Nutrients, Lifestyle and C-19

and other data like that, it's nice to have something that you can look to and, and look back and look at the references and all of that. So as we go live here, what I want to do is take the next 55 minutes or so and go over the latest scientific peer-reviewed data and Its relationship to nutrients with respect to COVID-19 illness. So for the purposes of the newsletter that we— it's laid out in there, but also for the purposes of our talk today, the infection is from the virus called SARS-CoV-2. And the disease we just call COVID-19. The the acronym and then the year we believe it started. So that's what I'll just refer to as COVID-19. But the particular newsletter I'm referring to, you can go and sign up pretty easily and just get it for free. If you go to the Instagram page, which is just DRA like Dr. A DRA online, that's an easy way to get it. It's right in the link tree. It just says Dr. A newsletter. You click on. that and you go there and you get it. If you're on Facebook and you go to DR.A Online, so almost the same, that's the Facebook site and there's a post on there from me that has a link not only to the radio station but also to the newsletter. So that's an important thing to keep in mind if you want a hold of the newsletter. And if you do sign up for the newsletter, you'll, you'll receive an email notification when we put them out. Usually it's 2 a month unless there's something extra special going on that month like this. But like I said, I wanted to put this into the newsletter and then do a live program, and then of course later a podcast on it, so that we would have a record of— kind of a written-out record of this research I'm going to talk about. Because one of the things that people will comment on sometimes, especially if you watch, say, the You know, my LinkedIn or feed or especially Twitter or Instagram or Facebook. I'll post an image of maybe one of the papers. It's interesting, etc. But it's always people always wonder, well, is that the only one? Are there others? Do they get into things? And even had some you know good comments about well this this one paper you showed doesn't have specifics. It it referred to specifics, but they didn't put them in the paper. So today we have the newsletter that has all. 11 papers that I referenced that we're going to go over with it. So why is this important? Well, without editorializing a whole bunch, it has been interesting to see the response over time around things like nutrients and viral immunity or nutrients and COVID or, you know, any, anything of that nature. And, uh, one thing I mentioned in the newsletter is, and this is not editorializing, this is just repeating things that were said early on in the, in the media. It was whether it was print or, or, uh, you know, video or audio media. It was really common to see the, uh, especially the official medical news, uh, reporters and outlets say, well, you know, you, um, this nutrient is not going to help you. Vitamin D won't help you. And, uh, vitamin C is a bunch of bunk. One of them said, famously, and a whole bunch of other things, you know, like that. And so some very, very strong statements and other things such as, you know, what you eat has nothing to do with your immunity and other things of that nature. So one of the reasons I wanted to present what the scientific community has been doing around nutrition and especially COVID-19, although there's a lot of information about nutrition almost every other type of disease, but specifically because COVID-19 is on all of our minds. And if you're listening in the future, just, you could extrapolate this to influenza or other viral illnesses, even though they're not the same as COVID-19. So you future dwellers listening, go ahead and do that. But what I did is I did a search through peer-reviewed literature, and all that means is that's the highest grade of information that scientists, physicians, etc., trade with each other. And the idea of peer review is you and your team, or you alone, write something based on either your direct research or you looking into something, and there's a mixture of that. And then you send it to peer reviewers, meaning that they know the same things you do, or they're the same type of, you know, PhDs, or there's some— something you have in common. A lot of times, if you have the medical publication, for example, where you're publishing about, you know, interventions and things of that nature, the peer reviewers will tend to be other clinicians with experience in that area, but may it be a mix of, say, some PhD types, master's degree scientist types, and physicians, and they take a look at what you're writing and say, well, you should reference this particular thing that you're saying here because people— not everyone knows that that's common knowledge, or do you really mean to say this in this paragraph that you're saying because that doesn't match with what we know of the current science or whatever. So peer review is an important thing when it comes to this, you know, higher level of information that's put out. There's a lot of information that's very good that's put out as white papers or as other types of things that are basically you know, a group of clinicians or a group of researchers' ideas about something. They just put it out to the community to stimulate thought. So that happens as well. So everything we're gonna talk about today is from the peer-reviewed world, and we'll just get right into it. So the first thing that kind of relates back to some of the things I was saying about, well, you know, we've had a lot of news reports saying, you know, there's no relationship to diet or nutrition doesn't make a difference with viruses, or nutrients that you take or eat won't help you with COVID and all of this, you know, sort of stuff. So these are kind of— they're out there and they're in the, you know, they're in the recorded material from news outlets periodically since March, really. So what I did is I took and did a search through peer-reviewed literature since March, so March through you know, the beginning of August. And I looked specifically for papers that relate to COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2 illness, and nutrients and nutrition. So those are kind of the search terms that I was using. And I wanted specifically, and with just one exception, everything relates specifically to COVID. There is one that I put in on the 11 references. And again, if you get the newsletter, it Goes there and you can get all the references. There's one I put in that's about viral, especially respiratory virus, but it's very germane. So I found 11, and there probably are others, but I found 11 that would, I think, be good for this sort of review. And again, if you are looking for the newsletter, you can just go to either the DRA Online on Instagram and In the Linktree is a newsletter button you can click, or Facebook, Dr. A Online, Dr. A Online. And there's a link in today's post about this. You can just go and get the newsletter for free. So the first thing is these statements like, well, you know, this will not help you and this is bunk and all of that. They make really good, you know, listening on the radio or viewing on TV when you say them. But the idea that if you're looking at scientific information, it reaches a destination, an endpoint, and so people will say the science is settled, that's actually, that's not true about science. The idea of science is there are things we believe now to be true that later we will have more research and information on that we'll change our minds on. And if you've lived very long at all and watched the things reported about scientific events and stuff, you'll see that that's very common. It's very common in the world nutrition, for example. So, you know, to think that what we believed even a year ago, but especially 10 years ago, about particular things in the world of nutrient biochemistry and health are the same as they are today, most of them are not. And that's very important to keep in mind. The next thing is, is that this is a pretty well-delineated hardcore area of medical science. A lot of nutritional medicine, so nutrient you know, medicine data and research comes from the world of nutritional biochemistry. So it's part of the biochemistry of the human in this case, and how their biochemistry affects health and then pathologies and other things. So these are not fringy sort of things. These are publications in, you know, some very, very well-respected publications around the world for medicine and medical science. So The idea that science is settled or stops is never true. As long as we, you know, learn things, we'll know new things. The next thing is, is that a lot of the reason to look both historically but also at new publications is sometimes there are historical things that we've known for a long time that have come up here in a moment, and then we find a new twist or we find something more specific. So, for example, our ability today to do research about the way that nutrients and biochemistry interact inside of, you know, living humans is different, and it's better, it's able to get more deep than it was in previous times. So sometimes there's things we know, such as, you know, this causes this reaction, and then later we look in and we find out, wow, well, it causes this reaction for these reasons, and there's all these other things included, and that actually can then upgrade our knowledge. So looking at new data informs a lot of these little missing pieces that we had a lot of times. So I think that one of the, you know, concepts that I actually said in the newsletter, but I said on almost every radio program since March, is with a— with an epidemic or a pandemic or some new virus, you don't want to predict how everything's gonna come out or how everything's gonna work, et cetera, now, because like I say, it's like predicting the, you know, score of a ballgame in the first 5 minutes of the ballgame. We're a little early to be predicting what's gonna happen a year or 2 from now. Right. But it is good, especially because so many people are dealing with COVID-19 illness, to know what do we know right now? Because if you got COVID-19 right now, you can't wait for 2 years to find out how everything's going to shake out in, in all of the research, et cetera. So, um, while we want to make sure that everyone's clear that, you know, we're not talking about cures or guarantees or anything like that, as a matter of fact, you can do everything exactly right. With an infectious disease like COVID-19, you can be super healthy, you can do all this stuff, and you can still get really sick or you can even die. Like, that happens. And that's— you have to be realistic about that. Is it statistically likely that it will be less intense and you're less likely to die? Yes, based on the few human research things that we've seen where they've done different things with patients. Yeah, it does seem like that, but there is no guarantee that the most perfectly enacted diet and nutrient strategy and everything else is going to protect you 100% from any disease, especially COVID-19. And it's not going to protect you even from dying in every single case. But in most cases, what the research is showing is it has a huge effect. So while we don't want to be Pollyannish about this and say, well, if you do all these things, everything's going to turn out just fine and you're going to be perfect and not get sick. Um, The other side of the coin is you— this is not a good time to experiment with trying to do things, you know, in a less than healthy way. The more healthy you are when you encounter things, usually the better that you weather them, and that's really important to keep in mind. Okay, so the other thing is that we're talking about research that relates back to Basically common sense and logic if you think about the idea of nutrients and health, et cetera. So what we put into ourselves through eating is the currency by which our bodies operate. And so when we eat and consume fluids, et cetera, that is all broken down into micronutrients. So macronutrients are like how much fat and protein and carbohydrate and stuff you get in. Micronutrients are how much of the different B vitamins and vitamin D and A and all this stuff are you getting in from your food. So micronutrients are the currency by which everything works in your body pretty much through one means or another. There's a lot of different ways nutrients work. But if you think about that, then if your immune system, which it is, as we've talked a lot about specifically on other programs, is the, is the hub around which you either repel foreign bugs or you live through them or whatever it is that you do. And also the response, the level response of the immune system, which we've talked about. So not too much, not too little. If that is all predicated on the food and the nutrients that we get into ourselves, obviously logically it makes sense that that has something to do with our immunity. Now, just to be clear, you can have genetic diseases and other things that affect your immune system. You can have other what are called comorbidities that affect your immune system, but Regardless of all those things, they are still affected by the nutrient currency, the micronutrient currency that goes in. So a lot of this, especially early on, and, you know, coming from where I do from the medical point of view, but early on, you know, hearing the medical experts on TV getting really upset about people talking about vitamin D, and that's a bunch of bunk, as they said, and vitamin C doesn't do anything, and all these other things, you know, that were said. I just thought, well, you know, yeah, we don't want to overstate these things and say that they're like some miracle or something like that, but you also can't understate them and say, well, these are not worth anything, because that logically doesn't work in the face of the way human biochemistry and immunology operates. Okay. So we have to logically think about, yeah, we don't want to overstate, but we really don't want to understate either. So let's get into some of these things. Now, if I want to make a quick note to— if you are a scientist or a doctor or something like that, and you get the newsletter, you'll notice that the newsletter is written for everybody. So the entire public, for scientists, doctors, physicians, all of that sort of stuff. The references at the end are really probably the place— it'll shorten your trip on PubMed if you go there and you can see the 11 references and use that as a jumping off point if you want to take a look at them. And I'll describe most of them and what they have pluses or minuses. But because the podcast and the radio show and the newsletter go out to people all over the world and of all types of education, I want to keep it to very conversational and just, you know, very as informative as possible. So those of you who are really smart and educated, just go to the end of the newsletter and get the, get the references, and you can take a look for yourself. So that's just a quick caveat. There's another thing that I say in all of these, and, you know, it's the— it's almost become, you know, rote on all these programs and interviews. I'm a doctor, but I'm not your doctor. So everything we're gonna talk about here is science. And I'm relating stories about the science that's out there. You have to Compute this with your healthcare provider, and it needs to be a healthcare provider who is really trained, at least to some degree, in, in using micronutrition and macronutrition with, you know, with the human body. So different practitioners are trained differently. Now, one thing I have had feedback from other physicians and healthcare practitioners is, let's say they're not, you know, they don't do a whole lot with nutrients, etc. Something like the newsletter where you've got the references and then the recommendations to consider tied to the references, that helps a lot of healthcare providers, which is why I write it that way, because then they can, they can look for themselves. They can see that it's based on something. It's not just some, you know, wild idea, and it gives a bit more, you know, credence to maybe what we're talking about in that respect. So I think that that is important. So if we go through just some highlights in the newsletter, the first thing I brought up was, well, is, is the idea of micronutrition and disease plus or minus a new idea? And certainly it's, you know, it's kind of funny that no, obviously that's not a new idea. That goes back to Hippocrates and before. And now that we know all this science about how things work inside the human, it's just under scored. Obviously you can figure out, uh, even with no medical training, if you take a human and you don't give them anything to eat or drink, after a while they will die. That just is what happens. Um, well, part of the reason that they die is you need a base level of micronutrients going into you to help you out. So we get into that a little bit in the newsletter and kind of what, um, you know, one of their papers does a nice job of saying, you know, this is what we've known before. Here's the micronutrients that we focused on for immunity, and here's a direction the science seems to be taking us with respect to immunity, especially with viruses like the one that causes COVID-19. So I think that that's an important thing, and we bring that up kind of right off the top as a, you know, as an overview. Now, the next thing I want to be really clear about is that there's a lot of information here That is focused on macronutrients from diet that get converted by your body to micronutrients. So remember, macros are like your carbohydrates, fats, and protein, how much hydration water you get in, etc. And micronutrients are what they break down into. So there's water, of course, there's minerals, electrolytes, and other things, vitamins, etc. And then amino acids and all of that. So Where do they go? The macronutrient discussion, which is borne out by a few of the papers, looks simply at the most important part, which is what we eat. And there's something that I think is really important. And you'll see this if you read all of the papers. And the other thing I did, and these 11 papers, they are all available as free full text online. You don't have to sign into anybody's server. You don't have to pay for them or any of that. Okay. So if you want to read every word of all of them and look at the characters and the images that they have, it's all there for you. But I think an important thing to keep in mind is that you have to start with what we put in our mouth from the food end of things. And so there's a saying that goes around. I know, I don't know who originated it, but I used to tell my students, you know, you can't out-supplement a crappy diet, basically. Sometimes I'd use other words, but the idea is Because you can take a whole handful of, you know, supplemental vitamins and minerals and stuff like that, which is great, talk about that. But if your diet is at cross purposes with the supplements, it's not going to help as much or at all. Because the majority of the nutrition that goes into your body is— that's the currency of health— has to come from your food because that's what you do to get nutrients in. So A lot of the papers, I'd say at least a third of them are very focused on that, the dietary part of it. And they should be because that is a huge part of the way that, uh, that this stuff gets into you. Then if you want to supplement on top of things, so you're going to take some extra vitamin D or some extra vitamin C or whatever, which we'll talk about in the last third of the program, uh, that is just, it's the, it's the icing on top. Now, The other side of the coin is if, let's say you're doing all the dietary stuff correct, is there a need to supplement? Well, that's an open question, which has a lot of, uh, uh, has a lot of twists and turns scientifically, but in my opinion, when you are, and the opinion of a lot of other people, when you are, uh, fighting off illnesses or sick and trying to live through a bad illness, the more nutrition that you have available, so diet and supplemental, the more likely you are to have a healthier system in your body to fight back, et cetera. And that's again, not to say, like we said at the top of the show, that people who do all this stuff right still don't get sick, but you have probably less index of illness and a long— a better time long-term, not short-term getting through things. Short-term, you can still be pretty darn sick. Yeah. So I think that that is just an important thing to keep in mind. Diet should be first. And so when it comes to diet, we've had a lot of programs specifically about diet and immunity that are focused on, you know, macros and, you know, how much of carbohydrates and fats and protein and what does that look like and looking at, you know, getting as many colorful vegetables in your life and your diet as you can and all of that. Very, very important. And probably if, if, if I can line it up and I can get my colleague and friend, Dr. Lisa Price, on, we'll do an interview. She and I have worked together on some ways. We met each other a long time ago in some cancer research that was going on and worked on a project together to see if there weren't ways to get people who are ill better quality of food and things without it. you know, costing an arm and a leg, that sort of thing. So there's a lot of things that can be done in that respect, but mostly just eating as clean and as nutrient-dense as possible. So for example, and this, this came up in a question that I was reading yesterday, I believe, or the day before, there'd been a lot of back and forth. There are people who live in areas that are known, identified as food deserts. So not dessert, but desert, the other one. And that's literally where it's very hard unless they have a car and can travel, etc., to get to, you know, a lot of variety for their nutritional intake. And so if you're dealing with that, and that happens a lot in different areas, sometimes rural areas, certainly because you're rural, but also there's a lot of places like that in larger population-dense cities where the closest place where you might be able to get a lot of produce or something is, is pretty far away and pretty inconvenient. So one of the things to kind of dial back to is the next thing we're talking about really are things that you do, that you do every day regardless of where you are or what kind of resources you have or whatever. And you just have to optimize those based on what you have available. There's a lot of, for example, it's not the only group, but for example, there's a lot of elderly folks who You know, don't get out and to shop much, and there's, you know, other things, and maybe they don't have available a lot of food delivery services and things of that nature. And so they tend to get down to a pretty narrow diet, and they're eating the same things. And, you know, one of the things that you learn about early on in medical school is, you know, watching for people, especially either chronically ill people or elderly folks who really aren't eating a very Wide menu, a wide dietary intake, because they just get a lot of nutritional deficiencies and then that makes them susceptible to illnesses, et cetera. Well, that, that's been going on forever. It's just more accentuated now. So when we get into talking about things, remember diet is first. If you have limited resources to get things for your dietary intake, there are things you can still do that are a little better versus a little bit worse and just maximize what you can do. Okay, because I don't want this to be taken that, well, it's great if you can go out and, you know, go to the local organic food stand and buy all your organic food and all that stuff. And, you know, but I live in a place where I can hardly get any of that, and it's pretty hard to get a lot of food. This needs to be for everybody. You can, you know, make choices within what you can do, but it's good to be educated either way it goes. Now, if you want a lot of the detail on this information, you can certainly go and, you know, read through the newsletter, but I'll just, I'll just sort of get down to a couple of basics and then we'll get into the recommendation part, which is the part more people are interested in, like, well, what specifically do I do? So a couple of things. They have some in here. I have some references to papers, these scientific papers that looked at what are the, what are the factors that come when you're in a quarantine or shelter-in-place or whatever you want to call it environment And so not only is you're not maybe going out or you're going out once a week to buy food or whatever, not only is that going on, but you're also in your house. You're not leaving, right? Well, one of the things, you know, that came up, I did an interview on Dr. Sam Adira's radio program podcast on CTR Network where you're hearing this and you can go back and listen. It's episode 50. That's, I can remember it because it's an even number. We talked a lot about that and how one of the concerns in these research papers bring it up is when you're stuck inside, you know, you're not likely to get as much exercise. You're not as likely to, you know, have, you know, you might narrow down to comfort foods, which aren't always the most, you know, the most nutritious. You might be a person who doesn't cook a lot or doesn't know how to cook. And now you're at home and you have food, but you're not sure what to do with it. There's a lot of factors. Well, these scientific papers actually bring that up and give a lot of good advice. Some of the Early ones, I think reference 2, 3, and 4 or something like that. It's listed in the newsletter. But it is important to see that. The other thing that Dr. McGeer and I talked about was, you know, people who are stuck at home statistically, and you look at the research coming out, they're more likely to not only be more sedentary, but drink more alcohol and other things of that nature. And, you know, which again, just are not pushing you in a direction towards more robust health. And certainly that's not everybody, but that's a lot of people. You know, and then there's the psycho and neuro-emotional parts of having, you know, we talked about this in one of the recent radio programs, having this outside influence being a virus that's changing your life and you don't have any control. You know, that's a tough one to deal with too, just emotionally. So there's a lot of effects there. And these papers get into it. And I try and, you know, get into which paper says what, so you can go look it up if you want to get real specific. There is a The paper that is reference number 5 that you can take a look at, and number 4, those 2 look a lot and they have lists of, you know, what would be better diet choices if you can make them. And these are, you know, with any list anybody makes, it doesn't matter who it is, especially around nutrition, you can always fight about this or that or the macros or whatever, but just, you know, kind of keep an open hand. Read the lists if you're looking for lists of things that are healthier or less healthy. And understand that, you know, it comes from whatever the writing group or the author's bent is. So some people are less worried, for instance, about, you know, the macro balance and some are more worried about it. So fats versus protein and carbs and stuff. But when you get down to it, as I've said on this program a lot, if you look and you get as much color as you can from the vegetable world, that's a great hub to build your diet around because color not only means, you know, more You know, more fiber and more vitamins. It means more minerals. It means different types of amino acids in some plant-based fats. The other thing though that color means is there are these other polyphenol chemicals that we've done some of the cooking shows about, and those have a lot of effect on your immune system. So that's super important to keep in mind. So what you eat has to be the start, and that's some of the early papers that I cite there go into that. Then there's some other things that, that don't come up as often, but some of the authors in the papers here brought up, which I think was really wonderful. And that is some, uh, what you almost think of as ancillary nutritional interventions, although they're part and parcel of how humans work. Uh, one being something not talked about as much. It is talked about a lot in nutrition, but maybe not as much with viruses, the type of fats that you get. So there's a lot about omega-3s. Yeah. oils, omega fats, and what they do for you. There's also a fair— fairly good bunch of information about probiotics, and you could look at that as prebiotics as well, which means the foods that trigger you to grow the right microbiome. And there is a— this is a conference I'm preparing for just a couple of weeks where it's all about the nutrient and digestive system and your health. And one of the parts we're going to talk about is the immune connection and the, you know, the good flora, the bacteria, the good or bad that grow inside you, how much that affects you. Well, a couple of the authors, and it's listed out here in the newsletter, bring that up and talk about specifics around probiotics and some prebiotics. And we certainly have older programs on that as well. So So there's a, one of the publications from British Medical Journal, which is a pretty big, well-known journal. And I make the comment that, you know, if you, if you like lists of good, good data and good nutrient information and how many research projects have been done, et cetera, then this is your paper. It's paper number 7. And what they did in there is actually took and they broke down and they said for vitamin A, here's the research for vitamin D, here's, here's the research. And it's really nice because then you don't have to go looking at, you know, 25 research papers to find that there is research on vitamin A. Now, if you want to dig into it, it's there for you, but it's, it's a very nice summary there for you if you want to get into that. And I think some of the, some of the, you know, professionals who want to dig into this, that's a great paper for that. Good jumping off point. The other thing that came up a lot in some of the research is around some of the other, like, With COVID-19 illness, we hear about the cytokine storms, immune overreaction. Is that affected at all by the diet and nutrient status of the human? And originally, this is something that, you know, everyone just didn't want to touch at all in saying anything about it, because we knew that if it happened and you were, say, in a hospital, it would take some pretty extreme measures to get the cytokine storm under control, and we've had programs about that. But what it turns out is, and what, you know, one or two of the papers talk about, is the better the nutritional status, so the biochemical currency in your body, the more likely that those things are going to be a little more muted and less of a problem. Now, do I know people personally who have gotten and dealt with COVID and And were taking supplements and eating well and, you know, thinking good thoughts and all that, and they still had a very rough time with it and have, you know, post-COVID problems. Yeah, I know a fairly large number of those. It seems that they probably would have done worse had they not have been doing that, but it is a thing, right? So there's no guarantee that, you know, any of this is going to be completely preventive or curative, but— Better to have the resources going in than to be real sick and have a worse outcome. So I want to spend the last third of the program here talking about the recommendations that we could kind of glean from this data that I summarized. And then, like I said, in the newsletter— so you can get that, the link on the post for CTR Network today on their Facebook page, you can get it on DRA Online on Instagram or Facebook. It's posted there, a newsletter link. Newsletter is free. It's got all this. We've got old, old letters and new ones coming up. So if you want to read it and you want the references, it's all there. But I want to start out with, as I mentioned earlier, there are limitations everyone has. Some people have very little limitation. Some people have a lot of limitation. So That is just the way humanity is. It's the way being a person is. And I want to be as inclusive as possible when it comes to limitations. So the first thing that I usually try to talk to people about, whether it's about viral immunity or dealing with cancer or whatever it is, I like to start out with the things that we all have going on in our life, whether, you know, we have a lot of resources or no resources, a lot of limitations, no limitations. So the first thing is sleep. And this is obviously a big area where a lot of the stress response around, you know, an outside virus that might, you know, might harm you or kill you is a pretty stressful event, can throw off your sleep. A lot of things can mess up your sleep. But the bottom line is that less sleep is equated with less immune function. And that's the last thing that you need. So to the degree that you can, sleeping as well and as much in a reasonable amount as you possibly can is better. And most of us have had this experience. I know just personally from, you know, without looking at research projects, when I have gotten run down and I've been extra busy and I'm not sleeping appropriately, you tend to get sick a little bit easier. Well, it's because your immune system does have to recharge. So sleep's very important. Another thing that we all do or, or we die is hydrate. So the most important thing that you can put in as far as fluid into your body is water. And that's because the currency literally that everything operates within is water inside of your body. And if you think about it, your body's super dynamic. It's like, you know, you've got the area from the blood going to the area outside the cells to the inside the cells and back around. And that whole system has its own operational mode that it's in, and it's operating 24/7 every second of the day. So if there's not enough fluid and hydration to take the good nutrients in and the toxic stuff out, things back up and you actually can become functionally deficient just because of lack of hydration. So making, making water your first primary fluid that you take in, and then everything else after that is probably the best way to go. It makes me want water. Also, I'll talk better if I'm hydrated. The other thing we've talked about, which you can go to old programs, with a virus that primarily comes in through the respiratory mucosa, mucous membranes, the more hydrated you are, the better their immune function operates. So it's sort of a double benefit there. Movement. So this doesn't have to mean exercise, just mean moving your body. The more that your muscles, the things that move you around, the more they do, The higher the metabolism that opposes infections and bad immune stuff is. The more you're sedentary and the more your fat is metabolizing, the lower your immunity goes. And we've had a lot of programs on that, but that's sort of a thing. And people will say, well, you know, I'm bedbound. What do I do? Well, you can still move some part of your body that has a muscle. If your arms work and your legs don't, you can move your arms. If your legs work and your arms don't work well, you can move your legs. And that's a lot of what occupational and physical therapy work with people, especially when they're stuck in a hospital on. And it's not, it's not just for mobility, it's also for metabolism purposes. So do as much as you can. Your mind, the mind-body connection is not just this ethereal thing, you know, you literally are what you think. And the epigenetic influence of your thoughts and the either good or bad, that you let in your brain and all that filter into your genome and the operation of your body. And so if you're bathing yourself in only negative impulses and inputs, and that's what you're thinking about, that is going to affect you downstream. I often mention on the program my friend, Dr. Bruce Lipton, and his many books. They're about these effects and very scientifically laid out. And you should read those if you haven't, they're very good. But it's a big thing. There's a lot of people that talk about this now. It used to be sort of a fringy part of immunology. Now it's, it's a very big part. So your mind and what you let go in. And then just the rest of you, you know, there's a lot of lifestyle things that either bring us more fulfillment and joy in our lives or less. Everyone has things that are unpleasant that we have to do. Or maybe not unpleasant, but just things we'd prefer we spent less time doing. We just got to do them to stay alive or work or whatever. But with whatever amount of time you have to focus on and do things outside of that, do it, you know, time is short, life is short, do it in things that bring you some level of joy, peace, centering, enjoyment. And again, we've had a lot of programs on that. So I'll just mention it. We mentioned diet globally, so I don't want to belabor that more. There's tons of past podcasts on diet and even some cooking ones that you can look at, so you can go back there. But I want to just go through, and I've done this before on programs, but now that I've put it in the newsletter, I want to explain some of the specific supplemental nutrient things. So again, First are the lifestyle things, then the diet, what we're putting in, and then supplements come after. But are supplements important? I believe based on the science and the way I read it and the way most other people read it, that yes, to, you know, and you can argue how much are important, but especially when fighting with a potential outside thing like the flu or COVID-19 or any other thing, it's better to do it than not is my personal opinion. Yeah. Now, the next thing is, again, these are not medical recommendations. These are things that come from this science I'm sharing and give you ideas about what to do, but nothing— you shouldn't put anything in your body from supplements or drugs or anything like that that doesn't have the filter of a healthcare practitioner to help you out with that, especially some of the ones that are fat soluble that you we'll talk about right off the top of the head. So these are just things to consider. These are not things that you should do personally. The first is vitamin A, and there's a difference between short-term and long-term use too. Usually when you're dealing with prevention, that's months. It's not years and years. So short-term, usually in the world of prevention or early, you know, intervention with the virus itself, you're talking about You know, 1 to 3 months, maybe 4 months, and then you're going to do less. Sort of like, let's fill the tank and then we'll move on. Vitamin A, normally for viral, especially respiratory things, we think of the fat-soluble form of vitamin A. And because it's fat-soluble, it can build up in your body and you can get too much. And so you have to be careful of that. Now, if you've never taken vitamin A, you usually can handle a fairly large amount, but you want to be careful and Work with your healthcare provider on doses. Normally though, what I've used with family members has been around 25,000 to 50,000 international units of the retinol form, the fat-soluble form, in times of flu, cold, COVID-19, etc., a day. And then— Over the first 2 or 3 months, you kind of back back down on the dose. Pregnant women can't take that much. People with liver damage often can't take that much. So again, you have to work with your doctor. Generally, we give pregnant women a lower dose anyway, but it's very, very important. And one of the other things, it's less about big doses every day and more about regularity over time too. So I think vitamin A is an important one that's often forgot about, especially in the world of respiratory and viral illnesses. And they bring that up in some of the papers. Vitamin C. So we've talked a lot about vitamin C. Just remember the short version is most people get diarrhea if they take too much vitamin C orally. And I always recommend looking at Dr. Cathcart's paper from 1981 in Medical Hypotheses about oral bowel tolerance dosing. But the bottom line is if you take 500 milligrams or 1,000 with each meal, Spread it out through the day. You'll find out where your bowel tolerance is, and it doesn't hurt you. It just means when you start to get loose bowels, you've had enough vitamin C that day. And it's water-soluble, it can't hurt you. You just don't want to have, you know, diarrhea from vitamin C. So you can, you can always back off when you get to your bowel tolerance. In a lot of places in North America, Europe, and especially in China, during the, the local epidemic with COVID-19, they were giving people, you know, powdered vitamin C to put in their water and just drink throughout the day at doses like that. Vitamin D is in the news a lot, and that's because it's— vitamin D is really more of a hormone than a vitamin, but it relates to a lot of immune function. Vitamin D relates to lots of things like your bone health and a lot of fatty membrane health and it turns out immunity, etc. So vitamin D is fat soluble, so you can get too much. People get their vitamin D levels checked. That's great. So if you're already taking vitamin D to keep your levels, you know, in the upper half of normal, you're probably good. Okay. If you've never taken vitamin D before, a lot of the papers will look at, you know, vitamin D levels do trend with immune function. So Better, and it doesn't mean high is good, it means, you know, in the normal range, but in the upper half of the normal range is associated with better immunity than being at the low end or low vitamin D. So it is one of those things because it's fat soluble, they check levels. But initially when people are around a lot of sick people or getting sick, you know, again, we'll have them do 25,000 or more units I use a day for the short term and then back off. But again, Yeah. You need to work with your healthcare provider on what's good for you. A lot of times we don't include a lot of the B vitamins, and I put them in the newsletter as just the B complex. So B complex is what they call a suite of vitamins, like a suite of rooms, right? A suite of vitamins that are related. And they include the numbered B vitamins like B1, B2, B3, you know, B5, B6, B12, etc. Then there are some named ones that are related like folate, folates and para-aminobenzoic acid, PABA, biotin, other stuff. So they're, they're kind of a family. They're not all exactly alike, but they're like a family. And the thing with B vitamins is they don't get a lot of press with immunity, but they are normally in almost all places where a vitamin works to help a process go through, say, an enzyme cofactor. In almost all of them, it's a B vitamin, one of the members of the B vitamin suite who does it. Sometimes it's vitamin C or some other thing, but more than not, it's B vitamins. So if your body is acting a lot, doing a lot of things, these are water soluble. So what I eat and take in today is probably gone by tomorrow for the most part. We want to make sure they're in there. So if people are looking at supplementing, a lot of— if you have a good multivitamin, it'll have all those in there. Some people will take a B complex. Again, you know, work with your healthcare provider on what's best for you, but you don't want to just take the famous immune support nutrients and then forget all the other guys. And the B vitamins are certainly there. Minerals. Now, zinc has become famous because there's a lot of talk from the CDC on out about the idea of zinc somehow having a role in slowing viral replication down, which is great if you have a virus and you have less replication, And that's a good thing normally. And so the CDC even has some videos about zinc and how it works and all that. It's really cool videos. You can look up on zinc in the— see, if you just go to the CDC's YouTube videos, there's some super smart people with great graphics that show that. And look for zinc and virus or zinc and COVID from the CDC there. That's some good stuff there. But here's what happens. So zinc is great and it has to get in the cell and all that. Wonderful. But then you start to— it's like with the B vitamins, you don't just want to focus on one because your body runs on all sorts of minerals, right? So what we have tended to have people do, especially like in my family where it's more you're working on prevention and all that, is to use instead of just a whole bunch of one mineral, get a multi-mineral supplement, kind of like a a B complex for the B vitamins with all those special things, multi-mineral that has zinc and selenium and chromium and, you know, all of those helpers. Now, in people who are actually sick, they will often recommend that they do extra zinc. So let's say you have 30 milligrams of zinc in your multi, uh, your multi-mineral. They might add another 25 to 50 milligrams of zinc on top of that if you're sick. And that's probably a good idea because again, minerals are mostly water soluble. They move through the body. Now, something that people will bring up about zinc is, is you look in nutrition books and it says, well, if you're giving extra zinc, you have to give copper with it because they balance each other out, which is true. Now, short term, it's not such a big deal. So meaning 1 to 3 months, it's— they're not going to get that out of balance. But long term, one of the reasons that you would maybe get your levels checked and/or just use a multi-mineral that's balanced out is most balanced multi-minerals are going to have A ratio of zinc to copper. It's a big zinc, small copper. So if you're taking it every day for, you know, 5 years, you're going to keep your ratios in line. Short-term, while you're dealing with infections and stuff, it's less of an issue unless you have a known copper deficiency. So again, when it comes to copper and iron and some of the things that we need a little bit but not a lot, you do want to have those looked at if you're going to be taking them over time. So I think while zinc is certainly important, the other minerals like selenium and chromium and all the other guys are also important. And so a multi is good. And you think about where you get minerals, whether it's from the plant kingdom or animal kingdom, when it comes to things of that nature, they generally don't come singly, they come as a group. Okay. And then one other thing, and I mentioned quercetin, which is a bioflavonoid, comes from plants. You can take that. It's been in the news about helping zinc in the cells. So it's kind of famous there. But the other nutrient that a lot of people talked about that I think is really important is N-acetylcysteine. So amino acid cysteine, we've talked about, helps with mucous membrane immunity, mucous flow, helps with glutathione formation. and a bunch of other good things for the immunity. N-acetylcysteine is the least expensive way to boost your glutathione levels and help your mucous membranes. So N-acetylcysteine, normally they come usually 500 or 600 milligrams in a capsule and you take them, you know, one with 2 or 3 meals a day. And so if you were down and you could do your diet the best you can and you only had money for 1 or 2 supplements, Honestly, what I would do is the best food you can eat, hydrate a lot, and then vitamin C and N-acetylcysteine, which are in the list there in the newsletter, are the cheapest, literally best defense. If you can only buy one or two things, vitamin C and N-acetylcysteine as far as supplements. So if you're interested in the newsletter, because we're running out of time, on Instagram, it's just DRA Online, DRA Online. On Facebook, You can go to the CTR Radio Network platform, Contact Talk Radio. My post there has a link. You can go to DR.A Online on Facebook. There's a post with a link to the newsletter. It's free. You just sign up for the newsletter and you get access to this and the other newsletters we have. But we are out of time for the day. And so it's been wonderful to speak with you. And I'll be back here in a week. You can also get these on any of the podcast Burners of Medicine and Health with Dr. Anderson. But otherwise, I'll see you on the radio next week. This is Dr. Paul Anderson. Thank you. You've been listening to the podcast