Health & Fitness

Victorian residents, especially those in Melbourne, have struggled through harsh COVID-19 restrictions over the past five weeks - and now, the introduction of a "social bubble" could be the mental health respite many are in need of.

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Travis Christofferson has written three books on metabolic health optimization. His third and latest one is “Ketones, The Fourth Fuel: Warburg to Krebs to Veech, the 250 Year Journey to Find the Fountain of Youth.”

Interestingly, optimizing your metabolic health appears to be an effective way to mitigate the severity of a COVID-19 infection. The reason for this is because when you're metabolically flexible, you're not insulin resistant, and insulin resistance and diabetes are significant risk factors.

The ketogenic diet was a standard of care in the 1920s for pediatric epilepsy, but once antiseizure drugs came out in the '30s, it was shelved and eventually forgotten. Fasting encountered the same fate. As noted by Christofferson, therapeutic fasting was huge in the '60s, yet the benefits of this strategy eventually fell by the wayside of medical history as the low-fat movement took hold.

“[Nutritional ketosis] made this remarkable resurgence by the year 2000, and people began to recognize that ketones were essentially a fourth fuel, and had these incredible therapeutic side effects,” Christofferson says.

Today, as we face epidemic levels of insulin resistance and its associated health effects, including diabetes, heart disease and increased vulnerability to viral infections, nutritional ketosis could not be more pertinent.

The Four Fuels

The four fuels are carbohydrates, fats, proteins and ketones. Carbs and fats are the two primary ones. Proteins are primarily used as building blocks, but they can also be broken down and be burned as fuel. They just cannot be stored for anything other than emergency starvation fuel.

Protein can also be converted back into glucose through gluconeogenic pathways. When you fast, protein can be used as an alternative fuel, but the ideal fuel is ketones. Christofferson explains the metabolic difference between carbohydrates, fats and ketones as follows:

“For some reason, life chose glucose as a primary fuel. Carbohydrates all enter the same sort of glycolytic pathway and get burned or processed through 10 enzymatic steps into Acetyl-CoA, which enters the Krebs cycle. It then spins off substrates that feed into the electron transport chain to generate energy.

How we burn fat is very dependent on insulin. So, when you're eating a lot of carbohydrates, when you're releasing insulin throughout the day, you're essentially shutting down fat processing and turning on the lipogenesis, which is fat building, and it all centers on insulin.

So, when insulin is high, it shuts down the process of fat burning, which is beta-oxidation. When insulin is low during a state of fasting or a ketogenic diet, it turns on beta-oxidation. So, fats will come in and get processed. What makes fats unique, and this doesn't get talked about a lot, is that they're extraordinarily energetic. There's tons of energy imbued in that fuel source.

So, the body really has to come up with a way to process it without blowing up the mitochondria. The way it does this is, some of the fat is processed through Complex II of the electron transport chain, which tones down or dampens the energy within fat so it can be processed without exploding the mitochondria.

Then the Acetyl-CoA enters the Krebs cycle and just goes through normal metabolism. The important point is that fat burning gets turned off by too much carbohydrate. When you enter this state of ketosis, fat burning gets turned on, and when beta-oxidation occurs, when we're burning fats, it is tethered to the process of generating ketones.

So, low insulin tells adipose cells (fat cells) to release triglycerides, stored body fat, that enters the circulation that goes into the cells, and then beta-oxidation begins. Within the liver — this is the central part of ketosis — liver hepatocytes are the manufacturing line for ketone bodies.

As beta-oxidation is ramped up, oxaloacetate, the last metabolite of the Krebs cycle, is being pulled out to generate glucose, because the body has to maintain a baseline level of glucose. The Acetyl-CoA cannot combine with the last substrate of the Krebs cycle, so it builds up in hepatocytes.

And then there's an enzyme waiting for this massive buildup of Acetyl-CoA. This enzyme begins to transfer that into acetoacetate, which then gets converted to beta-hydroxybutyrate, which now enters the bloodstream as a fourth fuel, a preferred fuel, and an extraordinarily efficient fuel. So, that's the metabolic difference between these three fuel sources.”

High-Carb Diets Damage Your Metabolic Machinery

The problem is that with today's standard American diet, most people never reach this state of fat burning and ketosis. They’re constantly feeding their bodies carbohydrates, and in this high-insulin state, they simply cannot burn fat. Over time, it wears out your metabolic machinery, resulting in insulin resistance and weight gain.

As explained by Christofferson, glucose is a very rigid planar molecule, and when in your blood, it damages your epithelial cells, nerves and just about everything else. For this reason, your body has to get rid of it quickly. The insulin tells your cells to take up the glucose to lower the glucose level in your blood.

It then tells the cells to process it by turning on the last step of glycolysis, the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex, so that the glucose can be processed. When those two “machineries” wear out, you develop insulin resistance. What this means is your cells no longer respond well to insulin, and as a consequence your blood glucose remains elevated.

You’re also burning less fuel, which diminishes all metabolic processes. This is in context to a state of insulin resistance: Less glucose is able to enter the Krebs cycle and ATP production slows. For example, the efficiency by which your body makes antioxidants and neurotransmitters decreases. The beautiful thing about ketone metabolism is it completely bypasses all this pathology. It doesn't depend on insulin pathways.

So, when you're generating ketones and your blood ketone levels go up, the ketone enters the cell through a model carboxylic acid transport protein. Even without a rise in insulin, the cells are efficiently fueled.

Ketones also do not need pyruvate dehydrogenase complex. Instead, ketones go directly into the Krebs cycle. So, all of a sudden, diminished metabolic pathways spring back to life and you’re able to generate energy, antioxidants and all the rest. Your brain also gets the fuel it needs for optimal function.

Metabolic Benefits of Ketones

Ketones have a number of specific benefits. For starters, they’re thermodynamically and metabolically efficient, meaning they burn cleaner than glucose, thus creating far less free radical damage and inflammation in your body. Christofferson explains:

“Beta-hydroxybutyrate is a metabolically superior fuel. It's thermodynamically imbued with more energy per two carbon unit than glucose. So that sets the stage. When you burn it, it widens this gap in the electron transport chain between Complex I and the Coenzyme Q couple.

The electron transport chain, what it does is, when you burn fuel, the electrons are stripped through, and they go through a series of complexes in the electron transport chain. When it does this, it injects a proton into the inner mitochondrial membrane space. That gradient of protons then generates ATP.

Beta-hydroxybutyrate widens this gap … There's more energy … to capture. One thing that does is, it supercharges our metabolism.

When Veech and Krebs were studying these four metabolic hubs, these coenzyme couples, where ATP is one of them, that drive all metabolism, they realized that if there was a way to increase the energetic potential of all these nucleotide coenzymes, it could therapeutically have immense benefit for metabolism.

They just didn't know a way to do this. When Veech merged with Cahill and began studying this, they realized that beta-hydroxy did exactly this. It was metabolically imbued with the ability to increase the amount of energy in ATP, NADP, NADPH and Acetyl-CoA.

Then you look at what that does … for example, the manufacturing of internal antioxidants … is dependent on the charge of NADPH. Under ketosis, that charge is dramatically increased. So, we're able to process free radicals much, much better.”

Ketosis Dramatically Improves Antioxidant Production

The concept of NADPH is profoundly important and not widely appreciated. It’s probably every bit as important as NAD+, especially with respect to recharging endogenous intracellular antioxidants. As explained by Christofferson, the only thing that determines the antioxidant status of a cell is the redox ratio of NADPH, and the only known way to change that redox ratio is through burning beta-hydroxybutyrate.

There’s a pervasive belief that you can diminish free radicals simply by consuming antioxidants, but that has never actually been proven. As noted by Christofferson:

“Krebs wrote Linus Pauling about this, saying, ‘You don't understand what you're talking about with regard to Vitamin C.’ The example I try to give in the book about this is, all these antioxidants … have to be recycled by NADPH. So, the NADPH ratio alone is dictating the way all these antioxidants work.

If you eat antioxidants, it's just like having a full grocery store. There are 10 cash registers, and there's 10 checkers. The rate limiting step in how fast people get checked out is the 10 cash registers. If you add 20 cashiers, it doesn't help. Those 10 cash registers are the thing that determine how many people in the grocery store get checked out.

It's the same thing with antioxidants. You can eat antioxidants and add to the pool of intracellular antioxidants, but they're not being recycled any faster. So that’s a huge misconception about how antioxidants work. When you shift to ketosis, there's profound therapeutic consequences with regard to antioxidants production.”

Radiation and Antiaging Benefits

Christofferson cites research showing that when you give mice ketone esters after dosing them with radiation, the chromosomal damage incurred is reduced by 50%, compared to mice fed a normal carbohydrate diet. He believes taking ketone esters is therefore advisable when getting X-rays or when flying, for example. Ketone esters may also help counteract the normal ravages of aging.

“One of the theories that's stood the test of time is the Harmon free radical theory of aging, which is that we really do produce a lot of, just endogenous free radicals, just by normal metabolism. And that has always been considered the proximal cause of aging, because it's the main damaging event within the cell,” he says.

“One of the ways to mitigate this constant endogenous free radical production is through ketosis, keto metabolism, beta-hydroxybutyrate. It slows the production of free radicals …

Beta-hydroxybutyrate metabolism in ketosis will also dramatically increase the levels of NAD in our bodies … So, exogenous NAD precursors, ketogenic diets, fasting or ketone supplements are ways to really slow this pernicious process of epigenetic aging.”

Beta-hydroxybutyrate also activates FOXO3a, which is perhaps one of the most important pathways for antiaging. FOXO3a in turn changes the expression of hundreds of other genes.

Some of those genes regulate internal antioxidant production such as catalase and superoxide dismutase. These are not like traditional antioxidants that have to be recycled by NADPH. They operate by traditional ketolysis, where superoxide is changed into hydrogen peroxide and then water.

Ketone Esters Improve Athletic Performance

Christofferson also reviews how ketone esters can improve athletic performance and recovery:

“Another good real world application of this is Tour de France riders. They discovered ketone esters back about 2012 … The reason they're so important is, by the third week of this grueling bike race, the primary reason you're not recovering is because you're generating so many free radicals by this massive intake of oxygen and exercise.

When they take this ketone ester, they say they have an unprecedented ability to recover, and it's because it's blunting this free radical generation and massively increasing their ability to cope with all these free radicals that are damaging tissues and grinding them down as this race occurs.”

Other Benefits of Ketone Esters

There’s also some data suggesting ketone esters can be beneficial for certain health conditions.

“In somebody that's showing the beginning signs of dementia or Alzheimer's, the [ketone] esters are able to increase levels of beta-hydroxybutyrate to druglike levels. You get these enhanced pleiotropic effects of ketone esters.

Another effect … is it inhibits NLRP3 inflammasome, the initial complex that kicks off inflammation. So, beta-hydroxybutyrate at higher levels can suppress inflammation. [It can also] act as an epigenetic reprogrammer. It inhibits HDAC proteins, which are proteins that install the tags on histones, to change the genetic expression.

The initial data show that people in the throes of some disease process may benefit more from an ester than somebody that's healthy and just looking for enhanced quality of life. That being said, it's a natural compound, it's a fuel source. It's really eating food, in a way.

If you are exercising a lot, or about to have an X-ray or flying, I think a ketone ester is a perfectly reasonable thing to take for that … But nobody suggests it's a replacement for the most important strategies, which are a good diet, exercise and fasting — those kind of global intrinsic ketone-producing [strategies].”

MCT Oil Is One Alternative

Another therapeutic option is to use MCT oil, as this type of fat lends itself readily to ketone production. I consume about 6 ounces of caprylic acid a day, as I require many calories due to my daily exercise. I need at least 3,500 to 4,000 calories a day. I get more than 1,000 calories a day from MCT oils, which works out well for me as I obtain the metabolic benefits discussed here.

MCT oil is also far less expensive than ketone esters. That said, 6 ounces is far more than most people would be able to tolerate. To start, begin taking 1 teaspoon and work your way up from there. Be careful to take them with loads of other fats and don’t take more than 4 tablespoons at once — otherwise you will likely get nauseous.

“MCTs are a hack to get into ketosis [as] they bypass these control pathways,” Christofferson explains. “Typically, you have to have low insulin, which releases triglycerides, which then get processed in hepatocytes to beta-hydroxybutyrate.

MCT oils go directly into the cell and force this production, because they radically increase the amount of Acetyl-CoA. That then creates beta-hydroxybutyrate. They even cross the blood-brain barrier, which most fatty acids don't.

So, neurons will directly produce ketones in the brain. One of the main pathologies of Alzheimer’s is insulin resistance in the brain. So, your brain is starving of energy. It can't process glucose. MCT oils will go directly into the brain. Or they'll produce ketones in the blood, go directly in the brain, bypass all that pathology and fill that energetic gap.”

Why Cyclical Ketosis Is so Important

While many believe it’s best to remain in nutritional ketosis continuously and indefinitely, I strongly disagree with such advice. I believe it can be highly counterproductive to remain on a continuously low-carb diet.

While it’s important to remain on a low-carb diet until you are metabolically flexible and insulin sensitive, which can take months or even years for some really heavy people, once you reach that state, you’ll want to increase your carbohydrate level (depending on your exercise level) to 100 or 150 grams once or twice a week, especially around the times you're exercising.

Doing so will actually further improve your metabolic flexibility, as you want to have the ability to seamlessly switch between burning fat and glucose. As mentioned, glucose is the universal fuel, so we have to be able to use that. We just don't want to use it all the time. Christofferson agrees, saying:

“You need to remember; your body is in a continual state of … breaking down [or] repair. If you're constantly breaking down, you don't give your body the chance to repair, to be anabolic.

Glucose raises insulin, and insulin is — if you're in a high-insulin state all the time — a terrible thing. But it's also an anabolic hormone that kicks off IGF-1 and all these antibiotic pathways, for repair.

So, I think … the most optimal strategy will be one of cycling, going back and forth. I think that probably mimics what our ancestors went through. We probably had times of deprivation. In the winter, there were very few carbohydrates or none. And then, in times of abundance, when there was plenty of carbohydrates, it was a time to repair and regenerate.

I think that in the end, that strategy will be exactly the correct one. And we don't know — even an occasional fast may be enough for people that are generally healthy.”

Improving Metabolic Health Is Key in Post-COVID World

Lastly, optimizing your metabolic health through nutritional ketosis, which is best done through time-restricted eating and a cyclical ketogenic diet, will help you move forward with greater confidence and less fear in this post-COVID world. As noted by Christofferson:

“Looking at the data, and what this virus is doing, it's a no-brainer. Health officials talk about these proactive measures of social distancing and mask wearing, but it just doesn't seem like the one thing that's staring us in the face is ever addressed, which is metabolic dysfunction.

We could have said, ‘One way you can potentially mitigate the severity of the disease is by eating right; starting doing these things and come out strong.’ But that message has not been delivered …

[Metabolic dysfunction] was a crisis before the virus. It was there, and we failed [to address it]. The virus exposed that [failure], and we still have to really address that publicly.

It really shows the profound biases in human thinking, and the way we react to problems, without doing full cost accounting. When you do a dispassionate look at the full cost accounting of the economic dislocations of lockdowns versus what we're getting out of that, with the virus, it's disproportionate. We’ve got to find a way to balance that reasonably.

This virus disproportionately kills older people. What it costs per 80-year-old is over $1 million, using full cost accounting, and if you could take that $1 million, you could save hundreds of lives of younger people. So, I think our response is, in a way, absurd, and just doesn't look into the problem in the right way.

The take-home point for me is, look at health care and how we parse up and spend enormous amounts of money on each disease and make almost no progress, year after year.

We have this basically free, intrinsically installed health care therapy [i.e., ketones] installed in every one of us … It's really empowering, and that's what I want the take-home message to be: how potent this is, and how readily available. You can access it at any time you're ready.”

To learn more, be sure to pick up a copy of Christofferson’s book “Ketones, The Fourth Fuel: Warburg to Krebs to Veech, the 250 Year Journey to Find the Fountain of Youth.” This really is the information you need right now, so the timing of the publication of this book couldn’t be more appropriate.

In the interview, Christofferson also reviews some of the history of the key doctors and scientists responsible for identifying and understanding ketone metabolism — including Otto Warburg, Hans Adolf Krebs, George Cahill and Richard Veech — so for more details, be sure to listen to the interview.

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In this interview, retired Army combat veteran Erin Marie Olszewski, a nurse who for several months treated COVID-19 patients at the Elmhurst Hospital Center, a public hospital in Queens, New York — the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S.

She has now written a book, "Undercover Epicenter Nurse: How Fraud, Negligence, and Greed Led to Unnecessary Deaths at Elmhurst Hospital,"¹ which details her experiences.

Olszewski was born in Michigan and raised in a small Wisconsin town and joined the military at 17. When 9/11 happened, she was in basic training. "I was only 18 years old so I grew up pretty quickly," she says.

Altogether, she was stationed in Iraq for just over a year. Upon her return to the U.S., she worked at the Special Operations Command in Tampa, Florida, before leaving the military and going into nursing. Just a bit over 20 years ago, July 2000, I read a study by Dr. Barbara Starfield² published in JAMA. It contained stats that identified physicians as the third leading cause of death. 

I created that headline in July 2000, which took off as a meme and spread across the world. In a shocking follow-up to Starfield’s article, in 2012 her husband wrote a disturbing article in the Archives of Internal Medicine³ about her death, pointing to a drug she was taking as a possible contributor to it.

“Specialization, fragmentation, drug-orientation and profit-seeking help make American medical care the most expensive in the world, but not the safest or most effective,” Dr. Neil A. Holtzman wrote. "The lessons from Barbara’s death should be put in the perspective of the millions who cannot afford even basic services in our expensive system and suffer as a result.”

As if that's not egregious enough, newer death statistics reveal the situation has only gotten worse over the years, and Olszewski's experience during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates just how much more dangerous medicine has become.

"I did go into this profession to help people … [but] it did not take me long to realize that we're literally just pumping our patients full of medications. Most of my job was morning meds, afternoon meds, night meds ... [and] tests.

I've always had a passion for more of a natural approach to health and it was devastating to me to realize that I wasn't really helping these patients, I was contributing to the problem," Olszewski says.

"I always had that mindset as a nurse: How can I get these patients to look through these meds and talk to the doctors and advocate for them to get them off of all this?

I would hit a lot of roadblocks and so I ended up going to work at a private practice where doctors were more concerned about not so much profit, but the people. I always continued along those lines. Fast forward to this year, we were essentially laid off from our jobs.

In Florida, we did it right. We didn't ban any of the alternative treatments. They left it up to individual hospitals to make up their own minds, so that's why we were very successful, whereas New York was not."

Medical Negligence Was the Norm

As the COVID-19 pandemic progressed, New York, being a hotspot, was in desperate need for skilled nurses, so Olszewski ended up volunteering and went to work at Elmhurst in April 2020. "It was still extremely packed in these hospitals with pretty much every single person on a ventilator," she says.

Curiously, when she got there, she was told she'd have to wait days for her assignment. Normally, in times of war, you're expected to immediately get to work. This was the first red flag suggesting all was not as it seemed. Some of the nurses had waited in hotel rooms for 18 days before they received their assignments.

"Why weren't they utilizing their resources, complaining that they didn't have enough help when [there were] … 1,000, 2,000 nurses sitting around in New York waiting for an assignment? That was very confusing to me. If indeed this was essentially a war zone, people are literally dying left and right, why aren't they utilizing us?

I finally did get an assignment and they put me at Elmhurst Hospital … I got there and literally it took me one shift — 12 hours — to realize that this is absolute chaos, and not because we didn't have enough staff.

We were well staffed. It was because nobody cared. I literally felt like I was living in the twilight zone. And, just knowing what I know about our system anyway on a good day, this was just absolute negligence."

Clearly, when you go into the hospital, you are at great risk of medical mistakes that can accidentally kill you, and Olszewski's experience highlights one of the key problems: willful gross negligence. This is why it's so crucial to make sure you have an advocate with you around the clock who can speak for you, ask questions and ensure you're getting the appropriate treatment.

Due to COVID-19 infection concerns, family members were excluded from the process here. They simply weren't allowed in. To me, that was probably why so much of this abuse was able to occur. Olszewski agrees, saying:

"That's exactly right. On top of that, they created a liability-free environment. So now you have a liability-free environment where everybody knows that no matter what they do, they're not going to get in trouble for it. We have no family around putting us in check …

You've got doctors and nurses that, at that point, just didn't care because everybody was going to die anyway so what's the point? And then you have everybody on a ventilator. So, these patients can't even speak for themselves. They're at the hands of whoever is taking care of them.

How do you sit by and allow this to happen? I don't know how so many people knowingly knew this was going on and just chose to remain quiet. It's just really sad." 

Routine Ventilation Was a Death Sentence

By the time Olszewski started working at Elmhurst in April, doctors around the world, including the U.S., had already started raising questions about the routine use of mechanical ventilation for COVID-19 patients. Within weeks, many started arguing that it appeared to be doing more harm than good.

That certainly proved accurate at Elmhurst. In a four-week period, Olszewski only witnessed one patient put on mechanical ventilation who survived, and that's because the sedation didn't quite take and he ended up extubating himself. The sad tragedy is he didn't have any medical indications warranting him being placed on a ventilator to begin with.

Essentially, being put on a vent is the kiss of death and, according to Olszewski, the staff at Elmhurst were aware of that. So, within her first week, Olszewski spoke to an attorney and began secretly videotaping her findings and interactions with the staff at Elmhurst. This was necessary so that the public would believe her story. She explains:

"Like I said, it didn't take me more than a shift to realize what was going on. I got back to my hotel room and just broke down in tears … I couldn't even believe it. I have a lot of nurse friends and I asked them to hop on a Zoom call with me and I just let it all out.

One of them is a nurse practitioner, and she ended up kind of being my proxy. She did a live video and it went pretty viral … She got gaslighted by everybody. She had death threats. Everyone said she was making it up.

So, I had contacted an attorney after a few days of seeing what was going on with her, just trying to get my message out. And I'm like, 'Listen. No one's going to believe what's happening here because they don't believe her … The only way the public is ever going to be able to take this seriously and believe what I'm saying … is with actual video.'

I had already tried to go up the chain of command and everybody would just tell you, 'Just be quiet or you're gone.' You were considered a troublemaker if you tried to advocate for your patients, and you were pretty much shunned … There were nurses sent home prior to me getting there, for doing the same things …

Ethics essentially just went out the window. My attorney actually ended up getting me a pair of spy glasses in order to videotape and they fit in with the rest of the PPE so it was never really questioned …

It was pretty terrifying, but at the same time I'm going in there, looking at my patients like, 'You know what? You guys deserve justice. This should have never happened, and I hope history never repeats itself ever again.' That was the mission.

People need to know the truth and those that thought this was OK need to be held accountable for these actions. In our profession, we're supposed to be there for the patients. We're supposed to act with integrity and compassion and none of that was happening."

Nurses Fired for Protecting Patients

As a general rule, nurses, who are in the trenches day in and day out, are far more knowledgeable about the practical details to optimize patient care than most physicians, who may understand the science better but typically fail to appreciate critical implementation variables.

Nurses who are in the trenches day in and day out typically know what works and what doesn't. I can remember many times during my own medical residency where nurses would correct decisions that, if implemented, could have harmed the patient.

So, skilled nursing staff are really crucial components that help keep patients safe. Unfortunately, in this case, nurses were routinely overruled and ignored. According to Olszewski, she had many conversations with her coworkers, all of whom said the same thing. They just couldn't believe what was happening.

"I actually recorded a lot of those conversations too just because I didn't want people to think it was just me," she says. "Really, everybody thought 'This is not OK.' But everybody was afraid to say something … There are a lot of upset people and they try to hurt you and silence you in any way that they can."

Olszewski was ultimately fired from Elmhurst for speaking out about the conditions there. There are also petitions to remove her nursing license. That, it seems, is a commonly used way to silence the opposition these days. Olszewski vows to fight to keep her license. 

Medical Experimentation by Residents Killed Patients

Making matters worse, many of the doctors treating COVID-19 patients at Elmhurst were first-year residents, many of whom had never interacted with patients before. According to Olszewski, many had "zero bedside manner" and approached their patients as little more than "something to practice on." "There were not many of them that really had compassion for these lives," she says.

Typically, private hospitals do not have medical residents treating patients, and if they do, they're strictly supervised. Elmhurst Hospital, however, is a training hospital, and according to Olszewski, residents had virtually no supervision at all. "I very rarely saw an attending, so it was the residents running these floors," she says. Worse, the residents were not leaning on the expertise of the nursing staff.

"We couldn't even leave our patient's room because [the residents] would come in and dial the ventilators, they'd mess with our drips. We had to lock our pumps because they would just come in and change it. That's unheard of on a normal day. Physicians never touch our pumps or ventilators without letting us know."

When asked why residents would behave so inappropriately, Olszewski replies:

"A lot of ego, a lot of, 'They're going to die anyway so we just want to experiment and see what works and what doesn't.' There were a lot of errors being made and unnecessarily causing a lot of death. And I can't explain it. Like I said, [you had a] liability-free environment … [and] these residents weren't being monitored by the attending doctors …"

Lack of Segregation Led to Unnecessary Deaths

The refusal to segregate infected patients from noninfected ones also undoubtedly worsened the situation, placing lives at risk. In a perfect scenario, infected patients would have been isolated in negative pressure rooms, since the normal ventilation system can circulate the virus throughput the hospital.

Still, by rooming infected and noninfected patients together, you virtually ensure the disease will spread to noninfected patients being treated for other health conditions.

Nurses also were not changing their personal protective equipment (PPE) between patients. The same PPE was worn all day long. Elmhurst didn't even have regulations requiring fresh PPE between patients or when going from one room to the next.

COVID-Negative Patients Placed on Ventilation

Perhaps most egregious, COVID-negative patients were listed and treated as confirmed positive, and some were even placed on mechanical ventilation. One of them was a male patient admitted for high blood glucose, which is easily remedied and under no circumstance would require ventilation. Olszewski tells the story:

"They ended up giving him a lot of different psych drugs which, ultimately, just kept that blood sugar going up and up. And, instead of treating that, they ventilated him.

They put him on our COVID ICU floor, which is unheard of. And he's anxious, so they have him tied down to the bed in restraints, which makes anybody even more anxious. You can't have any family in there, there's a bunch of nurses telling you to be quiet. Anyone's going to fight in that type of situation. You're terrified to be there in the first place …

I was in there just trying to hold his hand, talk to him, calm him down, and one of the residents comes in saying 'If you don't calm down, we're going to have to put a tube down you to help you breathe.' I was just like, 'What are you doing? He doesn't need that.' Within five minutes of my leaving for the end of my shift, he was on a ventilator. That right there, that's just negligence."

New York Had Adequate Resources That Went Unused

The same medical fellow also refused to allow another patient to be resuscitated, even though he did not have a do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order. A fellow is someone who has completed their formal medical training, graduated medical school, internship, and residency, and is doing a sub specialty in some discipline of medicine. So, you'd expect a fellow to act more responsibly than that.

"At that point, nobody really cared anymore," Olszewski says. The doctors expected all patients to die anyway, and there was no liability for anything that was being done or not done. Unfortunately, there was a clear financial incentive for treating noninfected patients as COVID-19 patients, and placing them all on mechanical ventilation. As explained by Olszewski:

"They essentially turned Elmhurst into an all-COVID hospital … If they were going to admit somebody, they were either COVID positive or they were awaiting their test results. So, they would be admitted as 'COVID rule-out' and the hospital would still get the kickback. It was $13,000 to admit a patient to the floor.

Some of these people, like the one that was unnecessarily vented, he could have gone to the Navy ship Comfort, knowing he was negative for COVID-19. They knew that. But they still admitted him, got the $13,000 and then ventilated him for another $39,000. This was happening consistently.

There's no reason these patients had to be packed in like sardines when we had external resources that weren't being utilized. So why? … Maybe it was the financial incentive … That's just people just not caring and putting profit over these patients."

Death Rate Plummeted Once Treatment Protocols Were Exposed

While Olszewski has been largely ostracized by her nursing colleagues, most of whom likely fear losing their jobs if they openly side with her, the death rate at Elmhurst plummeted after Olszewski's undercover videos started making the rounds on social media.

Her hour-long interview in the "Perspectives on the Pandemic" series, which has 1.4 million views,⁴ was released to the public June 9, 2020. Daily death rates in New York City hospitals dropped dramatically after that.⁵

"I personally think that this has had an impact on the deaths in New York because after that video went out and they were outed on their treatment protocols, the death rate plummeted,” Olszewski says.

I think they're a lot more cautious about who they're admitting to these hospitals and how many people are being put on the ventilators [now]. In early April when I got there, I questioned a doctor that I also recorded and he admitted that not one patient had been successfully extubated.

So, by the time I got there, every single patient on a ventilator died. And they refused to try any alternative treatments even though we know a lot of alternative treatments existed. Their excuse was that they didn't work. And my question was, 'Listen, if you know the ventilators aren't working, then why not try [the alternatives]?'"

Government Should Not Interfere in Medical Decisions

The tragedy is that hydroxychloroquine with zinc likely would have made a significant difference if routinely used in the early stages of disease, and in suspected cases. It clearly was helpful in Florida, where some doctors have been using it.

Quercetin also works similarly to hydroxychloroquine. Both drive zinc into the cell, and quercetin, being a supplement, doesn't require a prescription and also has other effects, such as SIRT2 activation and decreasing inflammation, which actually make it a better choice. However, like hydroxychloroquine, quercetin must also be used with zinc — and administered very early in the course of the illness.

Still, considering asymptomatic patients were being roomed with those who had confirmed COVID-19, either of these options could have protected many of these patients. It's really incomprehensible that a treatment has been so badly maligned, to the point that pharmacy boards have refused to fill prescriptions for a drug that's been on the market for more than six decades.

"I think every patient has a right to try multiple different alternatives," Olszewski says. "High-dose IV vitamin C [has also] successfully treated patients in Asia and some people in New York when [the pandemic] first started. Why are these alternative treatments being frowned upon?

Has this caused even more deaths? Honestly, government shouldn't ever get involved in the doctor-patient relationship. People should be able to have a choice and the freedom to be able to have these alternative treatments available to them if they can save their life.

Autonomy and patient rights are just gone … Patients deserve to be treated like humans, and politics and profit should never be placed above human life, ever."

One of the most effective treatments to date in the hospital setting appears to be the MATH+ protocol, which includes high-dose vitamin C, steroids, thiamine and heparin. It has protocols both for early intervention and late-stage disease.

However, I plan on posting an update to the nebulized hydrogen peroxide video as I have modified the recommendation. I've had a number of people use it with very severe disease and recovered from the symptoms in a matter of hours. I had no idea this treatment was so effective.

Fortunately, since Olszewski started speaking out, others have braved the backlash and spoken out about medical mismanagement as well. One of them is featured in the video below. Warning though the video is very emotional and the nurse uses some understandable profane language.

On the downside, physicians at Elmhurst who were responsible for implementing orders that led to patients' deaths may or may not be held liable for their actions.

"There are some clauses in that order that gross negligence is liable," Olszewski says. "Families are coming forward and many of them are very upset, so maybe, hopefully, there will be a federal investigation and there will be accountability for these actions. I feel there should be."

To learn more about what went on at Elmhurst, be sure to pick up a copy of "Undercover Epicenter Nurse: How Fraud, Negligence, and Greed Led to Unnecessary Deaths at Elmhurst Hospital," slated for release August 18, 2020.

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Motherhood has been an exhilarating ride for Jesinta Franklin, but the first six months with daughter Tullulah also tested her as she tackled breastfeeding woes, sleep struggles and raising a new family in lockdown. In an honest chat with Body+Soul, she talks about the judgements new mums still face and a new labour of love inspired by her little girl.

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The Doctors for Disaster Preparedness¹ lecture above, given August 16, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada, features Dr. Lee Merritt, an orthopedic spinal surgeon with a medical practice in Logan, Iowa.²

In her presentation, she discusses how geopolitical power can be swayed in the absence of an identifiable army or declared war. She talks about the cognitive dissonance we’re currently facing, when what we’re told no longer corresponds with known facts or logical thinking.

And she reviews how medical technocrats — the so-called medical experts and political leaders who have turned the world upside-down in response to COVID-19 — have been 100% wrong about everything they’ve been telling us.

They’ve been wrong about the initial risk assessment, testing, preventive measures, mask wearing and social distancing. They’ve conflated “cases” or positive tests with the actual illness. They’re also guilty of errors of omission — not telling us what medical doctors and scientists know to be helpful.

“I can give you the benefit of the doubt when you’re wrong about one or two things, but when you’re wrong 100% of the time, consistently, that is not by accident,” Merritt says. “They should have come up with something that was in our best interest if they really cared about us.”

The Rise of Technocracy

Merritt credits her understanding of technocracy to reading Patrick Wood’s book, “Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation.” Wood is also the editor in chief of Technocracy News & Trends. I recently interviewed Wood. His interview is featured in “The Pressing Dangers of Technocracy.”

As explained by Wood and Merritt, technocracy is an economic ideology built around totalitarian rule by unelected leaders. It got its start in the 1930s during the height of the Great Depression, when scientists and engineers got together to solve the nation’s economic problems. At the time, it looked like capitalism and free enterprise were going to die, so they decided to invent a new economic system from scratch.

They called this system “technocracy.” The word comes from the word “techn,” which means “skill,” and the god “Kratos,” which is the divine personification of power. As explained by Merritt, a technocrat is someone who exercises power over you on the basis of their knowledge.

As an economic system, technocracy is resource-based. Rather than basing the economic system on pricing mechanisms such as supply and demand, the technocratic system is instead based on energy resources. In a nutshell, under this system, companies would be told what resources they’re allowed to use, when, and for what, and consumers would be told what to buy.

Former President Obama’s implementation of economic fines for those unwilling or unable to purchase health insurance could be viewed as an example of this system, in which you do not have the freedom to choose whether you want to buy a service or not. Your only choices are to purchase that which is mandated, or pay a fine.

The technocratic system also involves, indeed requires, social engineering, which relies on massive data collection and the use of artificial intelligence. Technocrats have silently and relentlessly pushed this agenda forward ever since those early days in the ‘30s, and signs of its implementation are becoming increasingly visible.

Evidence of technocratic rule has also become evident during the pandemic. The censoring and manipulation of medical information are part and parcel of the social engineering part of this system.

The Lies We’ve Been Told About COVID-19 Death Risk

In her lecture, Merritt reviews several lies we’ve been told by the technocratic elite, starting with the actual risk of death. Based on deaths per capita, the death rate for COVID-19 is 0.009% (709,000 people have died from or with COVID-19 around the world, and the global population is 7.8 billion). That then means the average person’s chance of surviving this disease is 99.991%.

The area with the highest death rate, New York, has a death per capita rate of 0.17%, yet Dr. Anthony Fauci publicly lauded New York for its excellent COVID response. This is just one example that has caused cognitive dissonance, as praising the area with the highest death rate (even if low overall) as having one of the best responses simply isn’t logical.

Ironically, five of the six countries with the lowest death rates (ranging between 0.00003% and 0.006%) did very little in terms of pandemic response; they didn’t shut down or order people to stay home.

Yet, we’re told these measures are absolutely necessary, and must continue, perhaps indefinitely. This too creates massive cognitive dissonance, as it goes against all logic. If an action doesn’t result in an observable benefit, it simply doesn’t make sense to continue, let alone claim that was and is necessary.

Purposeful Conflation of ‘Positive Tests’ With ‘Cases’

Furthermore, instead of comforting everyone and opening the world back up when the death toll started falling, the narrative suddenly shifted focus to “cases,” meaning people who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 — regardless of whether they had symptoms. More cognitive dissonance, as the primary measure of disease threat is its lethality.

As noted by Merritt, since ancient times, a “case,” medically speaking, has referred to a sick person. It never ever referred to someone who had no symptoms of illness.

Now all of a sudden, this well-established medical term, “case,” has been completely and arbitrarily redefined to mean someone who tested positive for the presence of viral RNA. “That is not epidemiology. That’s fraud,” Merritt says.

What’s more, most of the tests used have no benchmarks, meaning we don’t know what the rates of false positives and false negatives are. And, many areas are tacking on extra “cases” when someone tests positive and relays that they’ve been around other people. Again, “that’s fraud,” Merritt says.

Evidence that the technocratic propaganda is working can be seen in a recent poll by Harvard, Oxford and Universita Boconi, which found Millennials believe 2% of their generation will die from COVID-19. “That’s 10,000 times more than the reality,” Merritt says. “It’s just completely out of proportion to reality.”

The Lies We’ve Been Told About Mask Wearing

Lie No. 2 is about the benefits of mask wearing. “It’s not scientifically sound, so why are we doing it?” Merritt asks. It’s “just a symbol of submission.” As noted in her slide show, “The strongest argument for mask wearing is it sounds good. The strongest argument against mask wearing is it doesn’t work at all.”

Alongside that quote is a photo of a man’s face covered in dust particles after sawing sheetrock wearing a Class II medical earloop facemask, with the caption, “Each particle of sheetrock dust is 10 microns. Coronavirus is 0.125 microns. Any questions?”

The coronavirus is nearly 100 times smaller than sheetrock dust. In other words, surgical masks cannot and do not block the coronavirus (or any other virus for that matter). Surgical mask boxes are even printed with the warning that the mask “will not provide any protection against COVID-19 or other viruses,” and “does not reduce the risk of contracting any disease or infection.”

Ditto for medical N95 respirator masks, as they only block particles larger than 0.3 microns. N95 masks are used in hospital settings to protect against tuberculosis, as the TB virus is 3 microns. You must, however, wear the correct size, it must be properly fitted to your face, and you must follow certain procedures when putting it on and removing it to prevent cross contamination.

OSHA respirators, used by construction workers and other industries, also screen down to 0.3 microns, but they are equipped with a one-way valve. So, it only screens the air coming in, not the air going out. So, you’re in no way protecting others when wearing such a mask.

The Quality of Data Is What Matters

Merritt also discusses a publication in PNAS, “Identifying Airborne Transmission as the Dominant Route for the Spread of COVID-19,”³ in which the authors purport to support mask wearing by looking at New York City as a model. According to Merritt, she has serious concerns about this study, as it doesn’t control for the No. 1 factor that reduces infectivity, namely humidity.

The higher the humidity, the lower the infectivity rate. The paper also has “all these bizarre references,” Merritt says, “that have absolutely nothing to do with the precursors of anything you would look at to do this kind of research.”

What’s more, at least one of the authors listed, Yuan Wang, has no medical background whatsoever. He’s in the division of planetary and geological sciences at Cal Tech.

The graph showing that infectivity in New York City was reduced when mask wearing was mandated also matches the natural downslope seen in Sweden (which had no lockdown or mask mandate) as the infection ran its course. In no way does it prove that mask wearing actually prevents infection. “This is a very sophisticated made-up fraud, I think,” Merritt says.

She also reviews other publications in the medical literature showing masks do not protect against viral infections — including a May 2020 review by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention itself, which I wrote about in “WHO Admits: No Direct Evidence Masks Prevent Viral Infection.” In that review, the CDC concluded that masks did not protect against influenza in non-health care settings.

Merritt also cites studies showing there’s no difference between surgical masks and medical N95 masks. For a better understanding of the science, she recommends reading Denis Rancourt’s paper,⁴ “Masks Don’t Work: A Review of Science Relevant to COVID-19 Policy.” I’ve also interviewed Rancourt, who has a Ph.D. in physics, about his findings, which you can find in “Masks Likely Do Not Inhibit Viral Spread.”

Mask Mandates for Peons and the Social Distancing Lie

The suspicion that masks are little more than suppression muzzles also gains strength by the fact that lawmakers are exempting themselves and certain categories of workers from their mask mandates.

Two examples given in Merritt’s lecture is the D.C. mask mandate, which exempts lawmakers and government employees. In Wisconsin, the Governor has exempted all politicians from the mask order. If masks truly worked, wouldn’t these workers be prime candidates for wearing masks everywhere to prevent them from getting ill and dying?

The third lie Merritt reviews is the 6-foot social distancing rule. Thirty-four minutes into the lecture, you’ll find a fascinating video from a study⁵ published March 26, 2020, in JAMA Insights, demonstrating the particle emissions occurring when sneezing. In this study, they showed emissions can reach 23 to 27 feet (7 to 8 meters) — a far cry from the 6-foot distance we’re told will keep everyone safe.

The Biggest Lie: Lysosomotropic Agents Don’t Work

Lie No. 4, which Merritt believes is the biggest one of all, is that lysosomotropic agents (drugs that acidify the lysosome) such as chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine don’t work. Fauci has repeatedly stated that these drugs either don’t work, that there’s insufficient evidence, or that the evidence is only anecdotal.

Yet the National Institutes of Health itself published research⁶ in 2005 showing chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread, actually having both prophylactic and therapeutic benefits. As the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is a part of the NIH, since 1984, Fauci should be well aware of these findings.

As for what the motive might be for suppressing the use of hydroxychloroquine, despite all the evidence showing it works quite well when used early in the course of treatment, Merritt points to a 2006 study⁷ in the Virology Journal, titled “In Vitro Inhibition of Human Influenza A Virus Replication by Chloroquine.”

That study delivered “overwhelming proof that chloroquine inhibited influenza A,” Merritt says. Now, if an inexpensive generic drug can prevent influenza infection, then what would we need seasonal influenza vaccines for?

Another paper,⁸ “Effects of Chloroquine on Viral Infections: An Old Drug Against Today’s Diseases?” published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases in 2003, discussed the potential of chloroquine against a range of viral diseases.

So, not only might we have an inexpensive remedy that can fight the flu, it might be useful against many other diseases as well. In short, were these drugs to be recognized for their antiviral benefits, they could disrupt the drug industry to a significant degree. Is that why they’re suppressed and vilified?

Follow the Money

Merritt also reviews Dr. Vladimir Zelenko’s clinical experience with hydroxychloroquine, which you can read more about in “How a False Hydroxychloroquine Narrative Was Created.” Of course, the media vilified Zelenko rather than applauding his remarkable successes against COVID-19.

Even more egregiously, Merritt notes, was the fact that a Baltimore federal prosecutor actually started an investigation into Zelenko based on his statement that hydroxychloroquine is FDA approved. “It is FDA approved,” Merritt says. “You don’t go back once things are FDA approved to get reapproval for a new indication.”

Doctors have always had the ability to prescribe drugs off-label for other conditions once they’ve been approved by the FDA, which is precisely what doctors have been doing with hydroxychloroquine. But now all of a sudden, that common (and perfectly legal) practice is portrayed as controversial, unethical and/or illegal.

There’s also the clinical experience of French microbiologist and infectious disease expert Didier Raoult, founder and director of the research hospital Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire Méditerranée Infection,⁹ who reported^10,11 that a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin — administered immediately upon diagnosis — led to recovery and “virological cure” in 91.7% of patients.

Merritt also reviews the fraudulent science that has been used to suppress hydroxychloroquine use, referring to these studies as “a new level of fake papers.” In one instance the authors pulled the data set out of thin air. They made it up.

Yet these fraudulent papers were published in The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine, two of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals in the world. It’s worth asking how that could happen. As noted by Merritt, what we’re told and what’s borne out by facts simply don’t add up:

Hydroxychloroquine costs $10 to $20 for a course of treatment, is already FDA approved, has minimal side effects and has been shown to cut the death rate by 50% when given early in the treatment of COVID-19.¹²

Yet Fauci is pushing the use of remdesivir,¹³ an intravenous drug for late-stage severe COVID-19 infection that costs $3,600, has been shown to cause severe side effects in 60% of patients, and doesn’t reduce the death rate. It merely reduces the recovery rate by an average of 31%, or four days.

Merritt believes the reason we’re not embracing hydroxychloroquine is because it could demolish the $69 billion vaccine industry. That alone is enough of a motive to warrant a cover-up, she notes.

The drug could also eliminate one of the most powerful leverages for geopolitical power that the technocrats have, namely biological terrorism. If we know how to treat and protect ourselves against designer viruses, their ability to keep us in line by keeping us in fear vanishes.

Lies by Omission and Ultimate Motives

Last but not least, Merritt reviews lies of omission — facts that would have saved lives had they been promoted. This includes data showing that higher vitamin D levels reduce both the severity of COVID-19 infection and the mortality. So, who benefits from the suppression of data and information that can save lives and the promotion of medical lies?

According to two investigators, John Moynahan and Larry Doyle, Bill Gates negotiated a $100 billion contact tracing contract with Democratic Congressman Bobby L. Rush — who also introduced HR 6666, the COVID-19 TRACE Act — six months before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, during an August 2019 meeting in Rwanda, East Africa.¹⁴

The U.S. government has also purchased 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine still under development by Pfizer and BioNTech. As noted by Merritt, we keep seeing how drug companies fund working groups on diseases, and then when the disease breaks out, those same drug companies make billions in profit.

But aside from profit, Merritt is convinced there’s another reason behind the illogical pandemic responses we’re seeing. She points out how in a few short months, we’ve been dramatically shifted from a state of freedom to a state of totalitarianism. And the way that was done was through the technocratic mechanisms of social engineering, which of course involves psychological manipulation.

Psychological Manipulation Tools

Merritt reviews psychiatry professor Albert Biderman’s work on psychological manipulation and his “chart of coercion,” all of which can be clearly related to the COVID-19 response:

Isolation techniques — Quarantines, social distancing, isolation from loved ones and solitary confinement

Monopolization of perception — Monopolizing the 24/7 news cycle, censoring dissenting views and creating barren environments by closing bars, gyms and restaurants

Degradation techniques — Berating, shaming people (or even physically attacking) those who refuse to wear masks or social distance, or generally choose freedom over fear

Induced debility — Being forced to stay at home and not be able to exercise or socialize

Threats — Threatening with the removal of your children, prolonged quarantine, closing of your business, fines for noncompliance with mask and social distancing rules, forced vaccination and so on

Demonstrating omnipotence/omniscience — Shutting down the whole world, claiming scientific and medical authority

Enforcing trivial demands — Examples include family members being forced to stand 6 feet apart at the bank even though they arrived together in the same car, having to wear a mask when you walk into a restaurant, even though you can remove it as soon as you sit down, or having to wear a mask when walking alone on the beach

Occasional indulgence — Reopening some stores and restaurants but only at a certain capacity, for example. Part of the coercion plan is that indulgences are always taken away again, though, and they’re already saying we may have to shut down the world again this fall

Merritt packs a lot of information into her hour-long presentation, so I hope you take the time to view it. Aside from what I’ve already summarized above, she also reviews:

• The influence of the World Health Organization and its largest funder, Bill Gates, and his many connections to the drug and vaccine industries, digital economy and digital tracking technologies
• The curious similarities between the Gates-funded Event 201 and current world events
• The consistent failures to create coronavirus vaccines in the past, as all trials revealed the vaccines caused paradoxical immune enhancement, which made the disease more lethal. You can learn more about this in “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Explains Well-Known Hazards of Coronvirus Vaccines”
• Fauci’s conflicts of interest

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While seaweed is more of a novelty in the typical Western diet, save for an occasional sushi dinner or bowl of miso soup, it’s been a staple food in Japan, Korea and China since ancient times. In Japan, seaweed may account for more than 10% of the diet, and 21 different types are used in everyday cooking.¹

Seaweed is highly nutritious and provides a rich source of micronutrients.² However, it also has powerful antiviral properties and researchers are looking into seaweed extracts as potential treatments against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Seaweed Extracts Outperform Standard COVID-19 Antiviral

Researchers from the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies (CBIS) at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute tested the antiviral effectiveness of seaweed extracts against SARS-CoV-2,³ with promising results.

Five sulfated polysaccharides were tested, including variants of heparin, which is widely used for anticoagulant therapy,⁴ (heparin, trisulfated heparin and a nonanticoagulant low molecular weight heparin) along with the fucoidans RPI-27 and RPI-28.⁵

"We're learning how to block viral infection, and that is knowledge we are going to need if we want to rapidly confront pandemics," said lead researcher Jonathan Dordick in a news release. "The reality is that we don't have great antivirals. To protect ourselves against future pandemics, we are going to need an arsenal of approaches that we can quickly adapt to emerging viruses."⁶

A dose response study was performed with the extracts, revealing the effective concentration that inhibits 50% of viral activity — known as EC50. A lower EC50 is indicative of a more effective extract. The results, given in molar concentration, revealed that RPI-27 had an EC50 of about 83 nanomolar, compared to remdesivir’s 770 nanomolar, which was revealed via separate research.⁷

Remdesivir is an antiviral drug that has shown some promise in treating COVID-19, however serious side effects have been reported, including kidney failure.⁸ With the seaweed extracts, however, no cellular toxicity was found, even at the highest concentrations.

In the case of the other extracts, heparin had an EC50 of 2.1 micromolar, which was about one-third as active as remdesivir, while the nonanticoagulant heparin was about one-fifth as active as remdesivir, with an EC50 of 5 micromolar.⁹

A New Method of Treatment

Robert Linhardt, a Rensselaer professor who’s collaborating with Dordick, said what’s most intriguing is uncovering a potential new way to treat an infection:¹⁰

"The current thinking is that the COVID-19 infection starts in the nose, and either of these substances could be the basis for a nasal spray. If you could simply treat the infection early, or even treat before you have the infection, you would have a way of blocking it before it enters the body."

Because the seaweed compounds can also be consumed orally, they may also be beneficial for addressing gastrointestinal infections, according to Dordick. In fact, while remdesivir must be delivered intravenously, the seaweed extracts could be delivered through a nasal spray, inhaler or orally. When taken orally, seaweed fucoidans are considered “Generally Recognized as Safe.”¹¹

The seaweed extracts appear to work against SARS-CoV-2 via what’s known as a decoy technique, which has previously been used against dengue, Zika, influenza A and other viruses. According to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in a news release:¹²

“The spike protein on the surface of SARS-CoV-2 latches onto the ACE-2 receptor, a molecule on the surface of human cells. Once secured, the virus inserts its own genetic material into the cell, hijacking the cellular machinery to produce replica viruses.

But the virus could just as easily be persuaded to lock onto a decoy molecule that offers a similar fit. The neutralized virus would be trapped and eventually degrade naturally.”

By binding tightly to the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, seaweed’s sulfated polysaccharides may act as decoys to interfere with the spike protein binding to the heparan sulfate co-receptor, which could effectively deter viral infection.¹³

Also worth noting, separate research found that anticoagulants such as heparin led to better outcomes among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Intubated patients who received heparin had a significantly lower risk of mortality compared to those who did not.¹⁴

“It is unknown whether this is a result of heparin’s anticoagulation alone, or to some degree is an effect of its anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity,” the featured study researchers explained.¹⁵

Seaweed’s Antiviral Activity

While the usage against SARS-CoV-2 is new, seaweed extracts and polysaccharides including carrageenan, alginate, fucan, laminaran and naviculan have long been valued for their antiviral properties.¹⁶ In one study of extracts from six Hong Kong brown seaweed species, most of them inhibited herpes simplex virus types 1 and 2, with very low toxicity to other cells.¹⁷ They were also moderately effective in inhibiting respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

In fact, seaweeds are being actively studied in the hopes of finding new compounds to treat viral diseases. In one such study, red and brown seaweed polysaccharides inhibited viral replication of the hepatitis C virus,¹⁸ while others have pointed to their diverse modes of action.

“The structural diversity and complexity of marine polysaccharides and their derivatives contribute to their antiviral activities in different phases of many different viral infection processes,” researchers wrote in the journal Carbohydrate Research, noting that seaweed extracts have the ability to inhibit virus internalization and uncoating as well as inhibit virus transcription and replication. Some are also immunomodulatory.¹⁹

In another study, 16 extracts of British Columbian seaweeds were investigated and 15 of them were found to have direct virus-killing abilities.²⁰

Was Seaweed Behind Japan’s Initial Low COVID-19 Rates?

Japan, where seafood is a dietary staple, had low initial levels of COVID-19 infection, particularly in Hokkaido.

Writing in the Journal of Applied Phycology, researchers from the University of Coimbra and Canada’s Verschuren Centre for Sustainability in Energy and Environment suggested that there may be a connection and the low initial rates “were possibly related to the traditional and widespread consumption of seaweed and the regular supply of iodine in their diet.”²¹

While cases later increased, they noted, “These reports suggest that seaweed helped Hokkaido populations to reduce contagion in an initial period, but their consumption was not a 100% effective weapon …”²²

Seaweed extracts, including carrageenan, have also been found to benefit the common cold, which is caused by different respiratory viruses, including coronavirus. In a study of children and adults, a carrageenan nasal spray reduced the duration of the common cold while also increasing viral clearance and reducing relapse of symptoms.²³

The pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim markets a carrageenan-based nasal spray, but the researchers questioned why the substantial research about the antiviral properties of seaweed extracts appears to have gone largely unrecognized by Big Pharma during the COVID-19 pandemic. They added:²⁴

“Many species of marine algae contain significant quantities of complex structural sulphated polysaccharides that have been shown to inhibit the replication of enveloped viruses including members of the Nidovirales.

Other compounds, both of red algae (e.g., the lectin griffithsin), and other sulphated polysaccharides extracted from green algae (i.e. ulvans) and brown algae (i.e. fucoidans) could be potential antiviral therapeutic agents against SARS-CoV-2.”

Seaweed Is a Superfood

There are many reasons to add seaweed to your diet, even aside from its antiviral potential. It’s an excellent source of iodine, for starters, which in itself is a strong weapon against viral infections. An imbalance of iodine affects your thyroid function, which in turn affects many other systems in your body, including your heart.

Seaweed also has properties that are useful for lowering blood pressure. In an observational study in children, seaweed consumption was shown to lower diastolic blood pressure in boys and systolic blood pressure in girls.²⁵

As for adults, research published in the American Journal of Hypertension found that a preparation made from seaweed decreased mean blood pressure in 62 middle-aged patients with mild high blood pressure.²⁶

Seaweed contains beneficial nutrients as well, including potassium, calcium, iron and alginic acid. Alginic acid naturally protects marine plants from bacteria and binds to heavy metals in humans, which makes seaweed a powerful detoxifying food.

Choosing seaweed from unpolluted waters is crucial, as these plants absorb the contents of the water in which they're grown. While this is part of what makes them so nutritious, it can also be their downfall if sourced from contaminated waters.

Further, seaweed that comes from large, industrial seaweed "farms" (often in Asia) may be machine harvested in ways that harm the environment. Look for seaweed sourced from unpolluted waters that is harvested in a sustainable, environmentally friendly manner (such as hand harvested).

Also check that your seaweed is processed using only sun drying or low-temperature air drying, not high heat that may damage nutrients.

You may also be able to find seaweed that is regularly tested for chemicals and heavy metals to ensure it’s a pure, health-boosting product. If you want to add some seaweed to your daily meals, there are many to choose from, each with different flavor profiles and uses. Here are a few from Supermarket Guru²⁷ to get started:

• Hijiki — A stronger-flavored seaweed that grows in thick branches, which expand considerably when cooked.
• Nori — Often used to make sushi rolls, nori is deep purple or red but turns bright green when toasted. Untoasted nori is best, nutritionally speaking.
• Arame — Arame has feathery leaves and a sweeter flavor than some other varieties.
• Wakame — Found in miso soup, wakame is brown with delicate leaves and a mild, non-fishy flavor.
• Dulse — Dulse has a chewy texture and is often used in dried or flaked form.

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