Health & Fitness

This article was previously published August 23, 2020, and has been updated with new information.

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

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

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

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

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

Immunometabolism Is an Important Field of Medicine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Insulin Resistance Is a Modern Plague

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

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

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

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

Metabolic Age Is More Important Than Biological Age

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cytokines

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

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

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

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

Immunologic Tolerance Rises as Insulin Resistance Falls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Low LDL Associated With Greater COVID-19 Severity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Top Strategies to Improve Your Metabolic Health

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

Eating a Varied, Real Food Diet Is Key

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

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

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

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

Low Glutathione May Increase COVID-19 Severity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Glutathione, Zinc and Selenium

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of the best ways to increase glutathione, though, is molecular hydrogen. It is my absolute favorite as it does so selectively and will not increase glutathione unnecessarily if you don't need it.

More Information

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Dr. Mark McDonald is a psychiatrist in the Los Angeles, California, area. He's written a book called “United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to Mass Delusional Psychosis,” which is the topic of today’s discussion. Around April 2020, McDonald actually made the brave decision to “fire” patients who refused to accept his stand on certain realities and truths. 

“LA is a very politically-charged climate,” he says. “A lot of my patients, particularly those who would not identify as either conservative or even sincerely independent, tend to react in a very emotionally-charged way when they work with somebody who does not share their value system, and then it becomes difficult to work with them. I can't help them ...

I noticed that there was something bigger than just politics at play with the whole rise of the pandemic. About 10 to 20% of my patients, they either left abruptly without saying anything ... or they argued with me. Some of them actually attacked me personally and condemned me.

A few threatened to report me to the medical board for saying such ‘horrible’ things as children should be able to breathe without a mask on their face. What I concluded after seeing the fallout from this is that those who left, those who attacked me, they really are no longer people that I can help, because really good therapeutic work, at least the work that I do, starts from a position of truth and reality.

Now, I'm not claiming to have the monopoly on truth or reality, but I certainly value it so highly that I'm not willing to sacrifice it for someone else's emotional comfort or well-being in the moment ...

The ones that stayed and those who've taken their places have all been far, far more committed to the work and to getting better, to healing themselves emotionally and psychologically, than any of the people that left.

So, I am in no way regretful of that decision. I think it's made me a better clinician, a better practitioner. And most importantly, it's enabled me to continue to speak clearly, publicly and honestly about what I think is a much more important problem than just shots and masks, which is the state of our country and how we are being controlled and manipulated by corrupt individuals and corporations.”

The Public Has Been Groomed to Fear

Fear is one of the most powerful motivators of behavior and, clearly, people’s behavior has been massively manipulated through the use of fear these past two years. The motivation behind the book was to provide a retrospective analysis and explanation for how it all happened.

“The wool wasn’t pulled over our eyes on March 15 [2020],” McDonald says. “What I suspected, uncovered and explained in the first third of the book is that this process actually began a long time before that.

What we've had, and have been suffering from, is a slow grooming effort by government, by corporations, by wealthy, powerful individuals for a number of decades ... I even go back to post-World War II in my book with a very specific example for those who were growing up during those times, of the duck-and-cover exercises to protect against nuclear holocaust.

Obviously, hiding under your desk is not going to protect you from a nuclear bomb. And yet, we were all told to do this ... This practice, in my view, instilled in children a sense of fear, a sense of vulnerability and a reliance on a higher power — not God, but a higher human power, usually an authoritarian power, the power of schools or officials to protect you from this very unspecified, vague ... threat.”

The fearmongering about climate change and ecosystem collapse also falls under this “grooming.” “I’m not going to say the existence of pollution is not real,” he says. “However, to say that the world will end in 12 years ... is not truthful.” The goal is to change people's behavior, to instill a sense of compliance, so that resources can be reallocated.

“So, at the outset of the book, my goal is to explain: ‘How did we get to be so afraid?’ How did we get to be so capable of being fear-struck so quickly by something that very early on was clearly not a significant threat to most Americans?

Even to those for whom it was a threat ... there have been very helpful, successful, cheap, effective treatments that essentially cured nearly 100% of the people who were struck by this virus. So why [the fear]?

In explaining the how and the why of how we got to this point, my hope has been that people who are perhaps not entirely brainwashed, but those who are just somewhat confused, somewhat perplexed, not entirely clear-thinking but certainly want to be, will see their thoughts organized so that they can then move to the more important step, which is what do we do about it?”

Addicted to Fear

One likely reason why outright nonsensical countermeasures have been embraced is because fear paralyzes rational thinking. People who are terrified of dying from COVID cannot comprehend how ridiculous masking is because they cannot reason their way through the problem logically. What’s more, they don’t want to. As explained by McDonald, they’re not curious at all.

“This is my little diagnostic technique: Does the person express curiosity to know something different than what he or she knows right now? If the answer is no, I don't even go further with that person in conversation. It's absolutely pointless ...

Ambivalence is another word that we use in motivational interviewing. We assess for ambivalence. Is the person trying to hold two different, opposing positions at the same time? Because that leads to a resolution. If there's no ambivalence at all and there's no curiosity, I don't really know where you start. So, I'll ask, ‘What is it that you understand right now about what's happening?’

If I sense some ambivalence, if I sense some lack of confidence, then I'll ask a follow-up question. I'll say, ‘Are you curious? Are you interested in learning about some other information or some other viewpoints that you might not be aware of right now?’

And often, if I've got to that point, the person will say tentatively, ‘Yeah, maybe.’ If I get, on the other hand, ‘Absolutely not,’ or more of a condemnation, ‘What do you mean? Are you one of those anti-vaxxer hoaxers?’ Then I know I'm probably not going to really proceed very successfully, so I let up. I back off ... If someone's addicted to fear, I just wait and see if they're open and willing and ready to lose their addiction.”

In short, unless a person is open to new information, it doesn’t matter how many peer-reviewed studies you throw before them. Facts and data don’t matter if they don’t have curiosity or this ambivalence. As explained by McDonald, this is not a data war. We won that a long time ago. It’s a psychological war, and it really needs to be thought of that way.

“You always have to keep in mind that information and data is only as useful as the psychological state of the recipient,” he says. You could actually worsen the situation if they're not open and receptive.

The Emasculation of Society

Another cultural factor that has played an important role is the emasculation of society. This is problematic, as this also impacts our ability to defend ourselves against the next attack on our liberties and bodily integrity.

“My concern is that the underlying motivation of this psychological campaign has been for a long time, and it is still today, an attack on the core structures, foundations, institutions of our country ... Certainly in all the Anglophone countries, there has been an attack for many, many years on the core archetypes of the male and the female, the masculine and the feminine.

The goal is to take away the interest, the capacity, the comfort, both internally and also on a societal level, of men and women coming together. If men and women stop coming together, if they stop desiring one another, if they stop speaking to one another, if they stop dating, getting married, having children, then we no longer have families. We have single parents.

If we don't have families, we don't have civic organizations. We don't have churches. We don't have communities. All we have are single parents running around with their own children, relying on, most likely, government, to help keep them financially and physically safe. So, the role of the father, the role of the mother is simply eliminated.

The state then steps in and the state supplants the role of the father and begins to take over. There is a young girl who had been sexually abused by her biological father for a number of years, and eventually he impregnated her. He was arrested after a paternity test was performed.

I've been reviewing her therapy notes on a legal case recently, and what I'm struck by is that now, two years later, she is still insistent that her father was unjustly taken away from her. He did not deserve to be arrested, should not be in prison and that all she really wants is to be reunited with him.

You'd think this makes no sense. I mean, no sane person would want to reunite with a father who sexually abused her and impregnated her, but she does. I think there's a psychological reason for it. We only have one father. We only have one mother. If our father or mother is removed, we can't replace that person. We're essentially abandoned. We're lost ...

So, what happens if we reject the government? If we don't want to use the government as a way to keep ourselves safe, to be reliant on government for our money, for our sanctity, [then] we have to rely on each other. We can do that if we have a family, if we have a community, if we have a church, civic organizations and structures.

But what if we're a single mother with a couple of children living in a Santa Monica apartment that's being subsidized by the Santa Monica city government, and getting food stamps from the state of California? Well, now we can't say goodbye to government. We have to keep the government.

So, I really do believe that the attacks on masculinity, on femininity, are specifically designed to end the family unit and to cause all men and women to turn towards government for their security rather than to one another, as has traditionally been the case ...”

McDonald stresses that this isn’t really a political issue per se, although the left “seems to have almost a near monopoly on it,” primarily because “the left is inherently a communist or socialist movement. It’s anti-religious, anti-family, anti-individual.”

The problem, of course, is that communist and socialist societies are built on a foundation of corruption, where a small group of elites end up pilfering from everyone else. That’s why communist and socialist regimes don’t last. They always end up collapsing from the rot of corruption.

What’s the Solution?

As for how we are to solve our current problems, McDonald says:

“I have faith and confidence in individuals, but in humanity as a whole, I have lost quite a degree of faith.

Although there have always been corrupt individuals, the fact that humans as a group have allowed them, in the last couple of years, to gain such a foothold through their own voluntary compliance says to me that humanity does not have, at least not now, the inherent capacity to resist true evil to the degree that I believed it had. So, I was mistaken.

This is what's led me to have some, depending on the day, different feelings and views towards the possibility for a way out. I do not believe right now that the way out is to wait for a messiah ... I think the way out is going to be from the grassroots ... a rising from the ashes, essentially.

[Take] the public school system in the United States, which I think is unsalvageable; I don't think it can be fixed. We need to build a new school system. We need to be build a new banking system, a new food system, a new supply delivery system.

We need to build a new political system. All of these systems need to be basically rebuilt. And they're not going to be rebuilt by a leader, they're going to be rebuilt by the people, and that's going to require international cooperation ...

It's so important that the American people actually come together and throw off this corrupt cabal of power and structure so that they can rebuild ... If it doesn't happen, I think we're going to look forward to a very, very dark period of time that's going to last ... for years or decades. I don't know if we'll ever really be able to get out of it.”

Decentralization of Power Is Crucial

As we rebuild, it’s quite clear that decentralization is going to be absolutely essential. As explained by McDonald, one of the reasons for the United States’ success is the Founding Fathers’ foresight to create a system where power is decentralized across the 50 states. The reason the U.S. is on the brink of losing our freedom now is because the power has been reconcentrated through technology and social media.

“The only way for this degree of evil to exist and for it to have such a strong grip over the country, is for the power to be concentrated. If the power were spread out, it would be very difficult for this type of brainwashing to occur because there would be enough counterbalance, there'd be enough dispersion of the corruptive influence, that truth and honesty and the forces for good would actually have a foothold.

I mean, Parler was destroyed a year ago because two men in Silicon Valley flipped a switch and 30 million voices were silenced. I mean, this has never been possible before. Never ... I believe right now that ... it will take a personal loss, something profound and significant, for those who are still brainwashed to be able to actually start to think clearly again.

Perhaps the loss of a child to a vaccine injury, the loss of a parent who's denied hospital treatment for heart failure because he decided not to get a vaccine, the complete economic collapse of the home, the community, or perhaps even the country, because we are allowing ourselves to no longer work and believe that somehow productivity will happen somewhere else by some other person.

We may wind up, as is happening in LA, in a state of absolute anarchy, where wealthy people in the Palisades, in Malibu, in Beverly Hills, are now being robbed, raped and murdered by gang members in the same way that they are in the Favelas in Brazil.

This type of crime wave, not just among the poor people out in the ghetto, but among the wealthy class, the ones who are voting in all of the people who are pushing this corruption and this technological brainwashing ... has never happened in my lifetime in Los Angeles. [But it] may be requisite that those who are helping support this brainwashing actually suffer significant personal losses before they wake up and pull their support from it.”

Based on what I’ve seen and heard, I suspect even personal losses won’t wake some of them up. I’ve seen cases where a loved one has died within minutes or hours of their COVID shot, and if they’ve lived through it, the person brushes it off as coincidence and schedules their booster. They simply refuse to see the correlation.

This tendency toward blind self-destructiveness is part and parcel of a psychiatric condition known as “mass formation psychosis,” which is the clinical diagnosis proposed by Mattias Desmet, professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University in Belgium.¹

Is It Just Corruption or Something More Sinister?

Clearly, the concentration of power was not accidental. It’s been planned and executed over decades. Ultimately, technology — which is at the heart of the technocratic world view — was needed to succeed. Today, the technology to manipulate and control the global population exists.

“This gives rise to another question, which I would've answered very differently a year ago. I'm asked very frequently, ‘Is this simply corruption?’ Meaning ‘I want more money. I want more power.’ Or is there something more sinister? Is there at least a sociopathy or perhaps even existence of evil behind it?

Two years ago, I would've said that's absurd. Maybe there's a few sociopathic individuals. Certainly, there's nothing evil. I don't believe in the devil. But I'm now starting to wonder whether this goes beyond just simple human corruption. Greed is so banal ... That seems like such a relatively innocuous vice given what we're seeing as the consequences of these decisions.

I am now open, as I never have been before, to the possibility of the existence of evil. Of a force, which is actually at play, driving these individuals to commit such acts of horrible evil. And it is evil. The outcomes are evil. They are not errors, and they are orchestrated. That's what leads me to being so questioning now of these explanations that involve simply errors or isolated corruption.

There is something so, so beautifully precise and well connected and enduring about how all of these actions have come together in the last couple of years that it leads me to think that there must be some sort of force or power at play that goes beyond simple human frailty.”

Moving Forward

McDonald is currently writing a second book, in which he’ll delve deeper into solutions for overcoming fear on a personal and national level. Some of his ideas and treatment recommendations have grown out of a consolidation and evolution of his viewpoints over the last couple of years.

But before we can do anything, we need to understand which groups of people are amenable to treatment and which are not. Some are so deeply brainwashed, they’re seemingly unreachable. Others are scared, but they would like to not be. The first is untreatable, while the other is treatable.

“The brainwashed group, in the same way that we would treat a cult, cannot be treated voluntarily,” he says. “I cannot provide information, education, counseling or even a book for them, because they will not listen. They will not read it. They don't want to, because I am an enemy. Anybody that provides truth and hope and information is the enemy.

The only ally they have is the guru. Just as a cult is closed off, their family members completely separated from them ... these people will only listen to and take commands from Anthony Fauci, from Joe Biden, from Don Lemon, people in media, people in politics, people in bureaucratic government, and nothing will change their mind. Absolutely nothing.

They could see people dying around them, their own parents, their own children, and they would still go take another shot. They are lost, unless and until they are physically removed, essentially in the way that we would with a cult, to a remote location where they can be deprogrammed. And I am not in that business. So that's not the group that I'm speaking to.

I have to be realistic. We have to be practical and efficient with how we use our time. We don't want to preach to the choir, but we also don't want to try to go after people who are closed off, lacking curiosity, utterly brainwashed. They're not going to listen. It's useless.

So that leaves the other group, which is the open-minded, maybe scared, maybe anxious, curious group. I would call these people the fear addicts who want to lose their addiction ... Those are the people that I want to reach out to with the next book.”

Breaking Fear Addiction

The paradigm McDonald proposes is a basic 12-step program to overcoming addiction, in this case the addiction to fear. As in any 12-step program, the first step is to admit you have an addiction. They must admit they’re addicted to fear, because without losing the fear, they cannot move forward.

“Fear is the obstacle to being able to think and act rationally. So, the fear has to be overcome. But in order to overcome fear, you have to admit that you're addicted to it, that this is not something that you want to hold onto,” McDonald explains.

“From there, there are other things you can do. One of them, which I don't think anyone has really talked about much, is you need to embrace humor. Humor is what allows us to have a perspective. Without a perspective, we're like a sailor looking through a monoscope. Everything is just focused on one little target off in the distance.

We lose everything around us. We lose our context. We're unable to assign value and priority to things. Everything becomes about cases, death, cases, death, shots, masks. One of the best ways to step away from that is to actually develop humor and to embrace it. To start to laugh again, to tell jokes, to see the lighter side of our time here. We're not here just to exist. We're here to live. We're here to live fully ...

Developing that sense of perspective allows them to embrace more curiosity. They must also cut themselves off from media, at least temporarily, because media is what's fueling the addiction ... You've got to stop going to your dealer ...

I'm going to go through a lot of other steps as well as I elucidate them. But these are some of the ones I think are very important for people to consider — admitting that you have a problem and desiring to end it; developing, or at least embracing, humor; and avoiding the dealer of the fear, which is, largely speaking, the media.

Also, return to what's around you. Stop cutting yourself off from people. You may be embracing people who are also fearful. Hanging out with alcoholics is not the best way to stop drinking. Go to people who are sober.

Build friendships, relationships with people who don't have the addiction to fear ... You'll discover an entire world that does not revolve around viruses, injections, masks and shutting down schools and businesses.”

Do You Have the Basic Will To Be Free?

According to Robert Malone, Ph.D., in private conversation with Desmet, Desmet suggested that one of the things that can work is to shift the focus from the irrational fear of death from a relatively innocuous virus to the rational fear of global tyranny, the entire human race being subjugated to slavery for the remainder of time.

Desmet claimed he had tested it out and found that, in some cases, people who are afraid of COVID can be steered to a saner frame of mind by, essentially, giving them a greater fear with which to replace their irrational fear of the virus. McDonald doesn’t believe this will work, at least not to any significant degree.

“I wrote about the cultural prerequisites in my book. [Desmet] describes [them] in purely psychological terms, although there's also cultural overlay [such as] lack of meaning and being disconnected from family. Well, how does that happen?

When you don't really know what your purpose is as a man, when you don't have a nuclear family, you lose family relationships. You’re cut off from your friends because of political differences. So, we kind of reached the same end points from different starting points, but I completely agree with him.

The idea of hypnosis is also very interesting. I've studied clinical hypnosis. As we all know in stage performances, the hypnotist will bring on a dozen people on the stage, try to suggest different things to 12 people.

And then he'll gradually pick off 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 of them, send them back to the audience when he diagnoses them as non-suggestible. He keeps two or three who are, and those people usually perform beautifully throughout the hypnosis on stage.

I think that's also true. I think there are people who are just, for some reason, more easily suggestible. And so, they are more prone to a hypnotic trance. And I think there is a kind of hypnotic trance going on right now in the world. Those people just have an inherent suggestibility.

The idea that we could supplant the fear of death with a fear of totalitarian control is an interesting one, but I'm not sure that I agree with that for the following reason.

I think one of the reasons why people have become so compliant, especially in the Western countries, in the more affluent, the more kind of technologically-connected, interpersonally-disconnected societies, is that we have largely lost the ... intrinsic [will to] revolt and push back against being controlled by a higher non-God-like authority.

I think that people today, they do not intrinsically crave freedom. I think they crave being taken care of. And one of the great strengths of totalitarian regimes throughout the 20th century is that they have offered security at the expense of freedom.

And people have largely embraced it, at least at the beginning, before all of the camps started and the executions, because they don't see the end point of the loss of freedom. They see the immediate benefits of security, of being taken care of. I don't have to go to work every day ... This is such an easier life. This is like going back in time to the day I was born and every need that I had was taken care of ...

Now, I had no freedom. I was at the mercy of the mother. But wow, what an easy life. No responsibility ... So, there's something psychologically hardwired into us to want to embrace something simple, something easy, give away our autonomy to a higher authority that is a state that will take care of us.

And, of course, it always turns into a totalitarian system and then the people end up dying, being murdered, we have mass starvation, executions. We've seen it time and time again throughout the 20th century.

But from my experience as a clinician, people are actually far more scared of death, of losing security, of losing so-called protection from the state, than they are of losing all of their liberties, their freedoms, and ultimately just being fed into a meat grinder for society's despots.

At its core, the totalitarian system offers a cheat. It says, ‘Stop believing in a higher power that isn't real, God, and believe in a higher power which is me and the party. I can offer you the potatoes. I can offer you the guards ... I can offer you all of that right now. What can God offer you?  ... You can't rely on him. Well, you can rely on me.’ It's almost like a devilish kind of Faustian play that these totalitarian despots always engage in, but people fall for it.

And this is one of the reasons why every communist system, every dictatorship, essentially attacks all forms of religious worship and organization. They need a secular society, because when there is the higher power, above the state, that people believe in or rely on, it diminishes the absolute power of the state. It brings it into context.

And the context is that it's flawed, because totalitarian regimes are still run by human beings. They're not run by angels. They're not run by God. And if we can remove God from the picture, now suddenly, the whole hierarchy shifts and the top power becomes the state and there's nothing above the state.

I don't think there's any exception to this. And this is another reason why the attack on the church and the attack on Christmas, for example, has been so ongoing in the last couple decades.”

Be Brave, Speak Out, Find Your Tribe

If you haven’t done so already, the first thing you’ll want to do is surround yourself with like-minded people, and be sure to meet in person, whenever possible. Part of finding your “tribe” involves gathering your courage and speaking your mind.

“One of the key things that I discovered personally, which I strongly suggest everyone do, is come out of the closet,” McDonald says.

“I recognize it is far easier to come out of the closet as a transgendered non-binary right now than it is to come out as a conservative, but even if you lose a few friends and colleagues, you will gain far, far more from high-quality, supportive, loving, freedom defending people with integrity than anything that you've ever lost.

As Mikki Willis [creator of the Plandemic documentary series] said to me after he filmed his first movie, ‘I didn't lose a single friend.’ I said, how is that possible? He said, ‘Because all the people that left, they weren't friends to begin with.’ And I completely agree with him. That has been true in my experience. It will be true in yours.

All you have to do is you have to tolerate and accept the immediate temporary fire-branding that will occur once you put your head up and ... start speaking from your heart and being honest, showing your own integrity ...

The people that don't support you, they will leave. They will create space for those who do. Those who hear you and agree with you, they will come to you. They will say, ‘Thank God, another person who shares my views. What's your name? Can we meet for coffee? Have you heard about this group I organized? We meet on Thursdays over at the coffee shop. I want you to introduce you to my friends.’

That will happen to you. And I think that is the first, most important step that you can take to becoming a stronger, healthier, and more pro-freedom, pro-American individual.”

In closing, be sure to pick up a copy of “United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to Mass Delusional Psychosis” to learn more.

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This article was previously published October 10, 2020, and has been updated with new information.

When asked how much radiation women are exposed to from mammograms, Dr. Ben Johnson, author of "No Ma'am-ograms," says, "At least the amount of 100 chest X-rays."

It's a statement that would surprise many women who are advised to receive a mammogram as the standard of care for breast cancer prevention in the U.S. — and it's just one of the eye-opening facts presented in the documentary "Boobs: The War on Women's Breasts."

The film begins with a written statement informing viewers that all of the information you're about to hear is supported by scientific literature, even though much of it opposes the assertions made by conventional medicine. Doctors from across the United States and around the world — including California, Georgia, Switzerland, Virginia and Arizona — are interviewed, providing expert testimony on why you may want to rethink this controversial procedure.

The 'Early Detection' Myth and Biopsy Risks

One myth perpetuated by conventional medicine is that mammography is the most important screening test for breast cancer because it can detect breast cancer "up to two years before the tumor can be felt by you or your doctor."¹

However, the film points out that by the time you can feel a cancerous lump in your breast, the cancer has already been growing for two to five years. "Mammograms are not early detection," Johnson says.

The myth that mammograms don't spread cancer is also addressed, via the story of one woman who was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and given only 1 year to live. She made significant changes to her lifestyle and many of the tumors disappeared. The cancer was stable years later, until she received a biopsy and subsequent mammograms, which she says made the cancer spread — and a tumor appeared in the area where the biopsy was done.

During a biopsy, a piece of tissue from a tumor or organ is removed so that it can be examined under a microscope, often to determine if it is cancerous. Needle biopsies, for instance, are widely used as part of the traditional allopathic approach to diagnosing breast cancer. But they may accidentally cause malignant cells to break away from a tumor, resulting in its spreading to other areas of your body.

One of the harms of using mammography as a screening tool is that it can often lead to overdiagnosis and overtreatment, including false-positive tests and unnecessary biopsies.²

One study from the John Wayne Cancer Institute revealed that a needle biopsy may increase the spread of cancer compared to patients who receive excisional biopsies, also known as lumpectomies.³ They concluded, "Manipulation of an intact tumor by FNA [fine-needle aspiration] or large-gauge needle core biopsy is associated with an increase in the incidence of SN [sentinel node] metastases, perhaps due in part to the mechanical disruption of the tumor by the needle."⁴

Johnson said he calls biopsies "the kiss of death," describing how the needle gets driven through a billion cells, blows through the cancer and goes out the other side, dragging cells back through and spreading the cancer. Dr. Manfred Doepp, medical director of the Couros Center in Switzerland, agrees that biopsies can spread cancer, while the physical act of squeezing the breast during mammography may also trigger the cancer to spread.

The film cites a rapid response published in the BMJ, which states "robust scientific data, published in prestigious medical journals, have lent meaningful support to the concept" that the squeezing motion of mammography is in itself potentially harmful.⁵

Breast Cancer Overdiagnosed in 1.3 Million Women

The notion that mammography is an accurate screening tool is another myth busted in the film. Both false positives and false negatives occur, and even the skill of the radiologist in reading the mammogram is a factor in whether or not mammography is able to detect cancer.

Overall, when researchers examined trends in early-stage breast cancer and late-stage breast cancer from 1976 to 2008 among women 40 years and older, they found the introduction of mammography in the U.S. was linked to a doubling in the number of early-stage breast cancer cases detected each year.⁶

However, the rate at which women developed late-stage cancer decreased by 8% during that time, leading the researchers to suggest that only a small number of early-stage cancer diagnosed would progress into advanced disease:⁷

"Despite substantial increases in the number of cases of early-stage breast cancer detected, screening mammography has only marginally reduced the rate at which women present with advanced cancer.

Although it is not certain which women have been affected, the imbalance suggests that there is substantial overdiagnosis, accounting for nearly a third of all newly diagnosed breast cancers, and that screening is having, at best, only a small effect on the rate of death from breast cancer."

They concluded that due to the introduction of mammography, breast cancer was overdiagnosed — meaning that tumors were detected that would never lead to clinical symptoms — in 1.3 million women over a 30-year period.

Up to 80% of Breast Biopsies Are Benign

The overdiagnosis of breast cancer comes with serious risks, including needless treatments and unnecessary stress and anxiety. In another study cited in the film, it's stated that more than 1 million breast biopsies are performed annually in the U.S., 75% to 80% of which turn out to be benign.⁸ Sometimes, the benign result isn't uncovered until an unnecessary mastectomy has already occurred.

Up to 1 in 4 breast tissue biopsies may be incorrectly diagnosed by pathologists,⁹ and unnecessary mastectomies have been performed as a result. In a case that went to trial in 2020 in Israel, a woman was diagnosed with breast cancer after a biopsy tested at two medical centers came back positive.

She underwent six months of chemotherapy as a result, as well as a partial mastectomy to remove the growth. After the growth was removed, the lawsuit alleges, it turned out to be benign.¹⁰ In 2015, researchers with Boston Children's Hospital in Massachusetts revealed that false-positive mammograms and breast cancer overdiagnoses among women ages 40 to 59 cost the U.S. $4 billion each year.¹¹

Mammograms May Not Work for Women With Dense Breasts

The story of Nancy Cappello is also covered in the film. Cappello was diagnosed with breast cancer after receiving two normal mammograms. The cancer was missed because she has dense breast tissue, and was only revealed when her doctor felt a ridge in her breast and prescribed an ultrasound test in addition to a mammogram.

Cappello was a pioneer in the movement to teach women about dense breast tissue and how using a mammogram to detect cancer in such tissue is "like finding a polar bear in a snowstorm." She said:¹²

"So I went on a quest — for research — and I discovered for nearly a decade BEFORE my diagnosis, six major studies with over 42,000 women concluded that by supplementing a mammogram with an ultrasound increases detection from 48% to 97% for women with dense tissue.

I also learned that women with extremely dense tissue are 5x more likely to have breast cancer when compared with women with fatty breasts and that research on dense breast tissue as an independent risk factor for breast cancer has been studied since the mid 70s.

… I endured a mastectomy, reconstruction, 8 chemotherapy treatments and 24 radiation treatments. The pathology report confirmed — stage 3c cancer because the cancer had traveled outside of the breast to my lymph nodes. Eighteen lymph nodes were removed and thirteen contained cancer — AND REMEMBER — a "normal" mammogram just weeks before. Is that early detection?"

As a result of Cappello's movement, 38 states have passed mandatory breast density reporting laws. The film states that up to 90% of women may have some degree of dense breast tissue that may affect a mammogram's outcome and could benefit from whole breast ultrasound — a procedure that's not widely available. Women are also interviewed that were told they had dense breast tissue, but not what that meant for the effectiveness of mammography.

'Precancer': Ductal Carcinoma in Situ

Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) refers to the abnormal growth of cells within the milk ducts of the breast forming a lesion commonly between 1 to 1.5 centimeters (cm) in diameter. While the cells appear malignant under a microscope, they have not invaded surrounding tissue and are considered "precancer," noninvasive or "stage zero breast cancer." Some experts have also argued that DCIS should be considered noncancerous.

Despite this, the film tells the story of one woman who had both breasts removed due to a DCIS diagnosis. Such diagnoses now represent 20% to 25% of all "breast cancers,"¹³ and the standard of care is to treat all DCIS with mastectomy or breast-conserving surgery with radiotherapy. According to a review in the British Journal of Cancer:¹⁴

"In effect, women with DCIS are labelled as 'cancer patients', with concomitant anxiety and negative impact on their lives, despite the fact that most DCIS lesions will probably never progress to invasive breast cancer.

Owing to the uncertainty regarding which lesions run the risk of progression to invasive cancer, current risk perceptions are misleading and consequently bias the dialogue between clinicians and women diagnosed with DCIS, resulting in overtreatment for some, and potentially many, women."

Is Radiation From Mammograms Dangerous?

There's also the issue that mammograms use ionizing radiation at a relatively high dose, which in and of itself can contribute to the development of breast cancer. In a 2016 study, it's stated, "ionizing radiation as used in low-dose X-ray mammography may be associated with a risk of radiation-induced carcinogenesis."¹⁵

They point out that people who carry certain genetic variations or have an inherited disposition of breast cancer, in particular, should avoid ionizing radiation as much as possible — the latter group being one that conventional medicine often recommends for routine or even extra mammography screening. Again, they refer individuals to a different, safer, form of testing: ultrasound or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).¹⁶

A "new and improved" type of mammogram called 3D tomosynthesis, which is basically a CT scan for your breasts, is particularly problematic, as your radiation exposure is even greater than from standard mammograms — and by a significant margin.

According to one study,¹⁷ annual screening using digital or screen-film mammography on women aged 40 to 80 years is associated with an induced cancer incidence and fatal breast cancer rate of 20 to 25 cases per 100,000 mammograms. Meaning, annual mammograms cause 20 to 25 cases of fatal cancer for every 100,000 women getting the test.

The 3D mammogram requires multiple views in order to achieve three-dimensionality, so it stands to reason your total radiation exposure would be considerably higher than from a standard 2D mammogram.

Thermography and Ultrasound Use No Radiation

In order to make informed decisions, women should be provided with all of their screening options, along with an explanation of their strengths and weaknesses, and be allowed to utilize the option of their choice.

Mammography is only one option, with considerable drawbacks. Other potentially safer options include self and clinical breast exams, thermography, ultrasound and MRI. Thermography and ultrasound use no radiation, and may detect abnormalities that mammograms miss, especially in women with dense breast tissue.

These are explained in detail toward the end of the film, but they can be difficult to access in the U.S., as the billion-dollar mammography industry prevents the widespread use of these beneficial tests.

It's also important to understand that mammography doesn't prevent breast cancer in any way. Breast cancer prevention involves a healthy lifestyle, avoidance of toxins and attention to certain nutritional factors, such as vitamin D. It is absolutely vital to know and optimize your vitamin D level as it can radically reduce your risk of breast cancer.

Ignoring these factors and simply getting an annual mammogram and believing you're protected is the end result being foisted upon many women trusting the advice of conventional medicine. By leading a healthy lifestyle, and seeking to get informed about all of your breast cancer screening options, you can avoid this potentially deadly pitfall.

About the Director I believe in bringing quality to my readers, which is why I would like to share some information about the filmmaker, Megan S. Smith, M.S., and what went in to making "bOObs: The War on Women's Breasts." Thank you, Megan, for sharing with us. What was your inspiration for making this film? My inspiration for making this film, as well as in making my next film on alternative cancer therapies, was the death of my husband 11 years ago from lung cancer. Specifically, for "bOObs," my inspiration was emboldened by the death of my three dear friends in as many years after their breast cancer returned following 10-plus years in remission. What was your favorite part of making the film? My favorite part of making this film was interviewing the patients and doctors. I learned during my interviews of Drs. Ben Johnson and Galina Migalko about the detriments of mammograms and that we might instead be using thermography in conjunction with ultrasound. This nonradiation protocol made sense to me. Also, my interview with The American Cancer Society's Dr. Otis Brawley was an eye opener, as he disclosed, "Mammography is a suboptimal test" and "We need a better test." All these doctors were spot on. More information on the film can be found here. >>>>> Click Here <<<<<

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