Review of Common Immune Supplements

taking action into your consciousness by tuning into Contact Talk Radio and on tunein.com, hang.fm, and UpSnap Mobile. Contact Talk Radio. Welcome to Medicine and Health with Dr. Paul Anderson. This is a show about opening up the often mysterious world of how doctors think. The goal To empower the listener to gain access to the best healthcare possible. Good day and welcome to Medicine Health with Dr. Paul Andersen. That's me, I'm Dr. Paul. And today we are going to break down kind of a follow-up to the last couple segments that we've done, but this time it's feedback about Essentially, I see advertisements for immune supplements, or I'm taking this immune supplement, or it's reported to be one, and I'm not sure, am I doing myself any good? Am I potentially hurting anything? Are these things worth the money? What should I do? Well, of course, like all things, this is information only. This is not meant to replace your doctor or getting good health advice or from any practitioner that you use for your healthcare. So I'm gonna talk in generalities about immune supplements. I'm gonna break down, have a list of a number that people had said, well, take a look at this and see what's in it. And, you know, what do you think? So I'm gonna go through those things. But as always, this is not direct medical advice to you. This is information and you should correlate this whoever you get your healthcare from. Now, one thing with supplements that I would say is there are a number of ways that you can get health advice around supplements. And some of those methods for advice are better and some are worse. For example, it's not uncommon nowadays, as opposed to just a few years ago, to see moderately reliable or fairly reliable information on websites, say university health websites and other, you know, pretty reliable websites, and they'll give you some good basic information. So for example, they may have good information on, you know, what are the researched areas where this supplement does some good? And they may also have some good information on, in the research, is there anything I should be worried about? Is there any toxicity to this supplement? Or, you know, should I just not take it? Or, you know, Other things of that nature. What I would say about online advice and whether it's, you know, from one of these sort of garden varieties, here's a list of supplements and here's where we believe they work in the science and here's where we believe they may be dangerous, et cetera. Those are not a bad place to start. One of the things you have to consider though, kind of like what I said in the disclaimer at the top of the program, is an online source, especially, you know, one of these lists that, you know, gives sort of like a menu and then tells you the good and the bad, it has to by nature and by law be sort of limited in its information. So you're not really supposed to make health or medical recommendations. So, you know, the online source shouldn't, you know, be saying, if you have pneumonia, you should take this. That would be inappropriate. But the other thing is you tend in material, especially when you're not like face-to-face or over Zoom or talking on the phone with somebody, you know, who's an expert, you tend to need to be a little more conservative or a lot conservative about the information you give because you don't want people to just go out and like, you know, take a whole bunch of something, or you don't want people to not realize that there might be a danger in taking something too much, or You know, some other known adverse event of a supplement or even a drug, et cetera. So you do want to keep that in mind when you look at these sort of neutral advice pages. They're a lot better than they used to be. The information is getting better that we have and are able to share, but they by nature are quite conservative, with nothing wrong with that. That leads to another phenomenon that is meant to protect the public, and that is on over-the-counter products, much of which is what we're going to talk about today. On over-the-counter products, there generally is a recommended daily dosage. Okay, now you've heard of like the RDA, the recommended daily allowance. Those are for nutrients, and those are very minimal, and they are designed to be the cutoff to where below the RDA is where you would get diseased. Doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, above that is too much. It just means below that you're in big trouble, right? There's not an RDA for a lot of things, okay? Herbal products, a lot of other stuff. And as we've talked about, when you're sick, you tend to use more of things because you're more in a depleted state. So you have to be careful there also that the RDA really— it applies to if I was eating this or taking it every day above my life. The RDA is like the minimum amount I need to get in in my diet over the course of time so I don't get sick. It doesn't mean it's going to make me healthy, it just means I'm not going to get as sick. So the other side of that is when you in North America, certainly in probably most places now, when you have a label on an over-the-counter product Like, you know, an immune support complex. That's not the name of anything, but it could be. You're gonna see on the side, you know, how much is in every pill, tablet, or capsule. You're gonna see the recommended daily dose. And it's gonna say take, you know, 2 of these twice a day with food or something of that nature. We need to keep in mind about that recommended dose is legally you have to be careful if you're a supplement manufacturer that you don't recommend a dose that in any way could be toxic for an adult. Now, normally on the label, there'll also be a disclaimer saying, you know, not intended for children or pregnant women, etc., etc. And that is because in instances of, you know, smaller people like children or pregnancy, there might be different, you know, considerations. So the label will also be by nature a conservative dose. Now, it doesn't mean it's a bad dose. It means it's an average dose. And I have had people, you know, call and it's, you know, even in the days before COVID you know, you still would talk to patients on the phone or maybe they send a message in through the portal nowadays, you know, in your EMR. And they would say, you know, I'm sick and I'm at home. You know, I'm in no danger, but I've got this bottle of XYZ. And they tell you what's in it and You know, then they say, it says to take, you know, one pill a day or one pill twice a day. And often you look and you say, well, for you where you have this acute problem, I would like you to take 4 of them twice a day. Now that's medical advice in that instance because you know the patient and you know that they're sick and you know that that's an indication. And they'll often say, well, why, why does it say just take one twice a day? You say take 4 twice a day. Reason is that the label is set to be very broad and for the average person. Well, there is no average person, right? So you might look, or a healthcare professional might look and say, well, gee, you know, they need 500 milligrams of this particular substance and one pill only gives them, you know, a quarter of that. We need to, we need to boost up the dose. So A lot of things, in fact, pretty much everything I can think of that we're going to talk about today, I've got a whole list of questions that I have received from, from everyone. A lot of what we're going to talk about are these over-the-counter things. So you might then go and look, and you might find your favorite brand of something and say, gee, you know, it's, you know, only got this much in it, and the recommended dose is 1 pill a day. How does that relate to what know, Paul talked about on the podcast. Well, the way it relates is I might talk about the acute use of it, you know, for a really sick person is very different from some, you know, label claim that I need to make as a supplement manufacturer. I'm not a supplement manufacturer, so I don't have to worry about that, but that's just the way the rules are for labels. Now, the other thing I think just as we start out that's important to think about is why would we need immune supplements? And sometimes you don't. Okay, but there are a couple of categories of need. One would be to keep in mind that when we get sick, and we've talked about this every time we've talked about, you know, the immune system response or how things go with your vitamins and minerals when you get sick, etc. As you get sick, your natural nutrients that come from your diet, so whether that's vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, polyphenols and flavonoids, et cetera, they get lower because your body uses them up rather quickly. So when we're sick, we often need more of these external things. And I think that is important. So there is a need when we're sick sometimes to supplement and take on top of what we can eat. And then there's a lot of things that while you might eat, for example, there's a lot of, you know, mushrooms that you might eat in your diet that are very immune supportive. You might not be eating enough of them to have an acute effect on your immunity. So supplementation might be good. Same could be said for vitamin C. You might not be able to eat enough vitamin C when you're sick, so you might take more. The other thing is that the need for a supplement when we're sick or getting sick, or maybe trying not to get sick, may be based on how much stress is going to be on our immune system. So if it's cold and flu season, or if I'm living in a household of people who are sick with something, I might want a little more, you know, buffer, a little bit more support to my immune system. And remember, we've talked about on a number of the recent programs how the immune system really is a concerted effort or orchestrated effort. And it's, it's a lot like a wave that goes up and down. We have upregulation and downregulation, all which are good. And when we're getting sick, it may trend up, but it still has this up and down effect. So we might want to take things that enhance that. Okay. And so All of these are reasons why we might need these sorts of supplements. Now, one thing I'll mention this a couple of times because it's new, but I've had people, you know, sometimes like, you know, sometimes on Facebook, you may be watching this on Facebook Live or replay of Facebook Live, people, you know, below on the Dr. A Online post of the recording or the live, they may type in, you know, a question or something like that. I get feedback that way. There's a lot of different ways. But we did set up— the web team just set up this last week a new website that's just for public consumption. So it has a lot of things like blogs and newsletters on there that I've done. But it also has feedback, a contact form. So if there's something you saw on one of the programs or podcasts that you want more information about to be on the next podcast or a future podcast, or maybe there's something that you looked and said, gee, you know, I'd love— would you do a podcast on this? We like that feedback. So you can send it in now through the website. And it's pretty simple. It's D-R-A, like Dr. A, D-R-A-N-O-W. So just D-R-A-N-O-W, dranow.com. And you can go there. And as I said, there's a lot of resources on there, a lot of information, such as a lot of the— all of the newsletters and blog posts and all of that sort of thing, but you also contact there, dranow.com. But let's get into the list of things that people have asked me to talk about. So the first thing is, you know, I've heard you talk about taking zinc as a support for the immune system, and certainly zinc and selenium and some of the other trace minerals are very important for immunity. But I saw recently something that said for, you know, preventing, you know, respiratory things, cold and flu and stuff, I should be taking a lozenge of zinc or a liquid zinc or something like that. What's going on there? Because when we talked about the long-term use of zinc, we usually talked about taking, you know, a capsule or a tablet form, taking it with food so it doesn't upset your stomach. Why would you take a lozenge or a liquid? Well, what they're talking about there when they say that is if you're trying to— let's say you're going to be exposed to things and you're trying to prevent things. In addition to building up your zinc levels in your blood, which the oral take the pill with food thing will do, the lozenge or the liquid will actually help to keep zinc in the oropharynx and the area where you're likely to bring, you know, breathe in a virus like cold or flu, something of that nature. And it actually has been shown in research to decrease the uptake of virus, et cetera. So you kind of have 2 effects there. So acutely for prevention purposes, especially if you're going to be, you know, around other people, I know a lot of people have not been around other people, but you're going to have to go to somewhere, um, or you're going to be on an airplane, even if you're wearing a mask and, uh, you're going to be in public or something and you're concerned, a lozenge, zinc lozenges are great, or a liquid. And then if you want to look at your zinc levels over time, it'd be more like we talked about taking a pill, a tablet or capsule form of zinc. That's for long-term use. And that is something that I'll say with all these things we're going to talk about. There are definitely uses that are more long-term, fill-the-tank preventive, and then there's acute short-term use, which is important. So when you're looking at acute short-term use, something different like, say, a zinc lozenge may be important because it's doing a different job. Sometimes also acute or short-term use might mean a higher dose for a short time. Remember in the Either in the newsletter or in the podcast I've done about, you know, the vitamins and viruses, how we talked about, you know, you might take a fat-soluble vitamin short-term for a higher amount to build up your levels. Makes sense. But of course, you wouldn't take that long-term forever. You take lower doses in the preventive setting. Same idea. So the next one that was really common, and I think this is because it's a A version of this has been around for a long, long time, probably as long as there's been supplements. And that would be something around— it's often called ACEs or ACEs with zinc or something of that nature. And nothing I talk about will be a trade name, but that's kind of a common sort of generic supplement to see. And it's acronym for A, vitamin A. C, vitamin C. E, vitamin E. S for selenium. And then if it has zinc, zinc, obviously. But ACES. So where did that come from? And what in the world would that do? Should I take that when I'm sick or getting sick or something of that nature? Well, originally that ACES or ACES with zinc was sort of developed more to be a support to your you know, cell health and antioxidant status. Now, certainly antioxidant status and overall cell health get involved in your immune response. True. But those supplements are often used in people who are maybe trying to recover from something. So maybe they have a— they've had a trauma to their body, like they're getting over being sick, or they've had a surgery or, you know, some other taxing thing. And their healthcare provider felt like they need to rebuild their antioxidant Antioxidant stores, which happens. And so something like that can be very useful. Now vitamin A is often in there on— now vitamin A, as we know, we talked about this a lot, but vitamin A has a lot of especially respiratory immune supportive action because it's used in what are called epithelial cells. So vitamin A is primarily used in Reproductive organs, your eyes, and your epithelial cells, which not just your skin, but the lining of your mucous membranes, like your respiratory mucosa and your GI mucosa. So vitamin A is used by those cells when they're either fighting or repairing. So a lot of times vitamin A is used in those settings. And we also talked about how vitamin A is often used with, you know, in the Either hopefully preventive or treatment strategies around respiratory entry viruses, same thing. So ACES or ACEs and zinc type of supplements, that is generally their purpose. They can be helpful during times of either preventing illness, recovering from illness. A lot of people— we had a podcast not long ago on post-COVID. Yeah. syndromes and things of that nature. A lot of rebuilding of antioxidants and cell functions important there. ACES with zinc is a good global thing. Generally, those supplements are dosed in such a way where they are either meant as a long-term preventive at a very low dose, like 1 or 2 pills a day, depending on how the label is, but usually a low dose. And so you're not going to build up too much at that, or a healthcare providers sometimes will tell somebody, well, if you're recovering from being sick, or maybe you're just now getting sick and you called and that's what you have, they might have you take more of that again for short-term acute use. And again, short-term acute use, the idea is to, to so-called fill the tank. Let's get more while we're depleted, but we're not going to fill the tank forever. You know, it's the same as with your car. If your car's tank is low, like the analogy would be your nutrient and other status is low because you're sick, then it's fine to fill the tank with more than normal, but you don't just keep pouring gas in because it's going to run out all over. Same thing kind of with a lot of supplements. Now another one that we'll break down a little bit more in a bit, but I got a lot of questions about where— and it's getting more popular— is beyond dietary use, like eating them. What about mushrooms, medicinal mushrooms. Now, a function of recent years, I also have to say, when I say medicinal mushrooms, normally what I'm talking about are immune-acting type of mushrooms. A lot of people nowadays will think of medicinal mushrooms or mushroom medicine more in like low-dose hallucinogenic mushrooms and stuff like that. That's not the topic of today's podcast. That might be a future one. But what I'm talking about are the non-hallucinogenic mushrooms, the kind that you may eat and often are put into supplements. So in the world of mushrooms, you see a lot of things like, you know, reishi mushrooms, shiitake and maitake mushrooms, turkey tail mushrooms, you know, all manner of mushroom types that go into supplements. And those are all great. They work really well. One of the cool things about mushrooms, and one of the reasons we know so much about mushrooms and their health benefits, is they've been part of the human diet For probably as long as humans have been eating, and they persist as part of the human diet. Now, depending on where you're from and maybe what era you grew up in, you may have come from an area where, you know, the cultivation of mushrooms and the eating of mushrooms in a culinary sense wasn't a very big deal. It just wasn't part of what your local store or, you know, your parents made for you or whatever. Um, And that certainly is true. I know of, you know, areas in North America, especially when I grew up, the main mushrooms that anybody saw often were little cans of, you know, of mushrooms that didn't really resemble a lot of fresh mushroom. Nowadays, people are a lot more used to seeing them. Certainly other parts of the world, people have always eaten mushrooms. When I've traveled and taught in Asia, that, you know, there's mushrooms that no one's ever heard of that you're eating. And the idea behind mushrooms, so you can get into the weeds with, you know, mushroom science, there's a lot of science around mushrooms. In fact, there's just in the peer-reviewed scientific research, you know, there's like 50,000+ articles just on the medicinal use of immune mushrooms. So there's a lot of science out there. So just a ton. But if you think just top-down, what do mushrooms give you? Why would they be good for your immune system? Well, and if you're trying to prioritize either, I can only take so much stuff or eat so much stuff when I'm sick, number one, maybe I can only afford so many things, or maybe I'm home, I don't have someone to shop for me, I'm just gonna eat what I've got around here. What would be high-value things to eat or take? Okay. Mushrooms might be one of the most high-value supplement or food things that you can do if you're either trying to protect yourself from illness or support yourself during infectious illness. And the reason is that mushrooms, you hear this word thrown around mostly for marketing purposes called superfood. Well, superfood is an actual thing. Normally, it's way overblown to try and sell something. But if you think about a food that's a superfood, you could fit mushrooms in under any category pretty much. And it's because it's a It's a dense nutrient source. So whether I'm eating it or taking it as a supplement, it's a dense nutrient source. It's going to have a lot— most mushrooms have a lot of minerals in them, which you talked about how important minerals are as cofactors and in support of pathways that work in immunity. But also there's a lot of vitamins and there's also a lot of plant flavonoids, polyphenols, and other chemicals. Now these flavonoids, polyphenols, chemicals that plants have, remember, have a lot of immunomodulatory activity. And it turns out that in mushrooms, the constituent plant chemistry and the density of it lends itself to support of the human immune system and other animals too, but we'll talk about humans. So generally, if a mushroom is edible, And again, we're talking about immune ones, not hallucinogenic ones. But if, if a mushroom is edible and can be part of your diet, it is a good way to make sure you're getting real high-density nutrition. So there is a not uncommon type of, of a food that's made for sick people in different parts of the world. And There's a couple of variations around it. Now, we've all kind of heard about chicken soup being, you know, good in colds and stuff. There's actually research to show that. Now, chicken soup is— it's an easy thing to eat. If you're really feeling bad, you can just eat the broth and goes down easy and it's very helpful. Well, the other thing is, you know, chicken soup has a lot of other nutritional benefits in it. Well, there's also another thing that's done and I don't— it's probably as old as time too, but the first place I heard about it was in France, so I've always thought of it as French. It may not be, but a common type of soothing sort of soup, you know, preparation that was made that I learned about from a French chef, but again, it could have come from anywhere, and I've seen this in Asia as well. Was taking some sort of base, either water or a broth like a vegetable broth, or maybe, you know, some other like chicken or whatever, but some sort of broth or water base and cooking crushed garlic. So they would take, and the literal way they would do it is they would crush the garlic. Now why do you crush garlic, you know, and either chop it or not? You crush the garlic to actually activate the essential oils that are in the there, which have a lot of the acute immune effects. Okay. So we crush the garlic and usually chop it up, you know, so you didn't have giant chunks of garlic and they would sauté it to take some of the, some of the bite out of the garlic in butter or olive oil or something. And then they would put in mushrooms, cut up mushrooms of whatever they had. And then they would let those marry and sort of soak the mushrooms, soak up the garlic and vice versa. And then they would add the broth, whatever it was to it. And they would give that to sick people. And it's not an uncommon, oh, your family's sick, why don't you all start eating this? Or, oh, you've been exposed, try this out. Well, it gives you a number of benefits. Now, we'll get to garlic in a minute, but the mushrooms, it's an easy way to eat the mushroom. It's a palatable way to eat it, especially if you're not feeling well, and it goes down easily. And if that's the only food you're getting in, you're getting a high value of nutrient and immune support density. Now, the reason for the addition of the garlic, and at least traditionally we think garlic garlic's in every native food culture that I know of and that I've studied, something in the garlic family anyway. Garlic provides a lot of direct anti-infective constituents. Okay, now we think of garlic and you might think of constituents, you know, like allicin and allium and some of the other things that have become famous because of medicinal use of garlic for heart problems and blood pressure and stuff. But there's a lot of constituents and a lot of oils in there. If you can get them active and you can get them into somebody, they actually do become very anti-infective. Now, excuse me. The use of— now, of course, this also smells like garlic. So, you know, it's, if you're sick, that's usually not a big deal, but you do want to keep that in mind. The mushrooms don't have a ton of smell. The garlic really does. And you do want it to smell because then you know you're getting all the good stuff. Well, so if you have something that's nutrient-dense like mushroom, and then you've got garlic, which has a lot of acute anti-infective capability, you have a really nice combination of, you know, some beneficial nutrients and anti-infective things together. So it's something you can eat. Well, there's also supplements that have, you know, extracted mushroom and there's supplements that have extracted mushroom and garlic. And that's actually not a bad thing, especially early on in an infection. So there's a lot of combination supplements and you might wonder, well, okay, I kind of heard about mushrooms maybe, you know, in this pill for my, you know, infection or whatever. Why would there be garlic in there? Well, that's because it's actually anti-infective. Eating it, if you can, is great too. And as I said, sort of a very traditional thing is to have it in some sort of easy-to-eat food for sick people. Yeah. Now, if you do eat animals, and you say, combine that mushroom and garlic mixture with say chicken broth or something, you actually do pick up some other benefits. But a lot of people, a lot of people who don't, you know, eat animal products will do it with, as I said, either water or vegetable broth, both of which can add to it. So you see things like that. And often, you know, with mushrooms in the supplement world, so we talked about eating them, you know, food is always the best way to start. Oh, and by the way, a lot of people think, well, you have to eat the really exotic sort of mushrooms. And by exotic, I mean to North Americans and what they see in their stores. Not necessarily if you're in Asia, exotic in mushrooms is a whole other thing. But when you think about mushrooms, a lot of people think, well, white button mushrooms, you know, those are the ones that most people see and most people have. They maybe aren't terribly medicinal. Turns out that white button mushrooms have a lot of immune, immune supportive potential, especially including them in your diet. So yes, while things like the shiitake and maitake and reishi and turkey tail and all these other ones that, you know, are a little bit maybe newer to Westerners to know, are certainly very dense in, you know, immune properties. Even white button and some of the more common mushrooms that we use have some immune supportive benefit. In a supplement nowadays, with more modern research on white button mushrooms, there are actually some mushroom constituents in supplements from white buttons, but most of the supplements that you'll see would be like maybe a mixture, you know, a shiitake, maitake, reishi, or maybe all reishi or all turkey tail or something. Generally speaking, if you want a broad effect from a mushroom product, you can look at it one of two ways. One is get a mushroom, I call it a mushroom mixture. There are mixed mushrooms that are, you know, usually named as, you know, mushroom complex powder, mushroom complex, you know, capsule or something. Or you can just go with your favorite one, you know, shiitakes or maitakes, etc. And you may have some research on some Certain types that do different things, but for general purposes, mixtures I think are very nice. Now I will say at this point because there are some if you want to take it to the next level, there are some supplements that are even more highly extracted versions of the immune supportive components of a mushroom, and so you'll see those sometimes as AHCC. The active hexose constituents. And that's one of the big things in mushrooms. If you see that, if you see— ever see initials, but especially AHCC, usually what that is, is they started with mushrooms, and they extracted out this really potent portion as that is kind of an immune stimulant. Now I say that because in some people when they're very sick, And we want to really, you know, hit something hard with a supplement, we might start with AHCC. And it actually is more upregulating to immune function. So we do have to be careful with the— like, the further you get from the food source of a mushroom. So you think of eating it, okay, that's here, that's really good. Probably do that every day of your life. Then you think of a mixed mushroom product, like in a capsule or a powder, powder, and that's sort of the next step up. And then some of the more specific, you know, you might have a real high concentration, you know, turkey tail or something like that. And then you go to these extracted products like AHCC kind of up higher. Reason I mentioned that is if you're sick, it may be great because it kind of stimulates your immune system literally and kind of moves you up into the upswing. But we've had people where they just started to take AHCC for some other reason and they didn't realize they had an immune system that was ready to get active. And then suddenly they've got fever and they feel achy, like they're getting sick. Well, what that means is the AHCC really hit the immune system hard, caused an upswing in activity, and the bugs that you didn't know you had now are being fought with. So it's not a bad thing, but you just want to remember the more potent a product is, the more concentrated concentrated it is, the more likely that might happen. As I said, if you're already sick, that may not be a big deal because you're already feeling badly. But that is a difference between what you get from eating something and what you get from an extracted constituent like AHCC. All good, different impact on your body. Now, as I mentioned, sometimes you get these combination products, and the first one we talked about was like the ACES or A-C-E-S with zinc. That's sort of a vitamin-mineral combo. Sometimes you'll have what I call a kitchen sink combo, which is, you know, might have all the vitamins considered to be very important for immunity with maybe some extra vitamin C and, you know, zinc and all that stuff. And then it may have some mushrooms and it may have, as I said, some garlic, garlic extract. Okay. And then you might look and there might be some other plants, some other herbal medicines that are not mushrooms. So that's the next group of things that I probably get the most questions about. Now, one herb or botanical medicine, herbal product that is, I believe, pretty commonly known because a lot of people use it, is the Coneflower, purple coneflower, echinacea. And a lot of people will take echinacea. Most people take it by, say, capsule or tablet. You'll notice if you take a liquid form of echinacea or a chewable form, your mouth will be tingly. That's because it actually does have an effect right away on your mucous membranes, and it makes your taste buds kind of confused. So you'll feel tingly. That's why a lot of people prefer it as, you know, a capsule or a tablet. That feeling goes away. It's not like it lasts or anything, but that does happen. Well, Echinacea kind of has an interesting past when it comes to, you know, science around Echinacea. One of the things that you see is Echinacea, like most plants, requires a certain amount before it actually does anything. So there were a number of studies that have been done over time where they used really low doses of echinacea, and then maybe they picked an outcome that echinacea wasn't really good for or whatever. And the study would say, well, it didn't really help. Well, if you look at the study, maybe they didn't get enough echinacea. So one of the things you want to look at is in the world of over-the-counter products and things, sometimes a name that is recognizable to the public will be used on the label because the manufacturer and the marketing people, you know, behind the supplement will say, well, people know what echinacea is, they've heard about it or something like, or vitamin C. And so they, you know, they may just buy it without looking what's in there. Well, that's very similar to buying anything else just by its name and not looking, you know, what the component is on the inside. If you're getting echinacea, but it's just sort of a token amount, and normally with most echinacea extracts, we're talking usually about capsules or tablets here. If you're looking at a 2-digit number, so something under 100 milligrams, it's probably not enough in there to really do very much, but it looks good on the label. It's sort of like there's a lot of products I looked at in preparation for the program today where I went online and I put in in, you know, in the shopping search bar, immune support supplement. And then I just looked at the top like 50 things and what was in them. And a lot of them would say, well, you know, on the label, vitamin C and this and that. And the amount of vitamin C that was in the pill, even if you took, you know, the whole bottle, was very, very little actually. So previous programs, we've talked about splitting up your vitamin C so you don't get digestive upset. And when you're, you know, getting sick or during an illness, you can tolerate up to what your bowels will tolerate, which can be thousands of milligrams. And these pills, you know, had 20 milligrams of vitamin C. Now, that's not that the pill is bad, but it's sort of like if that's listed on the label as a big selling point and you got 20 milligrams of vitamin C, you're better off buying just separate vitamin C and then taking whatever else you think you're getting in that pill separately. So you do want to read labels and look at what's in Now, on the other side of things, I have seen where a supplement manufacturer was making something that had, you know, about 50% herbal or botanical type of things, and the other 50% were vitamin mineral kind of supportive cofactors. And those quantities, you know, were good, and they were enough to do something. But you do need to look And kind of see what you're getting. Now along with echinacea, there's another kind of family, let's just call it, of plants that most people have heard of, and that would be either something like goldenseal or berberine, mahonia, Oregon grape often is used. A lot of different types of things in that, in that bitter herb category. Goldenseal used to be extremely commonly used in acute immune formulas, and it still is in some cases. It's a bit more endangered, and so herbalists have been trying to get people to use other things in the category that would provide the same benefit. So a lot of times we would use Oregon grape, you know, berberines, instead of instead of the goldenseal family. They all do similar things. Now goldenseal is thought of often, and Oregon grape are thought of as more anti-bacterial. Echinacea is often thought of more as antiviral. Well, it turns out echinacea does have some antiviral capacity, but it's also immunomodulatory. Echinacea tends to cause the immune response to go in the upward direction though. It's a little more stimulating. That's why some people say with autoimmunity, they take Echinacea and they'll get a flare of some autoimmune symptoms because it does tick up the auto— the immune activity in the body, and autoimmune people can feel that. So some people with autoimmunity choose not to do Echinacea, whereas Goldenseal, Oregon Grape, Berberines, those sort of things, their core you can think of as more about bacteria traditionally that's how they were used. But if you look at research around what these things kill, and you just think of either, you know, berberines, Oregon grape, mahonia, all those different names, bacteria are kind of the core, but they also have antiviral effect and definitely have some antifungal effects. It's a very broad spectrum. Many plants are like that. When we think of anti-infective drugs, they tend to do one thing, we believe, like antibacterial and not virus, some that cross over. With plants, it's often a little bit more complicated. Now, often in these combo things, either just as a botanical and herbal combination, or in one of these kind of high concentration, concentration pills that you see that has a lot of botanicals and some nutrients to support Support it, you'll see higher concentrations of a small group of things. A common one is the— often the acronym will be in there— of the echinacea, then hydrastis, which is goldenseal, and then B for berberine, EHBs. That's not uncommon to find either on its own as 3 things or in another supplement. Those are often thought of, and rightly so, as not the kind of thing you would take all the time throughout the year, but you would take it when you're either exposed to a lot of infectious things and/or when you're sick. And this brings up another thing that kind of goes back to why do we need it and when do we need it. When you look at long-term immune support, you want to start with dietary things and then supplements that you need that, you know, are probably lower doses given long-term. So they're supportive. You don't need big giant doses of stuff usually for long-term But if you are exposed to a whole bunch of stuff, or you're gonna be traveling and you know you're around a lot of people who likely are sick, and/or you're getting sick, family's sick, then you need bigger doses for short time, more acute things. A lot of the herbal things that you'll, you'll see talked about, such as higher doses of things like garlic, real specific extracts from mushrooms like AHCC, high concentration garlic extract, stuff like that. And then things like EHB or just, you know, a lot of Oregon grape or something. You really think about that as sort of a big hit on the front end, take it while you're sick and then you don't take it anymore. And certainly with most of the anti-infective herbs, if you have a competent immune system, you don't need to be on a lot of those like year round. That's not generally something that you need if your immune system works. Now, if you have an incompetent immune system, You should be working with somebody to help you out to figure out what you do need all the time. But generally speaking, because there can be some fallout from anti-infective herbs, meaning if we take a lot of anti-infective herbs at high doses, we can degrade the good bacteria in our digestive tract and other things. At high doses of these herbs, you want to think of them as a short, you know, kind of entrance into your life when you're sick or you're preventing a house full of, you know, sick people from spreading it around. Now, there's other products, and there's, you know, there's, as I said, I looked at, I just put in, you know, immune support supplement, and it's amazing. The world is full of them. So there's no way we could go through everything. But another category I wanted to bring up was, it makes sense, you know, if you've listened to any of these things in the past, vitamins and minerals, Okay, our body, they're largely water soluble, some are fat, but largely water soluble. We burn them up when we're sick, we need to replace them, makes total sense. Mushrooms, we've heard about immune supportive mushrooms we can eat or take or both. Okay, that makes some sense. Most people have heard of, you know, anti-infective herbs, whether they're from the Western herbal tradition or European herbal tradition or Chinese herbal traditions. There's plenty of anti-infective herbs. We've heard about using those kind of acutely. Another one that came up that I actually have had a lot of people ask about are the use of colostrum and/or transfer factor, those sort of things. Now, I remember the first time I heard— this is a long time ago, by the way— but of a employing colostrum. And because I grew up in the country on a cattle ranch, and because we had beef cattle, but of course they have babies and, you know, the babies nurse from mom and all that, but also because we had neighbors who had dairy ranches. And if you go to a dairy farm, the first bit of time after the mother cow gives birth, they're producing colostrum. And so I had this memory of this as an event at a dairy, uh, and, uh, you know, the colostrum was preferentially given to the new baby cows. Why? Because it has all this extra immune supportive material that is, if you think about the natural order of things, mom cow has the baby, the baby is going to be eating the milk, usually not humans. So wouldn't it be good for baby to be getting a lot of immune-supportive things through the milk because that's what they're eating. Well, colostrum is the name of that early milk. Now, obviously, there's more to it than that, but that's the idea. So when I heard of a colostrum supplement, at first I thought, you know, I thought of baby cows and I thought, well, that's an interesting idea, you know, giving what the baby cow needs. But the idea behind it, whether it's that or more isolated transfer factors and things, Is colostrum is a vehicle by which the, the body of the mammal that is making the milk can deliver during a specified time a lot of immune material, including immune proteins, into— in this, in the case of a mammal, their milk. Okay. This is also done through eggs, which are another way that you can put factors through, and a number of other things. So if, by the way, if you are, you know, allergic to an animal or chickens or something of that nature, and you're going to do transfer factors or some of the colostrum product, look, look and see where it came from and make sure it's not something you're allergic to. But beyond that, in the, in the early days, it was more just concentrated colostrum product, usually from cow or goat, and it was there to provide a lot of immune proteins. And then that's good, especially if you're sick, because you burn through your immune proteins. This is a way it sort of supplemented, etc. What they've done over time, though, is they've gotten a lot more specific in isolating the factors. You think of it coming out the other side. And so now you can actually get colostrum-based or transfer factor isolates That are stimulated by challenging, you know, the animal. And now there's even ways to make them synthetically, of course, challenging the animal with particular infectious agents that don't bother the animal, but they make immune proteins against. So a lot of transfer factor and colostrum products are specialized towards certain viruses or bacteria and things of that nature. So they can be useful in that sense. setting. The way I look at it in the overall picture is this is not something that I would think of as a first, you know, first entry into supporting your immune function. Now, maybe if you're really depleted and you need the protein substrates and other things, might do it for a while. And in some people who have chronic infections, we would use cycled immune proteins Transfer factors and things of that nature, you know, to help them with their immune function. But when you're looking at colds and flu and acute stuff, generally speaking, I would kind of prioritize vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and fatty acids, the things you get from your food, and then supplementing those, and then plant materials such as mushrooms, and then some of the herbal products. I I would prioritize them first. Because when you get to the more specific things, like I said, with something like extract from a mushroom like AHCC or transfer factor or something of that nature, you probably want, you know, somebody guiding, do you really need that? Do you really need that extra support and all of those things? So you do want to think of things logically and in an order, because your body is set up so that it is more likely to fill the gaps with vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, and those basic things than the plant flavonoids, right? Colorful part of plants. And then you're going to supplement on top of that. And then your body's going to recognize things that tend to come from food. So mushrooms would be a really good example there. And then plants like herbs that may— you may not use the herb in your food, but you might add it as a supplement to help you with either fighting a specific type of infectious agent like viruses or generally helping with immunity. So you need to think of things kind of in that order, and then you get to these specific things. They can be great, but in my opinion, they should probably be coordinated by somebody who's helping you, and it might mean you have bigger problems. The last thing— we're kind of winding down here time-wise— the last one I want to mention, because it's just in so much stuff, it's been in the news, Is black elder or Sambucus nigra. Sambucus or black elder has a lot of use in adults and pediatrics, especially for viruses. It does work quite well, not for everything, but it got some kind of bad press in the beginning of COVID because they said, well, it'll increase interleukin-6, and that's what creates the cytokine response or cytokine storms, so we should be careful with Sambucus. Well, if you're bad enough with cytokines that sambucus is going to be a problem with IL-6, you're probably already in the hospital and they're probably not giving it to you. Generally speaking, it would be a little more like some of the mushrooms where it's a little bit stimulating. But generally speaking, the black elder or sambucus— excuse me, sympathetic cough— it's not going to stimulate you so much that you're going to get sick from it. It is like a lot of the other herbs where you do want to use it kind of in the beginning or the I'm exposed phase or the beginning of the, you know, illness, and then you're going to move on to other stuff. So like Echinacea, let's say for instance, good analogy, early is better with the Black Elder. But that takes us down to the end of the list and magically the end of our time together Today. We will be back together on the radio in a week's time as well. You can always find us here. You can look on the new website, dranow.com, dranow.com, of links to all of the media, all the past shows, and all of the other newsletters, etc. But I will sign off for now. See you all on the radio in a week's time. It's Dr. Andersen for Medicine Health with Dr. Paul Andersen. Thank you.