Q&A on IG Live! Dr. David Perlmutter and Dave Asprey Talk Coronavirus

All right, guys, you can ask questions, I can ask questions. We can both answer them. So it is time. This is none other than the famous Dr. Perlmutter, who's in Florida. We're just comparing views. He's got palm trees, I've got fir trees. But we're both fortunate to be able to look at water. All right, here's one. Here's someone saying everyone's working from home and everyone's having issues with tech today. So it wasn't just us.

Now, that's true. It's get ready for it. It's going to be. There'll be a lot of tech issues, that's for sure.

Yeah. The good thing is I helped to build some of the infrastructure that's on the Internet today and know how it's all wired. It scales so we can put it in. But what you don't hear about is all the people who are working in data centers and in telecommunications keeping the stuff working, who are also putting themselves at risk. Just like people delivering your Amazon packages. So shout out not just to our doctors and nurses and emergency people, but also to the people keeping the wheels on the bus, because I appreciate you guys. Besides, network engineers are just cool. I just have to say that. All right, here we go. Colloidal silver. Best way to use it for the virus. Dr. Perlmutter, what say you about colloidal silver?

Oh, my gosh. That's our first question.

That's one of them.

You know, it's just a. I'm going to take. If this is player pass, I'm going to go pass on that truth. You know, I think there's a lot of interesting people talk about colloidal silver. The truth of the matter is I haven't really seen good data. So I'm gonna play or pass? I'm gonna pass.

All right, good deal. I'm gonna say it's broadly broad spectrum antimicrobial. It's probably a good bet. But we don't have data that says it's certainly a good bet, and that's a big difference. Also, I'm not a licensed doctor, so there you go. Do I like the idea of misting myself with colloidal silver? I. Before I get on an airplane, actually, I do that anyway, whether or not there's a virus going around, because I don't like to get sick and I fly all the time. I also, as soon as I get off an airplane and I get wherever I'm going, I take off whatever shirt and pants I was wearing and I put them off to the side. Yeah. And I. Those go straight in the laundry. And so I basically like quarantine my clothes because airplanes are disgusting. They're horrible and disgusting whether or not there's a new virus around. All right, so. And if you guys don't know just the incredible work that David Perlmutter has done, go.

Hey, Lise.

This is one of the guys who's really look at what food does to your brain and has just written a new book called Brainwash. But you've certainly seen his books about gluten and grains and just drpromutter.com yeah. So he's been on the show three or four times and has endorsed my books. I've endorsed his. Just one of the people I know and trust. All right, question from off vibes. Why do we think young moms, et cetera, are being put in the ICU from the virus? Do you have any thoughts on that? I know we talked on the show earlier.

I don't think that there is a specific reason that young mothers are putting the end intensive care unit. Except for. I think what we're seeing now is unfortunately, there are triage decisions being made whereby some people whose likelihood of recovery is lower, as in very older people, versus people who are in a position where they are responsible for others and that, you know, there's an interesting section in the New England Journal of Medicine just yesterday about this idea that there needs to be some decision making. Very, very challenging, difficult decisions are being made. So we do know that women have a significantly lower risk this time around of having this virus be a problem in comparison to men. Why that is, we don't know. We know that the XX and the XY chromosome array.

Now, if you guys like this kind of answer, I appreciate the hearts and thumbs ups and all that sorts of stuff and sharing it with your friends. I think that's a real answer. And Dr. Perlmutter, we also talked about how people are oftentimes not as healthy as they think they are. Especially in the US if you're eating regular inflammatory oils and you think I'm doing all right, well, you may not be where you think you are. And I think that may be a part of it.

Yeah. In fact, you know, some of the data right now indicates that there are a lot more younger people in America being hospitalized with coronavirus between the ages of 20 to 58. And you know, people say, gee, why would that be? Because, you know, these people, 20, 30 years old, they are healthy. But I'm sorry to report the reality is that the youth of America are not necessarily healthy. We rank in America at least 46 in terms of health care on the global scale with very high rates of obesity. And so we're not really super healthy as it relates to so many chronic degenerative conditions, high rates of obesity, high rates of diabetes, which we know are associated with worse outcome as it relates to coronavirus. So this is a real call to younger people to take the preliminary information about distancing themselves very seriously. That's your best defense in a situation where we don't have an offense.

Here's a question coming in. What about immunity if you get Covid? This is also something that you guys want to listen to the podcast. I'm going to get it out for you, hopefully within the next 48, 72 hours. But what do you think about that? Is it likely that you'll be immune?

This is a very interesting question, because what we now understand about this virus and how aggressive it is is it has the ability to hijack what is called interleukin 1 beta, a very important part of our immune system. We know that people who start off with low levels of this interleukin 1 beta have a worse outcome. British researchers are now looking at giving interleukin one beta to help bump up the immune system intranasally for people. But when you get the virus in some people, it lowers your IL1B and makes you even more at risk for a bad outcome. So, you know, all of the things that affect your immune system are things that we should think about. And most importantly, understand that the immune system is regulated by your gut bacteria. And that takes us right back to talking about food.

All right, speaking of that, we've got another question here. What are the specific foods or supplements you would look at right now to shore up your immune system?

The most important supplement I think that you can take for your immune system would be sleep, and I think so very underrated.

But.

Not getting enough sleep is devastating to your immune system. So it means turning the TV off in the afternoon and evening, not watching the TV during dinner, and do everything you can to get a good seven hours of sleep or maybe even eight hours. In terms of taking supplements, I think there's good data that in terms of your immune function, vitamin D and zinc are good choices. And as you and I talked about on our podcast earlier today, this fisetin F I s e T I n is, I think, something we should think about in terms of allowing our aging immune system to become more youthful and.

More functional by the way. If you read Headstrong or Game Changers or probably Superhuman, I mentioned that supplement Fisetin or Fisetin F I S E T I N because it's a new topic.

I'm actually just looking for your book because I have it right here.

Nice. It's. It's definitely one of the things that you probably want to have on hand to make your brain work better and for anti aging purposes. And I fully support what Dr. Fomodor is saying here about, hey, taking it now is probably a good thing to do.

And this is, you know, we've got to work on defense. We don't have anything on offense really that's available to us. So we got to work on defense. That means immunity. And we talk about immunity. We're talking about our gut bacteria. That's our most important line of events. It regulates our immune response and regulates inflammation. So eat the good prebiotic fiber foods like garlic, onions, leeks, broccoli, a Jerusalem artichoke if you can get it. Take a prebiotic fiber that you can get online or at the health food store. This is the time to be thinking about your medications that might be damaging your gut bacteria, like acid blocking drug that a lot of people take and may not necessarily need. One of the questions I think I just saw was where do you get fisetin? And you were spelling it wrong. Person who asked the question, it's F I S as in sam E T I N generally made from extracted from strawberries, but really got a lot of cool data about it in terms of rejuvenating immune function. Another question, let me just ask this. What's the correlation with COVID and sense of smell? Interestingly, there's been some reports of loss of sense of smell as being the harbinger for this having further symptoms. Not exactly sure why, but it may be that the cilia, or rather the nerve endings in your nose that are involved in transmitting scent to the brain might be colonized with the virus and then lose their function. Sanjay Gupta, I think was one of the earliest to call that out and something to think about.

So one of the things that we talked about on the podcast that is not yet on bulletproof radio that we're going to post as soon as humanly possible, was feeding your microbiome and someone here says inulin, which is one of the prebiotics, in fact it's the one that I use in the collagen bars for bulletproof, that that one makes them bloated. And so what are some examples of the types of prebiotics. I know you and I both make prebiotic formulas, but the types of things are going to feed good bacteria, which reduces inflammation.

Oh good. Well then again, you know, you should try to find whatever prebiotic you can tolerate. That said, if you do get a lot of gas from a prebiotic, that might help you with respect to social distancing. Who knew? Dang, who knew, right? So maybe inulin for that person. But you know, there are various prebiotics out there. Fructooligosaccharides is slightly better tolerated, I think acacia gum and baobab fruit. Acacia gum and baobab fruit are very well tolerated. But you know what? If you don't buy a supplement, just increase your consumption of things like onions, garlic, leeks, various types of vegetables have prebiotic fiber in them. And at the same time, ask yourself what you might be doing to traumatize your gut bacteria in terms of highly chlorinated water, or taking acid blocking drugs that you might not need, or unnecessarily taking an antibiotic, for example. Those represent pretty powerful traumatic events for your gut bacteria. We now have great research that shows, for example, that exercise is related to greater diversity of the bugs in your gut. So this is not the time to give up on exercise because you're upset about everything and becoming depressed. This is when you need exercise the most.

Is it the time to have the most, like to start an aggressive new exercise regimen or just to do moderate exercise?

I think it's a great time to start anything, whether it's learning a language, playing an instrument, exercise, whatever it may be. Because dedicate your mind and your thought process, process to whatever that new idea is. And really, most importantly, whatever you can do to offload all of this media that is making people very, very nervous and anxious and fearful is a good thing. I'm certainly not saying that we shouldn't be paying attention. There's wonderful information coming our way from governmental institutions and from others like yourself, for example. But I think to Bombard yourself with 247 is going to really tie you into your fear part of your brain, the amygdala. And what does that do? It compromises your immune system. So the more you watch the TV and the news and all the numbers, which are terrible, the more your immune system is going to suffer.

In fact, I have a challenge for you guys. You have no commute for the next at least 2 to who knows how many weeks. So pick up a copy of Brainwash, which is a book that just came out from Dr. Perlmutter where he talks about fear and anxiety and what's going on inside your thought process, how your brain is hijacking things. The exercises in there will help you make better decisions on everything you're doing. And I'm definitely a fan of that mindset that says, what should you do right now about all this stuff? Well, number one is just chill out, right? And that's, that's.

It'S hard to do, but you can't, it's not easy to do, but just limit your exposure to what's going, we all know what's going on. We all know. You'll know soon enough if, if there are, you know, new governmental impositions in the area in which you live. But you know, what you have talked about and what I've talked about is, for example, plant a garden if you have land. If not, get some pots and plant some vegetables or herbs. Good for you because you're reconnecting with nature. But also, hey, you might need to eat those vegetables at some point.

You know, there's something about life. Just planting things connects you with life. And I mean, you have nature outside your door. I have sheep and pigs and a giant garden. So that's, that's not typical though. But everyone here, you can have a houseplant or two. And if you look around, a few posts on my site about which ones filter air, which ones NASA likes, but you don't have to get those any plant and food bearing better. Grow some oregano, grow some rosemary. Those things actually have antiviral and antibacterial properties. They're good for you anyway, anti inflammatory.

So.

But when you do that, there is something about caring for a plant that is just deeply relaxing. So I'm just going to encourage that you do that at a minimum because it's not very expensive and it just, it's, you're not going to get to go outside if you're in New York in an apartment building. But you can do that and you should do that. It'll really change things for you.

I'm all in. And I want to say, Dave, we've been getting a lot of questions about fasting. We talked about it on the podcast and we did a fast on Sunday with all of our, well, not all. I mean, didn't participate with many of our podcast participants and we talked about it in the context of again, augmenting immune function. You know, it was a 24 hour fast. Some people indicate it might need to be a little bit longer. But we know that when we stress ourselves in this way, it's good for immunity.

Yep.

We've talked about the best defense is a good offense. We don't have an offense here, so it's all about defense. It's all about preparing our body's immune system to be as robust as it possibly can be.

Hi, Cedar. Sorry, I'm practicing social distancing with an 18 month old behind me and grounding while we're doing our podcast here. So just keep going.

No, I'm with you. I should probably go outside and show you what my project has been because, you know, we've been tearing out the yard to plant eggplant, kale, and you name it.

Yeah, it's, it's. I mean, in terms of putting your, you know, living your word sort of thing, this is the stuff. Yeah, I'm grateful to be able to live here. It's a pain in the butt to live in the middle of nowhere, but you can plant a plant and you can do those basic things and that is going to make you feel better.

You know, I will say one other idea that we have been looking at, and that is moringa. I don't know how familiar you are with moringa, but.

Oh, yeah, I love moringa in terms.

Of inflammation, immunity and also specifically as it relates to the lungs. So moringa is available still online for all your listeners and people who follow you. I'm sure you can find it online along with fisetin, vitamin D and zinc, although I think the zinc may be pretty hard to come by at this point.

Yeah, all the vitamin Cs are but N acetylcysteine, alpha lipoic acid. Those are very powerful and worth taking, I believe.

Yeah. And I would say that, you know, there is a pathway whereby they work, the NRF2 pathway that we can augment by even broccoli sprouts. So people can get broccoli seeds, sprout them for, you know, whatever it takes a couple of weeks. That's a great way to augment, to reduce inflammation and enhance immunity through this pathway called the NRF2 pathway. But I really want to say that the biggest issue right now is to calm down because the more fearful you are, the more you are compromising your immune system. And that is exactly what you don't want to do is. Wow, I'm wondering why that dog looks so green.

Dinosaurs. Sorry, keep going.

No, again. So really, you know, the sleep hygiene is such an important thing in terms of blue light exposure from your screen and just limiting all that goes on.

After supper, we're seeing a run surprisingly at TrueDark, the glasses company that I started on the glasses you wear during the day for screens because people are spending way more time on screens and then sleep is more important. So it's kind of funny. There are some businesses, the ones that make you stronger, they're doing okay right now as long as they're based on E commerce. And if they're in real time, do everything you can to support a local business that's supporting your health if it's even still possible for you. I highly recommend that. And on that note, David, it is time for us to end our Instagram Live. Thank you. You're@drperlmutter.com you guys go to itunes, subscribe to Bulletproof Radio. You're going to get this episode that contained all the stuff we talked about in a lot more detail. And I look forward to seeing you there.

Bye, Dave.

Bye. Tell your audience thanks for having.