Coronavirus Conversations - Day 10: Fisetin, Caloric Restriction, Fasting, & Flattening the Curve

Hi everybody, Dr. David Perlmutter here. This is Coronavirus Update 10, and things are moving along at quite a clip, aren't they? We're going to cover a lot of material today. I'm going to go ahead and send you the very first link of some information that I think is really important. And this is a— we're going to jump right in. We've had so many questions from so many of you asking about air and Airborne transmission. How is the virus being transmitted? Why the social distancing? What else can we do? What else may be involved? There are probably a lot of factors that are involved here that we aren't hearing about. Yeah, we should be washing our hands. Yeah, we should be distancing ourselves from people. I think the big story that isn't getting as much attention is the viability of the virus on various Surfaces for as long as, as it relates to plastic, for as long as 3 days. That again means that things that people may have touched who sneezed or coughed into their hand and touched that may be still wet 3 days later might still be a transmissible vector for the next person who touches that and then, as we all do, touches his or her face. So I think this is very important information. There's been a lot of concern as to whether coronavirus, COVID-19, is specifically something that we could be exposed to via the air of somebody who may be exhaling and exhaling the viral particles. And I will address that, but I'd like you also to keep in mind I just sent you the literature— Hi, Blake. the literature that talks about what the latest science will tell us. And the study appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Association states as follows. Here's the title: Air, Surface, Environmental, and Personal Protective Equipment Contamination by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2 as it is named, from a Symptomatic Patient. Again, published In the Journal of the American Medical Association, what did they look at? Well, they looked at an individual who had mild upper respiratory tract involvement, wasn't real sick, maybe the kind of individual that you would keep in your home, who you're hoping to nurse along. And they did an evaluation of the air in the room where this individual was and Also the toilet bowl and sink. And what they found was really quite interesting, that the air samples themselves were negative despite the idea that there was some pretty aggressive environmental contamination. Hello, Randy. I'd like to do your thing live that you had mentioned. But anyway, the point is that— so the air itself was negative, but here's— we'll talk about why that might not be So valid in just a moment. But the point is that the area in the bathroom was positive, and this is the second time I've presented similar data to you all, that in and around the toilet and in and around the sink, that was positive for coronavirus. So we know therefore that it's likely being shed through the gastrointestinal system where they are now able then to detect particles of the virus in the toilet. But here's the other thing to keep in mind, that they then tested the air vents that were outflowing from where this individual was, and they were positive. Swabs taken from air exhaust outlets tested positive, suggesting that small virus-laden droplets may be displaced by airflows and deposited on equipment such as vents. And I'll tell you why that's important. You quarantine somebody in a particular room in your home, but you have central air conditioning and you're sharing air. So that is something to think about. You got one person sick in one room, the next person in a totally different room, doors are closed, but you're sharing air. And so that is something to keep in mind. It might be the time to close the vents in the sick person's room and open the windows. Just saying. Now, we've been talking about the notion of the best defense is a good offense. Well, we don't yet have anything offensive. We don't have anything to attack this virus with, any medication yet that's proven effective, although in earlier episodes we've talked about what is promising. We've talked about favipiravir in Japan, remdesivir being developed by Gilead. Having promise and certainly hydroxychloroquine that we heard about and we've talked about before how it has been demonstrated effective in vitro at least, meaning in the laboratory, not necessarily in people. Keep that in mind as you watch the news. But, you know, right now best defense is a good offense. We don't have an offense, so we've got to focus on the defensive part. What can we do to increase our defense? And that is another way of saying immune function. That's how we battle viruses. It's how we deal with infections of all sorts. I've created a video for you on YouTube. You'll see it right in the intro here, in the title of today's time together. It is on YouTube now. We posted it. I'm thinking that you'll probably enjoy that. But I want to talk about other things today that you might consider. I'm not going to tell you this is a valid approach to reducing your risk, but what you might consider to bump up your immune function. And there is a nutritional supplement; it is a flavonoid called fisetin, F-I-S-E-T-I-N. And fisetin generally is derived from fruit, typically strawberries. It is a, again, a flavonoid that has really some interesting properties that are being looked at in terms of lifespan extension and even enhancing health. It is called a senotherapeutic, seno meaning old therapeutic. And what fisetin has been demonstrated to do, I'm going to give you some information about that, is it gets rid of old and dysfunctional immune cells. So it targets our aged senescent immune cells and helps to rid the body of them. I'll read from this article. This, the natural product fisetin, has senotherapeutic activity in mice and in human tissues. Late-life intervention was sufficient to yield a potent health benefit. These characteristics suggest the feasibility of translation to human clinical studies. And of the things that they looked at, certainly some of the activity was immune function. So I think you might take a look at that. It's not a prescription item. I'm not going to say again it is the end-all as it relates to coronavirus, but it is something I'd like you all to consider. A senotherapeutic, a way of perhaps bumping up the giving you a rejuvenated immune system, a senolytic, lysing, destroying senescent immune cells. Now, we know, as I talked about yesterday, that one of the powerful risk factors for bad outcome is obesity and obesity. We know that obesity is characterized as being a low-grade inflammatory condition. Increases inflammation. And one of the interesting things that we've been talking about for months on our regular Empowering Neurologists podcast with all kinds of interesting leaders in the area is what sort of dietary things can we do that can help reduce inflammation and as an added benefit might have an impact on enhancing our immune function. And certainly one intervention that has been looked at in laboratory animals and Now in human trials as well, is something called caloric restriction and things like intermittent fasting or prolonged fasting. These are ways that, at least in laboratory animals, of bumping up immune function and reducing inflammation. How long does a person need to fast to really have an effect on changing these dynamics of immunity? Unclear. It may be as long as a 36-hour fast. But I'm going to give you some very, very interesting research now that looks at this, and here you go. Stand by. Take first a look at this article that I published on my website. And now the next one is the studies that talk about how caloric restriction and specifically how it specifically affects immune function. So this is really the home run that we might be looking for in terms of just one technique for increasing immune function. That's what this is all about. We don't have a drug yet, but we do know that our immune systems are playing a big role in not only getting this, but certainly having a bad outcome. So I'd like to move on to the notion of Flattening the curve. We're hearing a lot about flattening the curve these days, and I just want to be sure that everybody is clear that we're the ones who will flatten the curve, that it's not going to be flattened by anything that anyone's going to develop or anything that we are going to be given or told to do. Flattening of the curve is reducing the number of people who are affected at any given time, like in the short term. We don't want a lot of people affected in the short term. Why? Because it's going to terribly overburden our hospitals and ventilators and intensive care units. We know a lot of people are going to get this, but if we can stretch that out, we can have a better shot at getting an ICU bed if we need it or our parents need it. That's why this is so important. That's why the social distancing is important. That's why now that 20% of the American population is under significant restrictions in terms of their mobility. I think that is a terrific, terrific idea. My opinion is we need to think about extending that to a national type of recommendation, if not even a higher level of interaction with the public, because not all states are buying into this. We've got to do our best to keep the disease from spreading. Because that's how we can flatten the curve. Please take a look at that. Yes, I'm drinking— looking at questions here. Coffee is Purity Coffee. Thank you, Purity Coffee. It's organic and they send that to me, so what can I say? Let me turn to our questions and just jump right in. Okay, and thank you, Jessica Budlow, for your nice comments. Hello. From near Toronto. Hope everything's good up there. We know people up in Huntsville as well. Great. Is cash handling safe? That's a great question. I went to the ATM, took out a little bit of cash, and I didn't handle it without a glove. I'm gonna let it dry out for several days. Cardboard can harbor a virus for 48 hours. We know that cash was probably put in the cash machine today. By someone. Who that someone was, I don't know. So I think that that's an excellent question. The other place to be very concerned is the gas pump. I noted today at the gas station that there were gloves in a box at the gas pump for you to take to use when you pump the gas. I happened to have brought my own glove, but what a thought. Think of all the people who are grabbing that handle and who knows what they are doing. Hi, Kelly in Colorado. I want to say, let's say Jenny Paddleford. All of my links are on every one that we've gotten here. This is a good question. Are on drperlmutter.com. Go to the coronavirus section. Every study that we quote is listed there. Okay, United Kingdom. Hope things are going well for you there, and I'm glad you stepped things up. We were waiting for that to happen. And glad that happened. Thank you, Jessica Budlow, about the poems. I'll take suggestions moving forward for poems or other readings. Be delighted to look at those. I'll take a lot of suggestions. Even if you know that there's somebody's birthday that's going to be watching, I'll be delighted to do a shout-out for them like we used to see on live television in the day. Okay, actually Spelling again, I'm not sure what you're referring to. It might be fisetin, F-I-S-E-T-I-N. Look up at the very top. I think I have it there in the introduction. I bought it on Amazon, so there you go. Health Wisdom Magazine, good. Enjoy my interview today and let us know when that interview is posted. Thank you for the interview. That was great. So looks like I will be— we're gonna look at which countries have flattened the curve in just a moment. Thank you for reminding me. In fact, I will go to that now. Thank you for asking. So flattening the curve is something that many, several countries, not a lot, have done. And they've done it because they've taken this seriously. I will say that the countries that have not flattened the curve in any way, shape, or form include Italy, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Austria, the United States. But countries that have had a huge impact in terms of flattening the curve include, for example, South Korea. Go to the, the link and look at what South Korea is doing. To a lesser extent but significant is Japan. And this is not happening— and mainland China, of course, as well. It's not happening because they've developed a treatment. That's not what's going on here, everybody. What's going on is that people are are quarantining themselves. That is how this works. We're not doing that right now, and we desperately need to. It's the most powerful intervention that we have right now. So you know when you're driving around and you see people doing the wrong thing, maybe it's time to give them a shout out and say, "Hey, BTW." Think about what you're doing. Okay, get the kids off the beaches in Florida. I'm all in for that. All right, flattening the curve. Okay, so everybody, hi Peggy, thank you so much. I was gonna say hi to you. Thank you for your email yesterday. And Peggy, I wanted just to comment about what you said, and that is for people to get outside. Get outside, enjoy nature. It's good for your immune system. It's good Good for inflammation. And truthfully, I think, you know, when they say 6 feet away from people, I think if you're downwind from somebody that's biking by and they're coughing, think about that. If you're downwind from somebody, their wind is blowing between them and you, you might want to extend that distance. Okay, let me see if there's any question, anything else. All right, I'm going to No. Any updated news on drug treatments? Unfortunately, no. We see that both favipiravir and remdesivir, of course, are in trials. There is, as you all know, an immunization trial. We saw that happening in Seattle. That's getting underway now. The problem with the immunization— all well and good, I think it's great— but the problem is it's going to take a long time. Because there can be significant complications from vaccines. We saw that with swine flu. People developed some developed Guillain-Barré syndrome, and that is you know potentially fatal event. So you know above all do no harm in general, but sometimes you know you have to push and bend the rules a little a little bit. Whitney Whitney granddaughter of Helen Wilson McKenzie. Happy birthday to you. A shout out. Great. We're having fun now. Okay. Somebody's channeling the same thoughts and all good stuff. Okay. Well, New Zealand's closed your borders. Always great to live on an island at a time like this. That's for sure. And all right. Great. I think we've gotten. I don't see any burning questions otherwise. Will the summer desert heat kill the virus? I would suspect. So yeah, okay. Anyway, let me— oh my goodness, there's so many questions. Lysine, let me comment on that and then we will, we will move on. So L-lysine competes with L-arginine as it relates to the replication of herpes virus. It's why people who get fever blisters, other forms of herpes, are encouraged to take L-lysine because The herpes virus needs L-arginine to replicate. So if you can compete with the arginine by using lysine, perhaps that might be something that has benefit. So, but I can't tell you that's the case here for an RNA virus like like this coronavirus is, in contrast to a DNA virus like herpes is. All right, everybody, la di da. Take a look at the Take a look at the video that I posted on YouTube. I think you'll enjoy that. It's very instructional, and that's talking about the microbiome, the gut bacteria, and how that relates to our immune systems. I think there may be a powerful explanation there as to why there is a relationship between Western cultures and risk and risk for poor outcome. I think it might explain why— I don't know if there's any cases in Haiti as yet, but I We'll show you some images of my trip there and what we observed in Haiti where, at least as of yesterday, there was not a single case. So I'd like to have you all look at that and comment. Let me know what your thoughts are and we will get together tomorrow and visit and see where we are. Meanwhile, everybody take a deep breath. You know, again, we got to work on our defenses here, and we're going to have a much better immune system. We back off the TV in the evening, get some exercise, get the best sleep that you can. I'm doing my best, but up around, you know, about an hour earlier than normal. Not that I want to be, but that's just the way things are. I'm not going to say that I am completely divorced from stress on this whole thing. It's a It's an event. Hopefully it's a once in a lifetime and we'll get through it. And I believe that we will get through it. I'm going to read a poem and then we'll talk tomorrow. Everybody ready? Here we go. The poem is called Be a Friend. And I, for some reason, don't see the author. I'll do my best to find out who it is. Be a friend. You don't need money, just a disposition, sonny. Just the wish to help another get along some way or other. Just a kindly hand extended out to one who's unbefriended. Just the will to give or lend. This will make you someone's friend. Be a friend. You don't need glory. Friendship is a simple story. Pass the trifling errors blindly, gaze on honest effort kindly. Cheer the youth who's bravely trying, pity him who's sadly sighing. Just a little labor spend on the duties of a friend. Be a friend, the pay is bigger, though not written by a figure, than is earned by people clever in what's merely self-endeavor. You'll have friends instead of neighbors for the profits of your labors. You'll be richer in the end than a prince if you're a friend. Thank you, everybody. Please feel free to link this Facebook video to your sites or whatever people do to get this information out. I'll keep my eye to the grindstone or whatever to learn as much information for you tomorrow. And until then, bye for now.