Health & Fitness

Over thousands of years, indigenous cultures have used traditional herbal medicine to prevent and treat diseases, including respiratory ailments like colds and influenza. In the modern day, the bioactive compounds of medicinal plants have become primary points of research for drug therapies, but the plant remedies still hold promise when used as nature intended.

“While the plant kingdom continues to serve as an important source for chemical entities supporting drug discovery, the rich traditions of herbal medicine developed by trial and error on human subjects over thousands of years contain invaluable biomedical information just waiting to be uncovered using modern scientific approaches,” researchers wrote in Nature Plants in 2017.¹

Now, with the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of traditional herbal medicine for the treatment of respiratory ailments has taken on renewed interest, and researchers from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and China’s Hebei Agricultural University compiled some of the most useful herbs for the prevention and treatment of cold and flu, and potentially COVID-19, too.²

Top Expectorant Herbs for Cold and Flu

Expectorant herbs are useful for thinning and loosening mucus, helping to clear congestion. They’re often used for coughs and colds, as they may make breathing easier.

After conducting a literature survey on natural herbal medicines, particularly those from traditional Chinese and Persian medicine, the researchers suggested the following herbs had significant potential as expectorants for cold and flu:³

Tulsi — Tulsi, also known as holy basil, is an Ayurvedic herb with antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, anti-inflammatory, analgestic, antioxidant and adaptogenic properties.4 A review in the Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine even called tulsi an “herb for all reasons,” noting that it’s effective against “a range of human and animal pathogens” with broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity. They even suggested it could be used as a hand sanitizer.5 Tulsi is also one of the herbs in Ayush Kwath, an Ayurvedic herbal formula recommended by the government of India to boost immunity and combat COVID-19. “Ayush Kwath due to its immune-modulatory, antiviral, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-platelet, anti-atherosclerotic, hepato-protective, reno-protective properties; seems to be effective in immuno-regulation for controlling viral infections like COVID-19,” a team of researchers wrote in the Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine.6

Snake root — Used by North American Indians to treat snake bites, snake root, or Polygala senega, is also valued for its stimulant, expectorant properties and has traditionally been used to treat respiratory ailments.7

Licorice root — Licorice root contains liquiritin, a compound that helps prevent the rapid reproduction of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, as demonstrated in the lab.8 The compounds in licorice root have demonstrated antiviral and anti-inflammatory effects in the body and the ability to modulate the immune system. A second compound in licorice root that has demonstrated an effect against SARS-CoV-1 is glycyrrhizin.9 Glycyrrhizin has traditionally been used in the treatment of coughs and viral respiratory tract infections in China, India and Greece, and animal studies suggest it reduces mortality from herpes encephalitis and influenza A pneumonia, while in vitro studies show it has “antiviral activity against HIV-1, SARS-related coronavirus, respiratory syncytial virus, arboviruses, vaccinia virus and vesicular stomatitis virus.”10

Clove — Cloves (Syzygium aromaticum or Eugenia cariophylata) are the aromatic flower buds collected from evergreen trees of the same name. Eugenol, a major volatile constituent of clove essential oil, has a range of pharmacological activities including antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antioxidant and anticancer properties.11 One way to use clove as a respiratory aid is to make clove tea, which you can either drink or use as a steam inhalation. For a cold, you can add a couple of drops of clove essential oil to a mug of hot water, sweetened with raw honey or stevia if desired. Drink two to three glasses a day until your condition improves. You can also use clove oil for aromatherapy by diffusing it into the air.

Slippery elm root — The inner bark of the slippery elm tree is a slimy substance that, when mixed with water, creates mucilage, a sticky substance traditionally used for soothing a variety of ailments. In addition to being used for gastrointestinal problems like irritable bowel syndrome,12 slippery elm is beneficial for the throat and coughs, and has soothing effects on the tissue of the upper airway.13

Marshmallow root — This perennial herb has been valued for treating respiratory ailments since ancient times, and research suggests that, when added to an herbal cough syrup, it’s useful for alleviating cough associated with colds, bronchitis and respiratory tract diseases that involve the formation of mucus.14

Sage — Sage, in addition to having antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory properties, is a natural expectorant and useful to clear mucus and reduce coughs, and even calm a sore throat.15 Consider adding a drop of sage essential oil to a cup of tea or hot water the next time you have a cold.

Top Antiviral and Immunostimulant Herbs

In their review of the best herbal medicines for cold and flu, in addition to COVID-19, the researchers of the featured study also highlighted antiviral herbs and those that stimulate the immune system. While most medicinal plants have a variety of benefits with overlapping therapeutic properties, the following stood out in these categories. Important antiviral herbs included:

Thyme — Thyme (Thymus vulgaris), contains potent compounds like thymol, camphene, linalool, and carvacrol and has been used traditionally for respiratory issues. Modern research shows vaporized essential oils from thyme, among others, may “potentially useful in influenza therapy.”16 Venezuelan officials also announced they have had encouraging results treating COVID-19 patients with Carvativir, an oral solution made from extracts of thyme and oregano.17

Honeysuckle flowers — Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) is another plant with a long history of use for respiratory ailments.18 It contains chlorogenic acid, which one study found "inhibited influenza virus during the late stage of infectious cycle" and also effectively reduced inflammation in the lungs and reduced viral titers during the study.19

Andrographis — This adaptogenic and antiviral herb has been used in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda to treat the common cold.20 In a systematic review of 33 randomized controlled trials with 7,175 patients, andrographis helped relieve the symptoms of acute upper respiratory tract infection and shortened the time for cough and sore throat as well.21 In another review of the literature, scholars found "strong evidence" that Andrographis was superior to a placebo in reducing the frequency and severity of coughs.22 A formulation known as Kan Jang that combines andrographis and Siberian ginseng has also been studied, with positive results, in the treatment of colds,23 upper respiratory tract infections,24 sinusitis25 and flu.26

Yarrow — This perennial herb contains many constituents with pharmacological activity. It’s traditionally been used for respiratory infections, colds and flu,27 and is sometimes combined with elder flower for this purpose.

Peppermint — Peppermint oil acts as an expectorant and decongestant, and may help clear your respiratory tract. Use peppermint essential oil as a cold rub on your chest or inhale it through a vaporizer to help clear nasal congestion and relieve cough and cold symptoms. For even more therapeutic punch, try a tea made from a combination of elderflower, yarrow, boneset, linden, peppermint and ginger.

Calendula — Also known as marigolds, calendula has anti-inflammatory, antiviral and regenerative properties that are also stimulating for the immune system.28

The following herbs, in addition to marshmallow root and slippery elm, were also highlighted for their immunostimulant properties particularly for cold and flu:

Echinacea — In a study published in Integrative Cancer Therapies, echinacea was found to reduce the severity and duration of colds if it is administered right away once symptoms appear.29

Garlic — With both immune-boosting and antiviral effects, those who consumed garlic daily for three months had fewer colds than those who took a placebo.30

Ginseng — Another adaptogenic herb, older adults who took an extract of American ginseng had a 48% reduction in relative risk, and a 55% reduction in duration, of respiratory illness.31 This herb was also found to be "a safe and effective treatment for reducing the absolute risk of recurrent colds and the mean number of colds per person."32

Isatis root — Isatis is a flowering plant used in TCM and Ayurveda, often in combination with other herbs. Teas and mouthwashes containing isatis, honeysuckle, mint and licorice root have also been successful at treating respiratory problems, including influenza.33

Usnea lichen — Usnea is a type of lichen that grows on trees and rocks around the world. It contains polysaccharides that may boost immune system activity, making it useful for colds and flu.34

Myrrh — Myrrh is a thorny tree or shrub that releases a resin from cracks in the bark. This resin has traditionally been used to treat colds and cough,35 and with known antiviral and immunomodulatory properties, researchers suggested myrrh mouthwash could be effective in combating COVID-19.36

Ginger — Ginger root has been used as a tonic to treat common ailments for centuries, and a number of studies have documented the antioxidant and immunomodulatory effects of this herbaceous perennial plant.37

Nature Is Full of Powerful Healers

Herbal medicine is a powerful arsenal in the prevention and treatment of respiratory ailments like colds, flu and COVID-19. In China, herbal treatment is recommended for children and adults with COVID-19,³⁸ and interest in traditional remedies is growing in the U.S. as well.

Herbs are unique in that they contain multiple beneficial components that work synergistically to promote wellness. As noted in the featured study:³⁹

“Some important chemical constituents of traditional herbs, which can be considered in the fight against COVID-19, are betulinic acid, coumaroyltyramine, cryptotanshinone, desmethoxyreserpine, dihomo-γ-linolenic acid, dihydrotanshinone I, kaempferol, lignan, moupinamide, N-cis-feruloyltyramine, quercetin, sugiol, and tanshinoneIIa.”

Because working with herbs can be complex, for best results consult with a knowledgeable natural health care practitioner who can guide you on the appropriate herbal solutions for your circumstances.

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In the summer of 2020, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) — a consumer advocacy group partnered with Bill Gates’ agrichemical PR group, the Cornell Alliance for Science,¹ and bankrolled by billionaires with ties to Monsanto, the Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller Family Fund and Bloomberg Philanthropies² — launched a social media campaign to put an end to Mercola.com.

July 21, 2020, CSPI issued a press release³ in which they accused me of falsely claiming “that at least 22 vitamins, supplements and other products available for sale on his web site can prevent, treat, or cure COVID-19 infection.” This despite the fact that their Appendix of Illegal Claims⁴ clearly show no COVID-19-related claims exist on any of the product links.

The group also testified in a Senate hearing on the topic of COVID-19 scams and urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission to take regulatory action against me.

In an August 12, 2020, email, CSPI president Dr. Peter Lurie⁵ — a former FDA associate commissioner⁶ — made the spurious claim that I “profit from the COVID-19 pandemic” through “anti-vaccine fearmongering” and reporting of science-based nutrition shown to impact your disease risk.

Former FDA Official Pulls Strings to Target Natural Health

Seeing how Lurie is a former FDA official, it’s disheartening, but not surprising, that the FDA has now issued us a warning letter⁷ for “Unapproved and misbranded products related to COVID-19.” Lurie has publicly taken credit for the FDA’s action,⁸ thereby establishing the potential that CSPI is pulling strings under the new administration through relationships they did not have back in August when they first launched their assault on my free speech.

According to the FDA, vitamin C, vitamin D3 and quercetin products are “unapproved new drugs sold in violation of section 505(a) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.” The agency is also listing Mercola.com on its Fraudulent COVID-19 Products page.

Lurie seems to be hinting that he also wants federal authorities to remove my StopCOVIDCold site, where you can download a free scientific report detailing the benefits of maintaining appropriate vitamin D levels to protect against viral infections. He’s also urging “state attorneys general to investigate how they may further protect consumers from Mercola’s illegal marketing.”⁹

“Americans are justifiably concerned about becoming infected with the coronavirus and contracting COVID-19. Being misled to believe that supplements could prevent or treat COVID-19 could cause consumers to fail to take protective measures such as mask-wearing, putting themselves and others at risk, or fail to seek actual medical treatment if sick,” Lurie writes.¹⁰

It’s ironic that Lurie dismisses offhand peer-reviewed published science demonstrating certain nutrients can boost your immune function and help lower your risk of severe infection — be it from SARS-CoV-2, the seasonal flu or anything else — and touts mask wearing, which has no published scientific evidence to back its universal use, as one of the most important prevention strategies against COVID-19.

Sadly, this is where we are nowadays. “Trust the science,” they say, while simultaneously promoting scientifically unverified claims and trying to eradicate anyone who simply reports the findings that are actually published in the medical literature that may negatively impact the pharmaceutical industry.

CSPI and FDA Cannot Censor Speech

The CSPI is trying to censor my efforts to educate people on how to avoid vitamin D deficiency which, without doubt, places them at far higher risk of complications and death from respiratory infections. Well, I am not going to allow people to die from COVID-19 and other respiratory infections due to vitamin D deficiency.

In October 2020, I co-wrote a paper together with William Grant, Ph.D.,¹¹ and Dr. Carol Wagner,¹² both of whom are on the GrassrootsHealth vitamin D expert panel, demonstrating the clear link between vitamin D deficiency and severe cases of COVID-19. This paper was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Nutrients.¹³

With that, I have established my medical and scientific merit, and will continue to express my professional opinions, based on the available science, and defend my freedom of speech as the U.S. Constitution provides for.

The FDA’s warning letter highlights statements in articles on my website that are fully referenced and supported by published science. I am committed to providing truthful information, for free, to anyone that wants it, and I’m all for having a rigorous scientific debate when necessary. CSPI has taken credit for pressuring the FDA to issue this warning letter to suppress free speech. The FDA’s warning letter is simply another attempt by CSPI to smear me with false accusations.

As CSPI well knows, thanks to the U.S. constitution and the first amendment, I have every right to speak publicly on matters regarding health, so this is nothing but another attempt to “cancel” me while concealing its own duplicity. For the record, we have fully addressed the warning letter; the FDA cannot simply stop free speech that CSPI does not like.

This Is NOT the First Time CSPI Has Endangered Public Health

CSPI continues to be a vitamin D denier even though overwhelming evidence points to its ability to reduce the risk of developing severe COVID-19. This isn’t surprising, coming from a Rockefeller-funded organization that pushed deadly trans fats on the American public until the facts became undeniable, at which point they simply rewrote the organization’s history on this subject to hide its past stance.

In 1986, CSPI described trans fat as “a great boon to Americans’ arteries.”¹⁴ Two years later, in 1988, they still praised trans fats,¹⁵ saying "there is little good evidence that trans fats cause any more harm than other fats" and that "much of the anxiety over trans fats stems from their reputation as 'unnatural.'" Meanwhile, in the real world, the CSPI’s highly successful trans fat campaign resulted in an epidemic of heart disease.

The CSPI’s role in the promotion of trans fats and its influence on the food industry was discussed in David Schleifer’s article, “The Perfect Solution: How Trans Fats Became the Healthy Replacement for Saturated Fats,”¹⁶ in which he noted that:

“Scholars routinely argue that corporations control US food production, with negative consequences for health … However, the transition from saturated to trans fats shows how activists can be part of spurring corporations to change.”

It wasn't until the 1990s that CSPI started reversing its position on synthetic trans fats, but the damage had already been done, and it never admitted its error. In fact, rather than openly admitting it had misled the public with erroneous claims, CSPI simply deleted sections of its previous support of trans fat from the web.¹⁷ Notice how their historical timeline¹⁸ of trans fat starts at 1993 — the year CSPI realized the jig was up and they had to support the elimination of trans fat.

CSPI then started raising money for campaigns to stop the heart disease causing substance they first promoted. How diabolical is that? Create the problem and then take money from others for the solution. 

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

This obfuscation was noted by Mary Enig, Ph.D., in a 2003 article, in which she wrote:¹⁹

“On October 20, 1993, CSPI had the chutzpah to call a press conference in Washington, DC and lambast the major fast-food chains for doing what CSPI coerced them into doing, namely, using partially hydrogenated vegetable oils in their deep fat-fryers.

On that date, CSPI, an eager proponent of partially hydrogenated oils for many years, even when their adverse health effects were apparent, reversed its position after an onslaught of adverse medical reports linking trans fatty acids in these processed oils to coronary heart disease and cancer …

Thanks to CSPI, healthy traditional fats have almost completely disappeared from the food supply, replaced by manufactured trans fats known to cause many diseases. By 1990, most fast food chains had switched to partially hydrogenated vegetable oil …

Who benefits? Soy, or course … [and] in CSPI’s January, 1991 newsletter, Jacobson notes that ‘our effort was ultimately joined … by the American Soybean Association.’”

Even more egregious is the CSPI’s continued recommendation to eat unsaturated fats like soy and canola oils²⁰ and avoid butter and other healthy saturated fats, saying that “changing fats doesn’t lower the risk of dying.”²¹

This wholly disregards the compelling evidence showing that industrial vegetable oils, omega-6 linoleic acid in particular, pose significant health risks and contribute to chronic disease. And chronic disease, in turn, impacts mortality. 

CSPI Primarily Protects Big Business

This tendency to fall in line with industry science and propaganda has become a trend within CSPI. For example, it wasn’t until 2013 that CSPI finally downgraded the artificial sweetener Splenda from its former “safe” category to one of “caution.”²²

In 2016, they downgraded it again, from “caution” to “avoid.”²³ Despite that, CSPI continues to promote diet soda as a safer alternative to regular soda, saying it “does not promote diabetes, weight gain or heart disease in the way that full-calorie sodas do.”²⁴

The group has also taken a strong pro-GMO stand and actively undermined the GMO labeling movement,²⁵ which resulted in the U.S. being the only country in the world that does not have clear GMO labeling. In August 2001, the organization actually urged the FDA to take enforcement action against food companies using non-GMO labels, claiming such labels could “deceive consumers.”²⁶

In a similar vein, the group opposes clear labeling of ultraprocessed fake meat. In a May 2018 letter to the FDA,²⁷ CSPI urged the agency “to reject efforts by the United States Cattlemen’s Association to prohibit use of the terms ‘meat’ or ‘beef’ on plant-based and cultured proteins marketed as alternatives to traditional meat.” All in all, it appears the CSPI is completely against the idea of a well-informed public.

The CSPI has also been a promoter of the thoroughly debunked low-fat myth. In 1995, they launched a “1% or Less” campaign that urged everyone over the age of 2 to switch from whole and 2% milk to skim milk (also known as nonfat or fat-free milk) in order to reduce their saturated fat intake.^28,29,30 

It was another successful campaign that resulted in the doubling of skim milk sales.³¹ However, just like their trans fat campaign, this was equally ill advised, seeing how research^32,33 shows full-fat dairy actually lowers your risk of death from diabetes and cardiovascular causes such as stroke.

CSPI Has Repeatedly Violated Its Mission Statement 

Considering the suspected, and in some cases well-verified, health hazards of trans fats, artificial sweeteners, soy, GMOs, low-fat diet and fake meat, CSPI’s intent to protect and advance public health is questionable to say the least.

It seems they’re more interested in protecting profitable industries, and the CSPI’s efforts to destroy companies selling vitamins and supplements with natural antiviral effects³⁴ is simply more evidence of that.

The fact is, they’re seeking to bring an end to Mercola.com because we are such a serious threat to their agenda and they want to eliminate as many of the truth tellers as they can.

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Many doctors around the world started using the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) early on in the COVID-19 pandemic. Among them is Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, a practicing physician in a Jewish community in Monroe, New York.

He garnered national attention in March 2020 when he told radio host Sean Hannity that he’d had a near-100% success rate treating COVID-19 patients with HCQ, azithromycin and zinc sulfate for five days.¹ “I’ve seen remarkable results; it really prevents progression of disease, and patients get better,” he said at the time.

In response, county health officials said Zelenko’s claims were “unsubstantiated” and urged residents to listen to public health officials.² In this interview, he explains how HCQ works against COVID-19, and discusses the lies spun about the drug to suppress its widespread use. Zelenko had a very active Twitter account and would get millions of views on his tweets, and like many other truth tellers in this crazy pandemic, he was censored and recently removed from Twitter.

“When we have a large population of people that need to be treated, it has to be oral, cheap, safe and effective,” he says. “By the way, this is not new. This information was known in 2005 — even before.

There are papers with [Dr. Anthony] Fauci's name on it, calling [HCQ] a miracle drug. Fauci called HCQ a vaccine. There's a paper in which he called it an absolute dream treatment and vaccine. So, it's conveniently forgotten but that's what it is. It's a matter of scientific record.”

What is most impressive to me is that he, through deep research and trial and error in the trenches, determined an incredibly effective protocol, and he did this under enormous personal health challenges. During the spring of last year, he was diagnosed with a type of pulmonary sarcoma that is typically considered terminal, and although improved, he continues to be under treatment for this condition.

Finding Solutions to Avoid a Death Trap

As the SARS-CoV-2 swept through his tight-knit Jewish community, Zelenko was seeing anywhere from 50 to 250 patients per day. At this point, he’s treated more than 3,000 patients with COVID-19-related symptoms. Only one-third of them actually received the triple-drug regimen. The remaining two-thirds were in low-risk categories and did not need drug treatment.

In all, Zelenko has only had 15 patients who ended up requiring hospitalization, four of whom were intubated. All were eventually successfully extubated and recovered. The remaining 11 were admitted for intravenous antibiotics for pneumonia. In all, only three of his high-risk patients died from COVID-19, which puts the mortality rate for this treatment at just 0.3%.

“You cannot ignore that. That's not even counting the risk stratification patients, which I chose not to treat. In other words, I was able to tell these patients, ‘I know you're going to be fine. Go home, and you'll be fine.’ And that has value.

If you include those, the mortality rate is even less. And this has been reproduced. You don't have to listen to me. You can call it anecdotal all you want, but there are now Harvard professors of virology with 4,000 patient experiences.

Dr. George Fareed, for example, or Dr. Harvey Risch from Yale School of Epidemiology, who has shown that it's absolutely statistically proven that HCQ used in the prehospital setting is absolutely effective. It's impossible for it to be a mistake,” he says.

Why HCQ?

Zelenko tells the story of how he got started treating COVID-19 patients with HCQ:

“Hospitals were near capacity and all the outpatient services were closed. Half my staff was sick and all of a sudden I had a war zone. I basically started learning triage medicine, trying to save as many people as possible.

At that time, the whole world had been focusing on building respirators and hospital capacity [instead of putting] emphasis on prehospital care. I found that bizarre because that's never what we do in medicine. We [use] common sense and intervene in the earliest stages.

It's much easier to fix a small problem than a large problem. For example, someone has cancer, we don't wait for it to become metastatic disease. We treat as soon as possible. Someone has a small infection. We put the infection out.

If you look at the CDC, they recommend starting the treatment of influenza with antiviral drugs within the first 48 hours, not the week, except when it came to COVID-19. We were told to send patients home, and when they get sicker, send them to the hospital, where there was a good chance they were going to get intubated, especially in March and April.

At that point, in the city, they had mortality rates above 80%. So, it was a death sentence. None of that made sense to me at all. So, I quickly started to brush up on my virology.

I wanted to understand how this virus works and more importantly, what I can do about it. A series on YouTube called MedCram, Episode 34, saved the world. It explains the biology behind how zinc inhibits RNA polymerase, and the fact that zinc can't get into the cell. So, it needs help.”

Zelenko goes on to describe how he settled on HCQ, a so-called zinc ionophore, meaning it shuttles zinc into the cell. He decided to treat high-risk patients as early as possible, and this turned out to be key. Early treatment really saves lives when it comes to COVID-19. This is not a situation where the wait-and-see strategy is well-advised.

According to Zelenko, during the first five days of SARS-CoV-2 infection, the viral load remains fairly steady. Around Day 5, it exponentially increases, potentially overwhelming the immune system. This also meant he could not afford to wait for test results, which took about five days. By then, most patients would already have progressed too far.

So, if a patient exhibited symptoms, especially if they reported loss of taste or smell as well, he’d start treatment immediately. In hindsight, about 90% of the tests of people experiencing symptoms had a positive test.

The Synergy of HCQ and Zinc

Zelenko likens HCQ and zinc like a gun and a bullet. HCQ is the gun that shoots the zinc into the cell. Zinc is the silver bullet that kills the virus by inhibiting an enzyme associated with viral replication inside the cell. The antibiotic azithromycin is given to prevent bacterial pneumonia and other secondary bacterial infections that are common in COVID-19.

Today, we have even more information, of course, which means there are more tools available beside HCQ, zinc and antibiotics. Ivermectin, for example, appears very useful, especially for prevention, as do steroids and blood thinners. So, Zelenko will now tweak the treatment of individual patients based on their symptoms.

“It's not a cookie cutter approach, but what is absolutely the same is that high-risk patients must be treated as soon as possible, within the first five days from onset of symptoms, and they all survive,” he says.

The Psychological Operation Against HCQ

Unfortunately, as discussed by Zelenko, there was essentially a “psychological operation” put into place to scare people away from HCQ. A big part of that was turning it into a political issue. From the start, doctors who used the drug were threatened with the loss of their medical license, which is unheard of for a drug with such a long history of safe use.

The U.S. government made matters worse by only issuing emergency use authorization for in-hospital use and not for outpatient settings. Meanwhile, HCQ has been used for about 60 years in people with chronic conditions such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

“So, the hypocrisy, the loss of common sense, the outright indoctrination killed a lot of people,” Zelenko says. “The root cause of it is the way we educate people. It used to be that higher education was about teaching critical thought and deductive reasoning, analytical analysis.

Now we indoctrinate people into responding to stimuli like dogs, like automatons, like robots. Common sense no longer matters. That's my critique of higher education and why I think many physicians fell into the trap. Also, this country was traumatized. Even if a doctor was willing to give it, patients were afraid to take it.”

The biggest reason for the fear was unfortunately due to falsified studies and trials using toxic doses. It’s difficult to not suspect an ulterior motive in light of those facts. As noted by Zelenko, a main component of pandemic response, namely prehospital or outpatient treatment, was suppressed.

The question is why? One obvious reason was that it was a presidential election year, and then-president Trump came out in support of HCQ in March 2020. His announcement sparked immediate backlash from a chronically hostile media. “There were plenty of people willing to use every possible way to vilify the president and to discredit anything that might give him a win,” Zelenko says.

Then, of course, there were financial interests at play. Millions of dollars were being invested into new drugs like remdesivir, for example — a drug that costs more than $3,000 per treatment and is only for in-hospital use.

Hospitals were also paid tens of thousands of dollars more for COVID-19 patients, so there was no lack of incentive to get people into the hospital and keep them there either. Meanwhile, Zelenko’s early outpatient treatment costs about $20.

Fraudulent Studies Fueled Distrust

As for the fraudulent and misleading studies, the first to raise alarm was a VA study in Virginia, which found HCQ didn’t prevent death. However, they only used it on late-stage patients who were already on ventilators. From there, they incorrectly extrapolated that it would not be helpful in earlier stages, which simply isn’t true. Other trials simply used the wrong dosage.

While doctors reporting success with the drug are using standard doses around 200 mg to 400 mg per day for either a few days or maybe a couple of weeks, studies such as the Bill & Melinda Gates-funded³ Recovery Trial used 2,400 mg of hydroxychloroquine during the first 24 hours — three to six times higher than the daily dosage recommended⁴ — followed by 400 mg every 12 hours for nine more days for a cumulative dose of 9,200 mg over 10 days.

Similarly, the Solidarity Trial,⁵ led by the World Health Organization, used 2,000 mg on the first day, and a cumulative dose of 8,800 mg over 10 days. These doses are simply too high. More is not necessarily better. Too much, and guess what? You might kill the patient. As noted by Zelenko, these doses are “enough to kill an elephant.”

It’s really unclear as to why these studies used such enormous doses, seeing how the dosages this drug is normally prescribed in, for a range of conditions, never go that high. “All those studies did was prove that if you poison someone with lethal doses of a drug, they're going to die,” Zelenko says.

Then there was the famous Lancet study that the World Health Organization used to justify essentially banning HCQ. This study was withdrawn when it was discovered that the data had been completely and utterly fabricated with falsely generated data from a fly-by-night company. It was supposed to be a meta-analysis of about 90,000 patients, which showed HCQ had lethal effects.

Unfortunately, before it was withdrawn, this fake study resulted in the WHO (or to quote Zelenko, the “world homicide organization”) putting a moratorium on the use of HCQ, which didn’t improve public trust in the drug. Even more egregious, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration used that fake paper as one of its justifications for removing the emergency use authorization for HCQ, even though the study had already been retracted.

Suppression of HCQ Needlessly Killed Tens of Thousands

According to Zelenko, “HCQ is the safest medication in the history of medicine, azithromycin is one of the most common antibiotics used in medicine, and zinc is a mineral that's well-known and well-tolerated. These drugs were affordable and available to take at home, which was very important. And they worked.”

June 30, 2020, Zelenko and two co-authors published a study,⁶ showing that treating COVID-19 patients who had confirmed positive test results “as early as possible after symptom onset” with zinc, low dose HCQ and azithromycin reduced odds of hospitalization by 84% and all-cause death by 500% compared to no treatment at all.

Crazy enough, even though Zelenko went to great lengths to share his clinical findings with the White House and the National Institutes of Health, he received no support and was told they had no use for it.

“What's happened over the last 20 years is that the academic elite and pharmaceutical industry have bred a monopoly on medical truth,” he says.

“They feel only data generated through randomized control trials, pharmaceutical sponsored trials, or those that are coming out of major academic institutions are to be viewed as truth. Anything coming from a frontline country doctor must be anecdotal.

That's the crime here. And they created artificial barriers that prevented the flow of common sense and lifesaving information. You know which countries did take it seriously? See, this is a disease of affluence because the rich countries could afford the waste of money. The poor countries like Honduras … they had no options.

They couldn't afford respirators. They didn't have enough hospital capacity. So, they gravitated towards the cheap generic approaches. And those are the ones that have the best outcomes.”

Zelenko highlights Uganda, which has a population of about 50 million people, yet has recorded just 325 deaths.⁷ “I think this was a genocide against the elderly and a crime against humanity,” he says. “There are plenty of people who have blood on their hands, including the media.”

Coordinated Effort to Cause Harm

He also stresses that the pandemic response, including the suppression of HCQ, has clearly been a global coordinated effort.

“You have to ask yourself, who benefits from a destabilized world? Who benefits from chaos on the streets, from anarchy, from financial despair, from psychological trauma? ... In some parts of this country, suicide rates are up 600%.

I speak to my colleagues in emergency rooms — the amount of child abuse and spousal abuse they’ve seen is absolutely ridiculous. The amount of collateral damage from preventable illnesses, like heart disease and cancer that are skyrocketing because people are not getting access to routine care.

A lot of people weren't getting elective surgeries on time. So, there's been a lot of collateral damage. The shutdown is killing more people than the virus. The virus is not dangerous if you approach it correctly. If you treat it in the right timeframe, it's no different than a bad flu. You can deal with it. You don't have to shut down the world.”

The True Agenda Coming Into Plain Sight

Indeed, the world is becoming increasingly black and white and it’s becoming easier and easier to see that global and national systems are not benefiting but, rather, enslaving the population, and how they’re doing it. As noted by Zelenko:

“I see the world now with such clarity ... It’s no longer confusing. It's a binary choice. It's very clear who's on what side. And here are the teams: There are those who want to live a life of God, conscious … Our lives have sanctity. They're priceless and they should be preserved at all costs. And no one has the right to enslave another human being. That's one approach.

The other is [internment] … an attempt to enslave, psychologically, and even more so physically, the world population. Do you want to know what's coming? Look at Justin Trudeau statements. Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, just announced that anyone who tests positive will be quarantined in a government-run facility, until the government deems you safe to return back to society.

That's [also] what Cuomo wants to do in New York. And I'll tell you what I think. For what I'm about to say, I'm going to be labeled as a conspiracy theorist. But you know what? I don't care because, eventually, the truth will come out and history will prove it right.

If you look at the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, they have a plan. They have a 30-year plan, they have 100-year plan. That's all spelled out in their charter. Just look at it.

So there's a plan called the 2030 plan. You can go to the World Economic Forum and look at their own words. It's being run by Klaus Schwab and his group. He wrote a book called ‘The Great Reset.’ That's where the term comes from.

Now, all the governments are quoting him, like Justin Trudeau, Prince Charles, the Australian prime minister. There's a myriad of other politicians calling for the great reset. So, what is the great reset? What are they asking for?

No. 1, I mean it's absolutely ridiculous, but they're saying, ‘You will own nothing and you will be happy.’ That is their mission. No. 2, America will no longer be a superpower. No. 3, there will be a small group of nations that determine the direction of where the world goes. No. 4, you won't eat meat except as an occasional treat.

No. 5, there'll be a global tax on fossil fuels to eradicate the reliance on oil. No. 6, a billion refugees will be displaced [and] we're going to have to incorporate them and absorb them into our society. These are their stated goals.

Now, how do you take the world's biggest country, most powerful country, richest country and make it no longer a world superpower? Well, that's exactly what they're doing. The economy is in shambles.

You've put in a government now that is passing foreign relief aid to China, Russia, Syria, Iran, the Palestinian Authority. They're sending billions of dollars now to financially support these countries. So, you have to ask yourself, what is going on here?

This all started many years ago, but when Trump went to Davos, in the first few years of his presidency, he said, ‘I'm not part of your globalist agenda. I'm going to put my national interest first.’ That was a poke in the eye of the globalists. That's the point when George Soros came out and said that Trump is one of the most dangerous people on the planet and he needs to be brought down.

He was dangerous to their agenda. So, what we're really fighting for is the soul of man. God is testing us, in my opinion. Every person is being asked one simple question, either bow down to God and have the divine presence protect you or you're going to bow down to Bill Gates … I'm calling for Nuremberg 2.0. These people need to be brought to justice.”

There’s No Rational Justification for COVID-19 Vaccines

Zelenko also shares his views on the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. He points out that while Gates is pushing COVID-19 vaccines, ostensibly to save lives, he’s on record saying he feels the world population needs to be reduced.

“If someone was a eugenicist and feels that the world population needs to be reduced, why would I take his vaccine for my health?” he asks. “The logical inconsistencies here are absolutely perverse.

I'm so pro-vaccine you can't imagine. I've given tens of thousands of patients vaccinations. I give it to myself and to my children. However, I'm not COVID-19 vaccine positive. And I'll tell you why: Because the majority of patients under the age of 45 have a near-100% recovery rate with a mild, runny nose from COVID-19. Why would I vaccinate someone with an experimental vaccine? The answer is not for medical reasons.

Another question, why would I give someone a vaccine, even if they are at high risk, if I can give them prophylaxis and/or early prehospital treatment and have a 100% recovery rate? Not for medical reasons.

Another question: Why would I give a vaccine to someone who's already had COVID-19 and has antibodies? Not for medical reasons. And why would I give a very specific vaccine to someone who is going to be exposed to a ton of different variants and strains and mutations?

I wouldn't. What I would use is an approach that inhibits RNA replication of RNA viruses, which works for all the strains, including, potentially, influenza. That's the big dirty secret here.”

It’s Safe to Stop Living in Fear

Zelenko, who was born in a communist country and whose family suffered under communist and fascist rule, is quite sensitive to the signs of these authoritarian regimes. He recounts a story told in the book “The Gulag Archipelago” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Stalin wanted to dig a canal from Moscow to St. Petersburg. The work, done in the middle of winter, led to the death of 400,000 prison workers, as they weren’t given the appropriate clothes or tools. The bodies were thrown into the cement and became a permanent part of the canal.

“No ship ever used the canal because it was too shallow. So, the question was, why was this canal built? And the answer is: So that 400,000 people would die,” Zelenko says.

“I'm not attacking the vaccine. I'm attacking the need for the vaccine. I have not enough information to say it's good or bad. And I don't like to guess. But what I can tell you is that I know for a fact that 99.98% of young and healthy people under the age of 45 recover, with no treatment.

I also know for a fact, from my own real-world battle-tested evidence, which has been reproduced now on hundreds of thousands of patients, that if you intervene early, you essentially eliminate hospitalization and death. And, I've now treated two waves. I have not seen one patient who's had COVID-19 in the first wave, get it again ...

So, the need for the vaccine doesn't exist. It's … been artificially conflated … offering people an artificial false hope solution in order to enslave them to be codependent on government. You know why my approach is so dangerous? Because not only does it treat COVID-19, [but] it treats anxiety. It tells people you don't need to worry.

My statement to the American people or whoever's listening is: Return to normal living. You do not need to worry. And by the way, there are nonprescription options … that can replace HCQ if your government or doctor are too stupid or vicious to give it to you. So, you don't have to rely on them. You can buy over-the-counter things that will save your own life. So, my point is, return back to normal life ...

It’s unbelievable the crime that's been done on the human psyche. I'm screaming to humanity: Don't be scared! Be cautious. Be smart. Use common sense. But don't be scared. Return back to life. Reengage in life.”

HCQ Mechanisms of Action and Alternatives

Over-the-counter alternatives to HCQ include EGCG (green tea extract) and quercetin, both of which are zinc ionophores and therefore work much like HCQ does. Quercetin works best when taken in conjunction with vitamin C, however, as the vitamin C helps activate it. Zelenko recommends taking 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C with it.

Now, HCQ does have other mechanisms of action beside being a zinc ionophore, so it’s a better choice, but if you simply cannot get it, EGCG or quercetin are viable stand-ins. Additional benefits of HCQ include:

• Inhibiting viral entry into the cytoplasm, in part by changing the pH
• Inhibiting cytokine storms through anti-inflammatory properties
• Stabilizing red blood cells, which improves oxygenation

“Since it has four different mechanisms of action, it's a very effective drug, and it has a half-life of 50 days in plasma,” Zelenko says. “But if you can't get it, you can't get it. So, I'll take quercetin or EGCG.”

The caveat here is you must implement this treatment within the right timeframe. It can be helpful to recognize we are in essence dealing with two diseases, or stages of disease, here.

First, there’s the viral infection, and second, there’s the immune over-response that leads to the release of inflammatory cytokines and agents that can cause blood clots. The key is to prevent the progression from the first stage to the second.

Prescription Help Is Available

Like many others who have dared run the gauntlet that is HCQ promotion, Zelenko has been attacked from several angles. His character has been assassinated in the press, his medical credentials questioned and threatened, and his online presence silenced. 

“I had had zero media experience before March 2020. I am of a quiet doctor who was taking care of his patients, living a serene life. All of a sudden, this all exploded on me ...

I was on Twitter, getting 10 million impressions per tweet. They shut me down last month for platform manipulation. I'm not even sure what that means. So, I had to develop my own website. It’s free and has my protocols in 20 different languages.”

To learn more about Zelenko’s protocol, be sure to visit his website, vladimirzelenkomd.com. There, you’ll find protocols not only for early treatment but also prophylaxis, along with studies that document the rationale for each of the treatment components and patient testimonials.

His website also includes access to telemedicine via “Speak With an MD,” which can overnight your medication. “So, if you live in a state that's tyrannical, you can have a consultation with Dr. Fields,” Zelenko says. “I had to develop this because there were patients around the country who didn't have access [to HCQ].”

HCQ should be available to most people in the U.S. at this point, but you do need a prescription, and some doctors are still unwilling or resistant to prescribe it. Other times, pharmacies can create roadblocks. “It may take some diligence but none of my patients goes without the medication written for them,” he says.

Early Treatment Prevents ‘Long Haul’ Side Effects

In closing, it’s worth noting that when you treat early, your risk of developing long-term side effects, commonly referred to as “long-haulers,” is virtually nil. Not a single one of Zelenko’s patients who received treatment within the first five days of symptom onset went on to develop long-haul symptoms afterward.

“I had patients that were long-haulers, but they came to me after that window, and they were already advanced in the inflammatory process. At that point, the cytokine storm had already taken hold. They had developed blood clots, some of them had pulmonary infarct, or strokes actually.

Others developed ARDS or catastrophic lung damage and pneumonias, and others just are not themselves. I don't know how to describe it, but it ate away part of their souls. They're not the same people. There's depression, there's lack of energy. There's a psychological impact as well.

So, it's not that I don't deal with long-haulers, I do. But the way to prevent the long-hauler syndrome is to intervene within the first five days, with appropriate antiviral medication in high-risk patients. That is 100% successful,” he says.

The Light of Truth Will Prevail

Zelenko refers to the COVID-19 pandemic and everything surrounding it as an information war, a propaganda war, and his primary objective and agenda in this war is to educate and speak truth.

“There's a lot of false narrative being pumped into the heads of people, to create fear,” he says. “In the Psalms of David, it says, ‘With crooked people, you have to deal crookedly.’ It also says you should learn from a thief.

So, I learned from the enemy, and I use their tactics to counter them. The main tactic is to spread truth. By the way, it's no longer dependent on me. I have second and third and fourth generation leaders that have taken on the mission and are really spreading the knowledge worldwide.

It's unstoppable. They could try to slow it down, and they are. But the truth will come out. The truth is coming out. And when the truth will be revealed, the people that try to obstruct it and use lies to slaughter, will be destroyed by it, God willing.

I am now more optimistic than I've ever been, simply because there's no more confusion. Life was very confusing. You didn't know what was good, what was bad. Now, it's very clear. There's much more bad, that's true. But I know where it is. I know where the enemy is. And I know where the good is. And a little light pushes away a lot of darkness.”

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Dr. Steven Gundry, a cardiologist, heart surgeon, medical researcher and author, is perhaps best known for his “Plant Paradox” book, which was a massive bestseller. He has now published another book called “The Energy Paradox: What to Do When Your Get-Up-and-Go Has Got Up and Gone.”

As the name implies, this book delves into the origins of fatigue and how to improve your energy at the molecular level. While he had not planned on writing a book about energy optimization, upward of 60% of his patients suffer from fatigue and a feeling of general malaise, so, clearly, this is something that affects an enormous number of people.

Time-Restricted Eating

The good news is there’s a lot you can do to improve your energy levels. One such strategy, which I embraced years ago, is time-restricted eating (TRE), a form of intermittent fasting in which you restrict all of your food intake to a certain number of consecutive hours each day.

As an added boon, this strategy doesn’t cost you a penny. If anything, it’ll save you money. Gundry was ahead of the curve on this one, having written about TRE in his first book, “Dr. Gundry’s Diet Evolution,” published in 2006.

“I had an entire chapter in that book devoted to time-restricted eating, and my editor at Random House at the time, Heather Jackson, said, ‘This is so crazy that I'm not going to let you do this.’

She said this. True story. And I said, ‘Look, I'm telling you, I've been doing this now for four years and I've been using it on my patients and it's not crazy. Here's the research.’ And she said, ‘OK. I'm going to give you two pages to make your case. I'm throwing the rest of the chapter away.’

So, I got two pages. I saw her at the mindbodygreen symposium last summer, before the COVID-19 outbreak. She came up to me and said, ‘You were right. I apologize. You weren't crazy, you weren't nuts. Everybody now knows.’”

Indeed, in recent years, TRE has gained a lot of recognition as mounting evidence shows the simple act of restricting the number of hours during which you consume food during the day will improve your health in a variety of ways, primarily by improving your mitochondrial health and metabolic flexibility.

As noted by Gundry, keeping your eating to a window of six to eight hours a day is an achievable goal for most people. However, most need to gradually ease into it.

“Metabolic flexibility is probably the underlying problem in the vast majority of diseases that we see and I wrote the book to try and make it easy,” Gundry says. “What I see in my practice is that a lot of people go, ‘OK. I usually eat breakfast at 7 and starting tomorrow I'm going to start eating breakfast — break-fast — at noon.’ And they fall flat on their faces.

They get headaches, they get hungry, they don't think right. They have no energy and they decide ‘This isn't for me.’ That's because they have a high insulin level, they're insulin resistant and can't use stored fat as an energy source …

So, in the book, what I do is, over a six-week period, I get them used to eating during a shorter and shorter time window. It's very much like learning a new exercise program. I couldn't run a marathon out the bat, but I can train and get there. So that's what we do.”

Part of the process involves retraining your circadian rhythm. Your food intake, which impacts the circadian rhythm of your gut microbiome, and other circadian rhythms are intricately connected, and the more you can realign these circadian rhythms, the better your whole body will function, including your mitochondria.

Crucial Notes on Meal Timing

At the most extreme end of TRE is the one meal a day (OMAD) routine, which can work well if you’re young and healthy. However, once you get into middle age and older, I believe it can start to backfire. I’m also not convinced that it’s healthy to remain on an OMAD diet in perpetuity, for the simple reason that your body will typically work best when you challenge it now and then.

During winter months, about six months out of the year, Gundry promotes using a two-hour, or even as short as a single-hour eating window during weekdays, and then eating during a much longer window during weekends. He’s been doing this for the past 21 years.

For me, cycling — mixing longer and shorter fasting intervals — has been a key to long term success, and taking the weekends off from this strict regimen may be part of why this strict regimen has worked so well for so long for Gundry.

“I think you've got to break it up. I don't do it all year around, and I break it up on the weekends, and the reason I do that is so I won't go mad,” Gundry says. Another important detail with regard to timing is to avoid eating at least three hours before bed. Even if you restrict your eating to six hours or less, if you eat too close to bedtime, you’re canceling out many of the benefits. As explained by Gundry:

“It's really important to stop eating at least three hours before bedtime for a couple of really important reasons. No. 1, you've got to undergo mitochondrial repair during the night.

You have to undergo brain cleaning during the night from the glymphatic circulation. Digestion takes huge amounts of blood flow, and if you're eating, all that blood flow is heading down to your gut when it should actually be going up to your brain.”

TRE Makes Most Diets Better

Gundry quotes data from Satchin Panda, which shows that rats raised on a standard American diet equivalent that also are put on a TRE regimen fare much better than those who are not on TRE. This despite the fact that they’re eating the same thing. The same has been shown to hold true in humans.

Remarkably, Panda has shown the average American eats for 16 hours a day. Essentially, they’re grazing all day long, stopping only while sleeping. About 90% eat for more than 12 hours.

Simply reducing your eating window to 12 hours would be an improvement. As noted by Gundry, “Big Food, Big Agriculture have convinced us that this is the proper way to eat.” In reality, the only thing these big businesses and their recommendations are good for is disease.

The Case for EMF Avoidance

Gundry and I are also in agreement about the dangers of electromagnetic fields (EMFs). I’ve previously written about how magnesium can help mitigate some of the damaging effects from EMF, and Gundry has a patient who appears to have had success using this strategy. Melatonin, which is a very potent mitochondrial antioxidant, is another potential mitigator.

“Melatonin is a very interesting way of mitigating against the bad effects of EMF,” Gundry says. “Now, as I talk about in the book, I used to think that people who said that they were sensitive to these invisible rays [EMFs] were out on the lunatic fringe.

But the longer I've been doing this, I've had some fantastic experiences with very credible people, who when we mitigated EMF got well. One patient was profoundly affected by her husband's AICD, a defibrillator, which was communicating his EKG with a satellite.

As soon as it went into him, she couldn't sleep next to him. She had migraine headaches. We finally turned off the transmitter in his AICD, and just like that, all of [her symptoms] went away. So, these people are canaries in a coal mine and we have to believe it.”

Leaky Gut Underlies Most Chronic Disease

While antioxidants like melatonin can certainly help improve mitochondrial function, I think there are better ways than simply piling on antioxidants. You also need to remove dietary and lifestyle factors that cause the energy depletion in the first place. EMF exposure is one environmental factor. Leaky gut, caused by lectins in your diet, is another factor that needs to be addressed.

According to Gundry, leaky gut is an underlying condition of most chronic disease, so, if you have a chronic ailment, chances are you have leaky gut. Thanks to Dr. Alessio Fasano, who heads up the Celiac Research Center at Harvard, we now have sophisticated tests that can diagnose this problem.

Fasano discovered the mechanism by which lectins cause leaky gut, and gluten is a lectin. When these and other food particles are able to cross your gut lining, they cause chronic inflammation, which requires a lot of energy to combat. This is one reason for your fatigue and general malaise. Gundry explains:

“If your immune system is distracted down to your leaky gut, first of all, it's not going to be available when [pathogens] come in through your nose or mouth. And secondly, your immune system is so hyperactivated that when it sees something that might not be all that important, it goes crazy and you get a cytokine storm. That, of course, is one of the major lethal consequences [of] the Western diet.”

Linoleic Acid Can Decimate Mitochondrial Health

Another dietary factor that decimates mitochondrial health, and thus energy production, is omega-6 linoleic acid (LA). “In the book, I talk about the Goldilocks effect,” Gundry says. However, LA is naturally found in virtually all foods, so it’s near-impossible to become deficient. The problem really is excessive intake, which is near universal in Western countries due to processed food.

The primary culprit here is industrial vegetable oils, which most people eat far too much of. If you’re eating a whole food diet, you’re more likely to have a healthy ratio of LA, but even then, it may be causing trouble if you’re eating too many LA-rich foods, such as conventional chicken, for example.

You can learn more about the mechanisms of action behind LA’s damage in “Why Chicken Is Killing You and Saturated Fat Is Your Friend” and “The Type of Fat You Eat Affects Your COVID Risk.” Olive oil is another food that is high in LA, but it also has other components that may modify some of the risks. Still, I choose to limit my olive oil intake. Overall, I try to keep my LA intake below 5 grams a day, regardless of the sources. Gundry has a more favorable view of olive oil, stating:

“If you limit your eating window, you actually stop that process from happening, which is really miraculous, No. 1. And No. 2, shameless plug for myself, with my Gundry MD high-polyphenol olive oil, you only need a tablespoon a day to get the equivalent polyphenols of a liter of olive oil a week.”

Surprising Benefits of Cheese

When it comes to fats, Gundry is a proponent of short and medium chain fatty acids. “For multiple reasons, I've been extolling the virtues of MCT oil since the ‘Plant Paradox,’” he says, adding:

“I think the saturated fats have other benefits. In particular, the saturated fats in cheeses may be one of the unsung heroes in longevity that I think needs more attention … I take care of a huge number of people who carry the APOE4 mutation, which is the Alzheimer's mutation. I noticed early on that cheese really elevated not only small dense LDLs, but also elevated for most of my patients’ oxidized LDL …

I don't like the traditional cholesterol theory of heart disease. On the other hand, I think oxidized LDL has an interesting place. What’s interesting is that when I've separated my patients into having them eat sheep cheese and goat cheese, I found dramatically different results.

I initially attributed it to the fact that sheep and goat have casein A2 and not casein A1. And I think casein A1 is a pretty bad actor. So, I said, well, I'm going to start letting my APOE4 [patients] have sheep and goat cheese, but in moderation. When I did that, I didn't see this oxidized LDL.”

One potential mechanisms for this might be because casein is a protein that can cause autoimmune reactions and contribute to leaky gut, which in turn contributes to increased LDL oxidation.

While most of Gundry’s autoimmune disease patients respond extremely well to Gundry’s plant paradox program, about 10% still do not fare well. Food sensitivity analysis has revealed a large number of them are sensitive to both casein A1 and casein A2.

Once their leaky gut is repaired, however, which may take up to a year, their immune systems typically become tolerant to these things again. “So, I think you can retrain the immune system once you get a good microbiome and seal the leaky gut.”

What About Meat?

While some autoimmune patients have reversed their conditions using a carnivore diet, popularized by Dr. Paul Saladino, who is a leading authority on the science and application of the carnivore diet, Gundry recommends limiting meat because of its effects on your gut microbiome. Interestingly, Gundry will be interviewing Saladino very shortly and that interview will be on his site. It should be a fascinating discussion.

“I have nothing against the carnivore diet as an elimination diet,” he says. “In fact, when Saladino was first on my podcast, he credited me as being the father of the carnivore diet because all plants are evil. And I went, ‘Please don't do that to me.’

I think one of the mistakes that people make in, particularly, a keto diet where they've eliminated fiber, you actually starve your gut microbiome from making butyrate. The other, I think worrisome, part about a carnivore diet is you tend to make more hydrogen sulfide. I'm a huge fan of hydrogen sulfide, the rotten egg smell … but again, we get the Goldilocks rule …

Some is really good for you, it’s really good for mitochondrial function, but a lot is really toxic. And there's some evidence with carnivore diets that you produce too much hydrogen sulfide. Now, I also understand the argument that if we eat a lot of gristle and a lot of mucin, basically nose to tail, that you can make butyrate by fermenting protein-based animal ingredients. I think you can.

But if you look at all the super long-lived folks, one of the things they have is really great production of butyrate. Butyrate, that short chain fatty acid, does so much good for mitochondria, I can't even begin to tell you. Well, I do in the book.”

I agree that a strict no-carb diet is a mistake. Healthy carbs — think plant foods rich in fiber — need to be cycled in, there's no question. Not every day, but certainly once or twice a week, even when you’re on a ketogenic diet. I recommend restricting carbs to about 50 grams or so for most of the week, and then increasing that to 100 or 150 grams once or twice a week once you’re metabolically flexible.

Protein, mTOR Activation and Exercise

Meat, of course, is also a source of protein, and while too much protein can be harmful by activating mTOR (thereby contributing to cancer and other problems), too little can be an unmitigated disaster, as I found out.

For a time, I aggressively restricted protein in an effort to minimize mTOR, and ended up developing sarcopenia (muscle loss). The lesson here is that you need protein, especially if you’re working out, and especially as you get older. With regard to mTOR activation, Gundry notes:

“The only way we can actually measure the effect of mTOR long term is insulin like growth factor IGF-1. I take care of a lot of super old people, 95 and above. I have a lot of 105-year-old patients that I study, and they all have very low insulin-like growth factors.

We've tried experiments with patients, really reducing their animal protein and replacing it with plant-based protein. I’m not taking protein away. Their insulin growth factors will drop 50 to 70 points in a matter of months, and I think that's pretty interesting.

The other thing that's interesting is that exercise will actually change your gut microbiome to eat branch chain amino acids before they get into you, and branch chain amino acids are one of the biggest stimulators of mTOR.

That's why, if you're building muscle and you're a body builder, you gulp branch chain amino acids all the time. So, I think, probably Saladino — who exercises and also does TRE and has pretty good IGF-1s — can tolerate a very high animal protein diet.

The other thing that I've written about in all my books is that beef, lamb and pork have a sugar molecule called Neu5Gc, and fish and chicken have Neu5Ac. Many people make an autoantibody to Neu5Gc, so they attack their own blood vessels if exposed to beef, lamb and pork.”

Lastly, Gundry points out the importance of exercise. When you work your muscles, especially the big muscle groups, myokines are produced, which help grow new brain cells and aid your mitochondria. However, contrary to popular opinion, you don’t need to exercise continuously for 30 to 60 minutes each day, Gundry says. It’s OK to break it into smaller segments.

“Even walking up and down stairs for a minute may be as effective as walking 10 minutes on a level surface,” he says. “Doing a plank while you're watching TV for a minute is a phenomenal exercise. My favorite is when you're brushing your teeth, do deep knee bends, do squats.”

More Information

This interview coincides with the release of “The Energy Paradox: What to Do When Your Get-Up-and-Go Has Got Up and Gone,” so to learn more, be sure to pick up a copy. You can also learn more about Gundry by perusing his websites, GundryMD.com and DrGundry.com.

He has a weekly podcast that you can tune into as well for a wide range of health information from Gundry and his guests. You can also find him on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

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