Researchers have discovered a neural circuit that drives physical responses to emotional stress. Emotional stress signals are processed in the ''emotion'' circuits and integrated in the DP/DTT. The integrated signals are transmitted to the hypothalamus which then drives a variety of physical responses through circuits that control ''body'' functions. The discovered ''mind-body'' connection constitutes a key part of the stress circuit in the brain.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2z93USg
This article is part of a weekly series in which Dr. Mercola interviews various experts on a variety of health issues. To see more expert interviews, click here.
In this interview, which took place March 23, 2020, Dr. Robert Rowen, who has practiced ozone therapy longer than any other physician in North America, discusses how it can be used for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 infection and other viral illnesses.
I previously interviewed Rowen about his contributions during the 2014 Ebola epidemic, when he and his staff went to Africa to treat affected patients and teach medical professionals on the use of ozone.
Over the years, Rowen has treated tens of thousands of people for a wide variety of conditions, and ozone appears to work in a wide variety of clinical settings, he says.
“I decided to go to Africa in 2014 because, knowing what I knew about the Ebola virus itself, I thought ozone would be an ideal therapy. Because of the similarity of the Ebola viral coat to coronavirus, I also believe it will be an effective treatment for coronavirus,” Rowen says.
Ozone Is Safe and Inexpensive
Aside from its effectiveness against infectious disease, ozone therapy is also incredibly inexpensive and safe. Ozone is only toxic to respiratory lung epithelium, so you must avoid breathing it. Other than that, it can be safely used in a variety of ways.
The biggest cost is the ozone generator itself, but once you have that, and compressed medical grade oxygen, you can treat large numbers of people very inexpensively.
You can technically generate ozone from ambient air. However, ambient air is nearly 80% nitrogen, so you’ll create a load of reactive nitrogen species rather than reactive oxygen species. That would be a bad idea. So, you a form of purer oxygen is preferred.
The most convenient is an oxygen concentrator. If run at a at a low flow rate, it will produce about 93% to 95% oxygen. Medical grade 100% oxygen is ideal, but in most states, you have to be a physician to get it, or you need a prescription for it. An oxygen concentrator is fine, Rowen says, if all you’re doing is bubbling ozone through water, but it should not be used for other ozone delivery strategies.
How Ozone Works
The most important factor in healing is oxygen, Rowen says. Oxygen is life. Without it, we die. Ozone improves body oxygenation in several ways. It:
Increases 2,3-diphosphoglycerate (2,3-DPG) in red blood cells, which causes more oxygen to be released by hemoglobin
Improves red blood cell flexibility, allowing the red blood cells to travel through small capillaries better
Increases arterial venous oxygen difference, which improves your body’s consumption of oxygen
Improves ATP production
Increases key antioxidants
Modulates the immune system, increasing certain cytokines that reduce inflammation and decreasing certain cytokines that increase inflammation
Reduces tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), thus reducing the lethality of insults such as stress or infection
All of these biochemical effects help explain ozone’s effectiveness. Importantly, ozone kills microorganisms, both viruses and bacteria, on contact. However, since ozone dissipates within microseconds, it cannot effectively kill a significant number of viral pathogens unless you somehow are able to extend the exposure.
For this reason, (if the case is severe or acute) ozone needs to be given via prolonged administration, either through direct intravenous (DIV) administration or through administration of ozone-enriched blood.
That said, even though ozone dissipates quickly, it creates a whole host of downstream metabolites (ozonites) — messenger molecules — that can kill pathogens and upregulate your immune system, and they last for days.
As explained in Rowen’s commentary,1 “A Plausible ‘Penny’ Costing Effective Treatment for Corona Virus — Ozone Therapy,” published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology:
“When blood is treated with ozone, it instantly reacts with electron-rich double bonds of lipids and other molecules. This creates longer lasting downstream weaker oxidant metabolites called ozonides: reactive oxygen species and lipid oxidation products, inclusive of peroxides, peroxyls, alkenes, alkanes. These molecules appear to act as messengers for the key biochemical and immune modulating effects of the therapy.”
How You Can Use Ozone
There are two basic ways to receive ozone therapy. Ideally, you’d see a clinician like Rowen who is experienced in its use. However, during a pandemic, that might not be feasible for any number of reasons.
Rowen has created an hour-long video explaining how to administer ozone therapy at home. Anyone can use these techniques, and it’s “extraordinarily safe,” Rowen says. The video is available for a $20 donation to Ozone Without Borders.2 Rowen’s website, DrRowenDrsu.com, also provides articles on home ozone use. In summary, home ozone techniques you can use include:
Rectal and/or vaginal insufflation
Ear insufflation
Drinking ozone water
Ozone sauna
General insufflation
Combination Therapies
When it comes to ozone machines, Rowen points out that some machines will also allow you to nebulize hydrogen peroxide, which he is doing daily during this epidemic. If you’re using colloidal silver, he advises taking the silver and hydrogen peroxide separately from each other. Two other useful therapies that can be combined with ozone therapy are:
•Molecular hydrogen, which upregulates your endogenous antioxidants. Molecular hydrogen tablets are dissolved in water, generating molecular hydrogen gas, which is then consumed. I would recommend drinking molecular hydrogen about 30 minutes before you do the ozone therapy. I do this routinely before I go into my hyperbaric chamber.
•Liposomal vitamin C (ascorbic acid), which will allow you to take far higher dosages than regular vitamin C (as regular vitamin C is limited by your bowel tolerance).
As noted by Rowen, “You're looking at 6 grams an hour, so you can easily swallow six 1,000 milligram capsules per hour or even more. If you take a lot of them at once, you would actually exceed intravenous administration levels, if the kidneys did not eliminate the nutrient.
That's a really good idea. The vitamin C in this case is working as a pro oxidant, and it's worth it to [take it].” Bear in mind that these high dosages are only for acute illness, not for prophylactic use to prevent infection.
•Nebulized hydrogen peroxide — This is a very powerful therapy that I believe is even more effective than using hydrogen peroxide in your ear canals that I’ve previously recommended. If you want some entertainment, watch one of my first YouTube videos from 2006 on this.
Ozone Water Is a Simple Home Remedy
While spending time in the Republic of Guinea a year ago, Rowen met a Polish nurse named Wieslavia Moriba — the wife of one of his patients — who was using ozone therapy on her patients. She had them drinking ozone water or taking ear insufflation or rectal insufflation.
“She was getting really, really good results with this,” Rowen says. She would bubble ozone through water at very cold temperatures, as cold water allows for far greater diffusion of ozone.
Water close to freezing can contain about three times the amount of ozone found in room temperature water. The reason for this is because colder water is denser, allowing it to hold more oxygen. As the water gets warmer it is not able to hold as much gas, so it diffuses out.
Ozone for Coronavirus
So, just how would ozone therapy kill coronavirus? In the interview, Rowen explains the mechanisms responsible. A more detailed description is also given in “A Plausible ‘Penny’ Costing Effective Treatment for Corona Virus — Ozone Therapy”:3
"[Ozone therapy] may be ideal therapy for viruses. In order to successfully penetrate cells, many viruses require membrane glycoproteins to be in the reduced R-S-H form rather than oxidized (R-S-S-R). Ozone inactivates many viruses directly …
Mirazmi, et al. found cytomegalovirus loses infectivity if its thiol groups are oxidized. Re-reducing the oxidized thiols (by dithiothreitol) enabled the virus to regain 65% infectivity. HIV is dependent on reduced sulfhydryl groups for infectivity, as also reported for Ebola virus to enter cells.
Like Ebola, corona virus structure also has regions rich in cysteine, inclusive of the spike and envelope proteins. Cysteine is an amino acid carrying a sulfhydryl (R-S-H) residue, also called a ‘thiol’ group. Alterations of these residues have been found to ‘cripple’ virus growth properties at least 2 logs lower than wild type virus.
Active cysteine is essential for membrane fusion … The redox status (reduced cysteine residues vs. oxidized residues) can ‘switch’ protein activity to ‘on’ or ‘off.’ Thiol S-H bonds are far weaker than the O-H bonds in alcohols, and vulnerable to oxygen based oxidants, which can oxidize the sulfur to sulfonic acid residues (R-SO3-H) …
Cysteine is highly vulnerable to oxidation to disulfide (R-S-S-R) or other residues; which effect will cripple its biochemical activity in proteins, altering their three-dimensional structure. Enzymes may become inactive when reduced thiols are oxidized. Ozone itself will oxidize SH groups instantly on contact.
Knowing ozone extinguishes itself virtually instantly on contact with blood, creating ozonides, one might then ask, ‘How will ozone reach deep reservoirs of virus?’ Ozonides are oxidants in their own right. They have a prolonged life … providing ongoing protection after a single treatment.
These molecules are less reactive than ozone, but still possess oxidizing power and serve as biochemical signaling molecules modulating the immune system. Creating a more ‘oxidized’ environment, ozone therapy may assist the body in inactivating thiols in viruses in blood and tissues.
(Our immune system is well known to create reactive oxidant species, such as hydrogen peroxide, superoxide, nitric oxide, hypochlorous acid, etc. and even ozone itself as mentioned previously to defend against infection). Viruses, unlike ‘living’ cells, have no mechanism of self-repair.”
In simpler layman’s terms, the coronavirus is a lipid-coated virus and rich in cysteine amino acid residues; if you disrupt that lipid coat or oxidize the vulnerable cysteine, you reduce or eliminate its infectivity. Ozone attacks lipids, and viruses cannot repair that damage. Thus, ozone may effectively destroy the virus.
Ozone May Be an Ideal Antiviral
Ozone also modulates the immune system. The cytokine storm associated with severe COVID-19 infection is due to an out of control immune reaction. Ozone can help bring the immune system back into balance, thus allowing it to defend itself against the invader without causing excessive damage in the process. According to Rowen:
“Ozone appears to be an incredible antiviral. In my words, it's the ideal antiviral … Designing drugs to damage the lipid coat is probably going to fail because those drugs are going to be toxic.
But we have a molecule that can do this. And whether you call it a drug, ozone is a natural substance — because it's made by the body — it matters not to me. The fact is, it's a pro-oxidant and it can ding the virus and render it inactive if the virus is exposed to it …
One of my goals in all of this is to try to get ozone [as] standard of care. I believe it's running up against a wall deliberately, because if ozone and oxidative therapies, including vitamin C, hydrogen peroxide or ultraviolet blood radiation got out there, you would see a change in the landscape of medicine in this country and it would really hurt Pharma … So, I have no doubt that this information is being deliberately squelched.
I know reporters who were trying to get the story out there and they were told by their higher ups, no go. It's a dead story. Why? Ozone could be put into the ICUs [at] no expense, no cost. I don't want to be paid for it to go into local hospitals … But we have a system that is so corrupt, so vile, that if it's not FDA approved, they will let somebody die.
That's evil on steroids. So it would seem that this pandemic could be a great opportunity. Because in China, they're using intravenous ascorbic acid for this, but it would seem to be an opportunity to use ozone over there … The people that they've gotten to with ozone, even those who are seriously ill, have had a very favorable outcome.”
To learn more, read Rowen’s commentary,4 “A Plausible ‘Penny’ Costing Effective Treatment for Corona Virus — Ozone Therapy,” published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology, or check out his website, DrRowenDrsu.com. In the interview, Rowen also goes into greater depth, explaining the biomechanics of ozone as it pertains to viral infections.
Judy Mikovits, Ph.D. is a cellular and molecular biologist,1 researcher and was the founding research director of the Whittemore Peterson Institute that researches and treats chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) in Reno, Nevada.
She is likely one of the most qualified scientists in the world to comment on this disease because of her groundbreaking research in molecular biology and virology.
Mikovits is absolutely brilliant, but like many gifted researchers, her complex discussions on science quite challenging for the average lay person to follow.
For this reason, I present her interview in a different format, cutting and splicing pieces together to present a more cohesive and coherent presentation of her many important points. I would encourage you to watch the initial, very short, videos first, so you will be well-grounded, and if you are motivated, watch the entire interview at the bottom of this article.
Because there were so many surprising and important revelations in this interview I will present part 2 next week along with an interview with Bobby Kennedy, Jr which will revolve more on the vaccine issue.
Mikovits Doesn’t Believe SARS-CoV-2 Is the Cause of COVID-19
One of the most shocking revelations Mikovits reveals is that she doesn’t believe SARS-CoV-2 is the cause of COVID-19 but merely serves to activate or wake up a dormant XMRV infection. To support her assertion, she states that COVID-19 patients have the same cytokine signature as the gammaretrovirus XMRV, which she published many years ago.
XMRV stands for “xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus.” Xenotrophic refers to viruses that only replicate in cells other than those of the host species. So, XMRVs are viruses that infect human cells yet are not human viruses.2
The XMRV retrovirus is actually the virus that has the same cytokine storm signature as COVID-19, not coronaviruses, which are far more benign. (I delve into what retroviruses are in another section further below.)
Additionally, there may be other infections that also are contributing to the infection, such as Borelia and Babesia or parasites, which may be why some of the antiparasite drugs like Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are working.
Vaccine Gammaretroviruses Have Adapted and Are Aerosolized
Getting back to the issue of gammaretroviruses, Mikovits research showed that many of our vaccines are contaminated with them. How did this happen? In short, vaccine viruses were replicated and grown in animal cell cultures that were already contaminated with retroviruses. In other words, the root of the problem stems from the use of contaminated cell culture lines.
Vaccine manufacturing frequently involves the use of animal tissues and many vaccines are grown animal culture cell lines. As noted in the 2010 paper, “Of Mice and Men: On the Origin of XMRV,” published in Frontiers in Microbiology (which Mikovits did not work on):3
“The novel human retrovirus xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) is arguably the most controversial virus of this moment. After its original discovery in prostate cancer tissue from North American patients, it was subsequently detected in individuals with chronic fatigue syndrome from the same continent …
The detection of integrated XMRV proviruses in prostate cancer tissue proves it to be a genuine virus that replicates in human cells, leaving the question: how did XMRV enter the human population?
We will discuss two possible routes: either via direct virus transmission from mouse to human … or via the use of mouse-related products by humans, including vaccines. We hypothesize that mouse cells or human cell lines used for vaccine production could have been contaminated with a replicating variant of the XMRV precursors encoded by the mouse genome.”
Mikovits goes even further, explaining that, “It became clear in 2011 that these [gammaretro]viruses had adapted to become aerosolized.” This is a rather shocking finding, and this, Mikovits says, is what allows the gammaretroviruses to spread in laboratories from one cell line to another.
This could be related to research catalyzed by Charles Lieber, the former head of Harvard’s chemistry department, who is a nanoscience experts and was arrested by federal authorities earlier this year for working with the Wuhan Virology Institute.
Lab workers may also be inadvertently spreading them as they are using cell lines contaminated with retroviruses in vaccine production that could result in the spread of these retroviruses via the finished vaccine. Mikovits suspects COVID-19 may in fact be a type of vaccine-derived or vaccine-induced retroviral infection.
“I don't believe [COVID-19] is infection from without,” she says. “I believe the spread across [210] countries4 is from injection, and there's enough evidence to support that.”
SARS-CoV-2 — A Combination of SARS, Gammaretroviruses and HIV
Another of her theories is that SARS-CoV-2 is unlikely to have had a zoonotic origin but is likely synthetically produced. She believes it originated in and escaped or leaked from a biosafety laboratory. Mikovits believes both scenarios might be at play, where a lab-created virus, SARS-CoV-2, is causing serious infection and/or death only in those who have underlying retroviruses in their bodies.
Mikovits suspects that people who do not have retroviral infections, SARS-CoV-2 causes no or only mild symptoms. Another possibility is that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is the result of growing coronaviruses in retrovirus-contaminated cell lines, producing a gammaretrovirus-carrying virus. According to Mikovits, her 2009 through 2011 work suggested 25 million to 30 million Americans were carriers of XMRVs and other gammaretroviruses. That estimate is over a decade old now so the number is likely far higher.
“There is a family of gammaretroviruses, most likely [in] contaminated blood supply and vaccines that are still to this day, almost 10 years later, being injected,” she says.
“We don't need an infectious virus if you inject the blueprint, if you inject the provirus. And … there are a lot of data to support COVID-19 is not SARS-CoV-2 alone, that it's SARS-CoV-2and XMRVs (human gammaretroviruses) and HIV.”
Might Wearing a Mask Worsen Your Odds of Illness?
Mikovits is also highly critical of the recommendation (and in some places mandate) to wear a face mask or fabric cover such as a bandana around your face. She believes:
“Wearing a mask is going to cause more secretions and give more cells a home and amplify any viruses. [Wearing a mask is] immune suppressive; it's going to limit your body’s ability to produce Type 1 interferon.
You're driving the infection in yourself and you're not preventing the spread. [Instead], you're amplifying [replication of] not just [SARS-CoV-2] but also many other [viruses], including your XMRVs, influenza or other dormant viruses.
What keeps those dormant viruses dormant? Your natural killer (NK) cells, your mast cells, your macrophages. That's where you're getting the inflammatory signature.
So, every virus you amplify is driving the inflammatory signature, and you're going to get sick. [The resulting illness] doesn't have to be SARS-CoV-2 at all. You’re making yourself sick [by bringing dormant viruses out of dormancy]. It's insanity.”
Wearing a face mask after getting a live flu vaccine may further worsen your odds, she says. Why? Because you’re injecting three or more live flu virus strains into your body, which lowers your immune function. You’re also going to shed the viruses contained in the vaccine. If you wear a mask, Mikovits says, you’ll shed those viruses into the mask, which could encourage illness.
On the other hand, not wearing one might jeopardize the health of others. “If you're shedding [the viruses] into the air, you're going to make somebody else get another upper respiratory infection that's going to allow [SARS-CoV-2] to make them sicker,” she warns.
Why PCR Testing Is a Bad Idea
We’re also being lied to about the prevalence of infection. We’re seeing inflated case numbers for the simple reason that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention no longer requires doctors to do testing in order to confirm that a patient is in fact infected with SARS-CoV-2 or died from COVID-19. The numbers now include “suspected” and “assumed” cases.
Naturally, without widespread and accurate testing, there’s no way to get a clear idea of how prevalent the infection is, and how many actually get sick and die from it. The initial emphasis on PCR testing resulted in massive false positives and greatly inflated numbers of those infected.
As noted by Mikovits, confirming each case through testing matters greatly, as there are hundreds, if not thousands, of microbes that can cause upper respiratory infections, including seasonal influenza viruses. None of those should be lumped in with COVID-19 if we want to understand the true nature and danger of this disease.
What’s more, the initial decision to use RT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) testing instead of antibody testing was an unwise one, as it virtually guaranteed an overestimation of the problem. RT-PCR is now being used to diagnose an active infection by detecting the presence of SARS-CoV-2 genetic material.5 However, by doing that, you end up with high rates of false positives. Mikovits explains how the RT-PCR test works:
“We're taking a swab and scraping some epithelial cells [from the back of the sinuses or throat] because that's what coronaviruses infect … We get a little RNA — because it's an RNA virus — we reverse-transcribe that, meaning write it backwards with enzymes in the lab, and then we amplify it [through a] polymerase chain reaction …
We're only taking a piece of the virus, we're not taking the whole virus … The first thing about [the PCR] test is, it was admitted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the CDC that the tests put out by the CDC were contaminated.
And when you amplify something a million times, or 10 million times — whatever they do in the 30 cycles or so — it's logarithmic that RNA then is way overestimated … [But] no [viral] particle was identified or isolated from your saliva or from your nasal passages. Nobody took the secretions from your nose or your mouth and isolated the [actual] viruses.
[When I isolated] HIV in 1983, I isolated it from saliva. What you do is you take the virus and grow it in any human cell, in an appropriate cell line, and you make many copies. [Viral replication] means you have [a positive test for] that virus. Then you sequence the whole virus.
A PCR [test, on the other hand] can give you a lot of false positives [by amplifying RNA fragments].
We [also] showed the people that had [HIV] infection had antibodies; that they had been fully exposed and it was not a piece of nucleic acid in a biopsy or in their throat or in their nose. [A piece of nucleic acid] is not a virus. And it's certainly not infectious.
If RNA is there and in the tiniest amount, I'm not going to cough it on somebody, especially if I'm not coughing. I'm not going to breathe that [out and infect] somebody because there's no evidence of an infectious virus.”
Better Testing Strategy: Antibodies
Rather than using PCR testing, “what should have been done is test for antibodies,” Mikovits says. This is what was done in South Korea. An antibody test will tell you whether you had the infection at some point, and have developed a strong immune response or immunological memory that will allow you to fight the infection should you encounter it again.
“Epidemiology is not done with PCR. In fact, Kary Mullis who invented PCR, Nobel Laureate, and others, said PCR was never intended for diagnostic testing. So that puts that to bed.
It takes nothing to develop a really good serology [i.e., antibody] test … [It takes] a few weeks. It's pretty easy because the people who have recovered have antibodies. So, you isolate those antibodies, you take their plasma, you purify the antibodies, and then you can grow them.
Then you develop the tests... It's usually ELISA or Western Blot [which check for] the protein and the antibody binds. You form an immune complex, and you detect it with a dye. You can do that test with a finger stick … and it takes 15 minutes to get the answer, almost like a pregnancy test.”
My belief is that the use of PCR instead of a proper antibody test was intentional, as it inflates the case numbers. Mikovits agrees, saying “I wouldn't get any tests right now. I'd simply wash my hands and drink hot lemon water as I always do for any flu season.”
Evidence SARS-CoV-2 May Be a Lab-Created Virus
In the Epoch Times documentary, “Tracking Down the Origin of the Wuhan Coronavirus,” Mikovits details some of the evidence supporting the view that SARS-CoV-2 is not a naturally-evolved virus, but rather a laboratory concoction.
One piece of evidence is that the virus contains a protein envelope from the HIV virus. It’s also very similar to SARS which, according to bioweapons expert Francis Boyle, is an engineered bioweapon.
As explained by Mikovits, an Indian paper6,7 detailed the presence of Gp120, a protein envelope from the HIV virus. That paper was quickly retracted due to political pressure. However, Mikovits colleague, Luc Montagnier, made a similar discovery, finding Gp41 in the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is the transmembrane domain of the HIV virus.
“The folks from India also had GAG. That's structural proteins. That gives you a clue that it wasn't a CRISPR technique or a pseudotyping where the envelope was expressed in a gene therapy-type of way. Ifit were CRISPR, you wouldn't put the GAG sequences in there.
What was done is, the virus was acquired as they grew SARS-CoV-2 in Vero-E6 cells — the monkey kidney cells where you get HIV.
Simian immune deficiency virus was the origin, and we were told all the way back in the 80s that somebody forgot to cook their food in Africa and a few promiscuous men spread this [HIV] virus around the world. So, you can see again the patterns of the lies and of what people end up believing.”
The addition of this envelope protein from HIV gives SARS-CoV-2 the ability to impair the immune system. It also contributes to its pathogenicity. Mikovits continues her explanation:
“The first thing is, you must grow a virus to make a lot of it. So, you grow it in cell lines. They didn't take [SARS-CoV-2] from the bat and it jumped into a human. It normally goes through another cell [from] a monkey or a smaller animal. The cell line that supports the growth and expansion [of viruses] are monkey kidney cells.
Maybe [SARS-CoV-2] is not engineered at all … but the end result is, now it not only infects the epithelial cells of the lungs, it infects the white blood cells, it infects the immune cells. We see the splenomegaly in large spleens, we're seeing penias, cytopenias. We're losing cells like HIV-killing T-cells …
So, it's got not only an expanded host range, but also disease symptoms that make no sense for a coronavirus. Hence, we're killing people because they're treating an upper respiratory infection, and you're getting that inflammatory disease signature because you're infecting the very innate immune response, the macrophages, the monocytes, the natural killer cells, the T cells. And it's primarily the T-cells in the macrophages because those are the cells HIV 120 and Gp41 infect through CCR5 in the CD4 receptor.
So now you're going to lose your adaptive immune response, you're going to drive the inflammation. And it’s the fire [of inflammation] that does the tissue damage.”
Another piece that hints at SARS-CoV-2 being a manufactured virus is the construction of its spike proteins, which bind to ACE2 receptors to gain access into the cell. This appears to be an engineering feature. According to Mikovits, it’s quite clear that the spike proteins came from the original SARS virus, which also infects through ACE receptors.
There are also “single point mutations there that make it far more infectious, easier to spread,” she says, “and how those were acquired, nobody really can say.” At least not yet. Nanotechnology may also have been used to aerosolize it for ease of transmission.
“The nano[size] further increases the host range. So now you can go into every cell. Now you can go across the blood brain barrier. That's nano. Now you don't need a receptor. You can breathe it, it can go into every cell of the body. You don't need the gatekeeper. You don't need the receptor. You don't need the lock and key.”
Contaminated Cell Line Shared With Wuhan Biolab
According to Mikovits, one contaminated cell line is the Vero monkey kidney cell line called Vero E6, which was given by Fort Detrick — a U.S. Army Medical Command installation that hosts many of our national biological defense programs and houses the National Cancer Institute laboratory where she used to work — to the biosafety 4 laboratory (BSL-4) in Wuhan, China. This cell line is what the Wuhan lab used to grow and study coronaviruses, she says.
The Vero cell line is listed in the 2015 paper,8 “A SARS-like Cluster of Circulating Bat Coronaviruses Shows Potential for Human Emergence,” co-written by University of North Carolina researchers and Dr. Shi Zhengli, a Chinese virologist at the Wuhan lab who in 2010 published a paper9 discussing the weaponization of the SARS virus.
The contaminated Vero monkey kidney cells were also used in the production of polio vaccines, Mikovits notes. The original polio vaccines were passed through mice brains, as we didn't have cell lines in the 1930s when that vaccine was originally developed. According to Mikovitz, the spread of this Vero retrovirus has occurred through laboratory workers and hospital caretakers for decades.
“That's why the family studies we did were so important,” she says, referring to studies in which retroviral transmission was tracked to determine how it spread between family members.10
Alas, whenever patterns were detected, she was always directed to cover them up. Her refusal to hide the information from the public was what led to her firing in 2011. According to Mikovits, we’re seeing the same pattern of sweeping evidence under the rug now during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The patterns are the same as far as the science goes, and the patterns are the same as far as the political corruption, the plague of corruption, in covering up data,” she says.
Mikovits Pioneering Research in XMRV
In 2009, Mikovits got embroiled in controversy when she wrote a paper reporting that a retrovirus known as xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus may play a causal role in CFS and other diseases, including autism. I interviewed her about this intriguing and complex story in December 2018 (see linked sentence).
According to Mikovits, Fauci does not appear to have changed his stripes, and is still misleading the public and hiding the truth about SARS-CoV-2, just like he did with the HIV virus and retroviral-associated diseases.
“I think the way to think about the background of what's going on right now is to go back to my first interactions with Dr. Tony Fauci when I was a 25-year-old lab technician in the National Cancer Institute. At that time, we had isolated — from blood and saliva — the lymphadenopathy virus.
[Lymphadenopathy-associated virus (LAV)] was the name given to it by Luc Montagnier, the Nobel Laureate, [who] first isolated and discovered that virus and its association with HIV/AIDS.11
In that situation, Fauci delayed the serology testing [to find out] who was exposed [to HIV]. It was politicized such that the only people that were [said to be] susceptible to getting infected with HIV was gay men [and] IV drug users.
The country was told not to worry about it. It was only spread through blood and body fluids and shouldn't be a problem for most other people. So, the testing that could have been done wasn't done because of political reasons, and the treatments weren't done because Fauci had patents, and — we didn't know this at the time — the wrong type of treatment was used. That led to the spread and [death] of millions worldwide …”
The Discovery of Human Gammaretroviruses
Ultimately, Mikovits and her colleagues discovered that the HIV virus was spread through a contaminated blood supply. After that, they proceeded to look into other “clearly retroviral-associated diseases,” such as CFS,12 certain kinds of autism, cancers, leukemias and lymphomas.
Gammaretroviruses13 are viruses that can cause cancer, leukemia and immune deficiencies in various animals. Examples include murine leukemia virus, feline leukemia virus and mink focus forming virus. As explained in a 2011 paper on gamma retroviruses:14
“Retroviruses are evolutionary optimized gene carriers that have naturally adapted to their hosts to efficiently deliver their nucleic acids into the target cell chromatin, thereby overcoming natural cellular barriers …
Retroviral vectors are fascinating and efficient delivery tools for the transfer of nucleic acids. As a hallmark, all retroviruses are capable of reverse transcribing their single stranded RNA genome into double stranded DNA, which will be stably integrated into the host cell genome.
As highly evolved parasites they act in concert with cellular host factors to deliver their nucleic acid into the nucleus, where they exploit the host cell’s machinery for their own replication and long-term expression occurs.”
The key take-home here is that retroviruses are “integrated into the host cell genome,” and infection can result in “long-term expression.” In other words, once they’re in your body, they can remain dormant, only to reactivate when conditions are favorable. In this regard, they’re quite different from your average virus that, when you’re exposed, invades your cells, replicates and causes symptoms, and is eventually eliminated from your body through your immune response.
In 2009, Mikovits and her team discovered and isolated the first human gammaretrovirus family of retroviruses, known then as XMRVs. As mentioned earlier, XMRV stands for “xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus.” Xenotrophic refers to viruses that only replicate in cells other than those of the host species. So, XMRVs are viruses that infect human cells yet are not human viruses.15
To reiterate some of the key take-home messages Mikovits delivers in this interview:
• She believes COVID-19 — the disease — is not caused by SARS-CoV-2 alone, but rather that it’s the result of a combination of SARS-CoV-2 (which appears to have been manipulated to include components of HIV that destroys immune function). Previous XMRV (human gammaretroviruses) infection may facilitate SARS-CoV-2 to express the COVID-19 illness.
Put another way, COVID-19 may be initiated by SARS-CoV-2 but dependent upon a preexisting infection with and awakening of other viruses such as XMRV, gamma retroviruses, possibly Lyme and other coinfections, including parasites, and this is why anti-parasitic medications like hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin help.
• Blood products and vaccines are contaminated with XMRVs that can damage your immune system and cause CFS, cancer and other chronic diseases. The viruses spread within laboratories as they have adapted to become aerosolized, and contaminate cell lines used in vaccine production and other viral research, including research on coronaviruses.
• Flu vaccines have spread a host of dangerous viruses around the world, which can then interact with SARS COV-2.
• It is possible to develop safer oral vaccines, and interferon alpha could be a valuable treatment alternative against COVID-19. Aside from interferons, other treatment strategies discussed in our interview include hyperbaric oxygen therapy, cannabinoids (CBD), peptide T and antioxidant support.
• SARS-CoV-2 is more dangerous and virulent than typical coronaviruses because it includes sequences of HIV, SARS and another virus, which enable it to infect more than just your respiratory epithelium. It can also infect blood cells and hematopoeitic organs such as the spleen.
Native bees that boost food crops are in decline but changing fire management policies could help them. A new study finds these native bees are better able to survive harsh climate events, like drought, in areas where naturally occurring fires are allowed to burn.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2Wi3X6u
While COVID-19 meets the technical definition1 of a pandemic (i.e., “an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people”), the death toll is nowhere near that of earlier serious pandemics2 that would legitimately justify the extraordinary measures being deployed by the U.S. government and others around the globe.
The Black Death
For comparison, the “Black Death,” which swept through Europe between 1347 and 1351 and kept resurfacing at intervals for the next 300 years, decimated up to one-third of the population with each recurrence.3,4
While the Black Death was long thought to be the same as the bubonic plague, in more recent years, researchers have questioned this assumption,5 and at least some of the evidence suggests they were not the same disease.
Either way, the plague killed 75 million to 200 million people in Eurasia, with deaths peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351.6 As much as 60% of the European population in rural areas were wiped out by the Black Death in the first four-year-long pandemic wave. People died within days of having symptoms.7 This horrific lethality is typically what people think of when they hear the word “pandemic.”
The Spanish Flu
Similarly, the Spanish flu (aka, swine flu), which hit during World War I in 1918, infected 500 million people worldwide, killing an estimated 50 million, or 2.7% of the global population.8
It killed 675,000 in the U.S. alone — more than died in combat during World War I, World War II, the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined, according to the historical documentary above.
Like the bubonic plague, the Spanish flu was a very rapid killer, causing death in as little as 12 hours. Like the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the virus also spread very easily and rapidly. Unlike COVID-19, however, people between the ages of 20 and 40 were most susceptible to the infection.
With COVID-19, it’s the elderly and immune compromised that are at greatest risk, but even in these high-risk groups, the mortality rate is nowhere near that of the Spanish flu.
COVID-19
Data points vary, and mortality statistics differ widely depending on the country and area you’re looking at, but using the higher of two prominent COVID-19 trackers — Worldometer,9 opposed to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center10 — 129,100 people had died, globally, from COVID-19 as of the afternoon on April 15, 2020.
Based on a global population of 7.8 billion,11 129,100 deaths amount to 0.0016% of the global population. Even if this tally is off by hundreds of thousands, we’re still only looking at a fraction of a percent of the global population succumbing to COVID-19 in three and a half months.
April 15, there were also 1,403,420 active cases, 96% of which were mild and only 4% of which were serious or critical,12 so clearly, a vast majority of people who are infected make it through and end up having antibodies that will confer long-term immunity.
I for one could see shutting down the global economy for a true plague or something much like the Spanish flu, but COVID-19 simply doesn’t warrant the draconian elimination of personal freedom and liberty we’re currently seeing. Nor is it serious enough to warrant the kinds of long-term surveillance strategies suggested by Bill Gates.
Understand What’s Happening Right Now
The Corbett Report above is well worth listening to if you’re still on the fence and think the way we’re going is a good idea to safeguard the vulnerable. Remember, infectious diseases have been with us since the dawn of mankind, and are not going to stop. Ever.
Right now, we’re being told that we have to forgo our civil liberties because we might spread a virus to a potentially vulnerable individual, and if that happens, we’re culpable in their death. So, to prevent “mass homicide” from occurring by people moving about freely, we’re told we have to isolate ourselves and stop living.
Yet every single flu season throughout history, people have moved about, spreading the infection around. Undoubtedly, most people who have ever left their house with a cold, stomach bug or other influenza at any point in the past has unwittingly spread the infection to others, some of which may have ended up with a serious case of illness and some of which may ultimately have died from it.
There is simply no way to prevent such a chain of events in perpetuity. Giving up our civil liberties in an effort to prevent all future deaths from infectious disease is profoundly misguided, and ultimately will not work anyway.
From my perspective, the only mitigating factor in this analysis is that there appears to be solid, well-documented evidence that this is an engineered virus, one that was constructed in biosafety level 3 and 4 labs that are focused on offensive biological weapons research. This may result in unprecedented adverse biological adaptions that impair innate immunity. But at this time, I seriously doubt it.
Mortality Predictions Fall Apart
Mid-March predictions said COVID-19 would kill 2.2 million Americans if allowed to run its course.13 By the end of March, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, downgraded the projected death toll, saying we were probably looking at 100,000 to 240,000 Americans dying.14
April 8, 2020, a new model referred to as the Murray Model15 downgraded the threat further, predicting COVID-19 will kill 60,000 in the U.S. by August16 — a number that is still 20,000 lower than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s death toll numbers attributed to the seasonal flu the winter of 2017/2018.17
In the Liberty Report video above, Dr. Ron Paul, former GOP congressman, also points out that Fauci’s “doom and gloom predictions” have completely collapsed, “with the new official prediction coming in under the normal flu numbers for 2018.”
If COVID-19 is not causing any greater death toll than the regular flu season two years ago, why are we now asked to end society as we know it well into the foreseeable future? There's no doubt in my mind that there will be far more deaths attributable to the financial collapse and isolation than there will be from the actual infection.
H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic Response Was a Gift to Big Pharma
The H1N1 swine flu of 2009 was the most recent pandemic of note, and considering Fauci and Gates are both saying we won’t be able (read, allowed) to go back to any semblance of normalcy until or unless we have a vaccine and enforce mandatory vaccination of the global population, it’s worth remembering what happened during the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
The CDC estimates that from April 12, 2009, to April 10, 2010, there were 60.8 million cases of H1N1 infection, 274,000 hospitalizations, and 12,469 deaths (0.02% infection fatality rate/mortality rate) in the United States.
June 11, 2009, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic of novel influenza A (H1N1).18 A vaccine was rapidly unveiled, and within months, cases of disability and death from the H1N1 vaccine were reported in various parts of the world.
In the aftermath, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) questioned the WHO’s handling of the pandemic. In June 2010, PACE concluded “the handling of the pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), EU health agencies and national governments led to a ‘waste of large sums of public money, and unjustified scares and fears about the health risks faced by the European public.’”19
Specifically, PACE concluded there was “overwhelming evidence that the seriousness of the pandemic was vastly overrated by WHO,” and that the drug industry had influenced the organization’s decision-making.20 As reported by the Natural Society in 2014:21
“… a joint investigation by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) has uncovered some serious conflicts of interest between the World Health Organization (WHO), who proposed … heavy vaccinations, and the pharmaceutical companies which created them.
The joint-investigation’s report explains that the WHO profited immensely22 from the scare tactics they utilized to promote the use of a swine flu vaccine.
Creating mass hysteria was the WHO’s emergency advisory committee’s goal … The WHO told the world that up to 7 million people could die without the vaccines they were pushing … The advisory panel was choked with individuals highly connected to the pharmaceutical companies with vested interests in both antiviral and influenza vaccines.
An over $4 billion stake was invested in developing these vaccines, and without a pandemic there would be no use for them. Utilizing propaganda and fear, the drugs were pushed on unsuspecting people, and the money was made.”
Disturbingly, while the WHO was found to have had serious conflicts of interest with the drug industry, nothing has actually changed since then, which makes one wonder whether the WHO’s COVID-19 pandemic response can actually be trusted.
White House Halts Funding to WHO
On the upside, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams stated in an April 13 radio interview23,24 with Breitbart News Daily that the White House Coronavirus Task Force is no longer relying on predictive projection models at this point, for the simple reason that we now have sufficient real-time data that provide a far more accurate overview of the situation.
According to Adams, the reopening of American communities will be based on actual infection rates (derived from testing) rather than predictive modeling, and communities’ ability to handle the real-world medical case load.
April 14, 2020, President Trump also halted funding to WHO until a White House review of the organization’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has been completed. As reported by Politico:25
“Trump … accused WHO of ‘severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus’ and called its opposition to U.S. travel restrictions on China in the outbreak’s early months ‘disastrous.’
While WHO did call such travel bans ‘ineffective in most situations’ at the time, the group did acknowledge that they could buy countries time to ‘to initiate and implement effective preparedness measures.’”
Considering WHO is acting like little more than a front group for Big Pharma, just like the Gates Foundation (which is now the largest funder of WHO), this may actually be a good thing. WHO really needs to decide whether it’s going to do what’s right for public health or take its direction from Gates and the drug industry.
Gates, through his massive involvement with WHO — detailed in “Bill Gates — Most Dangerous Philanthropist in Modern History?” — is both calling the shots during this pandemic and stands to gain handsomely from it, seeing how the Gates Foundation Trust is invested in vaccine development companies that in turn receive “charitable donations” from the Gates Foundation.
Gates has gone on record saying the U.S. needs a national tracking system26 that could involve vaccine records embedded on our bodies (such as invisible ink quantum dot tattoos described in a Science Translational Medicine paper27,28) and mandatory COVID-19 vaccination for anyone wanting to move about and travel freely in the future.
Limiting Gates influence, even if that means defunding the WHO, is likely going to be imperative if we want to avoid the dystopian surveillance state he proposes.
What We Learned From the Pandemic Swine Flu Vaccine
Even if a COVID-19 vaccine comes out in a year, we will have no proof that it’s safe since researchers are foregoing some of the normally required safety testing in order to get a vaccine out as soon as possible.29 What if it turns into a repeat of the fast-tracked H1N1 swine flu vaccine released in Europe during the swine flu pandemic of 2009-2010?
In July 2009, the U.S. National Biodefense Safety Board unanimously decided to forgo most safety and efficacy tests to get the vaccine out by September of that year.30,31 Europe also accelerated its approval process, allowing manufacturers to skip large-scale human trials32 — a decision that turned out to have tragic consequences33 for an untold number of children and teens across Europe.
Over the next few years, the ASO3-adjuvanted swine flu vaccine Pandemrix (used in Europe but not in the U.S. during 2009-2010) was causally linked34 to childhood narcolepsy, which abruptly skyrocketed in several countries.35,36
Children and teens in Finland,37 the U.K.38 and Sweden39 were among the hardest hit. Further analyses discerned a rise in narcolepsy among adults who received the vaccine as well, although the link wasn’t as obvious as that in children and adolescents.40
A 2019 study41 reports finding a “novel association between Pandemrix-associated narcolepsy and the non-coding RNA gene GDNF-AS1” — a gene thought to regulate the production of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor or GDNF, a protein that plays an important role in neuronal survival.
They also confirmed a strong association between vaccine-induced narcolepsy and a certain haplotype, suggesting “variation in genes related to immunity and neuronal survival may interact to increase the susceptibility to Pandemrix-induced narcolepsy in certain individuals.”
As of right now, one of the main contenders for a COVID-19 vaccine is using synthetic mRNA to instruct DNA to produce the same kind of proteins COVID-19 uses to gain access into our cells. The idea is that your immune system will learn to recognize and kill the real virus.
What the limited human trials on this vaccine will NOT tell us is whether it might have devastating genetic effects. No one expected Pandemrix to have genetic effects. Yet it did.
The pandemic H1N1 vaccine was largely voluntary. Had it been mandated across the entire world, which is what they’re considering for COVID-19, the health ramifications would have been absolutely devastating, and that’s the risk we’re facing if a COVID-19 mandate goes through.
The Swine Flu Fraud of 1976
Last but not least, we can look at and learn from the swine flu fiasco of 1976 as well, detailed in this 1979 60 Minutes episode. Fearing a repeat of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, “the government propaganda machine cranked into action,” 60 Minutes says, telling all Americans to get vaccinated.
According to 60 Minutes, 46 million Americans were vaccinated against the swine flu at that time. Over the next few years, thousands of Americans filed vaccine damage claims with the federal government.42 As reported by Smithsonian Magazine in 2017:43
“In the spring of 1976, it looked like that year’s flu was the real thing. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t, and rushed response led to a medical debacle that hasn’t gone away.
‘Some of the American public’s hesitance to embrace vaccines — the flu vaccine in particular — can be attributed to the long-lasting effects of a failed 1976 campaign to mass-vaccinate the public against a strain of the swine flu virus,’ writes Rebecca Kreston for Discover.
‘This government-led campaign was widely viewed as a debacle and put an irreparable dent in future public health initiative, as well as negatively influenced the public’s perception of both the flu and the flu shot in this country.’”
A 1981 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office to Senator John Durkin reads, in part:44
“Before the swine flu program there were comparatively few vaccine-related claims made against the Government. Since 1963, Public Health Service records showed that only 27 non-swine flu claims were filed.
However, as of December 31, 1979, we found that 3,839 claims and 988 lawsuits had been filed against the Government alleging injury, death, or other damage resulting from the 45 million swine flu immunizations given under the program.
A Justice official told us that as of October 2, 1980, 3,965 claims and 1,384 lawsuits had been filed. Of the 3,965 claims filed, the Justice official said 316 claims had been settled for about $12.3 million …”
CDC Lied About Swine Flu Vaccine Safety
According to 60 Minutes, the claims amount for the nearly 4,000 claimants totaled $3.5 billion. Two-thirds of the claimants suffered neurological damage and at least 300 of them died.
As explained by 60 Minutes, Americans who got the vaccine were told the vaccine had been field tested. What they were not told was that the vaccine they received was not the actual vaccine that had undergone testing.
According to Dr. Michael Hattwick, who directed the surveillance team for the 1976 swine flu vaccination program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there was evidence showing influenza vaccinations could, and had, caused neurological complications in the past.
He claims he warned his superiors of this possibility, as it pertained to the swine flu campaign. Yet the CDC denied the evidence and the American public was never informed of this risk. 60 Minutes also reveals the CDC was proven to have lied in its marketing materials for the vaccine.
Judy Roberts was one of the victims of that campaign. She was paralyzed by the vaccine, and suffered permanent damage. Her husband, who was also vaccinated and suffered no ill effects, ends the segment saying:
“I told Judy to take the shot … I’m mad with my government. They knew the facts but they didn’t release those facts, because if they had released them, people wouldn’t have taken it.
And they can come out tomorrow and tell me there’s going to be an epidemic, and they can drop off like flies next to me, and I will not take another shot that my government tells me to take.”
Remember, do not trust any vaccine messaging Fauci, Gates and other misinformed and ill-intentioned professionals are seeking to spread. It would be far wiser to focus on improving your innate immunity through solid inexpensive and safe strategies we have previously discussed.
While it’s not pleasant to talk about the possibility of death, it is helpful to know about factors that might work in your favor as well as those to watch out for. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen might have hit on something of importance related to early warnings: the possibility that lymphopenia signals a higher risk of sudden death.
Lymphopenia is the condition of having a low number of lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell. Some people refer to it as lymphocytopenia or lymphocytic leukopenia.1
The Danish study team found that people with lymphopenia are 1.6 times more likely to die from any condition, regardless of age or gender.2 Stated another way, having lymphopenia means having a 60% higher rate of passing from any condition, according to the results from the study.3
As noted in the article, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, “We found that lymphopenia was associated with an increased risk of all-cause and cause-specific mortality.”4 The scientists followed 108,135 people for about 11.5 years, from November 2003 to April 2015. Participants were part of the Copenhagen General Population Study; their average age was 68.
By the end of the study, the team found that people with hematologic cancers or cardiovascular diseases and lymphopenia had a mortality risk that was 1.88 times greater than that of individuals with normal white blood cell counts.
Lymphopenia Linked to Increased Risk of Death
The implications of these findings are significant, as lymphocyte counts are typically collected in routine blood tests, but it’s not really known whether this number held any special significance in understanding a patient’s overall health.5
Since white blood cells fight infection, a low count could mean that a person is more susceptible to infections and certain diseases than those who have normal levels of lymphocytes. It’s also more difficult for a person with lymphopenia to put up a good defense against these types of threats.6 As described by International Business Times:7
“Low lymphocyte count (lymphopenia) can be attributed to several reasons including risks of cancer, respiratory diseases, infections, heart diseases, and other causes. Since chronic diseases are quite common among older individuals, their low lymphocyte count can indicate an early demise.”
Indeed, the condition has been associated with mortality related to a number of health issues, including heart disease, cancer, alcoholic liver disease and various infections.8,9,10,11 The researchers were careful to note, however, that their results do not indicate causality, meaning that having lymphopenia was not necessarily the reason why some study participants died:12
“Our study showed that participants with lymphopenia were at high risk of dying from any cause, regardless of any other risk factor for all-cause mortality including age. This might be due to a reduced immune surveillance, which makes these patients less able to survive potentially deadly diseases.
Lymphopenia could also be a more passive marker of general frailty that confers high risk of death from any cause …
The higher mortality risk shown among those with lymphopenia who were younger than 70 years of age compared with those aged 70 years or older suggests that factors other than age might contribute to the high mortality risk, such as poor immune surveillance, iatrogenic causes (i.e., medications) and blood donations or transfusions.”
Causes of Lymphopenia and Treatment Options
As you get older, your lymphocyte count naturally goes down. This doesn’t automatically equate to lymphopenia, though; a blood test is needed to make that determination. The condition can be caused by lymphocytes being destroyed or by getting stuck in the lymph nodes or spleen.
Individuals who are immune-compromised, such as those with HIV/AIDS, may have lymphopenia. Cancer and treatments for cancer can also destroy your lymphocytes.13 Treatments will vary depending on the cause; research is being conducted on stem cell transplants as well as pharmaceutical options.
Lymphopenia + Neutropenia = Protenuria in Some Cases
Lymphopenia is not the only type of low white blood cell condition; neutropenia is a condition in which someone’s neutrophils are low. The neutrophils in your blood are the most common type and they are the ones that fight fungi and bacteria. Together with lymphocytes and three other types of white blood cells, your body’s defense system works to protect you against all types of invaders.14
In 2019, another group of researchers — from the same academic medical center in Denmark — published results from a similar study.15 They wanted to know if lymphopenia and neutropenia signaled the likely development of proteinuria, or high levels of protein in the urine, in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).
They studied 260 patients with SLE and found that lymphocyte and neutrophil counts, but not the ratio of the two, did in fact predict the development of proteinuria, regardless of immunosuppressants.
Proteinuria is of concern because it typically points to kidney problems, congestive heart failure or immune disorders; symptoms include sleepiness and fatigue; muscle cramping; frequent urination; swelling and puffiness as well as nausea.16
Interestingly, lymphopenia was one of the “independent risk factors for the development of severe infections in SLE patients” noted by scientists from Mexico City. In 2013, their article, “Lymphopenia as Risk Factor for Development of Severe Infections in Patients With Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: a Case-Control Study,” was published in QJM: An International Journal of Medicine.17
They looked back through five years of medical records of 167 people with SLE and compared lymphocyte levels of those with infection to those without:18
“Our results are in agreement with previous reports that have shown that lower counts of lymphocytes at SLE diagnosis or along different time points confer increased risk of infections. However, these reports are more related to opportunistic infections as the outcome.
We found that almost half of our patients (49.4%) with severe infections had genitourinary or skin/soft tissue involvement.
Interestingly, a high percentage of patients (23%) developed infections related to high mortality (almost 20%) (bacteremia, central nervous system and disseminated infections), suggesting that these patients may be the target of lethal infections.”
What Blood Tests Reveal About Your Overall Health
Getting a complete blood count (CBC) may be an important step in determining your overall health status. Doctors frequently order this test to augment routine physicals as well as investigations into the nature of troubling health problems.
In addition to providing lymphocyte and neutrophil counts, the results from blood work can reveal your blood sugar level, cholesterol level, iron level and blood viscosity.
The Intermountain Health Risk Score may be the most telling, however, as it was created based on the basic blood chemistry markers of tens of thousands of patients in a hospital setting, including CBC, sodium, potassium bicarbonate, mean platelet volume and other basics.
Based on these markers, you end up with a 30-day, one-year and five-year mortality risk. Naturopath Dr. Bryan Walsh said in our 2019 interview:
"That five-year mortality risk score is so valuable. You might have somebody who's relatively healthy, self-prescribing a bunch of supplements, maybe exercising a little bit, trying to eat as healthy as they can. But physiologically, something's abnormal.
They go to their doctor and everything looks pretty good. Let's say their glucose is good. If they were to enter in all these markers and it came out with a slightly high score, that's an indication that not everything is going well …
Again, if the antithesis of optimal health is death, you can see where you are on this score. If your score doesn't come up great, you can take it to someone who will actually take a look at what you're doing and make some recommendations to try and improve some of these things.
That's just another example of there's more data inside of a blood chemistry test than the blood chemistry test is actually even reporting on. Things like osmolality. Things like viscosity. Things like the fatty liver index. Things like the Intermountain risk score."
Boost Your Immune System, Naturally
I've often stressed that boosting your immune system is a key component of health and disease prevention, and this is true year-round. The good news is, there are a number of things you can do on your own to protect your health and that of your family:
