Did Ben Greenfield Get Vaccinated (Yet?), Can You Get COVID Twice, The Latest On Omicron, Treating Long Haul COVID & Much More With Dr. Matt Cook.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, how well do they work and then how long do they work for? This is going to be with us for probably the rest of our lives. When McCalla said that, that was the first time that I had heard somebody say, you can't get it twice. Our clinical experiences, we've seen lots of people get it multiple times and then get super dialed in so that it's not a surprise when it comes. And if you do that preparation, I have to think that you're going to be in a better state than if you didn't do anything.

Performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Well, it's been about two months since I had a pretty deep and wide ranging, and I suppose based on the feedback, somewhat controversial podcast conversation with my friend Matt Cook where we talked all about COVID and vaccines while we were on a beautiful walk down there in San Jose on my last trip to California. And that podcast wound up, I think, creating just as many questions as it answered. Since then I've done follow up podcasts with guys like Donnie Yance and recently did one with Dr. Peter Mercola. But Matt's in the trenches. He's treating people right and left for both Covid and also working with people on vac. And if you're not familiar with Matt, he's been on my podcast a billion times already. I'm just going to say a billion because that's easier than actually counting. Probably like eight or nine times. Yeah, Matt.

Yeah, I guess neither of us know how to count. Yeah, but I'm still waiting for my Ben Greenfield jacket that you get after the fifth time.

Apparently YouTube sends you like some kind of a special plaque when you reach X number of subscribers. So I'm still waiting on mine from that. I think I might have 100,000 subscribers on YouTube as of as of yesterday, so I don't know if that gives me anything but aside from bragging rights. So anyways though, Matt, he runs Bioreset Medical in San Jose, which is, in my opinion one of the best regenerative medicine facilities that exists in the world, period. He used to be an anesthesiologist and now he has expanded to a whole bunch beyond that. He treats people for Lyme, for chronic pain, for ptsd, for mycotoxins. He's even got a background in traditional Chinese med. Along with his degree from University of Washington School of Medicine and his residency at University of California, San Francisco, he's done a fellowship in functional medicine. And I suppose probably the category that you could lump Matt into would be, he's a functional medicine doc. He's a really good functional medicine doc. And I've learned a ton from him. As a matter of fact, Matt, I've learned so much from you. Do you want to. My morning, this morning was very Matt Cook esque. You know how my morning went this morning before interviewing you?

Oh, tell me.

Oh, boy. Okay, so I got up and I did a biocharger session and then I did a coffee enema to get things kind of cleaned out and the glutathione flowing. I then took activated charcoal and did a methylene blue suppository, got in the sauna for a half hour, sweated things out while I did flow yoga, finished up with a giant glass of ozonated water with Quinton in it and a five minute cold plunge, and then just did intranasal C Max and C Link and intranasal nad, and then came down here into my basement to interview you. So it's been a wonderful morning.

Oh, that's the way you do it.

Yeah, that's the way we do it around here, baby. I learned half that shit from you.

I love coming up there. The cold is, I think, one of the greatest things that anybody listening can do because it's so profoundly helpful. You know, 28 days out of 30, I do a sauna and a cold plunge. You know, and I. You. I have to credit you for really getting me into that because basically I felt so good when I would go to your house from doing that that I realized, kind of like my friend Peter Saladino realized. He said, oh, I need to copy everything that's at Ben's house and put it into my house.

I get that a lot when people come up here. And you know, the only thing I'd throw in there, Matt, for the sauna, like I mentioned, this is. This is like working for me now is combining the sauna, right? Because I know you have an infrared sauna out in your garage, but doing prior to the sauna, methylene blue and ozone. So you've got basically infrared methylene blue and ozone. And the mitochondria just love that they soak it up. And you feel even better when you get out of the sauna. So if you haven't. Haven't messed around with those before your sauna session, try it because they pair really well with the infrared.

Okay. I just got the new clear light so that I can do yoga sitting on the floor. The bigger footprint that you have? Yeah, apparently I'm going to get that in the next month.

The sanctuary. Yeah. Well, we have a lot to talk about. You actually shot me over a document that you put together with Dr. Mark Hyman, another really good functional medicine doc, about a lot of things you guys have been finding that really works for early treatment of COVID 19 and long Covid and even vaccine injuries. And the last time that we talked when we were on that walk, and I think, you know, one of the reasons that a whole bunch of people like were, were questioned that last podcast that we did, I mean, you, you came out pretty, pretty bullish on vaccines. You treat many people who are, who are immunocompromised and, and have seen a lot of, of bodies in the street, so to speak, when it comes to Covid. And, you know, you definitely recommended the vaccines. I didn't wind up getting vaccinated as I think, you know, and I'm still kind of waiting for one that I'm comfortable with, like, like Novavax or Novio or something like that. But, you know, a lot has happened since then in terms of the emergence of Omicron. And I don't know where you want to start off, but, you know, it seems like the Christmas gift to the world this year actually was Omicron, so maybe that's a good point to start.

Yeah, yeah, I know. What did you get for Christmas? And you know, every single one of my friends, and this tells you that we're old because all of our friends have kids in college and they all came home with Omicron. And so then, you know, a couple things are going to happen. Number one, this is potentially, you know, you've got early data coming out of England and South Africa and Denmark which is going to indicate that it may not be as severe, it may be more upper respiratory, and there may be a lower percentage of people that have to go to the hospital. On the other side of the coin, you're probably going to see a lot more people get it. It's much more contagious. And I'm hearing people say, you know, I have no idea how I got it. Now what's going to happen from that is the. The. And so it could. It's going to be the good, bad, the bad and the ugly. And so it's going to be a little bit of all of those. So one thing that's going to happen is there's going to be a whole bunch of people who get it both vaccinated and unvaccinated. And most of those people are not going to go to the hospital and then most of those people are going to start to develop some natural immunity. How good is that natural immunity going to be? It could be that it's going to be better than one vaccine. It could be that it could be as good as two vaccines. It could be that it's not as good as a vaccine. And so we're not going to know that for a while. But you know, from a silver lining perspective, what you're going to have is you're going to have a significant percentage of the unvaccinated community that's going to start to build some natural immunity and that's going to push us closer towards herd immunity.

You mean because. Because the unvaccinated could get Omicron and that would. That would boost natural immunity in the population?

Yes. Okay, that's kind of a positive. You know, we are seeing a lot of double and triple vaccinated people get Omicron. Now it may be that what's happening with them is it breaks through the vaccine and so the vaccines are losing a little bit of their effectiveness with this. They may still be helpful and most likely they're somewhat helpful. They're just not help there. And they're helpful to keep keeping people out of the hospital, but not so helpful that you could walk into a room and prevent yourself from getting the infection in the first place.

Well, that's like the huge question that kept coming up over and over again after I interviewed Dr. Peter Mercola. Because Peter and I'll link to that episode if you guys go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com matcook December that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com MatCookDecember which is the time that we're actually recording this podcast. December of 2021. Everybody, or not everybody, but a whole bunch of people were like, well, how could Peter say that I didn't get Covid twice because I did or my cousin did, or we got super sick and we went in, tested, got Covid and of course Peter said when I interviewed him that because that that PCR cycle is being run so many times that it makes sense that if somebody gets sick and they go in and they get tested that, you know, no matter what they had, whatever, flu, cold, whatever that had, test them positive for Covid because the thing generates so many false positives. Yet a. I've seen a couple of studies that have shown that spike protein after you get Covid once seems to kind of stick around in the system. For a really long time, like 260 days or something like that. So I wasn't sure if it was kind of like people still had the same Covid they got before and that protein is just expressing maybe if their, their immune system gets triggered or something like that or I think it was you who had mentioned to me that maybe there's something else going on here. Maybe people actually are getting Covid twice. What do you think? Can people get Covid twice?

For sure people can get Covid twice. And so explain that. I've seen so. Well, people can get influenza twice. And then what's happening is the COVID that exists today is different from the wild type that came out a couple years ago. And so then influenza keeps mutating and evolving. And so it's, you know, it's still here with us. It's going to be with us next year. Covid is going to be with us for the foreseeable future. I have had a lot of patients that have gotten Covid more than one time. And it's not like, you know, we have a lot of patients with complex immune problems where let's say they have Lyme disease and they never really recover. And that, and part of that is just because the bacteria is in a stealth situation, living and doing something in the body. Okay. And so then it can come out and then go back in. And what causes it to come out and go back in relates to basically the physiology of what's going on in the body. On the other hand, with COVID generally when people get it again, what happens is they get an exposure, there's a known exposure, and then next thing, you know, a couple days later they get sick. And so I don't think of these follow up things as being a long term consequence of having the spike protein in the body. However, both with COVID vaccines and with COVID what happens is your monocytes are basically white blood cells that come in and try to mop that up. And one thing that they will do is they will pick up that, that spike protein. And this is a little bit of the work of Bruce Patterson, who's I think, a very, very good doctor and is doing some very interesting work. Basically what he's finding is the monocytes can pick up that spike protein and it puts them into kind of an activated triggered state. And then that leads to immune dysregulation. And so that's why people are having these vaccine problems. And then when that happens, it causes them to have elevated basically cytokines. And so you're going to have an inflammatory basically milieu that is created. And so as a result of that, there are long term, sort of long hauler type of symptoms. And so then that's one category, acute Covid. And people definitely can get acute Covid multiple times.

Okay, now when you say they can get acute Covid multiple times, is that still theoretical or like, is there any way to test, aside from this PCR test, to say, okay, so this is for sure Covid that they've got. Again, I mean, to answer this question about whether or not you really can.

Get it twice, part of that diagnosis is clinical. So when someone gets a severe upper respiratory infection and they're testing positive, and people are testing positive both by antigen as well as pcr. Now the. And so then I would say it's a part laboratory diagnosis and it's part clinical diagnosis. But like, when McCullough said that, that was the first time that I had heard somebody say, you can't get it twice. And our clinical experiences, we've seen lots of people get it multiple times from direct exposure. And I've gotten multiple phone calls. So just in the last two days of after that podcast come out, people telling me, oh, I know somebody who got it twice. And even the person, the first person that died of Omicron in the United States apparently had had Covid before. I loved that podcast. And there's a lot of good things in there that I would echo. But my only disagreement that would be very substantial would be, I definitely think that you can get it more than one time. And if I'm wrong, I would love to find that out. And I will tell you I'm wrong.

One subtle nuance, like, you could get it more than one time, but would it be like, you could get Covid once and then you could get like the delta variant once, an Omicron variant. Like, is it that you could get a different variant, or could it just be the same Covid that you got before you could get again?

So that's a great question. And I don't know the exact. So here's the thing, as a doctor, what's happening is we don't have access to that type of testing. And so then when people go through their PCR testing, what happens is they'll take a percentage of those from a geographic area and then they'll do sequencing and they'll figure out, oh, is alpha or is it delta or is it Omicron? We don't really get access to that. I'm stuck basically reading the news, trying to figure out that side of it. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah, it does. So regarding the treatment, first of all, from a preventive standpoint, because you've got a lot of stuff, even since the last time that we chatted that you found that seems to really be working for treating Covid. You've shared some of that with me, and I know we want to get into some of that on the show. But before we get into what you're doing now, as far as treatment and also prevention and prophylaxis, as far as the vaccine goes, we talked a lot about the vaccine in our last podcast. And at that time you were pretty much of the opinion that especially regarding Pfizer and Moderna, that everybody should get vaccinated as kind of like a public health strategy. I'm curious, kind of like where you're at as far as any evolution of thought or anything that's changed since that last episode that we did.

It's such an interesting conversation socially, ethically, politically. And the more that time goes on, the more that I feel relatively unsuccessful in trying to convert somebody who doesn't believe in the vaccines or who's worried about the vaccines to get them. And so, and then we're also at a new moment where suddenly we're going to begin to see that of these vaccines, some of the efficacy is waning. And so then probably they're not going to all be created equal. And so then over the next six or eight months, we're going to get, we're going to have data on which ones actually work, how well do they work, and then how long do they work for? This is going to be with us for the, probably the rest of our lives. One thing we're going to have to do is think about what is our strategy now. There's going to be a whole bunch of people that are going to get infected. They're going to have some natural immunity, and so then we'll be able to watch and see what happens with that over time. Many of those are going to either got vaccinated or will get vaccinated afterwards. I still think that getting vaccinated is, is a good strategy that has relatively low risks. However, like what I talked about with the, the way the monocytes can pick up the spike protein, there are people who have long term consequences. You know, we, when we did that last podcast, I had been deep in the trenches taking care of COVID and really was not seeing many vaccine injuries. You know, since then, the phone has been to some extent ringing off the hook. With vaccine injuries as well. Now, the work of Bruce Patterson is super interesting because he's going to be able to understand that. And in general, our ability to heal vaccine injuries has been much better than our ability to heal long Covid. The vaccine injuries will heal relatively quickly because the vaccine is going to cause you to make some spike protein, but not nearly as much as you're going to get if you actually get Covid. I'm pro vacc, but I'm also aware that it's a very complex political situation and the data is going to evolve and our thinking and thought process is going to evolve. And so I don't think that there's necessarily a right answer. I think that people should be given a choice because when you're faced with this whole catastrophe of everything going on and then you feel like the government's out to get you, you could see why people have kind of a PTSD type of response to that whole thing.

Yeah, yeah. Now, when you talk about the issues that you've seen with vaccines in the clinic and the fact that you guys have been able to manage some of those issues and even, like you just said, perhaps found them more easy to manage than long haul. Covid, can we talk a little bit about how you actually manage vaccine injuries and what you found to be working?

Okay, that's a good one. If you think of this idea that the monocytes are picking up the spike protein and then they're triggered and they're inflamed. So then. And as a result, your immune system is upregulated and so you have these inflammatory cytokines. So one thing we're doing is we're doing testing. So we're testing cytokines. We're trying to make an assessment of what's happening. And then a lot of the people with vaccine injuries are people who have often other things going on. A lot of them will have either Lyme or mold, Epstein Barr, the classic causes of chronic fatigue syndrome and chronic immune stress. So we do a workup basically to try to figure out which of those things are going on and sort of. And then a functional medicine assessment of like, what's their overall health. Now then, you know, one thing we do is ozone plasmapheresis and traditional plasmapheresis, which basically pulls plasma and antibodies and immune factors out of the body and then kind of resets the immune system. We found that to be fairly helpful. Just regular ozone therapy has been helpful. We've been using peptides, and so there are peptides that regulate immune function and the immune Peptides in particular can be helpful, including like Thymus and Alpha 1, Thymulin, Thymus and Beta 4. We also will try to dive into basically just looking to see what somebody lifestyle, can we improve that? Can we optimize their vitamin D? Can we do all of the things that we would do to kind of get you in kind of a peak health state. And then finally, you know, the work of Bruce Patterson, which is kind of interesting, is there's a receptor on those monocytes called CCR5. Actually it's an AIDS medication called Maraviroc. This is CCR5 antagonist. And what that will do is that regulates the monocytes and blocks their activity and sort of calms them down. And then you can use a statin and that calms down inflammation in the walls of the blood vessels where the monocytes can go.

Like a short term statin treatment?

Like a short term statin treatment.

So maraviroc is the name of the one that you said that prevents the monocytes from migrating all over the body.

It's kind of regulates and calms them and it blocks one of their receptors.

Okay, and then you would combine that with like, like a statin to decrease vascular inflammation.

Yes.

Okay, got it.

That is like 1.0. And there's a lot of people who you will do somewhere between 20 and 90% of that protocol and then they just get 100% better. From what? Be that from long Covid or from COVID vaccine problems. And so you'll have a percentage people who you just get better in a couple weeks. And then, you know, I got off the phone with, right before you called me with somebody who has a nurse that I used to work with years ago and she, you know, she just recently found me and she'd been struggling with this for months and months and months. And so then I've. We're hard at work and some of these things will take, I think a six month to maybe even longer protocol to heal because the immune system is so embedded in every other aspect of the body. And when it gets out of control, just like in chronic Lyme or just like in chronic mold, it takes a while to sort of reset that whole thing. And resetting it requires a very comprehensive strategy.

Okay, got it. So some of the things though, it sounds like are really working if someone has access to this for vaccine injuries would be the ozone and ozone dialysis or plasmapheresis like you talked about. Kind of like the oil change for the blood combined with ozone and then statin and Maraviroc. And by the way, which statin do you like to use?

You can use Pravastatin, but then also I think that the peptides are very important. And the peptides are going to be something that's going to ultimately regulate the immune system back into a calmer state. And then the other thing is that. And it's going to be on an experimental protocol, but exosomes can be very helpful along those lines. And stem cells. And so a lot of those are not even going to be available in the United States. But ultimately it's not going to be one or two things, but there's going to be a lot of people that are easy cures. That's why I like things like the Maraviroc and the statin, because there's going to be some easy cases where you're going to be able to just reset it and then boom, they're going to get back. But then there's going to be some cases that can be tricky. But then I think the goal is we need to get 100% of them back as well.

How come the exosomes in the stem cells, why wouldn't somebody be able to get those in the States? I thought that it was more just like stem cell expansion. Like if you want to super high count, you'd have to go out of the States. But I thought you could still get exosomes and stem cells just fine in.

The U.S. well, so the stem cells that you get in the United States are not culture expanded. And so I personally think that there are some problems with those. There's less testing. They're just cells that basically somebody got when they harvested placenta or an umbilical cord after a delivery. But that's a relatively low cost product that doesn't have a lot of testing and valid. And ultimately a lot of people have abandoned those types of sub modalities. Exosomes are here, but they're fundamentally going through FDA regulatory pathway. And so it's hard to tell how long they're going to be here for and then what will happen. But we have seen very good results with using them for inflammatory immune problems.

Okay, you still like the exosomes from Chimaera Labs?

I think that they're, they're the, I think that they're the best in the world right now.

Okay, gotcha. And do you typically do those as just like, like a, like an IV therapy?

You can do those for long Covid. You can do them as an IV therapy for acute Covid. You can do them as an IV therapy. And that's sort of at the end of everything else. But you can also nebulize them. Well, some people will inject them subcutaneously.

Okay, cool. Got it. Now we were talking about peptides and you mentioned like some that I think people are probably familiar with as really good immune modulating pept peptides like thymosin alpha 1 and thymosin beta 4. I know BPC157 and LL37 are two others that you use quite a bit. But then there was one that you were telling about and you actually sent me some of this. You said it's a pretty good kind of sort of newer peptide, the thymosin beta 4 fragment. What's the difference between thymosin beta 4 and thymosin beta 4 fragment?

Imagine that there are a protein and a protein can have a whole bunch of active sites that do something. Thymosin Beta 4 is a bigger peptide and so it has a whole bunch of different active sites and then each site has a mechanism. So the TB4 fragment 1 to 4 is a very anti inflammatory. So it's great for pain and I think it probably is fairly helpful for Covid as well. And also it's smaller and so by weight you actually get more of the active quote unquote ingredient of it. So it's definitely a fantastic peptide.

Now I know that on the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com mattcookdecember we'll list a lot of these things that you're doing regarding treatment of vaccine injuries. But then when it comes to treatment of COVID in our last podcast we also talked about ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. And I remember you were talking about how you weren't that impressed with what you'd seen at that point on Ivermectin. I think you did kind of like hydroxychloroquine. There's of course these new monoclonal antibodies. So where are you at right now as far as some of these alternative treatments for Covid? As far as what's working in your clinic?

This one is a really, really good one. It's sort of worth going into hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. Both have some benefit in Covid. And what's interesting is you listen to the people who are real positive on them and then they're going to quote numbers that are going to be towards slightly more effective and then you're going to hear other people talk that they're less effective. And so Then it's hard to kind of work your way through the science of this. I was dismissive of them compared to the effectiveness of vaccines and monoclonal antibodies, because vaccines and monoclonal antibodies, and particularly when we talked last time, were looking super effective. You know, the vaccines were, you know, potentially 90 in the ballpark of 90% effective. The monoclonals were in the ballpark of 90% effective. And, you know, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin were significantly less. Call it in the ballpark of, you know, 25 to 70% effective based on, you know, a multitude of studies of who's who you're talking to. And then there's some side effects that you can have with those, particularly with ivermectin in terms of GI and neuro side effects. That being said, we're having a waning of effectiveness of the monoclonals with Omicron and then we're going to have a waning of effectiveness of vaccines. That doesn't mean I'm not supportive of them. It's just waning. And so then you come to a idea of how are we going to think about this? As a friend of mine that texted me that had Covid last week, he said, I'm throwing the kitchen sink at it. And so then those can be helpful. There's another antidepressant called Fluvoxamine that a lot of people are using the can be somewhat effective. And so then I will use them for people who want to use them. And I have seen benefit, but I'm still, I think that what's going to end now, interestingly, Pfizer has a new medication that's coming out, was very effective in the ballpark of 90% at preventing hospitalization.

Which medication is that?

That's the Paxlovid. And so that, that's got a repurposed AIDS medication and then a new protease inhibitor that is active against sars. So just like, just like the landscape of all of these things is changing with respect to all of the different meds, all of the vaccines. We're going to see that the virus is continuing to mutate. There's going to be an evolving strategy of medications that you can use. But then I started calling the pharmacies yesterday in anticipation of our talk today just to see if anybody has it and nobody has it.

You mean the new Pfizer Med?

The new Pfizer Med, yeah, the Paslovid. And so then that kind of leads me to this idea that and also like, of the monoclonals. There's some new monoclonals that work for Omicron. A bunch of the monoclonals that we've had appear to work less effectively or potentially not at all. And so then I would encourage people to be as careful as you possibly can and try not to get infected in the next couple months, because we're going to have way better treatment algorithms in two months than we do now. And then we're going to have access. But then also, while you're taking care of yourself and kind of like being careful, then, you know, New Year's is around the corner. And so this is the time to probably have the greatest New Year's resolution of your life and get super dialed in from a health perspective and get prepared. I like what McCullough said. He said, listen, people act like it's a surprise. I got Covid. Don't be surprised. You're probably going to get it. And so then I would do everything, get that first aid kit, start taking vitamin D, take vitamin C every day, and then get super dialed in so that it's not a surprise when it comes. And if you do that preparation, I have to think that you're going to be at a better state than if you didn't do anything.

Okay, Yeah, I want to get into, like, the ideal home first aid kit to have on hand for something like this. But one other question about the monoclonals, because there's a lot out there. I think there's like, what, four or five different versions of a monoclonal out there. How can people actually hunt those down? Explain to me monoclonals and how somebody could get those or what they should look for if they were interested in doing something like that.

What happens is when your body sees an infection, one thing that it'll do is it'll make an antibody, which is basically a protein that knows how to bind onto a virus. And then it binds onto it, locks it down, and then kind of shuts down the machinery of how the virus does it. Does. There are a whole bunch of different monoclonals. And the Regeneron was used, A, to treat people and then also B, for prophylaxis for immune compromised people. And so then that was broadly available. And then there was another one made by Lilly that people call Bam and then that one. Both of those were generally available at urgent cares. And so then what we had is we had all of the urgent cares in our area and urgent cares and where all of our basically patients were and so then when someone, if someone got. If someone was very immunocompromised, sometimes people could go and they could get an infusion on a prophylactic basis. And so then there was an algorithm where people were doing that on a monthly basis, for example. But for the most part, the monoclonals were used as a strategy. If somebody got Covid, and I've had this happen hundreds of times where somebody got Covid, they were sick and then they went to an urgent care and then they got an infusion of that, and so then that was a very, very helpful strategy. The effectiveness of that has waned. GlaxoSmith Klein has a new monoclonal that McCall mentioned, Citrovimab. That one appears to be effective for Omicron. But that being said, guess what? I called around. Do you think anybody has that at any urgent care that I talk to? No, I have some people who are on the other side of the country who found some. And I had a patient who I assume had Omicron and she got it and it was super sick. And then the next day she was like, I'm 80% better the following morning. If I was to sort of rank things from, like, highly effective to moderately effective to somewhat effective, the monoclonals are going to be high in that category. AstraZeneca also makes a monoclonal called eShield, which may also be beneficial for Omicron. But, and interestingly, that one lasts for like 6 months. The GlaxoSmithKline one only is a short term one. And so then the AstraZeneca one may be something that you can do for prophylaxis, which would be very interesting because now suddenly we're having more things that could be helpful for prophylaxis. That being said, you can't get any of these easily in the next, in the next couple of months because there's supply chain issues. And so that. And they need to bring these to. And I predict that what's going to happen in the, you know, I'm going to talk to you for Christmas next year and we're going to be having somewhat of a similar conversation, but there's going to be a new variant, there's going to be new monoclonals, there's going to be new drugs, and then we are going to have a very interesting immune conversation for, like, for the rest of our lives.

I want to get into the idea that you mentioned a few minutes ago about kind of like your home first aid kit, like, what kind of Stuff people should or could have on hand as either preventive or prophylaxic strategies or something that they could do if they were to get Covid. Do you have a list of your preferred go to's that anybody should just kind of like have on hand in their pantry marked with their giant Sharpie marker that says Covid Emergency kit.

Okay, that's a great one. I'll go back to this. Let's say you got Covid. One thing is everything that you can do to sanitize the upper airway, the nose and the mouth, do something that is anti infectious in that area, is going to decrease viral replication and potentially be super safe, low risk things that you can do to potentially cause yourself to have less viral replication but potentially make yourself less contagious to other people. Now obviously hand washing and all that stuff as well. Listerine I think works great for that. And so then I would have that on hand. So you don't, if you're sick with COVID you don't have to go to the drugstore. And so then I would mouthwash with that like three times a day. In terms of doing nasal rinses, there's a strategy of making a Betadine rinse. We have a link to the ingredients of this, but basically you mix a couple tablespoons of betadine with 6 ounces of water. And so the betadine, I just tested this and it was interesting.

Mark Hyman Betadine is basically like that povidine iodine that Dr. Peter McColl was telling me about.

Right? It's the same thing. Yeah. And so then what you're going to do is you're going to go to the, I went to the drugstore to get it just to test. So then you take and you make a solution of that. And then you can use like a spray bottle to spray it in your nose. You can use a neti pot. There's a bunch of different ways. But then you're going to have that and the second that you get it, you're going to start rinsing. Now one thing I'll tell you is if you want to do testing, you should do testing before you do this stuff. Because once you start to do this stuff, there's going to be less virus there and you may not test positive.

Afterwards even though you have it. It's not going to be in your nasal cavities because you've just nuked it. In your nasal cavities, you mean?

Exactly. So then the iodine is a great idea. You can also do colloidal silver. And then you can also make a peptide nasal spray where you mix 2mg of LL37 into a xylitol nasal spray and then start to spray that. And LL37 has some direct antiviral effects. And so then that one's interesting. So then there's this basically a total approach towards just sterilization of the upper airway with colloidal silver, betadine, peptides, mouthwashes. In terms of supplements, we're a fan of quercetin. So I, you know, take 500 milligrams twice a day of that.

By the way, as you're, as you're talking about quercetin real quick. Like, from what I understand, that actually works pretty similar to hydroxychloroquine. Like, like it's an immunomodulator. It's a, it's a zinc ionophore, and it seems to have a ton of other benefits. I mean, I, I, for the past couple of years, just since, honestly, since I went to India, I started using quercetin just daily for immune support because I knew Covid was going around when I went to India. And then I kept taking quercetin every day and still do, but it seems to actually act somewhat similar to hydroxychloroquine. It's pretty powerful.

Right? And so then that's an homage a little bit the hydroxychloroquine, because so then if you can put together a couple of, couple things with that mechanism, maybe it's going to be better. And then quercetin also is a great senolytic, so it's going to get rid of zombie cells. The vitamin D is another one. We recommend taking the vitamin D with K2 if you can, as part of your New Year's resolution of getting incredibly healthy. Go get your vitamin D checked, see where it is. If it's 20, you want to start supplementing, it's a reasonable thing to start taking the vitamin D and K2 every day and just try to boost, boost that up. Because the probability is if you get that up to 50 to 70, you're gonna have a better functioning immune system and you're going to do better at fighting Covid when it comes.

Yeah, my vitamin D levels, by the way, are higher than they've been in any past winter. But I actually, I don't take vitamin D as a supplement right now. You know, I usually recommend, like that Thorn liquid vitamin D, vitamin K blend, but I've actually just been doing once a week, week, just every Monday straight into my shoulder. 50,000 IU intramuscular D. And my levels typically in previous winters for vitamin D have been in the 30s and they're easily in the 60s. Every time I've tested so far this.

Winter, that's a good one. And then that would be a great sort of adjunctive, like let's say somebody got Covid. That's a good thing that you could add on to the treatment because you could just take that as an injection. And which is why I feel like we need more clinics that are actively treating this. And we just haven't been doing it because there's a little bit of a fear on the part of exposing people in the clinic to people with COVID So I think you need a separate clinic that does this. Be that as may. It's going to be interesting.

Okay, so we've got quercetin, vitamin D, vitamin K, what else?

Zinc. And so then if you take zinc, you should probably take trace minerals with it. And then what I've been doing is I just take a zinc lozenge every day. And so then I feel like that's putting some zinc in my upper airway right where the exposure is. I take it right before I go into clinic. So I've got some exposure there. I'm taking a couple grams of vitamin C every day. I'm taking N acetylcysteine, which is a precursor to glutathione and is very helpful from a detox perspective. That's been a little tricky to get, unfortunately, but I think that's super helpful. Curcumin, I think, is a great antioxidant. We like the thorn version of that as well. Vitamin A can be very helpful. It's fat soluble, so you gotta be careful you don't get too much of it. Green tea extract has some antiviral effects like the egcg. Yeah.

Okay.

And then melatonin. And melatonin also is going to be important for your first aid from the perspective that you may have trouble sleeping. And then you can go up on your doses like, you know, you can take 10, 20, 30 milligrams in the setting of COVID can be helpful. John Laurence has those suppositories which, you know, that's actually not a bad thing to put in your Covid. In your Covid first.

It's slightly higher dose. But yeah, he actually that's how I've been doing. The methylene blue too, is he has a suppository called lumitol, which is a methylene blue suppository and I've just been doing that before I get into my sauna. But he has those melatonin suppositories, which are fantastic. They're a little bit higher dose. I think they're close to like 100 or up to 300. But basically I'll list all this in the shownotes@bengreenfieldfitness.com MattCook September or December MATT Cook December. But basically it's kerosene, vitamin D, zinc, vitamin C, NAC, curcumin, NAD, vitamin A, EGCG, selenium, melatonin, and then omega 3 fatty acids. And you just like have that all in your first aid kit.

And then, you know, the next thing to consider putting your first aid kit would be some peptides. And so if you're going to do that, then you would have peptides that are in a lyophilized form, because then they're in a powder form and then you're going to have saline and so then you're going to, you can keep that. They're going to be stable for like a couple of years. And so they're in a salt form. And so then if something happens, or let's say you try like I got another call yesterday, traveled to actually a multiple of these. Yesterday traveled to rural Mexico. And what happened? Okay, we got Covid in the middle of nowhere. What are we going to do? So if you're traveling, I would bring that first aid kit and then I would also probably bring peptides and I would probably this. The simple thing would be to just to take BPC TA1 and LL37.

Okay, got it. And for people who haven't used peptides before, you gotta, you gotta toss some insulin syringes and alcohol swipes in your bag because most of them are injectable. The orals don't seem to work that well. But that's what I do is I just throw them in on ice in my bag. I have one of those bags, little cooler compartment in it and just travel everywhere with those just in case. Now, if somebody gets Covid, we talked about the use of monoclonals as one potential strategy, even though those are difficult to get. But obviously there's an inflammatory component, there's a coagulant component. There's possibly potential for the use of antibiotics. As far as the actual therapy that you guys might use in your clinic. For example, if someone were to get Covid, what type of other medications or protocols are using for things like the coagulation or the inflammation or even like an antibiotic or bacterial strategy.

Okay, so that's a good one. And so then the clotting one is, is really important because if people get clots, that's when things go sideways. And they can have. And it is. The COVID is very thrombogenic. And so then. And interestingly that's why ozone is so helpful. Because when you do ozone, ozone improves blood viscosity and you give heparin with it. And we're not doing this now, but when you treat people with acute Covid with ozone, their blood will start out super thick and then it just starts to flow perfect. And then once that happens, typically they start to feel a lot better. And I only mention that because if everything goes sideways and things get worse, that will be long term, a good strategy. But as long as there's great meds and all of this type of stuff that is on the horizon and monoclonals and stuff like that, that can be helpful in terms of clotting. It depends on what's going on with that person. Sometimes we'll just put people on aspirin, support them that way, but we'll watch them closely. Sometimes we give them eliquis if we're more worried. And then interestingly, peptides have an effect of thinning the blood a little bit. And particularly if you're doing higher dose peptides. And so you can either DO high dose TA1 or TB4 at a higher dose. Both of those will decrease viscosity of blood and make the blood a little bit thinner. That may be just because they're regulating the immune system. And so then because the immune system is more regulated, it's less thrombogenic. So then those can be helpful. We'll use azithromycin. Some people use doxycycline and we will use that at times. I don't always give antibiotics. I wait until day three or four and I see if they're starting to get a pneumonia. I've got people with presumed omicron who have gotten pneumonia and I've gotten. I talked to one of my good friends sons last night at 10 o' clock who came home with COVID and I was like, well, how do you feel? He's like, it's a 1 out of 10. And so then that goes to show you sort of the range. I'm not going to give him antibiotics. Assuming that he feels perfect, you know, I might have him take some aspirin. You know, we found that the nebulized inhalers like palmacort for Example is a steroid inhaler can be very helpful for that cough because people will get a fairly profound raspy cough that happens somewhere between day three and day eight. And so we will use that. And so then basically this goes to show that we're trying to use antivirals, peptides, supplements, medications, and it's sort of a total approach to supporting people that really helps to regulate immune system function and get back to baseline.

Okay, got it. Are there any particular, like lab tests that you run on yourself or on your patients? Not necessarily. I guess it wouldn't count as early treatment, but as something people should keep their eyes on either post Covid or post vaccine or as ways from a prophylaxic standpoint to make sure that their values are high enough. Like you mentioned vitamin D and making sure that preferably we got that up in the 50s or 60s or so. But are there any other lab markers that you look for that you think people could run just to make sure that they're kind of staying healthy, whether it's for Covid or vaccination or just cold and flu season in general?

Well, so then there's the traditional thing that everybody looks at that costs like $10 is getting a CBC in a chemistry panel, we'll look at the high sensitivity C reactive protein. We'll check sort of some markers of sort of the clotting system, like checking in a D dimer, there's a molecule called ferritin that is an inflammatory mediator. And then you can begin to start to go. So that might be some sort of baseline testing for somebody, either whether they're acute or just as a baseline before kind of checking in. We're evolving into doing more cytokine testing. And I think that that's going to be very helpful because what happens is the patients with long Covid and the patients with long vaccine complications, as well as patients with Lyme and mold, and all of these things will show an inflammatory picture on those labs. And so then you begin to see that all of these conditions behave fairly similarly. And then they're all going to respond, respond fairly similarly to strategies of regulating immune function. And so then that's going to be a trajectory of medical thought that has been with something that we were thinking about primarily for autoimmune conditions. But it wasn't something that was broadly in sort of in popular consciousness. But, you know, omicron may come. And if you look at people with long Covid, the early indications are a lot of those people did not have serious illness. And so Then we may see a lot of people with long Covid after omicron, we don't know. And so that's going to be very interesting. And so then the testing is just going to get more and more sophisticated and then we're going to be able to delineate actually biochemically what's going on in the body and help determine modalities and treatment based upon that.

All right, got it. And I'll put your gold standard list of lab tests too in the shownotes@bengreenfieldfitness.com MattCook December if people want to make sure that they've run any tests on themselves to make sure that they're just kind of staying healthy from a self quantification standpoint. So what other things are you doing right now that you would recommend to people or what other things haven't we yet considered when it comes to either long Covid or vaccine injuries that you want to make sure people know about?

Oh, you know, so it's interesting for the vaccine. You know, at the beginning I was a little nervous to get too interventional around the vaccines. And so we were not doing too much. And so we were, you know, taking a break from therapy before the vaccine, taking a break after the vaccine. And now some people would have a situation where they would get vaccinated, they'd have some flu symptoms that night and the next day they felt perfect. But then some people would have profound headaches, myalgias, couldn't get out of bed, and then that would go for days and days and days. And so then you're like, well, you know, what are we going to do? How are we going to manage that? How do we think about that? And so then what we started to do was get quite a bit more interventional. So for most people, when they get a vaccine, we're giving them vitamin C, glutathione, basically kind of an immune antioxidant supportive iv. And we'll do that one or two days before. And then if they're taking peptides, we let them take peptides all the way through the vaccine. And then after they get the vaccine, if they have a lot of headaches on day two, or if they're having a lot of symptoms that next day, we have them come in and we do IVs. And so then I'm going to even put the ingredients of our sort of antioxidant, vitamin C iv. It's important that you get that PH balance because some people can have burning if you don't do that, but then I'll do that iv and then people who are having a vaccine sort of reaction, it will literally go away right in front of your eyes. Often it'll come back a little bit that night, they come back the next day and we'll treat it. And so then that has been one strategy that we were able to use to support people. And so then I've had extremely good results getting people who wanted to be vaccinated through, with really no side effects of anybody that we took through that vaccination process. And so then that, plus some of the science that I talked about earlier I hope is at least if you're considering the vaccine, gives you some things to have a little bit more confidence, knowing that we are in early days and it's going to evolve and we're going to be learning a lot more in the days and weeks to come.

Do you think we'll see more variants like Omnicron just continue to pop up, but with less, I guess the word wouldn't be virality, but less serious side effects and adverse consequences?

You would hope that that's the case. And there is to some extent a trend for viruses to become less damaging over time, sometimes not all the time. And so then if that happened, then that would be amazing. And then if this turned into something that was a really bad flu that we had great ways to manage. And then we have the diversity of supplements, we have new medications, we have monoclonals, we have people getting in super great health. You know, all of the comorbidities make people at much higher risk. But maybe this is the thing that actually motivates people to say, let's, you know, this is the year, this is the year that I'm going to take control of my health. Maybe that's going to be a silver lining. But, you know, the reality in my mind is that this is going to be here. We're going to continue to have new variants and hopefully they get less bad. But then that's going to be hard to predict how that goes. You know, I was, I talked to Bruce Patterson yesterday and so then they are going to begin to, they can tell the difference between an alpha spike protein and a delta spike protein. And so they're going to be able to tell the difference between that and Omicron spike protein. And so then what's going to happen is this virus is going to run through our population and then it's going to have short and long term consequences. But then we're going to be able to test them. And so then at least then we're going to start to have better conversations of understanding how it's happening, what measures that we're taking up front are working, what are not. And so then we will evolve into better and better kind of ways of managing this. And then the side effect of that is that that's ultimately getting a large number of people to adopt a functional medicine, strategic approach to health, which is going to improve the health of everyone.

I mean, you're on the cutting edge of this treatment, so it's super cool just to be able to hop on a call with you and get all this information from people because there's a whole bunch of docs who are listening in who I'm sure are going to learn a little bit about how they can work with their patients. But then I'll be taking this full list that you put together as far as just the first aid kit. And I'm going to buy one for my mom, I'm going to buy one for my dad, I'm going to get one put together for my house just to fill in the gaps with anything on this list that I don't have. And I'll put all this stuff in the show notes for people so they can do the same thing. So that's all going to be@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Matt Cook, December and then if you have follow up questions about COVID about long haul Covid, about vaccines, about vaccine injuries, about natural treatments, about some of the treatments that Matt's doing at his clinic, Bioreset Medical, just leave your comments, your questions, your feedback in the show notes because I try and read those and those really help me steer the discussion and make sure that I do follow up episodes to help to answer your guys questions because I'm just trying to do the best job I can talking with people who are in the trenches treating this stuff and really know what's going on, I prefer those type of discussions to kind of like the folks who are just like blue sky philosophers about what's working and what doesn't compared to people who are just seeing patients every day in their clinic. So Matt, I appreciate you coming on and sharing all this stuff with us and all the time that you've given to making sure that the information gets out there.

Oh thanks. No, this is, I got a quote for you. I was have you, have you been watching Yellowstone?

No, I don't really watch it.

Somebody I had to watch it because it's set in Montana and they filmed it right outside of Missoula. So every time I've been watching it, just because I feel like I'm at home. And so there's a medicine man who is this great character in the show, and this character is going to get into a sweat lodge. And so he says, you must stand on the cliff of death to understand your purpose in life. And I was like, oh my God, I'm going to tell Ben that, quote.

You must stand on the cliff of death to understand your purpose in life.

But then I think my purpose in life is to be out here doing this stuff. I'm grateful for the opportunity to do it because you know, we're going to get through it. I encourage people to know that there's hope. Even if you've had big problems from Vaccine or from COVID Our understanding of the science is exponentially getting better, and there's going to be things that we can do to help you. Awesome.

Well, I'll link to all my previous episodes with you too in the show Notes. I'll also link to probably two of the most relevant episodes, my podcast with Donnie Yance and my podcast with Peter McCollough, which would also be good listens for those who haven't heard those yet when it comes to this whole topic. And all that's going to be@BenGreenfieldFitness.com MatCookDecember and until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. Matt Cook from Bioreset Medical in San Jose, signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing. In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and posts on this site. Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links, of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items. But the price is the same for you, and sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases, I might also be an investor in a company I mention. I'm the founder, for example, of Kion llc, the makers of Kion branded style supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the relationship, if I post or talk about an affiliate link to a product, it is indeed something I personally use, support, and with full authenticity and transparency recommend. In good conscience, I personally vet each and every product that I talk about. My first priority is providing valuable information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body and spirit. And I'll only ever link to products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So there's your fancy legal disclaimer.