary decisions about vaccination without being coerced or punished for the decision made.⁷⁴

Our not-for-profit charitable organization was established for one reason: We were mothers and fathers of children brain injured by the highly reactive pertussis vaccine in the DPT shot and we wanted a safer pertussis vaccine to replace the one that had hurt our children. That goal was accomplished after 14 years of consumer advocacy when a less reactive acellular pertussis (DTaP) vaccine was licensed for babies in the U.S. in 1996.⁷⁵

We also wanted parents to have access to accurate and full information about the risks and complications of both diseases and vaccines before children are vaccinated, so parents and pediatricians could work together to identify those children who are more susceptible to vaccine reactions and protect their health.

That is why we worked with Congress to secure vaccine safety informing, recording, reporting and research provisions in the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, a law in which the U.S. government officially acknowledged for the first time that vaccine safety should be made a national priority because federally licensed and recommended and state mandated childhood vaccines can and do cause permanent injuries and even death for some children.^76,77,78

We are not all the same. We do not all react the same way to pharmaceutical products,^79,80,81 which is why our organization has strongly supported research into genetic, epigenetic, environmental and other risk factors that make some individuals more susceptible to adverse responses to vaccination.^82,83

We believe every life is important, and that the lives of those harmed by vaccines and infectious diseases should be equally valued and protected.

We believe that consumer advocacy has and should continue to play an active role in holding pharmaceutical companies and government agencies accountable for vaccine product safety, and we are dedicated to working responsibly within the democratic system of this Constitutional Republic to make health policy and law safer and more effective for everyone.^84,85,86

Since 1988, I and other NVIC representatives have served as consumer members of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, FDA Vaccines & Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines, Vaccine Policy Analysis Collaborative and other federal and state public engagement projects discussing vaccine science, policy and law issues with vaccine developers, federal and state health officials, medical trade and pharmaceutical industry representatives, and members of other nonprofit organizations.^87,88,89

My 22 years of service as a consumer member on federal advisory committees and public engagement projects includes four years as a member of the Institute of Medicine Vaccine Safety Forum at the National Academy of Science, where I helped to coordinate public workshops on vaccine science, policy and law issues⁹⁰ and was an editor for the report on Risk Communication and Vaccination published by the National Academy Press. That report importantly stated:⁹¹

"The goal that all parties share regarding vaccine risk communication should be informed decision making. Consent for vaccination is truly 'informed' when the members of the public know the risks and benefits and make voluntary decisions.

The discussion of mandatory vaccination at the workshop suggested that it may interfere with informed consent and may damage trust and deter effective communication, and thus needs to be carefully weighed against its benefits."

We believe the human right to freedom of thought, speech and conscience should be respected, not devalued. As public health regulations and laws are being created during the coronavirus pandemic to restrict or eliminate civil liberties,⁹² we should be encouraging people to have civil conversations about vaccination, health and autonomy. Americans should be welcomed by legislators to participate in — not be shut out of — the democratic law making process.⁹³

When people feel disenfranchised and believe that those in power do not care about their lives or the lives of their children, that is when trust in government is lost and people let fear, anger and despair control their actions. Empowering people with knowledge and the hope they can help effect meaningful change if they do it in a rational and constructive way has always been one of NVIC's guiding principles.⁹⁴

Fifth International Public Conference on Vaccination Features Principled, Courageous Speakers

I want to thank the generous sponsors and attendees of the Fifth International Public Conference on Vaccination: Protecting Health and Autonomy in the 21st Century, who helped to make it financially possible for NVIC to host a virtual conference last fall.⁹⁵

The conference had been scheduled for two years to be held in October 2020 in a hotel in the Washington, D.C. area. When travel and social distancing restrictions were enacted in the spring of 2020, we had to make a choice between canceling the conference or pivoting to a pay-for-view online public conference.

We chose to hold the conference online because we knew that the controversial issues being debated in the public square this year needed a public forum where well-anchored information and perspective could be presented.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the more than two dozen principled and courageous scientists, physicians, holistic health professionals, authors, attorneys, faith leaders, parents of vaccine injured children and civil and human rights activists, who represent diverse areas of expertise and participated in our conference.⁹⁶

NVIC Will Not Abandon Our Mission

No matter how many political operatives, corporations and institutions threaten and try to discredit NVIC and our work in order to silence us, we will not abandon our 40-year mission dedicated to preventing vaccine injuries and deaths through public education and defending the ethical principle of informed consent. We are moving forward with faith and resolve that we can secure a future for America that protects health and autonomy in the 21st century.

Because we know that if the state can tag, track down and force individuals against their will to be injected with biologicals of known and unknown toxicity today, then there will be no limit on which individuals' freedoms the state can take away in the name of the greater good tomorrow.

Be the one who never has to say you did not do today what you could have done to change tomorrow. It's your health. Your family. Your choice. And our mission continues. No forced vaccination. Not in America.

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My absolute favorite event to speak at is Dave Asprey’s Biohacking event. He was kind enough to allow me to run my presentation at this year’s event in Orlando. To say it was beyond fantastic is a serious understatement. I learned so much and had a chance to personally connect with over 1,000 people. It was beyond great.

In my video above, I review how COVID gene therapy injections will almost assuredly be granted emergency use authorization for children and babies before this year is over, despite having been linked to serious blood disorders and heart inflammation. Third booster shots have already been rolled out in the U.S. for those older than 65 and anyone at high risk for exposure due to their profession.

We’re also facing vaccine mandates around the country, and vaccine passports are being implemented in certain areas. I predict it won’t be long before a social credit system is rolled out as well, which will be tied together with the vaccine passports and a digital economy.

While times are dire, I firmly believe that, in the end, we will win and sanity will be restored. Unfortunately, things may get a whole lot worse before they get better. With that in mind, what can you do? How can you prepare? How do we keep fighting the good fight for freedom?

Take Control of Your Health

“Take control of your health” has been my catchphrase since I started this website, and right now, that is perhaps the best advice anyone can follow. You need to stay healthy and out of the hospitals.

One of my top recommendations for safeguarding your health at this time is to optimize your vitamin D level. In my lecture, I show a graph that clearly illustrates the correlation between higher vitamin D levels and your risk of dying from COVID-19. At a level of 17 ng/mL, the death rate is nearly 100%. At a level of 35 ng/mL, which is still below the ideal minimum of 40 ng/mL, the death rate is near zero.

Similarly, your vitamin D level is also strongly correlated with COVID-19 severity. In one study, cited in the lecture, 96% of critical and severe cases had low vitamin D levels (below 29 ng/mL) and 93% of moderate cases were deficient. Meanwhile, 98% of those with mild cases had a vitamin D level of 30 ng/mL or higher.

The evidence for vitamin D in COVID-19 is so compelling, I wrote a paper¹ on it together with William Grant, Ph.D., and Dr. Carol Wagner, which was published in the peer-review journal Nutrients at the end of October 2020. The paper is titled “Evidence Regarding Vitamin D and Risk of COVID-19 and Its Severity.”

Vitamin D and Your Risk for COVID

As noted in our paper, dark skin color, increased age, preexisting chronic conditions and vitamin D deficiency are all features of severe COVID disease, and of these, vitamin D deficiency is the only factor that is readily and easily modifiable.

You may be able to reverse chronic disease, but that typically takes time. Optimizing your vitamin D, on the other hand, can be achieved in just a few weeks, thereby significantly lowering your risk of severe COVID-19.

In our paper, we review several of the mechanisms by which vitamin D can reduce your risk of COVID-19 and other respiratory infections, including but not limited to the following:²

• Reducing the survival and replication of viruses³
• Reducing inflammatory cytokine production
• Maintaining endothelial integrity — Endothelial dysfunction contributes to vascular inflammation and impaired blood clotting, two hallmarks of severe COVID-19
• Increasing angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) concentrations, which prevents the virus from entering cells via the ACE2 receptor — ACE2 is downregulated by SARS-CoV-2 infection, and by increasing ACE2, you also avoid excessive accumulation of angiotensin II, a peptide hormone known to increase the severity of COVID-19

Vitamin D is also an important component of COVID-19 prevention and treatment for the fact that it:

• Boosts your overall immune function by modulating your innate and adaptive immune responses
• Reduces respiratory distress⁴
• Improves overall lung function
• Helps produce surfactants in your lungs that aid in fluid clearance⁵
• Lowers your risk of comorbidities associated with poor COVID-19 prognosis, including obesity,⁶ Type 2 diabetes,⁷ high blood pressure⁸ and heart disease⁹

Other Health Benefits of Vitamin D

Aside from its benefits against infections, vitamin D also has many other health benefits through both direct and indirect activities. Among its direct actions are:

• Reducing DNA damage
• Improving central nervous system functions
• Improving cognition and depression
• Reducing risk of cardiovascular disorders, including heart attacks and strokes

Indirectly, vitamin D also:

• Improves your mitochondrial function
• Reduces obesity, metabolic syndrome and diabetes
• Improves autoimmunity

Through these direct and indirect actions, plus its ability to control oxidative stress, vitamin D helps to both facilitate healthy aging and prevent pulmonary diseases, falls, cancer and sarcopenia (age-related muscle loss).

How to Optimize Your Vitamin D

While most people would probably benefit from a vitamin D3 supplement, it’s important to get your vitamin D level tested before you start supplementing. The reason for this is because you cannot rely on blanket dosing recommendations. The crucial factor here is your blood level, not the dose, as the dose you need is dependent on several individual factors, including your baseline blood level.

Data from GrassrootsHealth’s D*Action studies suggest the optimal level for health and disease prevention is between 60 ng/mL and 80 ng/mL, while the cutoff for sufficiency appears to be around 40 ng/mL. In Europe, the measurements you’re looking for are 150 to 200 nmol/L and 100 nmol/L respectively.

I’ve published a comprehensive vitamin D report in which I detail vitamin D’s mechanisms of action and how to ensure optimal levels. I recommend downloading and sharing that report with everyone you know. A quick summary of the key steps is as follows:

Take Your Vitamin D With Magnesium and K2

It’s strongly recommended to take magnesium and K2 concomitant with oral vitamin D. Data from nearly 3,000 individuals reveal you need 244% more oral vitamin D if you’re not also taking magnesium and vitamin K2.¹²

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.

The Importance of Exercise

Another foundational health principle is physical exercise. I’ve been exercising for nearly 50 years now, and I recently set a new personal record, at the age of 67. In 2021, I was able to deadlift 400 pounds.

I’m not saying you need to be able to lift hundreds of pounds, but strength training in general, even if using light weights, is absolutely crucial for optimal health and only becomes more so as you age. The reason for this is because strength training helps you avoid frailty.

Many don’t realize that frailty is lethal. Frailty is an umbrella term that encompasses several age-related clinical conditions involving deterioration of strength and malfunctions in the body, which then makes you more vulnerable to disease and hampers recovery from illness. I am very familiar with this as both my parents died from frailty.

According to Chinese research¹³ published in August 2021, 59.9% of seniors aged 65 to 79 in China had signs of pre-frailty, while 95% of centenarians (those older than 100) were frail. As noted by the authors:

“Both pre-frailty and frailty were associated with the increased risk of multiple adverse outcomes, such as incident limited physical performance, cognitive decline and dependence, respectively.

Frail males were more vulnerable to the risk of mortality (hazard ratio [HR] = 2.3 …) compared with frail females (HR = 1.9 …). The strongest association between frailty and mortality was observed among the young-old (HR = 3.6 …).

Exhaustion was the most common domain among patients with pre-frailty (74.8%) or frailty (83.2%), followed by shrink (32.3%) in pre-frailty and low mobility (83.0%) in frailty. Inactivity among females aged 65–79 years showed the strongest association with the risk of mortality (HR = 3.50 …).”

The Case for Blood Flow Restriction Training

The most profound and effective type of strength training I know of is called blood flow restriction (BFR) training. It was invented in 1966 in Japan, and introduced in the U.S. in 2010.

BFR involves exercising your muscles using no or very light weights while partially slowing arterial inflow and modifying venous outflow in either both proximal arms or legs using thin elastic pneumatic (inflatable) KAATSU bands.¹⁴

By modifying the venous blood flow, you create a relatively hypoxic (low oxygen) environment in the exercising muscle, which in turn triggers a number of physiological benefits. One of the reasons I’m so passionate about BFR training is because it has the ability to prevent and widely treat sarcopenia (skeletal muscle loss) like no other type of training.

Importantly, it allows you to use very light weights, which makes it suitable for the elderly and those who are already frail or recovering from an injury. And, since you’re using very light weights, you don’t damage the muscle and therefore don’t need to recover as long.

While most elderly cannot engage in high-intensity exercise or heavy weightlifting, even extraordinarily fit individuals in their 60s, 70s and 80s who can do conventional training will be limited in terms of the benefits they can achieve, thanks to decreased microcirculation. This is because your microcirculation tends to decrease with age.

With age, your capillary growth diminishes, and capillary blood flow is essential to supply blood to your muscle stem cells, specifically the fast twitch Type II muscle fiber stem cells. If they don’t have enough blood flow — even though they’re getting the signal from the conventional strength training — they’re not going to grow and you’re not going to get muscle hypertrophy and strength.

BFR, because of the local hypoxia created, stimulates hypoxia-inducible factor-1 alpha and, secondarily, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which acts as “fertilizer” for your blood vessels. VEGF allows your stem cells to function the way they were designed to when they were younger.

The hypoxia also triggers vascular endothelial growth factor, which enhances the capillarization of the muscle and likely the veins in the arteries as well. Building muscle and improving blood vessel function are related, which is why BFR offers such powerful stimulus for reversing sarcopenia.

In short, BFR has a systemic or crossover training effect. While you’re only restricting blood flow to your extremities, once you release the bands, the metabolic variables created by the hypoxia flow into your blood — lactate and VEGF being two of them — thereby spreading this “metabolic magic” throughout your entire system.

You can learn more about KAATSU by viewing the video below. You can get most of the benefits by purchasing inexpensive bands like this on Amazon. If you are hardcore like me, you can go all out and get the best that many professional athletes use. For a limited time, you can get 10% off the KAATSU band by using this link: www.kaatsu.com/go/NVIC

The Power of Time-Restricted Eating

A third biohack that will put your health on the right track is intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating, where you eat all your meals for the day within a six- to eight-hour window. It’s a powerful intervention for reducing insulin resistance, restoring metabolic flexibility and losing excess body fat.

Aside from old age, obesity — which is often rooted in insulin resistance — has been identified as one of the primary risk factors for being hospitalized with COVID-19. It doubled the risk of hospitalization in patients under the age of 60 in one study,¹⁵ even if the individual had no other obesity-related health problems. A French study^16,17 also found obese patients treated for COVID-19 were more likely to require mechanical ventilation.

One hypothesis for why obesity is worsening COVID-19 has to do with the fact that obesity causes chronic inflammation.¹⁸ Having more proinflammatory cytokines in circulation increases your risk of experiencing a cytokine storm. Remarkably, as illustrated in my lecture, 42.4% of Americans are now obese, not just overweight. Compare that to the obesity rate 115 years ago, which was 1.2%.

Benefits of NAD+

You’ll also want to make sure you’re eating at least three hours before bedtime. One of the reasons for this advice is because avoiding late-night eating will increase your nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) levels, which are important for a variety of bodily functions. Sirtuins, so-called longevity hormones, are also dependent on NAD+.

It will also have a negative impact on your nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) level, which is essentially the true cellular battery of your cell and has the reductive potential to recharge your antioxidants. The largest consumer of NADPH is the creation of fatty acids.

If you’re eating close to bedtime, then you’re not going to be able to use the NADPH to burn those calories as energy. Instead, they must be stored some way. To store them, you have to create fat, so you’re basically radically lowering your NADPH levels when you eat late at night because they are being consumed to store your extra calories by creating fat.

Aside from avoiding late-night eating and snacking, the best way to raise your NAD+ level is — intense resistance exercise! Exercise such as BFR training raises the rate limiting enzyme for remaking NAD+, NAMPT. Merely by exercising very intensely, you can raise your NAD+ level by 20 to 30 times more than using precursors.

The problem, though, is that most are unwilling to train this hard. I have found that BFR training is highly effective for increasing NAD+ levels, which is why I rarely use precursor supplementation.

Avoid This Dangerous Fat

Another super-simple biohack that can add years to your life is to avoid one of the most dangerous foods in the modern diet, namely the omega-6 fat linoleic acid (LA). Dietary fats are a crucial component of a healthy diet, but the devil’s in the details and the type of fats you choose can make a world of difference.

LA makes up the bulk — about 80% — of the omega-6 consumed and is the primary contributor to nearly all chronic diseases. Nothing will destroy your health faster than excess LA, which acts as a metabolic poison. To avoid this dangerous fat, you’ll want to cut down, avoid or eliminate:

• Conventionally raised chicken and pork
• Processed seed oils such as corn oil, soybean oil, sunflower and canola oil, as well as most olive oils and avocado oils
• All processed foods, including virtually all restaurant sauces
• Virtually all seeds and nuts
• Virtually all pastries unless butter is substituted for vegetable oil

Seed oils, all of which contain double-digit percentages of LA,¹⁹ have been linked to heart disease, gastrointestinal diseases such as irritable bowel disorder, inflammatory conditions such as arthritis, certain cancers²⁰ and even COVID-19.

A compelling report²¹ in the journal Gastroenterology showed a person’s unsaturated fat intake is associated with increased mortality from COVID-19, primarily by promoting life-threatening organ failure. On the bright side, they suggested early treatment with inexpensive calcium and egg albumin might reduce rates of organ failure and ICU admissions.

Since diet-related comorbidities are responsible for 94% of all COVID-19-related deaths,²² taking control of your diet is a simple, commonsense strategy to lower the risks associated with this infection. To determine how much LA you’re getting from your diet, use a nutritional calculator such as Cronometer.

With everything going on in the world and with all the threats now facing us, there’s never been a better time to grab the proverbial bull by the horns and start to safeguard and build your health. The biohacks I review in my lecture are deceptively simple ways to do that without spending a fortune.

Sign up NOW for Next Year’s Event at a GREAT Discount

September 15 through 17, 2022 — just short of one year from now — the eighth annual BioHacking Conference will take place in Beverly Hills, California. Secure your spot at the 2022 conference by registering online right now.

>>>>> Click here <<<<<

Between now and September 15, 2022, you can get 40% off your attendance fee, plus another $100 discount if you use the discount code MERCOLA.

Normally, these links provide affiliate commissions, but I assure you that I do not earn a penny from your registration. I asked Dave to give my commissions to YOU so you would be more likely to attend, as I believe it is one of the best health events out there for serous health students. Planned speakers at the 2022 conference include yours truly, Dave Asprey, Dr. Caroline Leaf, Dr. Stephen Sinatra and Charlie Engle.

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