Reset Your Immune System with Dr. Doni

Hi everyone. I'm so glad you're joining me for this stress recovery workshop. To me, stress, if we really want to get to root causes and solve health issues on a big level, we need to be thinking about it in terms of how stress affects us and how to help our bodies be healthy. Even though we're still continually exposed to stresses, some that we have some control over and some we don't have any control over and just acknowledging that and then saying what can we do little by little, because if we stress ourselves in the process of trying to get healthy, then we're really working against ourselves. So my strategy and approach is really how do we implement stress recovery without stressing ourselves more? That's what we've been talking about the prior two days. If any of you missed it, definitely feel free to just reach out to me and I can send you the videos which we'll have available until the end of the five day workshop, which ends on Tuesday. And so we can send you those and then we can also, you can either go into my stress warrior Facebook group or into IGTV Instagram tv and you'll see the videos there too. So let's see. So we covered, we started by understanding stress and the HPA axis and how stress affects our adrenal glands and our cortisol and adrenaline. So to get the big picture view of how does stress disrupt our health? And then yesterday we talked about specifically how does stress affect our digestion and how do we start thinking about healing our digestion. And we talk through some of the things that people try, especially based on conventional approaches and what can work or temporarily help and what doesn't really get you there and other ways to think about really helping your digestion heal by.

Looking at it as a functioning environment that basically needs an overhaul, needs a whole reset. And that can take time and diligence, but it's doable, it can be done. I see it for myself and I see it for patients all the time. Today we want to focus on how stress affects our immune system.

Tomorrow we'll talk about the nervous system and the next day we'll talk about hormones. So that we can really cover the common systems in the body that get affected by stress so you can really relate it to your symptoms and your body. For some people, stress affects basically essentially mostly one system. Some people may find that their stress exposure mostly affects their digestion. Some people it's digestion and immune system, or could be all four systems. I find it's helpful to look at it that way. Because then we know where do we need to be doing our rebalancing. It's also important to recognize that these systems communicate with each other. So the digestion is communicating with the immune system, communicating with the nervous system and the hormones. And so there's always this cross communication happening. And so the way I look at that is if there's a disruption in one area, let's say there's a disruption in the digestion and has the potential to throw off the other systems too. Or alternatively, if we heal a digestion, it has the potential to help reset the other system. So we start to exponentially able to gain our influence on our health by even addressing one system. And I do think stressing the digestion first is key because the digestion, that's where we take in our nutrients. That's where actually where most of our immune system in our body is located, in our digestion, 80% of it. So actually when we talk about immune system, we're right back talking about the digestion again because it's, that's where our immune system is located and that's where it's getting its information. Our immune system is getting information from what comes through our digestion tract and who's living in our digestive tract. So if we have imbalanced bacteria or other microbes sending signals or giving toxins, that's going to disrupt our immune system too. So again, just by helping your digestion, you're going to help your immune system. So let's start by just thinking about what are some of the common ways or symptoms that the immune system would indicate to you that it's been thrown off by stress. So I would be thinking of, first of all very common. One would be frequent infections. This could be anything from if say you're like, oh, I catch every cold that comes. You know, anyone I'm exposed to, I get a cold, or that every time I get a cold I end up with bronchitis. Or it could also be that you get some other infection. It could be a bladder infection, vaginal infection, skin infection, eye infection, basically little infections of bacteria and viruses or even candida. Anywhere in your body, to me is what we consider an infection just means, you know, this microbe is able to, you know, more than just being present. It's causing a problem, it's causing inflammation, it's causing symptoms, it's causing your body to have to go and try to protect you from it. And that would, those are very, I see it all the time. And that tells us if a person's like, if I see a patient who's getting, you know, say they're getting every cold, and then they end up with an infection in their tooth, and then they end up with an infection in their eye and the infection on their skin. And I'm like, okay, we got to realize that these are interrelated. This isn't just separate things going on. This is actually that their immune system is not able to help protect them. And they're being susceptible to probably bacteria that were there all along, but now they're becoming susceptible to them. And another way that immune system can show up as being stressed is allergic reaction. So say you're noticing you're more. You have more allergies than usual, you're sneezing, runny nose, itchy eyes, or just like, feeling like, oh, my gosh, now I'm allergic to this and this. And I. Now when I eat this food, I react to all kinds of immune responses. Also, immune system would be related to autoimmunity. So if you were diagnosed with any kind of autoimmunity, whether it's Hashimoto's in the thyroid or psoriasis or lupus or Crohn's or celiac disease or any of these, where the immune system is now trying to protect from itself, our immune system is not supposed to protect us from ourselves. It's supposed to know ourselves separate from something foreign. And it's supposed to know not to attack ourselves. But when it gets confused, that tells me that it's been stressed. And not only has the immune system been under stress, but it also tells me that our. That your DNA, the way your genetics are expressing themselves, have been stressed. Because what happens is we have our genetic tendencies, but they may not be turned on. You might have a tendency toward autoimmunity, say, from your family or hereditary, but you don't have autoimmunity happening yet. Well, when we are exposed to stress of various types, that can shift the genetic expression. So now the immune system starts turning into an autoimmune pattern because the genetics were turned on by stress. Now it's important to know that we can turn it back off again. That's not something you usually hear in the conventional medical system, because they don't tend to focus on that. But I'm telling you that there's ways that we can help reset and turn off the genetic expression so that your immune system isn't in that autoimmune mode. And it's some of the same things we use for help the stress recovery, the same Ways that we help your body recover from stress can help shift your genetic expression. So, you know, it actually comes back to some of the same tools and techniques. And again, that's why I find that, you know, helping us recover from stress can be so powerful. So is there any other ways that your immune system tells you that it's stressed? You can, you know, feel free to type in for me and I'll. Unless this way we can share a little bit. And also I'm curious by the way, after the conversation yesterday, if, as some of you were doing your little self check ins, especially related to the digestion, if you noticed anything, you know, what did you maybe notice that you did it before? Maybe you picked up on something happening in your digestion that you hadn't noticed before, that hadn't been in your awareness. And now it's like, oh, maybe my digestion is trying to tell me something.

And so I'm curious and yeah, let me see if I can see. Okay, there you go.

Sure, I could see the comments.

So yeah, so let me know what you've been noticing and what you notice about your immune system. Of course, right now the immune system has been such a focus because we've had this, you know, what we consider to be a kind of a new virus. Although it really, you know, we don't know exactly how new it is or what, you know, there's been these versions of viruses around. So it's just that it's gotten so much attention and caused so much devastation in the past year and a half. So we put a. We've come to really start thinking about.

The viruses and how they can affect us and what we can do to help protect ourselves from viruses. And of course, I also like to really mention that there's viruses around us all the time. We have.

Different viruses. 95% of us have been exposed to the monovirus, which is Epstein Barr virus. Most all of us have been exposed to the HPV virus, human papillomavirus. It said at least 90% of us will have HPV at one point in our lives. So these are viruses that are more like chronic viruses that once when we're first exposed to them, they could potentially cause an issue right then, but they also could just stay in our system. And then once we're stressed, once our system is overwhelmed, then these viruses activate. This is true with Epstein Barr virus. There's many people that end up realizing that at some point in their lives Epstein Barr virus becomes active again. And they can experience a lot of fatigue.

Headaches, Sometimes joint pains, and it can really affect their day to day experience. When the Epstein Barr virus becomes active again, and it's not very well established in the medical system, there is a test that can be done to tell us if Epstein Barr virus has become active. It's called the early antigen. If we do EBV IgG for early antigen and it's elevated, that tells me that the Epstein Barr virus has activated again because of stress on your system. So then we come back to helping your body recover from stress in order to help your immune system fend off C. Barr virus. Same with hpv. I help thousands of women around the world to fend off hpv, which in the conventional medical realm, when HPV shows positive, it would be on a Pap smear. If they test for it, it can show positive. And in the conventional system, they just watch and keep doing Pap smears and colposcopies to check and see if HPV causes, causes abnormal cells on the cervix or on the vaginal tissue. But they don't have a way to treat the hpv. And so, but what I've found over the years is that we can, we can help your immune system learn how to protect you from HPV and get that HPV to negative on the test results so that it's not able to cause abnormal cells. Because HPV can actually cause cancer cells on the cervix or vaginally, and it can cause cancer cells other areas of the body too. Except that we don't, we don't seem to screen or test for it in other areas. So the main place we find it is on the cervix and vaginal area because that's where we do a Pap smear test for. So these are viruses that I also like to bring attention to because some of the same approaches that I'm gonna talk about today can help with these more chronic viruses. And.

Same things that we can do to help fend off these viruses will help fend off other viruses, blue viruses, cold viruses, any virus that you have in mind, I believe, because when we get to the core of what helps our immune system work, then we're going to help protect you from all the things that you want to be protecting from. And at the same time, sometimes people get really worried because they feel like, based on old ways of thinking about the immune system, they used to think that if we support the immune system's ability to protect us from things like viruses, we might also increase autoimmunity. But I want to Reassure you that that's not the case, that science has not proved that to be true. And I don't see it clinically either, that actually if we support your immune system to protect you from things like viruses and bacteria, it doesn't increase autoimmunity. Autoimmunity is in a whole different path, a whole different channel. And we can, at the same time as helping your body protect you from viruses, we can help your body turn down the autoimmunity. So even though they seem like opposites, they're actually not opposites. It's more of a balancing act. You see, if we kind of help this side come down and help this side come up, we end up in more of a balance. And that's what we're doing, that's what we're aiming for, and that's what the approaches can help us do. So it's pretty amazing, in fact, if you think of it back to the genetics and genetic expression. If we help reset genetic expression, then your body's going to get back to its default mode. Think of it as like your default. If you were able to like hit reset on your phone or your computer, it goes back to default. That's the idea is can we press reset and help your immune system go back to protecting you from what you wanted to protect you from? And, and not having autoimmunity or allergies? So it's like this kind of realigning things to where you want them to be.

And so I want to go into talking about some of the ways we can do that, both specifically and on a bigger picture level. But I just want to see if you guys have any questions. I don't see anything in the chat there yet.

Okay. She's saying.

Okay, yes, this is a good one. She says she also notices.

Joint inflammation when she's stressed. And that's a good point. That inflammation is another way that the immune system shows us when we're stressed. When we're more stressed, we're going to tend toward more inflammation. And inflammation can show up as like joint pain. Headaches. Anxiety, I would say, is also a symptom of inflammation. Sometimes people just say they feel kind of puffy and inflamed or water retention. Sometimes you're more likely to have PMS type symptoms too. Sinus issues, basically. Inflammation anywhere in your body is a sign that your immune system stress. Thank you. That's really, really. I love that point. And, and it's very true that that's one way sometimes that you realize that your immune system is Stressed that you start just feeling more inflamed overall.

And she's saying it took five years to get rid of probably one of the viruses she's referring to.

And this comment is she's been trying to cut out sugar as I'm having more with being stressed. Okay, so this is a really good transition to how do we help our bodies work, help our immune system recover? Because it's true, like, sometimes when we're stressed, then we tend to eat the foods that I know, right? When you look at it, all we can do is just laugh at ourselves because it's like we can see that when we're stressed, we end up eating the things that are going to be harder for our immune system, like sugar, right? When we're stressed, we're going to tend to be like, okay, where's the sugar? And of course, when we consume more sugar and we're talking about actual sugar, like cane sugar, not so much fruit. Although some people do find that increasing their fruit can affect their immune system also. But for the most part, I'm talking about like a spoonful of sugar. And when we eat sugar, it shows that it reduces our immune system's ability to protect us from infections for something like eight hours, every spoonful of sugar. So, you know, if you think about it, it's like, oh, my gosh. Every time we have sugar, we're dropping our immune system for a period of time. Oh, my gosh. I remember noticing this when I was back when I was a nature Catholic medical student and I would have sugar. And then I just knew if I had any sugar, I was way more likely to catch the very next cold or sinus infection. And sure enough, and I was like, oh, my gosh. Every time I thought of eating sugar, I would just have to remind myself, okay, I don't want to go through trying to recover from another infection, so I'm going to skip the sugar. Or if I eat sugar, then I'm like, okay, what am I going to do to help help my immune system protect me until the sugar wears off. But yeah, and it's also been known that sugar is inflammatory, so it increases inflammation in the body. We know that sugar over feeds certain bacteria and candida in the digestion. So sugar can disrupt the gut microbiome. Sugar is also associated with cancer, which is cancer has been also associated with stress in the immune system. Part of the job of the immune system is to monitor for cancer cells. So if our immune system is not working well, we become more susceptible to cancer, too. And cancer Cells just replicate way faster when there's sugar in our environment. Let's see. Okay, so she's asking. Yeah, how to. How to. How to handle the sugar cravings. What I find is.

I don't tend to. Again, because now you guys heard me say I don't tend to like to make really drastic quick moves because I find that for a lot of people, that's just more stress. So cutting out sugar a hundred percent overnight, you know, kind of like cold turkey, no sugar, you know, potentially could be a stress on your system. You're going to go through some withdrawal symptoms from taking away the sugar. You're likely to, you know, feel tired, you're likely to get a headache. You're likely to, you know, have your mood fluctuate because you just made a big quick change. And so as much as sugar can be an issue, I would try to go about it a little bit more gradually, especially if you realize that you've been having way more sugar than, you know, than you'd like to. I mean, there's sugar that we do on easily because we're literally taking a spoonful of sugar and putting it on our coffee or tea, for example, and you're like, okay, let me do a half a teaspoon or let me do some other kind of sweetener instead of sugar. Like, even if you switch to stevia, if you like stevia, or if you can switch to. Even if you could switch to a little bit of honey, that would be better. Although honey is fructose, it's a fruit sugar, so you have to be careful with that, too. And, you know, so you kind of have to think, what could you switch to? There's some other sugar alternatives like Monk fruit and Xylitol. But also sometimes you might be able to just not have any sweetener and get used to the taste. But there's also times when sugar comes in and like condiments, you know, if you have mustard or ketchup, just the simplest condiments, or salad dressing, if you look at the label, a lot of times they put sugar in there. It makes me so mad because we really don't need sugar in these things in order to make them taste good. So really go through your refrigerator and your cabinets and look at the labels over the next day or two and say, hey, is there sugar sneaking in? We didn't even. You didn't even want it there. You didn't even choose it. And next time you buy a new one, look before you buy it. And because most always I can find A version that doesn't have sugar added. Like it'll say cane juice or cane sugar. Usually then buy the one that doesn't have that so that you, because if you're going to have some sugar, you want to, for me anyway, I feel like if I'm gonna have sugar I wanna kind of choose it on purpose. Not just in some place that I don't really need it. A lot of times it's in beverages, it can be in mixes. If you buy like a, let's say even if it's a gluten free pancake mix, if it's got sugar added or even I find it in gluten free granola, sometimes they put in sugar. I'm like, please don't put sugar in my LD food. So yeah, you know what my point is, is start to gradually reduce your sugar. So if you've been having, let's say you've been having, you start to realize you've been eating, having sugar in like, I don't know, five times a day, maybe you go, okay, let me reduce it to four times a day, let me reduce it to three times a day, let me reduce it to two times a day. Because if you, even if you do that gradually over a week or over two weeks, you know what I mean? Gradually, so that it doesn't trigger the withdrawal symptoms and the cravings are a withdrawal symptom. The cravings are your body saying, hey, where does sugar go? And you're going to try to decrease it in such a way where you're not, you're not bumping into too many cravings. So if you try to drop it overnight, you're probably going to have a lot more cravings. But if you go slowly and you gradually shift your amounts, then you're less likely because your body's going to adapt and, and get used to this new normal gradually over time. And so that's one way I would say to help prevent the sugar cravings is just decrease a little bit more slowly. You can also think about replacing the sugar with protein or kind of anytime you would normally have sugar. Make sure you're getting enough protein. Which to me, depending on of course your body size and your activity level, I usually would say each time you eat you need to have about 10 to 12 grams of protein. So whether that's, you know, three to four or five times a day, you need to have 10 or 12 grams of protein. So when you sit down to eat or especially if you're having a sugar craving, but if you sit down to eat, ask yourself where is the protein? And make sure that every time you eat, you have, you have some protein and healthy fats there because they're good. The protein is going to help sort of carry your, maintain your metabolism and your blood sugar levels so that it's usually when we crave sugar, it's because our blood sugar levels went up and down and up and down like a roller coaster. And if we more like have our blood sugar levels going up a little bit and then down a little bit and then up a little bit and down a little bit. So like the kitty roller coaster, that's what you more like want. And the way to do that is to have smaller meals with less carbs overall, not just sugar, but less carbs overall with protein and healthy fats. So now you're really managing your blood sugar levels. And we talk this through totally in the stress remedy program. It's a lot about balancing the blood sugar levels because imbalanced blood sugar levels increase inflammation and drop your immune system. So it really is so important to help balance your blood sugar levels not just from the sugar spoonful of sugar, but from any carbs. If you're having, even if you're having a lot of vegetables and fruits, but that's, it adds up to, let's say, 30 grams of carbs in a meal, you're going to still get this roller coaster ride where you, you know, the fruit and vegetables or even rice and potatoes can raise your muncher up and then it dies. And then you start to get cravings again and you feel tired and grumpy and then you, you know, you're choosing healthier carbs, but it's still sending you on a blood sugar roller coaster. That can happen. And so wait. And not only does it disrupt your blood sugar, but usually throws off your digestion too. So you're more likely to feel bloated and have weight gain and high cholesterol. These all go together because when your blood sugar is fluctuating like this, it's, it's causing the body, the liver has to decide what to do. So the liver is going to say, what do we do with all this high blood sugar? And it's going to turn it into cholesterol, it's going to turn it into triglycerides, it'll turn it into fat, usually around your waist. And fat cells are inflammatory. So these fat cells start getting more inflammation. That's why the high blood sugar levels are inflammatory. And it starts saving it as fat in your liver, which is also Inflammatory.

We don't want these spikes in blood sugar. It's just going to perpetuate the stress in your body. That's why we start with blood sugar. Balancing, I would say is a perfect place to start. First of all, helping with your stress recovery overall, but also helping with your immune system. So many times I find that even with HPV cases here we are thinking this is a virus and we're going to use specific nutrients to go after the virus, which we definitely do. But if I see that someone's blood sugar is running high, I know that we have to correct that in order for their immune system to be doing a better job of fending off hpv.

Something a lot of people don't know is that too much stress can actually create an abundance of health problems like high blood pressure, high blood sugar, anxiety, migraines, insomnia, even for fertility issues. This is because high stress puts your adrenal glands on overload. They release cortisol and adrenaline which controls your digestion, hormones, immune system, energy focus and even your emotional response. So how can you beat stress when you don't know where to start? That's why we have a free 7 day stress reset program. It's designed to help support weight loss, digestive healing and hormone balancing. It's, it includes support for integrating self care, daily tips come to you by email and video. Gluten free dairy free meal plans as well as grocery shopping lists, journal pages and more. This free program will help you beat stress and put you on the path to wholeness in your body. Get your plan now for free@drdani.com.

So I hope that that makes sense and it's helpful, but that's a really, that's a really important place to start and before even adding supplements. In fact, they've shown in studies now that people who have higher blood sugar levels or even diabetes are more susceptible to COVID virus, for example. So COVID virus is also teaching us that it's important to manage our blood sugar levels in order to have a healthier immune system. And you know, that might not be something we automatically put together, but the research really shows it and I see it all the time clinically. So that's an important place to start. Also with food, in terms of food and the immune system, yes, you can choose to eat foods that are high in, let's say vitamin C and zinc and vitamin A. Great. But also keep in mind that if you, you can only eat so much of those foods. Right? So yes, have some colorful fruits and vegetables, but if you end up, like, some people will say, okay, I'm gonna have a lot of juice, right? You're. Even if you're making juice at home or you're purchasing juice, be careful, because a lot of times they add sugar to juice. But also to keep in mind that if you make yourself a big juice, as. As wonderful as it sounds, it's like you're like, oh, yay. I'm gonna put all these fruits and vegetables and greens and banana and fruit. You know, what can happen is this shake becomes so it's filled with so much stuff that it ends up being too high in carbohydrates. And now your healthy shake is actually pushing your blood sugar up too high and disrupting your digestion because it's just too much at once. I mean, it's definitely possible to have too much of a good thing.

So just sometimes I'll say just if you're going to make yourself like a smoothie or green juice or something, have a small amount at once. You know, calculate how many grams of carbs am I putting into this yummy smoothie or drink, and let me just have, you know, maybe 20 grams of carbs. And make sure you put some healthy protein in there. I would add, if it's pea protein, rice protein, collagen protein, some sort of protein, because you need to balance the carbs with the protein, and I would really add a healthy fat. Also, I usually add to my shakes organic flaxseed oil, but you could also use MCT or, you know, coconut oil or a different kind of oil if you have a preference. So you can have the fats, you can have the protein, and then you can have, you know, an okay quantity of carbs or fruit and vegetables. But be careful, because sometimes these smoothies and shakes end up being just way more than your body can actually use. In the moment. We'd like to think that we can swallow it and our body's gonna use it all day long, but it doesn't work that way. Our body has to deal with whatever we swallow right then. So it can only absorb so much vitamin C, for example. It can only absorb so many other nutrients or use those nutrients in a period of time. So with vitamin C, for example, I believe. I mean, I always think of it as about 500 milligrams that the kidneys can absorb and that the body can really utilize. Sometimes we'll do 1000 milligrams of vitamin C. We're talking about oral doses at once. But if you're taking more than 1,000 at once. It's okay. Aphrodite.

If you're taking more than 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C, you might not actually benefit from it. And so I encourage you to space it out over the day, especially when you're trying to help your immune system to protect you from whatever kind of immune challenge you want to space it out. So we usually do 500 or no more than a thousand milligrams, let's say maybe four or four to six or eight hours apart so that you can actually absorb it and use it. And so that's an important thing to know about vitamin C. And there's, you know, there's different kinds. People can get vitamin C from different sources. You'll see all kinds of different vitamin Cs out there. The chemical name for vitamin C is ascorbic acid. That's not a problem. That's just the chemical name of vitamin C. So don't worry about that. If it says ascorbic acid, it's more a matter of.

How well can this vitamin C get absorbed. And so sometimes I'll also choose vitamin C in a liposomal form. Liposomal just means that they, in the product they put vitamin C and something called choline or lecithin that helps the carry that other substance like vitamin C across the cell membrane into the body. So we use liposomal for things like glutathione, which is an antioxidant. It can also be used for vitamin C. And so some. That would be okay if you choose a liposomal vitamin C. And you can get liquid powders, capsules, all different kinds of vitamin C. I was just going to look. This is, this is a vitamin C support that has 400 milligrams in a capsule from Acerola. It's a really good source of vitamin C. This one also has quercetin, hesperidin, hibiscus and rutin. These are really like bioflavonoids. These are, these are plant substances that are also going to be supportive to the immune system and stabilizing to blood vessels, decreasing histamine reactivity. Because histamine is also part of our immune system, that's what often we associate with allergies would be histamine, but not just pollen and things like that. But there's certain foods that can trigger histamine, like usually aged foods, vinegars, fermented foods, nuts, gluten. So if you find that you're having a lot of histamine. So these itchy eyes, runny nose, or even even sometimes Digestive symptoms, then we might need to be managing the histamine better. And I also like to manage histamine when a person has, like a cold virus. Because when you have a cold, viruses, you think about it, or any other kind of virus where you get like, runny nose and you're just blowing your nose and sneezing all day long. Oh, my gosh, it's like a faucet. Well, that's. We can help turn that off using a natural antihistamine. And I find that really helpful. Like, say you have a runny nose. It's. What happens is when you have a virus and you get all this extra fluid, the body's trying to protect you from the virus. So it's getting the. Making the fluid to try to clear it out is the way I think about it. But what can happen is when we have a lot of extra fluid around in our sinuses, in our mouth and our throat and our. In our lungs, then bacteria like to show up, because bacteria love it when it's moist and wet. Then people tend to get a secondary bacterial infection. They'll know when you have bronchitis or sinus infection, ear infection, you can get a bacterial infection on top of the viral infection. And to me, the thing that makes us most susceptible to that is just having all this fluid sitting around. Whenever I get a virus or runny nose, my whole strategy is how do I keep that fluid moving, Blowing my nose, I'm coughing it up, spitting it out, and I'm using his ferritin, which is in this vitamin C. But you can also get hesperidin by itself. The same with quercetin. I just find that hesperidin works better in many cases. And hesperidin is not like. I mean, yes, you could also choose a conventional antihistamine, but those are really. Sometimes those are too strong sometimes. Then you're too dry. And so we don't want to go to that extreme either. We want just a nice gentle antihistamine to help turn off all. Turn off some of this fluid production. And so we use the hesperidin as a natural antihistamine. And again, we dose it multiple times a day. That's one of the key things I find that people miss when they're trying to protect themselves from or fend off an infection is that if you're only taking your doses like once a day or twice a day, it's not enough. Because these herbs and nutrients, they. They only last for, let's say, four hours, six Hours at the most. So you have to repeat your dosage. You have to be like, okay, I'm going to take them. And that's why I often tell people, take your doses every four to six hours or three to four times a day when you're trying to fend off the virus, because otherwise you're not going to the dose the thing that substances are wear off and not be protecting you until your next dosage. So you just have to kind of get used to and be prepared. Okay, I'm going to dose again and dose again and dose again. But it's worth it because I did all kinds of try. I had so many infections earlier in my life that I got to try out many different protocols on myself. And I figured out that that's how I could get myself better the fastest was by more frequent dosing. And so anyway, so that's how we use vitamin C and hesperidin. There's also. You hear about zinc, which you can get separately. You can get. This is like a 54 milligram per capsule. You can get. I love Vitamin A is one of my other favorites for helping with viruses because vitamin A is very active in the respiratory tract in the sinuses, and not. Vitamin A is also very active in the digestion and the urinary, like the bladder. Vitamin A helps us make secretory IGA part of our immune system, and it's also directly antiviral. Vitamin A can be really amazing. The thing is that our bodies normally would make vitamin A from beta carotene. And we can, although some of us genetically just don't do as well converting beta carotene to vitamin A. So sometimes it's hard to get enough vitamin A because usually we get it from more like fish sources. And so if you're not eating a lot of fish or fish liver, like a cob liver oil, then you're going to get vitamin A. But if not, you might not actually be getting very much vitamin A in your diet when you might not be converting it based on your genetics. There's not really so much of a test for that. But if you are getting infections, you can probably figure, okay, my vitamin A is probably low. And if, you know, you've not been consuming much of it. So we can use vitamin A. Now here's the thing is that we have like, with all of these nutrients, we have clinical doses. This is why I went through training as a nutritionist and an age of doctor and I'm certified as a clinical nutritionist because now I know how to Use nutrients in a clinical way, not just, you know, vitamins as like a multivitamin or essential. What's essential for humans? No, we want to use clinical doses. And these are not, you know, this is not what you're going to find at the regular pharmacy or health food store because they're putting this on the shelf for anybody to grab and they're not, it's not some, they're not having someone help them manage the doses or know how long they're taking it or how much they're taking it. So just know if you grab a vitamin off the shelf, it's probably going to be a lower dosage and not a good quality and a less effective form. Even vitamin C and zinc can be lower quality. When you just buy it off the shelf, you probably aren't even going to get affected. Vitamin A over the counter because it's just there is more of a concern. A person could purchase a vitamin A and take too much with any of these vitamins. I mean, if a person takes 20 pills a day, at some point they're going to have too much. So don't do that. Don't take 20 a day of anything from my perspective, because, you know, these nutrients, you'd have to do it like, you know, for a whole year. But eventually you could have too much vitamin A and then there's nothing lethal about it. You would just not feel good and stop taking it and feel better. But still no reason to do that. You know, we just want to get, we're just trying to get enough to have a clinical effect. We're not trying to overdo it. And so if, you know, of course, if you're pregnant or potentially pregnant or breastfeeding, we can't do as high doses of any of these things because a lot of it hasn't really been studied. Well, it's very difficult to ethically study nutrients and herbs with pregnancy and breastfeeding. And so the studies, there's some studies, but not enough. And so we tend to just need to under do underdosing, lower doses if you're potentially pregnant or breastfeeding. But for the others of you, you could use a little bit more, say zinc and vitamin A in order to help especially during an infection. Like so if maybe you're sick for 10 days or two weeks, you can boost up your levels, help your body. Same with vitamin D, you could take a little extra, boost your immune system because now we know the vitamin D also helps the immune system, help you fend off this infection, get through it, feel Better and then go back to your usual doses. So we consider that like a short term clinical use based on a situation that's going on. Same thing with a bladder infection or any other kind of infection really. And I help patients with this all the time, like every day, every week. A lot of what I do is help people to get through various kinds of infections, hopefully without antibiotics. Sometimes they need to take antibiotics and we do all of this alongside the antibiotics. And I can guide them. And then I would say to them, as soon as we get through any kind of infection, with or without antibiotics, our goal needs to be how do we help prevent you from getting the next one? Because as soon as you have one infection, you're more likely to get a next infection. Especially if you had to take antibiotics, you're more likely to get another infection. So we need to help your body recover from the antibiotic use, from the stress that happening in infection, so that you can prevent the next one. And a lot of times when we are under the weather or sick, we tend to eat foods we don't usually eat. Also, you know, we're going to turn towards, you know, something sweet because we, we have a sore throat. Let's say you're eating ice cream because you have a sore throat. Well, ice cream has dairy that increases phlegm. It has potential food allergens like casein and egg in there. It has sugar. So, you know, try to remind yourself, okay, if I'm feeling sick, let me, let me instead go for the classic, you know, chicken soup or broth of some type. If you're vegan, get some sort of broth and that's going to be hydrating electrolytes, immune support. And then if you need something cold, then, you know, you could always use ice. For sore throats I love to use salt water and I'd love to mention that a bit here too because salt water is, salt is just naturally antibacterial and antiviral. It decreases inflammation. So it's very soothing. So if you do the classic put your sea salt in water and gargle it, you're going to be anti inflammatory and killing whatever might be causing the sore throat to begin with. And we can use salt as a nasal rinse too. You've probably heard of like a saline nasal rinse which you can purchase. Sometimes I find we need a little bit more salt than saline, in which case we can make it ourselves. But again, you got to be careful. You don't want to overdo anything. You can even overdo saline nasal spray Spray, I've seen it. So we don't need a bunch of I already told you guys, we're trying to decrease the fluid in your sinuses. We're not trying to leave a bunch of extra water in your sinuses that the bacteria are going to hang out in. No, we just need a small amount to be able to get a quick rinse of sodium, basically, or salt, which sea salt. It has all the minerals in it. So it's a much more balanced way to do salt because you're not just getting sodium, you're getting all the minerals. But that is going to be anti, inflammatory and antibacterial. So we can use this a couple times a day to help you recover. Now I also have had a lot, a lot of good results with using silver as a liquid in a sinus rinse or in a throat spray. We can also use silver topically too on any kind of rashes and things. But the silver, this we're talking about silver, that's pharmaceutical grade nanoparticles of silver. So it doesn't build up in your body. It's just going through being antimicrobial and going right out. It doesn't have any kind of buildup of silver. But silver is known for so long as an antimicrobial. And we can use nasal spray silver, we can use it as a throat spray and so on. And you can use that as prevention if you think you might be exposed to a virus or other infection or you could use it two or three times a day when you're sick to help your body fend it off and recover. And these, these things I'm mentioning we have available through my website if you go to Dr. Donnie.com under the store and it's at the moment 20% off. So this way, if you want to try something and free shipping in the United States, then you can, you can do that. Let me see. There's also combination products, by the way. And so a lot of times if we're thinking, oh, we need vitamin C and zinc and A, and and then maybe we want herbs that are antiviral and immune supportive like echinacea astragalus and maybe some lysine as an antiviral amino acid. So we, it starts to be a lot of products to juggle. You know, you're like, how am I going to do all this? So I tend to, tend to like to be efficient with capsules. And so I look for combination products that are effective. And I have a couple favorites. One, for example, is this One that's just called immune support. And it has some vitamin A, vitamin C, zinc. It also has herbs like astragalus, elderberry, endographis, echinacea. So these are. The thing, I guess I want to clarify is that when we talk about these herbs and nutrients, it's that they are. When we get. We could get into lots of specific details about the immune system and how they function. But if you imagine that the immune system is like a whole army of different kinds of immune cells doing some of them making antibodies, some of them directly attacking a foreign substance, some of them, their job is to then remove that the. And repair the area where the infection is, you know, so really doing. They all have different parts of the immune system, have different jobs. And so you'll hear about different things like T cells, for example, and antibodies. And so when we look at the research on these different herbs, for example, we see that. And another classic example would be a mushroom extract the mushrooms to the. We actually can research and see that they improve the ability for our immune system to protect us from infections of various types. And again, that's different than. It's not going to cause the immune system to be more autoimmune. It's working on a totally different part of the immune system. And so that's how these are working. It's actually helping your body work better. Because sometimes I think, people think, okay, is it just like a masking it? Is it somehow just sort of, you know, pushing something somewhere? But no, this is actually helping your immune system work better, do a better job for you and overcome some of the depletions that were caused by stress. And so that's how, you know, they can, you can use them together because they're actually working together more synergistically. And then you, you may have to take one or two of these every four to six hours to really get the most benefit out of it. And again, even if I, you know, anything I mentioned, you always have to keep in mind your unique allergies, sensitivities, reactivities. You know, you tend to, let's say, you know, you can be allergic to echinacea, My father's allergic to echinacea. So you have to know your body, and if you take anything, you feel worse, then you got to stop and figure out, hey, what just happened? And we have to re. Figure out what to do instead. But if you're choosing products that are hypoallergenic and they don't contain dairy and gluten, and they don't contain sugar and they don't contain colors and fillers, then you're way less likely to have a reaction. Then if you do have a reaction, you're pretty sure that it's from the herbs or some ingredient in there. And if you tend to be highly reactive, I'm more likely to use individual ingredients. So if you do react, we can figure out exactly which one it was. If you're not as reactive, then you can definitely use more like a combination formula so that, you know, you can just get more in in a single pill. But you also have to be careful because sometimes with combination formulas, they put too many things in there. So now the doses are too low. You know, if you're taking something with, you know, 20 ingredients, then they can only fit so much in each pill. So there's only teeny tiny doses in each pill. And so you really have to take a lot in order to get any benefit. So to me, that doesn't solve it either. If you're going to use a combination formula, make sure that it has actually effective doses in the, you know, in an amount of pills that's not enormous because otherwise you might be like, hey, I might as well swallow four separate pills and get more than what I'm getting in this combination formula. So that's something to consider too. Let's see. So this is coming from this perspective of things that you can take especially to prevent.

Some sort of acute infection, help yourself recover faster. I'm also, again, I meet people. If you're a patient or if you would like to be a patient, then that's something that I help with, is helping people through acute situations so that we can hopefully avoid antibiotics. Because that's the thing is if we don't need to take antibiotics, we can do it without. Antibiotics is better because antibiotics can disrupt the gut bacteria and the digestion, and then it's a further stress on your immune system. Right. So but if you need antibiotics, okay, but let's just make sure we're doing it with support because the antibiotics are just killing the bacteria. They're not going to kill a virus. They're not going to support your immune system. They're just going to kill the bacteria. Right? So we need to do the other things alongside killing the bacteria in order to really help you recover. And sometimes we need some more anti inflammatories in there, especially if you start getting coughing and pain and shortness of breath and, you know, pain in your sinuses and cleaning your ears. Okay, now we need some anti inflammatories like, and there's natural anti inflammatories. We can use bromelain, we can use curcumin, we can use. We can use N acetylcysteine to help clear the phlegm. There's so many tools actually that we can use to help your body recover from. It's trying to protect you from the infection, but in the process it's getting everything all inflamed. So we need to help fight off the infection and help your body recover from the infection. Then again, we need to stop and say, okay, what's going on that you are susceptible. Do we need to help with blood sugar issues? Do we need help with your adrenals? Is your cortisol too high or low? If your cortisol is way too high or too low, you're going to be more susceptible to infection. So we need to figure that out and help your cortisol get back on track. Is your digestion an issue? Are you having, you know, do you have leaky gut and or overgrowth of bacteria or some other issue going on in your digestion that's going to decrease your immune function. Right. So we need to look at the big picture so that we can eventually get your infections decreased. I'm thinking of patients where they originally came, came to me getting bronchitis every month. And then as we heal their adrenals and their digestion, those patients don't even need to call me anymore because they're getting bronchitis anymore. They know they healed their body and now they know what to do if they start to get sick. They know exactly what to do to help recover faster and not end up in that same spot again. So let me see if you guys have any amazing, any other questions or anything else you'd like me to cover related to immune system. Just let me see if I can see these comments again.

And immune support for adults. Okay, so adults versus children. Okay, so let's talk about children a little bit. I definitely also love to help with children because of course.

Children get these infections and colds and stuff too. And there are definitely other products they usually use for children because a lot of times children don't swallow capsules. So a lot of times we need to use powders or liquids and you can get different, all different forms of liquid C, zinc A and so liquid vitamin D. So you can get liquid forms and then that's often easier dosing for children. Also for herbs, I use a liquid. We can get liquid herbals for cough that don't mean contain alcohol. We can get herbals. There's one I love called immunoglyceride. There's also homeopathic remedies, by the way, I didn't mention that before, but I like to use homeopathic remedies which help your body protect you from a virus, help your body with the symptoms of a cold or a virus. And so we have also at Dr. Donnie's door, there's for example triple flu defense that's used for colds and fleas. There's a viral support that's used for.

Say for example for COVID virus. There's. We even have homeopathics for HPV and so on, Epstein Barr virus. So we can use homeopathics that help with the virus and those can be great for children because they're liquid and they don't have side effects. They can also. Homeopathics can also be used in general during pregnancy and breastfeeding. So they're very good way to help with symptoms when someone is young or potentially pregnant. For children who can swallow capsules, then we can start to use capsule forms if they prefer that over the liquids and we just use lower doses. Say for example with vitamin C, the general rule is a child can take 100 milligrams of vitamin C per day based for each year of life. So if they're 1 years old, they can take 100 milligrams per day. If they're 2 years old, they can take 200 milligrams per day. So we can kind of figure out what amount based on their age. And it also has to do with, as they get older, their, their weight. So if, you know, if a 13 year old is the size of an adult, they can usually take adult doses. But that's where I would definitely, I can't give specifics because it's so individualized and I wouldn't want to give you wrong information for your child or for you. So definitely if you have a situation, then I would reach out to you so I can give you some more specifics based on your case. But in, in general for children I would say we would use. Tend to use more like liquid. So we can do smaller doses. It's also easier for them if they're not swollen capsules yet and then, but otherwise if they're, you know, a little bit older, say teenager, they can follow capsules. They could use immune support. That immune support formula that I mentioned, I've used that with teenagers. For example, let's see in, in the Dr. Donnie store. By the way, if you look under the packages, you're going to see one called Natural Medicine Cabinet that has some of my favorites for I think that one has the combo product called EHP and hesperidin. There's also one called Immune Boost that has my favorite mushroom extract with the homeopathic Tropical flu Defense. There's also a viral support package that has some of my favorites, including the vitamin A for an immune system and fending off viruses in general. So you can, if you look under the packages, which are also 20 off today and tomorrow, then you can get those and you can, or you can just, you know, create your own package since since they're all 20% off right now, you can, you can do it that way. And there's also a children's package I believe there. So you can look for that in the packages and see those are some of the common ones I suggest for children. And I have some blog posts I can share. I'm happy to share with you guys. I have some blog posts over the years related to.

Helping you recover. I even actually have a free guide that reminds me, I'll get you the link to that, a free guide on how to recover from a cold or flu. And so I can send you the link because you can then you have it all at your fingertips, the different products and dosing that I suggest. Let's see. I wonder if a post nasal drip and phlegm.

Immune response from a food and not just a bacterial infection. Yes, that's the thing is right anytime you have this kind of like drippiness in your throat or you're, you feel like you're clearing your throat or they're, you're blowing your nose or you know, there's just extra phlegm around as I was talking about earlier. That can't be caused by so many different things. It's your body trying to help protect you from something. So if you think you might have a cold or flu, it could be from that. But if you don't have a, you know, if you don't have a virus, it's more likely it could have been from a food you ate. Like if you have a food sensitivity even from a classic would be from dairy. It's very common to cause extra fluid and phlegm. It can also be caused by reflux. If you have reflux, sometimes you don't feel the heartburn, but it ends up causing more sinus drip. It can also be caused by anything that triggers histamine in your diet. It can also be caused by mold. If you're exposed to mold in your home or any other kind of allergens, of course in your home, you can cause that kind of. Because just think of it as your body's trying to protect you from something. So then you have to kind of become the detective and say, and sometimes it's more than one thing. Sometimes there's mold and you're eating something and, you know, then you start to really solve it. You're like, oh, okay, my body's been trying to protect you from me from a bunch of different stuff. Now we try to avoid those things while we help your body recover because is really your body's in a stress response and we need to help it eliminate what's triggering it while we help it recover so it's no longer being triggered by those substances anymore. But I think, yeah, that's really insightful that you're like, wait a minute. Why do I have all this drift going on? Okay.

Let'S figure this out. So, yeah, that's a really important question to ask.

Yes, I see patients virtually. Oh, there's a question. Do you see patients virtually? I see patients virtually most of the time. That's what I do. 95% of the time now is by phone and video and around the world. I help patients anywhere and Australia, Hong Kong.

You name it. So I love it. I love it because so much of what we're talking about, we don't. We don't really need to be in the same location. And most times you can either find what you need locally or we can ship to you. So, you know, so I can help people so many different places, which is so awesome and rewarding. So for sure, if you have. If you'd like more help, just reach out to. You can just reach out to my office. Just. I would say on the website there's a contact us or you can just email to off ice office at. And then Dr. Donnie is spelled out dash O C T-O-R-O-N I.com advices that can help get you to where you need to go. You can also just from my website, Dr.donnie.com d r d o n I.com you can go to. To make an appointment and you can just. It has the whole system online. So you just choose your appointment type.

Depending on which appointment type you choose, it'll have you pay a deposit and then you can book your appointment online and guide you through setting up the whole thing. So you can just do it any time of day from Anywhere. And if you find, depending on your schedule, if the appointment availability doesn't match up, then just reach out to us and we can, you can find a different time so that you and I can get together and talk and I can help you out and if ever you have a question, if I can help, then just, just reach out. My assistant can also help connect us and ask any questions and so we can go from there and, you know, depending. I always love to hear from all of you. So if you have thoughts of like, hey, this is what would really help me or this is what my needs are, please share with us so that we can figure out how we can meet those needs. You know, so if it's, maybe we want to do a more of a group program, I'm finding the group program so awesome. We have a HPV online group program where I'm helping women to fend off HPV and get their passengers to normal. And we do that as a live group meeting on Zoom. And these are women from around the world who come together to work on this together. But we can do programs for even just for stress, for example, and that's my idea with the beginning of the Stress Remedy program is the idea that the Stress Remedy is a nice place to start changing your diet, getting your blood sugar balance, integrating stress recovery activities, stress starting down this path, just kind of dipping your toes in the water, but without stressing yourselves out, right? We want to go nice and gradually. And so the Stress Remedy program and what I'm offering right now is you can start with the stress from the program and get.

You know, four weekly sessions with me included. So even just the value of that, even if you're like, even if you don't want to take the supplements or you, you know, you just want the value of working with me for four group sessions, the stress remedy program is $300 with and then add 20% off of that. So 20% less than that if you sign up today or tomorrow and you're getting four live sessions with me. So to me, that alone would be worth it. But you also would get the emails, the menu, the meal plan, the recipe, and you also get the protein shakes and leaky gut support that I suggest. I also mentioned yesterday, if you, if there's something about those particular products that you're sensitive to or you can't take, let us know so we can substitute for you, get you, you know, product that's going to match for you. So, and so that's right now we're offering this dress remedy with those four live sessions and 24 off. But if there's other ways that I can give support, please let me know so that I can. I'm always creative and loving to create something that works better for you. Thanks for joining me and we'll we can talk again and if you have questions let me know. But tomorrow especially when I focus on helping related to understanding the nervous system, the neurotransmitters. So this is like let's think about the messengers in our nervous system and what causes anxiety, depression, sleep issues, anything mood but also nervous system could be related to headaches and dementia. Let's figure out how to help our nervous system recover from stress too. Anyway, thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to talking to you tomorrow. Take care.

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