Gregg Garfield spent 64 days in hospital, 31 on a ventilator left the hospital supported by his girlfriend (left) and his sister.
California man given standing ovation following coronavirus. A video of a coronavirus patient leaving hospital supported by his girlfriend and sister has gone viral, after the California man made a miracle recovery from the disease.
“The disease kicked off, and my immune system just ate me alive,”
Garfield told KCAL-TV in Los Angeles. Per a report on the “Today Show,” Garfield suffered pneumonia and kidney failure. His sister Stephanie Garfield Bruno told KABC-TV that four different parts of his lungs collapsed. He was unable to walk. But with the help of physicians and physical therapists, he was slowly able to regain his mobility and returned home with a walker. On the day of his release, the entire staff at Providence St. Joseph gathered for a round of applause to cheer on the man who survived coronavirus, after two months of hospitalization. He still has a long road to full recovery, but Garfield hopes that people take the coronavirus pandemic seriously. “The only thing I really am focused on right now is telling the story about how real this is,” he told KCAL-TV. In the clip, Garfield is seen holding onto the arms of his girlfriend AJ and his sister Stephanie as he stands up out of his wheelchair and makes his way out of the hospital doors. He is surrounded by dozens of people with signs of encouragement and clapping. A California “miracle patient” was given an emotional sendoff from the hospital after he spent 64 days battling coronavirus, video shows.
Gregg Garfield was the first coronavirus patient to be admitted to St. Joseph’s Providence Medical Center in Burbank, Calif., after he caught the virus on a ski trip in northern Italy. In February, CBS Los Angeles reported. The virus attacked nearly every vital organ in his body, leaving him on a ventilator for 31 days of his two-month stint, the outlet reported. “I believe there is a 70 percent or above mortality rate for COVID patients that go on a ventilator,” Dr. Daniel Dea told the outlet. “So for him to survive with a near full recovery is amazing. He’s our miracle patient.” Garfield walked out of the hospital Friday with help from his girlfriend and sister to raucous applause from hospital staffers.
“These guys in the hospital are unbelievable. This walkthrough of love, it’s just amazing,” he said. “These doctors are the best of the best. I could not have survived anywhere else.” What made the video even more special was that it was filmed and posted by Amanda Kloots whose husband’s Nick Cordero remains in hospital fighting the disease. Kloots became friends with Garfield, his girlfriend AJ and his sister Stephanie during their time in hospital and she is thrilled at his recovery. Along with the video of his discharge – during which he was given a standing ovation – she posted the comment: “I’ve watched this video maybe 100 times and each time I get chills and teary eyed! This is my new friend, Gregg Garfield, walking out of St. Joseph’s hospital in LA after 64 days – COVID SURVIVOR!
“Gregg’s story is very similar to Nicks so to have these three as new friends to talk to has been amazing. What a send off this was! That’s an amazing Code Rocky! “Congratulations to the hospital, doctors and nurses and most importantly Gregg!!” Garfield’s struggle first came to light when his sister Stephanie Garfield Bruno started a crowdfunding page for him, saying her brother had one percent chance of surviving coronavirus when he was admitted. She said her brother checked himself into hospital on March 5 with serious COVID-19 symptoms. “Two days later, under heavy sedation and paralytic drugs, the doctors intubated him – around day 10 doing a tracheostomy- and he continued to be on a ventilator for 31 days,” she said. “During that time his body became septic; his kidneys failed and he was put on CRRT dialysis; his blood pressure plummeted and he needed medications to divert his blood-flow to his major organs for survival, leaving his hands and feet starving for circulation; he spiked fevers and was covered in ice; his lungs collapsed four times and chest tubes were inserted; and he developed secondary infections that are common in hospital environments. “He had a one per cent chance of surviving,” she continued. “The doctors and nursing staff had to always remain three steps ahead of any potential disasters because to enter his room took about 15 minutes for them to gear up in their hazmat attire. “Gregg knocked on death’s door, but said “F#$% NO! I’m not coming in!!!” She joined her brother in thanking hospital staff for his miracle recovery.
“His care team at the hospital- an incredible group of smart, talented, caring individuals – did everything in their power to bring him through. THANK YOU seems inadequate a word to express the gratitude that Gregg and his family feel for all of you.” Before he was able to be discharged, Garfield had to undergo rehabilitation to learn to walk and perform basic daily activities. He has suffered permanent damage to his fingers and toes and will return to hospital for amputations and the fitting of prostheses. Funds that have been raised for Garfield will now be used to modify his home to “accommodate his new hands and help facilitate movement”. As he was leaving, Garfield thanked hospital staff for aiding his recovery, telling CBS: “These guys in the hospital are unbelievable. This walkthrough of love, it’s just amazing. “These doctors are the best of the best. I could not have survived anywhere else.” Stephanie also expressed her utmost appreciation for the hospital for saving her brother’s life. “I’m so thankful for this hospital,” she told CBS. “They saved his life. Every person who has been in here to take care of him and who has talked to him and hold his hand because we couldn’t.” Dr. Daniel Dea, who works at the hospital, said they refer to Garfield as their “miracle patient.” “I believe there is a 70 percent or above mortality rate for COVID patients that go on a ventilator,” he told CBS. “So for him to survive with a near full recovery is amazing.”
Facts you should know about COVID-19 (2019 novel coronavirus) prevention tips!!! COVID-19 is a new disease that can cause immune problems usually in individuals with medical problems. In the elderly, COVID-19 can cause a potentially fatal viral pneumonia that requires hospitalization. COVID-19 is the cause of the current pandemic. COVID-19 mainly spreads from person to person by respiratory droplets infected with SARS-CoV-2. COVID-19 can also spread by infected droplets that land on surfaces. Prevention and decreasing the risk of COVID-19 infection can occur when people follow the CDC recommendations, especially handwashing, social distancing, and decontamination. If you are COVID-19 positive, you can use face masks, isolation, quarantine, gloves for caregivers, and disinfection of surfaces to reduce the risk of infecting other people.
What is COVID-19 (2019 novel coronavirus)?
COVID-19 is a new disease first discovered in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019, that likely came from infected animals and spread to humans. SARS-CoV-2 is the name of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The virus can cause severe respiratory problems mainly in people with medical problems, weakened immunity, and the elderly (age 60 and older). As of Mar. 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-9 the cause of a worldwide pandemic. Some infections result in fatal viral pneumonia. The current mortality rate (death rate) is about 4.76%, depending on the data available.
How does COVID-19 (2019 novel coronavirus) spread?
COVID-19 spreads by an infected person coughing and/or sneezing, thus producing infected respiratory droplets. This is person-to-person spread, most often by inhalation. It also spreads by touching surfaces where infected droplets land followed by touching your eyes, nose, and/or face and mouth. There is no airborne spread like the measles virus. Unfortunately, some people can be infected and have little or no symptoms yet still be able to spread COVID-19 to others.
COVID-19 Infection Symptoms & Signs Medical researchers estimate that the incubation period varies from 2 days to about 14 days. Symptoms may begin like the flu but go on to develop fever, cough, and shortness of breath that is severe enough to warrant hospitalization in many patients. Although early in this outbreak, Chinese researchers suggest that people who are infected but don’t show symptoms (incubation period) may be contagious. This allows the virus to spread more freely from person-to-person and makes it more difficult to isolate infected patients. Read more about COVID-19 (Wuhan coronavirus) »
What can people do to prevent a COVID-19 (2019 novel coronavirus) infection? The best way to prevent or decrease your risk of COVID-19 infection is to avoid contacting infected people and the places they have visited. Infected people can help minimize the chance of infecting other people by strict quarantine procedures that keep the infection isolated from others. Currently, there is no vaccine available to prevent infection. Also, there is no antiviral drug available to prevent or treat infection. Some individuals suggest that taking zinc and/or vitamin C tablets help, however, such data for preventing COVID-19 is lacking. The CDC has specific recommendations for COVID-19 prevention that it constantly updates. The following is modified from the CDC (as of March 11, 2020). Remind everyone in your household of the importance of practicing everyday preventive actions that can help prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses: Avoid close contact with sick people; distance yourself eight feet or more from other people (termed social distancing). Stay home when sick, except to get medical care. Cover your coughs and sneezes with a tissue. Cough and sneeze into your elbow – if you can’t cover with a tissue. Clean frequently touched surfaces and objects daily (for example, tables, countertops, light switches, doorknobs, and cabinet handles) using a regular household detergent and water. If surfaces are dirty, clean them first by using a detergent and water prior to disinfection. Depending on the surface type and environmental conditions, COVID-19 virus survives on surfaces for many hours. For disinfection, a list of products with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-approved (EPA-registered household disinfectants) emerging viral pathogens claims is available at Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Fighting Products. Frequently wash your hands with soap and water for a minimum of 20 seconds, especially after using the restroom, prior to eating, and after coughing, sneezing, or blowing your nose. Immediately throw away used tissues. If soap and water are unavailable, use a hand sanitizer that has approximately 60% alcohol.
New York’s ‘patient zero’ back home and feeling much better!!!! The man identified as New York’s coronavirus “patient zero” remembers going to the emergency room in February. The next thing he remembers is waking up from a coma. Lawrence Garbuz told NBC’s Today show he thought he just had a cough. At that point, the disease was not on his radar and New York had not yet taken strict measures to prevent the spread of the disease. “I’m a lawyer. I sit at a desk all day,” he said. “I think at the time we were sort of focusing on individuals who had maybe traveled internationally, something that I had not done.” But the outbreak in his town of New Rochelle prompted the governor to create a “containment zone,” which shut down schools and places of worship before the rest of the state was under stay-at-home orders. Garbuz, 50, said he didn’t have any pre-existing conditions. He is home now and said he feels much better.
The One Symptom That Predicts How Bad Your Coronavirus Case Will Be!!! And Eight signs that the body has fought the coronavirus on its own, without you being aware of it!!! Coronavirus is possible, at least as experts say, in recent days. Experts say there is a possibility that some people may have contracted the virus before the epidemic officially began. If you have had mild forms of these symptoms, you have probably successfully contracted the virus yourself. 1. Eye infection New research has shown that eye infections, such as conjunctivitis, can be a symptom of covid-19. 2. Dry cough One of the most common and recognizable symptoms of coronavirus is a dry cough. 3. Mental fatigue Although not officially recognized as a symptom of coronavirus, some infected patients have reported it as a symptom. 4. Temperature In addition to a dry cough, this is the biggest indicator of coronavirus. 5. Difficulty breathing The feeling of pressure in the chest and the inability to breathe deeply also appear as symptoms of covid-19 6. Loss of sense of smell and taste The British Association of otorhinolaryngologists recently warned that the loss of sense of smell and taste could be a symptom of the virus. 7. Stomach problems Of the 204 infected people who took part in the study, 48.5 percent reported diarrhea as a symptom. 8. Physical fatigue Another symptom of Covid-19, which occurs with colds, influenza virus, and a number of other viruses, is fatigue and exhaustion. Get ready for a second wave of economic pain!!!
Bringing America Back is an ABC News feature that highlights the day’s top stories in economic recovery and medical preparedness amid the coronavirus pandemic. These stories delve into the key steps America is taking — or needs to take. Stay on top of the latest developments regarding states’ social distancing measures, advancements in the treatment of COVID-19 and more. Does warmer weather slow coronavirus? New York and Texas reported their first COVID-19 cases within days of each other back in March, but as of Monday, New York had nearly 300,000 more cases than Texas. Other warm-weather states, like California and Florida, similarly do not have as widespread a coronavirus problem. Researchers believe the outside temperature may play a role in how aggressively the virus spreads. As States Rush to Reopen, Scientists Fear a Coronavirus Comeback
Millions of working people and small-business owners who cannot earn money while sheltering at home are facing economic ruin. So dozens of states, seeking to ease the pain, are coming out of lockdown. Most have not met even minimal criteria for doing so safely, and some are reopening even as coronavirus cases rise, inviting disaster. The much-feared “second wave” of infection may not wait until fall, many scientists say, and instead may become a storm of wavelets breaking unpredictably across the country.
The re-openings will proceed nonetheless. The question now, scientists say, is whether the nation can minimize the damage by intelligently adopting new tactics. Evidence is mounting that masks — if worn in public places, by everyone — are far more effective at stopping transmission than was previously realized. Across the nation, testing remains wholly inadequate, but home-use nasal swabs and saliva tests are on the way that may provide a clearer picture of where the virus is.
Americans are lining up for antibody tests that may reveal who has some immunity, perhaps opening paths back to normal life for them. Early (but still controversial) surveys suggest that more Americans may carry antibodies than initially thought. Employers are moving to design safer workplaces. A modestly effective antiviral treatment has been found. And laboratories around the world are racing toward the grail — a vaccine — at an unprecedented pace. But while it may still be possible to blunt the impact of the re-openings, the nation is finding even this goal difficult. As the weather warms, Americans are already struggling to stay at home or remain six feet apart on crowded beaches, hiking trails and park playgrounds. Every crowd may have some silent carriers of the virus. Outside New York, California and a few other states, many Americans refuse to wear masks, and governors and mayors have waffled over whether to order them to. The dispute has even led to threats and a killing. Fifty brands of antibody tests are available, but many are inaccurate. Many states are moving too quickly for employers and retailers to make environments safe. And the lockdowns have become entwined in partisan politics, with some libertarian extremists, gun-rights advocates and anti-vaccine activists painting them as an infringement of personal freedoms.
Deaths are already far higher than the 60,000 once predicted by August. Even President Trump has begun to talk of a toll that may reach 100,000, perhaps more. Some epidemiological models predict three times that many within months — closer to the 240,000 that the White House’s coronavirus task force predicted in March before switching to a new, more optimistic model. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the task force’s chief medical adviser, has said he expects cases to spike in closed environments like nursing homes, prisons and factories. “We’re not reopening based on science,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, a former director of the C.D.C. in the Obama administration. “We’re reopening based on politics, ideology and public pressure. And I think it’s going to end badly.”
All Quiet, at First The effects of the re-openings will not be immediately apparent, and in the absence of widespread testing, it will be hard to know where the country stands in the fight against the virus. It takes two or three weeks for the newly infected who become severely ill to need hospitalization. An initial calm may encourage more Americans to drop their guard or more governors to ease restrictions. “I do worry that people will stay home enough in the states that open earliest so that we don’t immediately see the second wave, and then other states will draw the wrong lessons,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a former health commissioner of Baltimore. Social distancing has proved effective at interrupting viral transmission in places where it was embraced. But now even formerly terrified New Yorkers, living at the center of the nation’s outbreak, are clearly wearying of it. Central Park, which was so quiet in late March that the birdsong was startlingly loud, is often crowded with joggers, strollers and cyclists. Avenues that were ghostly canyons now have far more cars, Mayor Bill de Blasio has complained, and steady traffic has returned to some local highways. Viruses persist only because they can exploit human interactions: a stray cough, a plume of virions behind a jogger, a bicycle handle no one has disinfected.
Nationwide, there are still about 25,000 new confirmed cases a day of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Most are probably within families, experts said, or among health workers and emergency personnel exposed on the job. But there have also been hot spots of hundreds of cases in meat and poultry plants, veterans’ hospitals and nursing homes in rural states. To keep the toll from rising, some factories making essential goods, like ventilators, have placed workstations six feet apart and made temperature checks and masks mandatory. Food plants are installing plastic barriers between workers and on cafeteria tables, requiring masks, checking symptoms at entrances and doing more cleaning. Most nursing homes no longer accept visitors. As well intentioned as these stopgap measures may be, they are part of a headlong rush back to “normal life” that few experts condone. Many models for safely reopening the economy have been issued, including one from the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia, and others from Harvard, CovidActNow and Resolve to Save Lives. Most reopening criteria, including the White House’s relatively vague guidelines, say that at a minimum a state should have 14 days of declining cases before it even considers reopening. Almost no state reopening now has met that low standard. Virtually all guidelines emphasize comprehensive testing and systematic contact tracing. Testing is a sore point. Virtually everyone but Mr. Trump says there are too few tests, but everyone disagrees about how many are needed. At a minimum, a state must do enough random testing — including among people with no symptoms — to detect a surge of cases anywhere within its borders. Otherwise, the first unmistakable sign that something is wrong will be the wail of sirens as oxygen-starved patients are taken to a local emergency room. By then, it may be too late to stop a flood of patients over the next week that will overwhelm that hospital.
In Rural America — even in relatively wealthy states like Texas — financially struggling hospitals often have few ventilators, and ambulances must drive long distances. When hospitals run short on supplies or ambulances fail to promptly reach victims of pneumonia, heart attacks, strokes or car accidents, many lives may be lost, as happened in New York. New York now tests far more citizens than any other state does — twice as many per capita as California, and five times as many as Texas. To spot outbreaks early, the Harvard model advocates scaling up, to 20 million tests a day nationwide.Adm. Brett P. Giroir, the coronavirus task force’s chief of testing strategy, recently said there was “absolutely no way on earth” that goal could be reached, and that eight million tests a month, or about 270,000 a day, might be possible by June.
Paul M. Romer, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at New York University, has called for daily rapid tests for every worker in contact with others — meaning 20 to 30 million tests a day. At $10 a test, he has conceded, such an undertaking would cost at least $ 1.5 billion a week, but even that is far cheaper, he argued, than the damage now being done by keeping the country locked down. For now, the lofty goal of tracing and testing the contacts of every infected person remains unthinkable. Epidemiological models in the United States and data from China suggest that each case generates about 50 contacts, so the 25,000 new daily cases in the United States generate another 1.3 million contacts to find each day. Even under ideal circumstances, a team of five tracers takes about three days to find 50 contacts. So, if the number of trained contact tracers were increased to 100,000 — from 3,000, the most recent tally — the daily case count would still have to drop below 5,000 just to stay even, assuming the tracers worked five-day weeks.
But the daily load is barely dropping below 25,000. Digitally automating the job has been proposed. But for Bluetooth and GPS apps like those used in South Korea to work in the United States and find a useful percentage of a victim’s contacts — about 80 percent, calculated Tomas Pueyo, author of an article titled “Coronavirus: How to Do Testing and Contact Tracing” — Apple and Google would have to update their smartphone operating systems with built-in tracking apps that all cellphone owners would by law have to use. Also, neither location data nor Bluetooth could be turned off. Americans are unlikely to accept that, Mr. Pueyo conceded. “We fear ‘1984,’” he wrote. “We want to avoid an A.I.-driven world where the government knows our every movement, rates us according to our behavior, and soon tells us what to think.” Making masks obligatory has strong potential to cut down transmission, according to new evidence not just from Asia, where masks have long been common, but also from the Czech Republic, Germany, Israel and other countries, according to Masks4All, an advocacy group. The single biggest mistake made in the United States and some European countries that have failed to control their epidemics “is that people aren’t wearing masks,” argued Dr. George F. Gao, the Harvard- and Oxford-trained director of China’s Center for Disease Control. Outside New York, California and a few other states, many Americans resist wearing them. Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio rescinded an order to wear masks after state residents “felt affronted,” he said. Officials in Stillwater, Okla., dropped a municipal order after store clerks who asked barefaced customers to stay outside were threatened. The issue has become mired in politics: the president won’t wear one, some protesters have compared them to Muslim face veils, and a shopper at a supermarket requiring masks wore a Ku Klux Klan hood.
Neglected Criteria In the absence of detailed national reopening standards, governors are setting their own, and some allow far closer human contact than others do. It is or will soon be possible in 19 states to get your hair cut or roots dyed, for example. Many states are letting restaurants reopen with restrictions that require six feet between diners, outdoor seating only or disposable menus. By contrast, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York has refused to even set a date for easing restrictions everywhere in the state, although three regions will be allowed to partially reopen on May 15. Although hospitalizations and deaths are steadily declining, he said, they are still dropping too slowly. “All of this inconvenience, all of this turmoil, for what?” he asked this month. “To keep 100,000 people out of our hospitals, that’s for what.” When restrictions are lifted, he said, the state’s least-affected central counties will go first and each economic sector will be phased in slowly: construction and factory jobs first, and retail establishments that can deliver goods curbside. Next: banks, insurance, law firms and other professions. Then restaurants and hotels, and finally entertainment, sports and schools. One of the most difficult decisions is when to open primary schools. Doing so is crucial to getting young parents back to work, but scientists are still unsure about how much children spread the disease to their families. France is reopening its schools this week, as are some regions of Australia and much of Europe, so there may be some data soon on the question. Unlike New York State, Florida, Tennessee and Texas are reopening as their cases and deaths are spiking to new highs, which means, experts said, that it is impossible to know when or how high they will peak. If that happened, a wave of unexpected deaths could deliver some sharp political shocks, researchers predicted. “Excess fatalities may mean some serious consequences for the governors,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the disaster preparedness center at Columbia.
Frustrated Americans, eager to break out of lockdowns, often do not realize how lax this country’s strictures are compared with those imposed elsewhere. In Chinese cities, only a tiny corps of essential workers was allowed to leave home for months. There was virtually no travel between cities. People lucky enough to live in apartment complexes with internal gardens could walk there; others had to stay indoors, unable to shop even for food or medicine. Building committees pooled grocery orders and distributed them internally. No city in China was allowed to reopen until it had reached 14 days of zero new cases — a standard that no American city is expected to meet. In Italy, many residents were not allowed to go more than 200 yards from their homes without written government authorization. Police roadblocks enforcing that rule were everywhere. If deaths in the United States surged, harsh measures like those could, in theory, be imposed. The 1918 Spanish flu provides some lessons. A new analysis of that epidemic from the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass., concluded that various lockdown measures had “clear success” in lowering death rates. But they ultimately failed to curb overall mortality in most cities because they were lifted prematurely. School closings and bans on public gatherings typically lasted only 36 days, the report said, and Americans usually tolerated quarantine for only 18 days. Denver, for example, closed its schools and banned public gatherings for only one month after deaths peaked. Then reopening caused a second, much higher peak of deaths. “The lesson for the ongoing coronavirus pandemic in 2020 is that, to curtail overall deaths,” wrote the chief author, Robert J. Barro, such interventions “have to be maintained for substantially longer than a few weeks.” “Most likely,” he added, “12 weeks work much better than four to six weeks.”
Uncontrolled Experiments Dr. Frieden, the former C.D.C. director, now runs Resolve to Save Lives, the public health advocacy group that has issued detailed reopening guidelines. “Every day, I look at the two models for approaching this,” he said. “The China model, which is to use the world’s most authoritarian regime and best digital tracking system to hunt down and stop every case and then wait for a vaccine. So far, it’s working.” By contrast, he said, Sweden is trying to achieve “herd immunity” by letting young, healthy people become infected at what they hope will be slow, steady rates. Primary schools are open, higher ones are closed, everyone is asked to be careful in public and older adults are asked to stay home. Israel is roughly following Sweden’s model, Dr. Frieden said, just as Asian countries are roughly following China’s. “And then,” he added, “there’s the American approach, which is: ‘What the hell — I heard something on Fox News. Let’s try it!’” Sweden’s model does look appealing. Television news programs have shown smiling Swedes drinking in outdoor cafes, shopping for clothes, getting their hair restyled and enjoying other little pleasures that Americans have been denied for many weeks now. But Sweden is paying a high price, and Dr. Frieden rated its success as “still to be determined.” As of Sunday, its per capita death rate is 319 per million Swedes, which is higher than the figure in the United States, which is 242 deaths per million.
Other Scandinavian countries, with varying degrees of lockdown, have far lower death figures: 91 per million in Denmark, 40 in Norway, 48 in Finland and 29 in Iceland. Having 50 states and more territories do competing and uncoordinated experiments in reopening is “daring Mother Nature to kill you or someone you love,” Dr. Frieden said.
“Mother Nature bats last, and she bats a thousand.” Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said the initial wave of outbreaks in cities such as New York City, where one in five people have been infected, represent a fraction of the illness and death yet to come. “This damn virus is going to keep going until it infects everybody it possibly can,” Osterholm said Monday during a meeting with the USA TODAY Editorial Board. “It surely won’t slow down until it hits 60 to 70%” of the population, the number that would create herd immunity and halt the spread of the virus. https://www.bing.com/videos/ search?q=Dr.+Michael+Osterholm%2c&FORM=HDRSC3 Even if new cases begin to fade this summer, it might be an indicator that the new coronavirus is following a seasonal pattern similar to the flu. During the 1918 flu pandemic that sickened one-third of the world’s population, New York City and Chicago were hit hard in the first wave of illness that largely bypassed other cities such as Boston, Detroit, Minneapolis and Philadelphia. The second wave of illness was much more severe nationwide. If COVID-19 retreats only to return in the fall, the number of cases could peak and overwhelm hospitals that must deal with cases of flu and respiratory viruses. Furthermore, Asian nations such as South Korea and Singapore, lauded for strict controls and rapid testing to avoid damage during the first wave, might be vulnerable to a second wave of infections, he said. “It’s the big peak that’s really going to do us in,” he said. “As much pain, suffering, death and economic disruption we’ve had, there’s been 5 to 20% of the people infected, … That’s a long ways to get to 60 to 70%.”
Still, there are key differences between COVID-19 and the flu. The average incubation period for the new virus is five days, compared with just two days for the flu, according to a Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy report comparing the pandemics. The longer incubation period and a higher transmission rate suggest the COVID-19 virus spreads more easily than the flu. There were nearly 80,000 deaths and more than 1.3 million confirmed novel coronavirus cases in the U.S. at noon Monday, according to the John Hopkins University data tracker. New York state has been hit the hardest with more than 26,000 deaths, and preliminary antibody testing suggests about 20% of New York City-area residents have been infected. Worldwide, more than 283,000 people have died and 4.1 million have been infected. Osterholm said only an effective vaccine can slow the virus before a large enough segment of the population becomes infected and develops some level of immunity. Even if a vaccine works, Osterholm said, it’s unknown whether it would be durable enough to confer long-lasting protection from SARS CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Most states are easing stay-at-home orders though patchwork measures that vary from one to the next. Georgia began opening in late April amid national criticism, allowing tattoo parlors, bowling alleys and hair and nail salons to reopen with restrictions. California has taken a slower, phased approach, allowing some retailers and manufacturers considered low-risk to resume operations. Governors worry about the economic harm social distancing measures have caused with shuttered businesses and the growing ranks of jobless Americans. Unemployment has reaching 15% nationwide, and a Trump administration economic adviser warned unemployment could soon reach 20%. Osterholm acknowledges that the nation “can’t lock down for 18 months” and said political and business leaders need to find a way to resume activities while adapting to a virus that won’t soon disappear. He doesn’t believe there has been enough of a frank assessment on the economic harm the virus will cause over coming months and its disruption to international supply chains. “We all have to confront the fact there’s not a magic bullet, short of a vaccine, that’s going to make this go away,” he said. “We’re going to be living with it. And we’re not having that discussion at all.” Source
Special Note: Initially, the 72-year-old Leimert Park resident felt hope. She wondered whether the study and accompanying blood test could answer why she had been experiencing months of respiratory problems, even through her coronavirus test had come back negative. Maybe, she thought, the test would reveal that she had been exposed and recovered. Then she was hit with what she calls “a Tuskegee moment.” “Every time I think about ‘experimental’ or ‘we want to study you’ or ‘there’s no cure, but we can treat you’ … Tuskegee is in the back of my mind,” Temple said after deciding to go forward with the antibody study anyway.
“Nothing makes us prouder as a farmer than producing high quality milk,” said Rexing, who owns New Generation Dairy in Owensville. “And when you can’t finish it and see it in consumers’ hands …” In the COVID-19 era, there was nowhere for else for that 30,000 gallons of milk to go but worked into his land. https://news.yahoo.com/cows-don-t-shut-off-001110539.html
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine at Stanford University. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a senior fellow at both the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute. His March 24, 2020, article in the Wall Street Journal questions the premise that “coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines.” In the article he suggests that “there’s little evidence to confirm that premise—and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.” In this edition of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson we asked Dr. Bhattacharya to defend that statement and describe to us how he arrived at this conclusion. We get into the details of his research, which used data collected from hotspots around the world and his background as a doctor, a medical researcher, and an economist. It’s not popular right now to question conventional wisdom on sheltering in place, but Dr. Bhattacharya makes a strong case for challenging it, based in economics and science. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UO3Wd5urg0
Estimating actual COVID 19 cases (novel corona virus infections) in an area based on deaths.
It is more prevalent in Japan where it was discovered with 5,000 to 6,000 cases each year. — Source: CDC
In the United States, Kawasaki disease affects 4,000 children each year. The cause of Kawasaki disease is unknown. It doesn’t appear to be hereditary or contagious. Because the illness frequently occurs in outbreaks within a population, an infectious agent (such as a virus) is the likely cause. KD occurs worldwide, with the highest incidence in Japan, and it most often affects boys and younger children. KD may have a winter-spring seasonality, and community-wide outbreaks have been reported occasionally. In the continental United States, population-based and hospitalization studies estimate an incidence of KD ranging from 9 to 19 per 100,000 children under 5 years of age. As far back as In the year 2000, approximately 4248 hospitalizations with KD were reported among children under 18 in the US, of which 3277 (77%) were for children under 5 years of age. In 2009, the estimated number of hospitalizations with KD was 5447 (standard error [SE]=297), 4040 (SE=227) for children under 5 years of age.
More kids hospitalized with possible COVID-19 complication Officials said Last Wednesday that the number of children who have been hospitalized in New York City with symptoms consistent with a rare disease possibly linked to the coronavirus has nearly quadrupled to 64. Health officials said the illness has features of Kawasaki disease, a serious illness previously noted in children with COVID-19 in the United Kingdom. “A pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome, recently reported by authorities in the United Kingdom, is also being observed among children and young adults in New York City and elsewhere in the United States,” said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, deputy commissioner of the New York City Health Department’s Division of Disease Control, in a public letter to colleagues this week.
According to Daskalakis, symptoms vary among the children depending on which organ system is affected, but “include features of Kawasaki disease or features of shock.” All of the children experienced a persistent fever, more than half reported rash, abdominal pain, vomiting or diarrhea, and less than half experienced respiratory symptoms. He added, however, that “the full spectrum of disease is not yet known.” Kawasaki disease is associated with fever, skin rashes, and swelling of glands, and in severe cases, it can inflame blood vessels within the heart. Dr. Dyan Hes, a pediatrician in New York City, told CBS News last week that she was “not surprised” by the U.K. report showing a possible link between COVID-19 and Kawasaki. According to Hes, children can sometimes develop the disease after a bout with the common cold, which is caused by a different variety of bug in the coronavirus family.
Coronavirus “can become very severe” in kids, despite most showing milder symptoms. She added that Kawasaki could pop up “weeks to months later” after experiencing some kind of viral infection or “multiple viral infections.” The cases reported in New York involved children who were hospitalized between April 17 and May 1 with “illnesses compatible with” a form of Kawasaki or shock, according to the New York City Health Department. More than half of the children required blood pressure support, and five required mechanical ventilation. Those who were admitted to pediatric intensive care units required cardiac and/or respiratory support, according to the health department. On Tuesday, it was reported that four of the 15 children tested positive for the coronavirus. Ten tested negative, and one was initially indeterminate and then negative. Serology testing showed that six patients with negative results had coronavirus antibodies in their blood, suggesting they had been previously infected. Regardless of a coronavirus test result, the health department has urged doctors with patients under 21 years old who have symptoms consistent with Kawasaki to immediately report those suspected cases to the health department. Doctors are also instructed to immediately refer such patients to a “specialist in pediatric infectious disease, rheumatology, and/or critical care.” Only severe cases may have been recognized so far, according to the health department. Daskalakis wrote that “early diagnosis and treatment of patients meeting full or partial criteria for Kawasaki disease is critical to preventing end-organ damage and other long-term complications.” “We are learning that even though children are by and large mildly affected when it comes to COVID-19 that there can be situations that they are more severely affected,” New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot said Tuesday. “And thank God in this situation we haven’t had any children who have died with this Kawasaki or kawasaki-like illness.”
Its true the Great Depression began around 1929 and lasted almost a decade, was a massive economic downturn, worldwide. The implications of the largest economic depression in the 20th century, included unemployment on an unprecedented scale. Similar to the 30 million we have unemployed at the present time and the present unemployment having running parallels of 15%. Which was caused by the New York City’s coronavirus outbreak grew so large by early March that the city became the primary source of new infections in the United States, new research reveals, as thousands of infected people traveled from the city and seeded outbreaks around the country. Research showed that by March 1, when the first coronavirus case was confirmed in New York, the city probably had over 10,000 undetected infections. The research indicates that a wave of infections swept from New York City through much of the country before the city began setting social distancing limits to stop the growth. That helped to fuel outbreaks in Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and as far away as the West Coast. The findings are drawn from geneticists’ tracking signature mutations of the virus, travel histories of infected people and models of the outbreak by infectious disease experts. “We now have enough data to feel pretty confident that New York was the primary gateway for the rest of the country,” said Nathan Grubaugh, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health. The central role of New York’s outbreak shows that decisions made by state and federal officials — including waiting to impose distancing measures and to limit international flights — helped shape the trajectory of the outbreak and allowed it to grow in the rest of the country.
The city joins other densely populated urban hot spots around the world that rely on public transportation to get around. Starting with Wuhan, China, and then Milan, that have become vectors for the virus’s spread. Travel from other American cities also sparked infections across the country, including from an early outbreak centered in the Seattle area that seeded infections in more than a dozen states, researchers say. Even if New York had managed to slow the virus, it probably would have continued to spread from elsewhere, they say. But the Seattle outbreak proved to be a squall before the larger storm gathering in New York, where, at the end of February, thousands of infected people packed trains and restaurants, thronged tourist attractions and passed through its three major airports. During crucial weeks in March, New York’s political leaders waited to take aggressive action, even after identifying hundreds of cases, giving the virus a head start. And by mid-March, when President Trump restricted travel from Europe, the restrictions were essentially pointless, the data suggest, as the disease was already spreading widely within the country. Acting earlier would most likely have blunted the virus’s march across the country, researchers say. “It means that we missed the boat early on, and the vast majority in this country is coming from domestic spread,” said Kristian Andersen, a professor in the department of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research. “I keep hearing that it’s somebody else’s fault. That’s not true. It’s not somebody else’s fault, it’s our own fault.”
A lack of testing obscured the true extent of the outbreak for months, and officials acted on incomplete and sometimes conflicting information. The enormous growth of New York’s outbreak partly reflects its volume of international visitors, especially from Europe, where most of its infections came from. Dani Lever, communications director for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, criticized federal authorities, describing an “enormous failure by the federal government to leave New York and the East Coast exposed to flights from Europe, while at the same time instilling a false sense of security by telling the State of New York that we had no Covid-19 cases throughout the entire month of February.” A White House spokesman, Judd Deere, said that Mr. Trump had acted quickly. The president blocked most visitors from Europe starting on March 13, more than a month after he restricted travel from China. “Just as he acted early on to cut off travel from the source of the virus, President Trump was advised by his health and infectious disease experts that he should cut off travel from Europe — an action he took decisively without delay to save lives while Democrats and the media criticized him and the global health community still did not fully comprehend the level of transmission or spread,” Mr. Deere said. Now that infections are dispersed around the country, travel from New York is no longer a main factor shaping the progression of the epidemic, researchers said. As states around the nation begin to relax their restrictions, the findings demonstrate that it is difficult, if not impossible, to prevent those actions from affecting the rest of the nation.
Geneticists have analyzed and shared more than 2,000 samples of the virus from infected people. As the virus infects new people and replicates, it picks up mutations along the way. These mutations typically do not change the behavior of the virus, but they can provide a signature of a virus’s origin. Most samples taken in Texas, Ohio, Louisiana, Idaho, Wisconsin and many other states carry distinct mutations that can be traced back to viruses introduced into New York. Over all, Dr. Grubaugh estimated, viruses spreading from New York account for 60 to 65 percent of the infections identified across the country. Other scientists said that they would like to see more samples before calculating precise figures. But they agreed that New York’s prominence in seeding the national spread appears to have begun in early March, two weeks before stay-at-home orders were put in place. “New York acted as the Grand Central Station for this virus, with the opportunity to move from there in so many directions, to so many places,” saidDavid Engelthaler, head of the infectious disease branch of the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Arizona.
The most commonly detected viruses tied to New York have a distinct genetic signature linking them to outbreaks in Europe. Those spreading from Washington State have a signature linking them directly to China. At this stage, scientists say, genetic fingerprints alone are not sufficient for pinpointing the source of the viruses. But travel patterns and case histories of early known cases support the idea, they said. “It is a combination, still, of what genomic epidemiology and shoe-leather epidemiology is going to tell us,” Dr. Engelthaler said. Scientists modeling the progression of the disease nationally said the prominence of New York as a national hub was broadly consistent with their findings, although the picture was still emerging. “I would say this is not surprising in a sense,” said Dr.Alessandro Vespignani, director of the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University in Boston.
“The picture emerging is consistent with numerical models.”
Doctors keep discovering new ways the coronavirus attacks the body, Earlier research by Dr. Vespignani showed just how rapidly, and invisibly, the outbreak exploded in New York. By March 1, when the first coronavirus case was confirmed in New York, the city probably had over 10,000 undetected infections, his research group showed. New York and Washington State are not the only sources of the outbreak. Other large domestic hubs contributed to the spread, scientists believe, and a more diverse genetic mix is still seen in some places around the country, particularly in the Midwest and parts of the South. Even as domestic travel began to drive the outbreak, some infections were still seeded around the country by international travelers, geneticists said. It is possible, experts said, that some of the virus samples attributed to New York may have instead been seeded in other cities by direct flights from Europe, or from travelers laying over in New York before traveling elsewhere. For that reason, some scientists said they would like to see more samples before linking the majority of infections in the United States to New York. “I think that’s probably the story line that’s going to emerge, but I’d like to see more data,” said Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at Mount Sinai in New York.
A New York Times analysis of travel data supports the idea that the chains of infection originated in New York, experts said. The number of cases across the country was closely related to how many travelers each place received from New York in early March, based on anonymized cellphone tracking data from Cuebiq, a data intelligence company. “It looks like most of the domestic spread is basically people traveling out from New York,” said Dr. Kari Stefansson, founder and chief executive of deCODE Genetics, a leading genome analysis firm based in Reykjavik, Iceland. Last week, Dr. Andersen of Scripps Research and other scientists analyzing the outbreak in New Orleans reported that all of the samples taken from New Orleans were from the line linked back to New York. The virus swept through the area in March and has killed more than 1,000 people.
“You can figure out, with travel patterns, that the most likely thing to have happened is those came into New Orleans directly from New York,” Dr. Grubaugh said. Josh Holder, Michael Crowley and Derek Watkins contributed reporting.
Special Note: Medic Lauren Leander stood in front of protesters in a face mask and scrubs, with her arms crossed as a man waved a flag in front of her face. Leander is an ICU nurse at Banner-University Medical Center-Phoenix, where she — volunteered to work in the hospital’s coronavirus overflow unit. Leander and a few other nurses attended the rally and soon were targeted by protesters despite their silence. On her day off from caring for patients in the Banner Health COVID-19 unit, intensive care unit nurse Lauren Leander went to the Arizona State Capitol to meet those protesting the state’s stay-at-home order.
Does colder temperature make you more prone to getting a cold Or COVID-19? Most health experts agree that when it’s cold, people spend more time indoors and in close contact with other people, and this likely increases the spread of germs. Also, experts believe that our immune system may be more active when our body is warmer, as in during the summer months. Back in 2007, there was this study… In this one particular study looking at the spread of the influenza virus, they put guinea pigs together in a chamber and carried out different environmental experiments on them. They found that low relative humidities of 20%–35% were most favorable for infection, while the transmission was completely blocked at high humidity of 80%. They also found that when guinea pigs were kept at 5 °C, transmission occurred with greater frequency than at 20 °C, while at 30 °C, no transmission was detected. The authors concluded that low relative humidities produced by indoor heating and cold temperatures favored the spread of the influenza virus. I also want to add, that cold weather, by itself, can cause a runny nose without necessarily having a cold, and this allows for the virus so be carried in those secretions, which probably facilitates transmission. 40% of common colds are caused by rhinoviruses. The second most common cause of cold is the coronavirus, the normal one, not this novel coronavirus, aka SARS-CoV-2. Its been shown that the rhinovirus reproduces more quickly at cooler temperatures means you might catch a cold more quickly if you’re chilly.
And this probably applies to the coronavirus as well. It’s likely that with the combination of all of these 5 factors, meaning, cooler temp, lower humidity, people staying indoors more often in winter months, cold weather causing runny noses and our immune system is more active when it’s warmer, these combinations of factors likely explain why colds, flu,, and COVID-19 are more likely to cause infections in the winter months. But there is likely a 6th factor as well. And that is vitamin D. Our bodies don’t normally make vitamin D unless we get sunlight. In the winter months, for most of us in this world, we don’t get enough sunlight to make enough vitamin D. Unless you live in a warm climate, then maybe you are the exception. So if you aren’t getting enough sunlight in the winter months, that means you have to get enough vitamin D in your diet. And if you don’t do that, you will have low vitamin D levels. Vitamin D helps regulate or Calcium levels and is important for bone and muscle health. It also plays a role in regulating our immune system, but its exact role is not known. Why is this important when it comes to the common cold, flu, and perhaps with this novel the coronavirus that’s causing COVID-19? Well, vitamin D doesn’t affect these viruses themselves. Instead, it affects our immune systems. So what is my recommendation for taking Vitamin D? The best thing to do is check with your doctor to see if you might have low vitamin D, and if it is low, you’ll def need to get more vitamin D, especially during the winter months. Vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin that is vital to the function of white blood cells that help to fight infections, and overall immune system health. Vitamin C is also important for iron absorption, and being deficient in iron can make you more vulnerable to infections in general. The normal, recommended daily intake of vitamin C for adults from the diet and/or supplements is 75 to 120 mg. You can get about 80 to 90 mg from a cup of orange juice or sliced orange, or even more from kiwi fruit, or a cup of sweet peppers. Zinc has become one of the most popular suggestions for reducing symptoms of coronavirus. Some studies showed that zinc reduces the duration of a cold by half, while others showed no effect. Another study found that the type of zinc taken determined the result—zinc gluconate lozenges that provided 13.3 milligrams (mg) of zinc lessened the duration of colds, but zinc acetate lozenges that provided 5 mg or 11.5 mg of zinc did not. Note: Please watch the whole video to get the proper details, for the character limitation of the youtube description, I couldn’t provide the whole details, so I suggest you watch the whole video. Dr. Mike Hansen, M.D. Internal Medicine | Pulmonary Disease | Critical Care Medicine Website: https://doctormikehansen.com/ Please subscribe to my channel and press the bell icon: https://www.youtube.com/c/DoctorMikeHansen?sub_confirmation=1 https://muscledefense.com/200406A.php?n=ob
If You Want To Win. Change Starts With You. SO Be The Change You Want To See In The World !!!!
Vitamin C may have benefits in cancer treatment – 19th July 2010 – (Includes an interview with Graham Gaiger and Dr. Sue Levin from Helios Integrative Medical Centre) A new study by the University of Otago has found vitamin C can help curb the growth of cancer cells. The six year research, published in the in the latest edition of the Cancer Research journal, is the first real evidence of a connection between vitamin C and tumor growth. “The results offer a promising and simple intervention to help in the fight against cancer, at the level of both prevention and cure” says Associate Professor Margreet Vissers, of the University of Otago in New Zealand.
The role of vitamin C in cancer treatment has been the subject of debate for years, with many anecdotal accounts of the beneficial role of vitamin C in both the prevention and treatment of cancer, she says. Previous research by Vissers has demonstrated the vitamin’s importance in maintaining cell health and hinted at its potential for limiting diseases such as cancer. This latest study looked at whether vitamin C levels were lowered in patients with endometrial tumours and investigated whether the cancer cells had low vitamin C levels and whether this correlated with tumour aggressiveness and resistance to chemotherapy. Prof. Vissers and her colleagues found tumours were less able to accumulate vitamin C compared with normal healthy tissue, and that this related to the ability of the tumour to survive and grow. Tumours with low vitamin C levels had more of a protein called HIF-1 which allows them to thrive in conditions of stress, she says. Professor Vissers said the findings are significant as they suggest it would be beneficial for people with cancer cells to take more vitamin C to limit tumour growth. https://www.otago.ac.nz/news/news/otago009857.html
The news is no surprise to some, the Helios Integrative Medical Centre alone offers high dose intravenous vitamin C to up to 30 patients a week. Researchers say how cancer sufferers get their vitamin C should be up to their doctors, but their findings also prove a vitamin C rich diet is an anti-cancer tool. However, both researchers and clinicians now want to see trials on patients and because vitamin C is not a drug, that could be fast tracked. The study was funded by the University of Otago and the Tertiary Education Commission. I read recently that no matter how much vitamin C you have, without the presence of adequate vitamin D levels, Vitamin C can’t do its work without adequate levels of vitamin D. Therefore, for cancer the first thing that should be done after the dx is vitamin D levels should be checked. I noticed too. In my humble opine… While some oncologist do and some don’t. I know people that have had different care applications on vitamin d and it makes me livid. When a cancer patient doesn’t know what there vitamin D level is. As there is GcMAF in our bodies that in the presence of adequate vitamin d, these two items working together will help fight to kill the cancer..
For further information refer to www.immunocentre.eu, www.gcmaf.eu and www.immunobiotech.eu as well as to the source article, below. The GcMAF website provides links to scientific research papers. Saisei Mirai Clinics in Japan offer’s GcMAF treatments – www.saisei-mirai.or.jp – and possibly other collaborating clinics do as well elsewhere in the world. There is also a “GcMAF” Facebook group.
Sources: (1) What Doctor’s Don’t Tell You(WDDTY): November 2014: “GcMAF, Superhero?” (2) Medlab Magazine: “The Blood Protein with Multiple Benefits.” (3) The GcMAF Book by Dr. Timothy J. Smith Read also:“The Cancer Revolution: A Groundbreaking Program to Reverse and Prevent Cancer” by Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy: Dr. Connealy is the Founder and Medical Director of the Center for New Medicine and Cancer Center for Healing in Irvine, California. She is a walking encyclopedia in conventional and alternative medicine and has vast expertise in GcMAF, IPT/LD (low-dose chemo), genetic testing, detoxification, IV vitamin C, ozone, hyperbaric oxygen, hyperthermia, UV blood irradiation and so much more. Most that get cancer get it from eating the wrong things and too little of the right things. Most people that recover do so because they change the way they eat, (went healthy with little to no processed food and clean water without fluoride.) Although a lot of people swear by it, I do not think we were created to take such HUGE amounts (up to 100 Grams of Ascorbic acid, or Sodium Ascorbate, or in another form all in a couple hours, no less via the venous system}. – Just because a LITTLE works well, does not mean that a MOUNTAIN of the same will work even better.I did once remember a person from Beverly Hills California state to me, “So long as I was on the vitamin C (drip), my PSA-levels stayed down. BUT when I went OFF the C, it went back up” <– That symptom-regression…, is Not the same as healing.
Vitamin C for cancer? ‘Miracle man’ Anton Kuraia’s highly controversial!!! I.e. I’ve been diagnose with colon cancer in October 2019. I’m waiting on a second opinion, therefore, I am on the intravenous Vitamin C treatment in Christ-church for the last three weeks. I refuse to have any conventional treatment at this time. I started Vitamin C at 25mls twice a week. Now 50mls twice a week. I’m also taking Rongoa Maori, Cannabinoid and have changed my diet. Have listened to your story gives me some inspiration. ~ Nga mihi Nehupo Warbrick Note: This was a statement that I gain from reading the research of Professor Margreet Vissers.
Leading an international study of the vitamin’s cancer-fighting potential is University of Otago, Christchurch researcher Professor Margreet Vissers. She has worked for more than 15 years to understand the relationship between vitamin C and cancer, and is supported in her latest study by private donors wanting evidence that has long been lacking. Vissers has an established reputation in free radical research and her investigations into the antioxidant effects of vitamin C in 2000 instead led to a “serendipitous” discovery that linked vitamin C to cancer cell growth. “For many years people around the world have used vitamin C as a therapy in a number of diseases and there have been many reports of quite extraordinary effects. But it is mostly anecdotal information. “What we observed in 2000 was so unexpected that it sparked our interest, and we Vissers and her free radical research team] have become very focused on explaining it and addressing all the unanswered questions our results raised.” Vissers worked with the Christchurch Cancer Society Tissue Bank to undertake the first-ever analysis of tumour ascorbate (vitamin C) levels and to relate these to tumour growth promoters.
Her results were published in the Cancer Research journal. After studying the vitamin C content of bowel cancer samples, she observed that patients whose tumours had higher levels of vitamin C had longer disease-free survival than those with low levels of vitamin C. While there is a desire in the community for cancer treatments that are more than just a toxic drug, Vissers says evidence of the efficacy of natural compounds is sorely needed. “One day vitamin C could be used by oncologists alongside established treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. But before it could be used in the clinic, evidence for a mechanism of action is needed, as this will help determine which patients it will benefit and what doses are appropriate. “We have identified a mechanism that looks very plausible from the point of view of potentially slowing the cancer growth, but this information has been gathered without intervention, in vitro, or in animals, and no one – including us – has looked in patients yet,’’ she says.
Vissers began the first study in people that investigates the effect of intravenous vitamin C treatment on tumour biology. This study will help determine a mechanism of action and has been made possible by the generous donations of many private donors. “Many of those who have donated are affected by cancer, either themselves or someone close to them. They want information. They may have asked ‘would taking vitamin C be good for me or my loved one?’ and found there are no good answers to that question.’’ Vissers and her team will study 12 patients with colorectal cancer who will either get four daily injections of vitamin C or a placebo. Intravenous injection is the most commonly used method in “alternative” medicine and may result in better access for ascorbate into the difficult-to-access tumour environment. “The patient will receive the vitamin C treatment prior to surgery. We will analyse tissue taken before and after vitamin C treatment to determine what the intervention has done – if anything – and if it affects any of the biological processes we know encourage tumour growth,’’ she says.
The trial will test both the activation of HIF-1 and other leading theories. The aim was to gather information that will indicate whether this treatment could be of benefit and, if so, what level of dosing would be appropriate and which patients could it be targeted at.” “If we don’t understand the mechanism, we have no idea how to use this treatment option and that’s the situation at the moment. People are being treated in a variety of ways – once a week, every day, once every fortnight – there is no recommended protocol. Then when patients reportedly do better (or not), the data is rather meaningless. No one knows how to harness the power of this vitamin.” The final step before vitamin C could be used in hospitals is a randomised controlled clinical trial, however this is still several steps away. Prof. Vissers is grateful for all her private donors and funders such as the Health Research Council, New Zealand Breast Cancer Research Foundation and the Canterbury Medical Research Foundation, who enable her to continue this work. In the current cash-strapped research environment
That was a powerful motivation for me to carry on my work.” Prof. Vissers is driven to answer the many pressing questions about vitamin C and cancer for the benefit of patients and their families. She recounts the story of a woman with breast cancer who shared her experience of intravenous vitamin C treatment. “She was a long way down the road with her chemotherapy and the side effects had been debilitating. She told me ‘of all the treatments I have undergone this is the one that asked nothing of me and the one that gave me the most obvious benefit’. Her story made me think ‘we need to know more about this and how to use it to patients’ best advantage’.
Seeing the difference that intravenous vitamin C therapy makes to cancer patients’ quality of life has motivated the Centre for Advanced Medicine to fund groundbreaking research into the treatment. The centre has made a significant donation to the Vitamin C for Cancer Trust, which was set up to support the research of Professor Margreet Vissers and her team into the effect of vitamin C on cancer. As a result of generous private donations such as this, Vissers is about to begin the first human trial that investigates the effect of intravenous vitamin C treatment on tumour biology. Centre for Advanced Medicine CEO Jackson Perry says that over the past 15 years his company, along with associated clinic Integrated Health Options, has provided care for thousands of patients seeking intravenous vitamin C treatment for a variety of conditions, including cancer, viral/bacterial infections, and for immune support. Many cancer patients approach the clinic at a time when their quality of life has been significantly reduced through progression of disease and there appear to be few options available to help them, Perry says. “Our experience has shown that intravenous vitamin C therapy improves outcomes for cancer patients in a number of ways, including quality of life benefits, such as improved appetite, reduced pain, and overall well-being. We have also seen, on a case-by-case basis, increased longevity and improved prognosis,’’ he says. “As a result of these observations, we are very motivated to understand better how vitamin C works in the treatment of cancer. The earlier work conducted by Professor Vissers and her team gives us great confidence that this study will significantly advance the understanding of the use of vitamin C in cancer and enable patients to make better informed choices.” The research team at the University of Otago, Christchurch, has identified new functions of the vitamin that could explain how it works in cancer cells. The challenge is to show that these mechanisms work in patients with cancer. The team includes scientists and clinicians, and therefore has both opportunity and expertise to design and implement appropriate clinical studies to address these important clinical questions.
With my time in New Zealand through the usage of the WWW. Besides already knowing about Manuka Honeywhich I seen a YouTube video how to make it. I found the Hyacinth Bean which reminds me a bit like the apricot seed. You can harvest the immature green pods to cook as you would green beans or you can wait until the pods turn the characteristic purple color and have filled out to harvest them. The seeds are usually dried and then stored in a well-sealed glass jar. When you are ready to cook the dried beans, remember to boil them and change the water 2 to 3 times to ensure that all of thecyanogenic glycosides have leached out so that they can be safely eaten.
“There is no doubt in my mind that Rachel Arthur is one of the most outstanding clinicians of our time. Her knowledge of nutritional biochemistry and its clinical application is exceptional, and her authentically inquisitive teaching style is second to none. She’s always just a little ahead of the curve with trends and education concepts: her knowledge is extensive and her recommendations practical and firmly grounded in experience.
Risk Factors of Having High or Low Estrogen Levels in Males. The Triage Factor — Copper, Selenium, Zinc and Cancer!!! Always important to remember that all vitamins work in teams of threes. Any woman wanting to avoid breast cancer or its recurrence needs to be aware of the real risk factors. These are not the factors you hear about from the typical oncologist who is interested in pushing drugs. Imbalances in the body are the real risk factors that explain why women get breast cancer, not lack of drugs. The only way to avoid cancer or its recurrence is to address these imbalances. Two minerals, zinc and selenium, are key in maintaining balance in the body and keeping cancer away. Recent research has added to the pile of data underscoring the importance of these minerals in keeping women cancer-free. Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have reported that glands in the breast have unique zinc requirements resulting from their need to transfer extraordinary amounts of zinc into milk during lactation. When nursing women’s breasts are deficient in zinc, the result can be severe zinc deficiency in the infant, resulting in impaired growth and development. When zinc is deficient or not properly metabolized, breast cancer is often an additional outcome. Lack of zinc has been implicated not only in the initiation of breast cancer, but also in the transition, progression, and metastasis of the disease. When zinc is deficient, cellular functioning in the breast is compromised. In France, scientists report that estrogen receptor expression in breast cancers is associated with differentiated tumors and a more favorable prognosis. The greater the resemblance of cancerous breast cells to non-cancerous breast cells, the less threatening is the disease. Although the exact mechanism underlying the protection ERs play against cancer progression remains to be researched, these scientists studied the actions of ER alpha, and documented that one of the ways this ER inhibits invasion is though its first zinc finger. A zinc finger is a group of proteins organized around a zinc ion that can bind to DNA and influence gene regulation.
In other research, Dr. David Watts reviewed the hair trace mineral reports of thousands of women and found that a pattern of elevated boron, copper and calcium levels with lower levels of zinc occurred in women with breast cancer. According to Dr. Watts, boron and copper appear to make the body more sensitive to the stimulatory effects of estrogen, and less responsive to the quieting effects of progesterone. Zinc is the mineral that aids in the production and utilization of progesterone, so this pattern of mineralization makes women less progesterone responsive and more estrogen sensitive. Raising zinc levels and lowering boron, copper and calcium levels can bring these women into mineral balance and help in the creation of hormonal balance. The primary gene protecting women from breast cancer, p53, is thought to be the most frequently mutated or altered gene in the development of cancer. This gene requires zinc, and if it is missing, the gene becomes mutated, resulting in it becoming inactivated or suppressed. Dysfunction of p53 is well documented in the development of breast cancer, indicating that a zinc deficiency is a risk factor for breast cancer independent of the levels of boron, copper and calcium. Zinc is important in prostate gland function and may help prevent and treat prostate cancer. It has another important role in the lives of women too. Zinc is required for protein synthesis and collagen formation. Without adequate levels of zinc, skin begins to sag and lose its elasticity. The optimal balance ratio for copper and zinc is 1 to 10 according to nutrition experts Phyllis Balch CNC and James Balch M.D. In addition to sagging skin, deficiency of zinc may result in the loss of the senses of taste and smell. It can cause fingernails to become thin, peel and develop white spots. Other possible signs of zinc deficiency for women include hair loss, high cholesterol levels, impaired night vision, increased susceptibility to infection, memory impairment, diabetes, skin lesions, and slow wound healing.
Food sources for zinc are brewer’s yeast, egg yolks, kelp, lamb, legumes, lima beans, liver, meats, mushrooms, pecans, poultry, pumpkin seeds, sardines, seafood, soy lecithin, sunflower seeds, and wheat germ. Zinc is found in alfalfa, burdock, cayenne, chamomile, dandelion, eyebright, fennel seeds, milk thistle, nettle, parsley, rose hips, sage, skullcap, and wild yam. Zinc picolinate, zinc citrate, and zinc as methionine are good choices for supplemental zinc. These are available from many supplement companies. The relationship between selenium status and intake among breast cancer patients was studied by scientists in Kuala Lumpur. 64 women with breast cancer and 127 matched controls were interviewed to obtain information on their habitual dietary intakes, demographic data, and medical history. Selenium status was determined from toenail and hair analysis. The researchers found that total energy and protein intake was significantly higher among controls than among the breast cancer cases. The selenium intake among the women with breast cancer was significantly lower than the controls. Breast cancer risk decreased with the increasing quartiles of selenium intake. Selenium in hair did not differ among breast cancer cases and controls, but selenium status in the nails of controls was significantly higher compared to the breast cancer cases. In a recent study done at the University of Washington, scientists investigated the signaling pathways modulated by selenium. They compared global gene expression profiles in mammary tissues from pubescent female rats maintained on a selenium (3ppm) diet with those on a standardized diet. The selenium-enriched diet altered the steady-state levels of genes involved in various cellular functioning, the most dramatic of which was the changes in the expression of multiple genes that regulate circadian rhythm.
The normal mammary tissue of rats fed the standardized diet showed little circadian oscillation relative to liver tissue. However, the mammary tissue of the selenium fed rats showed a progressive, time-dependent increase in the expression of circadian gene Per2, and a circadian regulated transcription factor. Further, the results showed that the expression of Per2 and transcription mitigated RNA was significantly decreased in mammary tumors arising in selenium fed rate, but not in tumors of rats on the control diet. This suggests that selenium-induced elevation in the expression of circadian genes was incompatible with mammary cancer. The researchers concluded that the Per 2 gene is an important target of selenium for cancer prevention. Selenium’s main role is inhibiting the oxidation of fats as a component of the enzyme glutathione peroxidase, one of the most powerful of the body’s own antioxidants. When combined with vitamin E, selenium protects the immune system. It plays a vital role in regulating the effects of thyroid hormone on fat metabolism. In a study, men who consumed 200 mcg of selenium daily over a ten-year period had roughly half the risk of developing lung, prostate, and colorectal cancer compared with men who did not. Symptoms of selenium deficiency are exhaustion, high cholesterol, infections, liver impairment, and pancreatic insufficiency. Westerners often do not have enough selenium, because it is processed out of the foods typically eaten. This is one of the reasons that American men are five times more likely than Japanese men to die from prostate cancer. The typical Asian diet contains four times the amount of selenium as the typical American diet. Selenium is found in meat and grains, but the level depends on the soil content where the food was grown. It can be found in brewer’s yeast, broccoli, brown rice, chicken, dairy products, garlic, kelp, liver, molasses, onions, salmon, seafood, vegetables, wheat germ, and whole grains. Perhaps the best source of selenium is Brazil nuts. Eating two of the nuts a day provides 240 mcg of selenium. Earl Mindell, in his Vitamin Bible, recommends 200 mcg of selenium intake daily.
Immune Health Zinc is well known for its immune-modulating effects, but copper plays a role, too, especially the copper to zinc ratio. A balanced copper to zinc ratio, which is between 0.7 to 1.0, based on the studies discussed here, plays a role in maintaining the immune system, helping resist infectious diseases, and it has the potential to be used as an indicator of oxidative stress. Studies have found that during stages of chronic inflammation and poor health, there is a lower level of zinc and a higher level of copper, leading to an imbalance in the ratio. Both copper and zinc create the superoxide dismutase (SOD) enzyme that counteracts oxidative stress. In a study reviewing serum levels of copper, zinc, SOD, and other markers in 15 IBD patients and 30 controls, zinc levels were significantly lower (23 percent lower), as was SOD activity (7.3 percent), in IBD patients. The reduction in SOD activity relates to a lower ability to scavenge free radicals, which can lead to excessive oxidative stress. The copper levels were significantly elevated in women (17.6 percent) but not all patients (5.9 percent higher but not significant). In the IBD patients, the copper to zinc ratio was 0.73 in men and 0.87 in women, compared to 0.64 and 0.51 in the respective controls. Why you should know your Copper to Zinc Ratio In a prospective and experimental study, researchers took samples of serum copper and zinc levels in 100 patients with multidrug resistant pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) and determined their copper to zinc ratio. At the onset of treatment, the participants had a very high copper to zinc ratio, which experienced a significant drop when treated at the three and six-month marker after being treated with second-line TB drugs. Copper levels remained normal, while the zinc levels continued to be lower than that of the controls. The lower levels of zinc due to the disease led to a higher copper to zinc ratio, which in turn contributed to the immune system dysfunction and an increase of oxidative stress in patients. The researchers postulate that zinc supplementation might increase the efficacy of TB treatment through restoring the copper to zinc ratio and improving the body’s antioxidant capacity.
Other Health Effects There are many other ways in which this ratio affects health. Your copper to zinc ratio might also affect your sleep patterns. Higher levels of copper than between 1.10 mg/l and 1.12 mg/l correlate with a reduction in sleep duration, which in turn contributes to oxidative stress and inflammation. In one study, researchers looked at the link between inflammation (hs-CRP), serum zinc levels, and serum copper levels with sleep duration in older men. Those who slept 6 hours or less a night had the lowest levels of zinc at 0.91 mg/l, while the participants with the highest levels of zinc slept 9.5 hours a night with a serum zinc level of 0.96 mg/l. The group that slept under six hours at night had an elevated hs-CRP at 3.23 mg/l, compared to 1.92 – 2.85 mg/l for those sleeping between 6.5 and 9.5 hours at night. Sleeping over 10 hours at night raised the hs-CRP to 3.77 mg/l. The serum copper levels were highest in those sleeping less than six hours at 1.13 mg/l, those sleeping 9 hours at 1.14 mg/l, and those sleeping more than 10 hours at 1.17 mg/l, compared to between 1.10 and 1.12 mg/l for the other sleep duration groups. After accounting for certain confounders, only the copper and hs-CRP levels remained significant. In another study on elderly patients, a higher copper to zinc ratio, and a lower zinc level and antioxidant capacity, correlated with a higher risk of physical disability. The patient group had a 47.5 percent lower level of serum zinc compared to the control, and they had a 10.8 percent higher copper level and a 112.5 percent higher copper to zinc ratio compared to the control. The researchers concluded that the copper to zinc ratio is a reliable parameter for determining the physically disabled patients compared to the controls. One study found that in patients with heart failure, copper levels were higher. Both acute heart failure patients and chronic heart failure patients had significantly higher blood copper levels than controls, although the levels did not differ significantly between the two. Conversely, the serum zinc levels were significantly lower in both sets of heart failure patients compared to the control. This was independent of other risks for heart disease. The ratio also plays a role in metabolic health. In patients with type-1 diabetes, which is known to contribute to oxidative stress, the level of serum zinc was significantly lower and the level of serum copper was significantly higher in patients with diabetes, especially those with poor glycemic control. This led to a higher copper to zinc ratio, as well as higher levels of SOD. The researchers in this study also found a correlation between the HbA1C levels and the copper to zinc ratio, with a higher ratio correlating with a higher HbA1C. The Pathology Around Magnesium, Copper, Selenium, Zinc and Micronutrients Zinc and copper work hand in hand in many of their beneficial tasks, which is why it is important to not only concern yourself with just the amount of zinc or copper you consume. You also want to ensure you retain a good copper to zinc ratio to avoid the potential health risks discussed. If you are concerned, you can ask your doctor to perform a blood test to assess your serum copper and serum zinc levels. One way to do this is to ensure you consume adequate amounts of both minerals, primarily through diet. If you supplement with one, then you want to ensure you supplement with the other, unless you already have an imbalanced ratio.
Getting Your Recommended Zinc and Copper Foods Sources As with most nutrients, the best place to start to get your zinc and copper is through food sources. The best food sources of zinc, from highest to lowest, include: – Oysters – Organic, grass-fed beef – Sesame seeds – Pumpkin seeds – Adzuki beans – Wild rice – Peanuts – Pine nuts – Cashew nuts – Navy beans – White beans – Sunflower seeds – Black beans – Teff – Split peas – Lentils The best food sources of copper, also from highest to lowest, include: – Liver – Sesame seeds – Oysters – Cocoa powder – Soybeans – Cashew nuts – Lentils – Sunflower seeds – Brazil nuts – Adzuki beans – Kidney beans – White beans – Hazelnuts – Mung beans – Buckwheat – Pine nuts
As you can see from the list, many foods have both zinc and copper, making it easy to maintain your ratio. Some of the foods with the best copper to zinc ratio include oysters, sesame seeds, cashew nuts, and sunflower seeds. Foods in the nuts, seeds, and legume families often are rich sources of both zinc and copper, and they also have many other benefits. For example, Brazil nuts, known for their high selenium content, also are rich in other minerals, including zinc and copper. The average concentration of zinc in 100 grams of Brazil nuts is 4.7 mg, and the same serving has an average 2.0 mg of copper. Granted, an average serving is more often closer to one ounce or 6 nuts, which has 1.15 mg of zinc and 0.494 mg of copper. In addition to these nutrients, you also get healthy fat, protein, fiber, phytonutrients, selenium, magnesium, calcium, and phosphorus.
These work synergistically to further promote optimal health. Although several common foods contain copper, those following the typical “SAD” diet might still risk deficiency. The number of people presenting with copper deficiency is increasing, which might be due to a reduction in copper intake. It might also be from an increase in zinc consumption, which causes an imbalance in the ratio that might present as copper deficiency. What You Need to Know About Supplementing Zinc has a reputation for being healthy, including supporting the immune system and acting as an antioxidant. This has led to many people supplementing with high doses of zinc. Zinc is also found in many cough drops and other cold remedies. Because of the potential toxicity of copper, many people stay away from supplemental doses of it. Where does this leave you? With a risk of an out of balance zinc to copper ratio, which as discussed above can cause problems. So, what do you do? For one, do not supplement with high levels of just one of these minerals, such as zinc, without knowing your serum levels and/or ratio, which can be done with various lab tests. The most common is a blood draw for serum zinc and copper levels, which most doctors can perform. You might have to calculate your own copper to zinc ratio using the results for your serum zinc and copper levels. You need to make sure that both are in the same units, which is generally ug/dL. You might receive results with the units as umol/L, which requires you to divide the zinc by 0.153 and the copper levels by 0.157. If you have units such as L or mg, then you will have to perform metric conversions, which is usually multiply or dividing by a factor of 10. For example, to get from g/L to ug/dL, you would multiply by 100,000. You can also use an online conversion tool. Once they are in the same units, you simply divide the copper level by the zinc level. Some specialty labs will perform this for you. In those with high copper levels, supplementing with just zinc might be fine. In one study, supplementing with 10 mg of zinc gluconate helped to improve the copper to zinc ratio, which in turn helped to normalize oxidative stress and inflammation biomarkers in hemodialysis patients. It seems self-evident that if your zinc/copper ratio is off balance, supplementing with one will help. However, work with a healthcare practitioner so you will not end up altering the balance the other way. Often, using a supplement with both zinc and copper ensures you retain a good ratio. High levels of either mineral also come with other risks. Taking excessive amounts of zinc in supplemental form can lead to side effects, including vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal cramps. Using nasal sprays might also disrupt your sense of smell. The tolerable upper intake level (TUL) for zinc is 40 mg for adult women and men. Excessive copper intake through supplementation also comes with its risks, including altering the copper to zinc ratio and toxicity. The TUL for copper is 10,000 ug/day for adults. You will want to check for the TUL for other age groups, as well as pregnant and lactating women. In some cases, you might need high doses, such as in cases of malabsorption. However, you do not want to undertake this alone. As always, discuss supplementing with your doctor or other healthcare professional. They will work with you to determine a level of zinc and/or copper supplementation that ensures you have adequate amounts of both to retain the right ratio based on your situation and health concerns. It is important you consider all of your sources of both zinc and copper beyond food and supplements when determining if you are at risk of an imbalance. For example, a patient using excessive amounts of denture adhesive that contained zinc presented with severe copper deficiency symptoms. Additionally, copper might leech from any pots and pans, and you might also find it in your drinking water. If you have well water and are concerned about your drinking water, you can contact your state certification officer to perform a test for free. Those not on a well, you can purchase testing kits from a variety of places that are simple to use and do not cost a lot of money. The copper and zinc relationship is just another example of the delicate balance that the essential minerals—and micronutrients in general—play with one another for our maximal health. Recognizing the ways in which nutrients interact with others will help you formulate a better plan to maintain your optimal health through your diet and supplements.
Seattle may be through the initial stage of coronavirus, but the city is not relaxing.
As critically ill, elderly patients streamed into his emergency room outside Seattle, Dr. Ryan Padgett quickly came to understand how deadly COVID-19 could be. Of the first two dozen or so he saw, not a single one survived. It took longer for Padgett and his colleagues at EvergreenHealth Medical Center — the first hospital in the country to treat multiple coronavirus patients — to learn how easily the disease could spreadthrough the Skagit Valley Chorale members. At first, the medical workers wore only surgical masks and gloves. Later, they were told to wear respirators and other gear, but the equipment was unfamiliar and Padgett couldn’t be certain he put it on and took it off correctly each time. “This is a movie-like save, it doesn’t happen in the real world often,” Padgett said. “I was just a fortunate recipient of people who said, ‘We are not done. We are going to go into an experimental realm to try and save your life.’” Once his colleagues at EvergreenHealth realized they had run out of options, they called Swedish Medical Center, one of two Seattle hospitals that has a machine known as an ECMO, which replaces the functions of the heart and lungs. But even after the hospital admitted him, doctors there had to figure out why he was so profoundly sick.
Based on the astronomical level of inflammation in his body and reports written by Chinese and Italian physicians who had treated the sickest COVID-19 patients, the doctors came to believe that it was not the disease itself killing him but his own immune system. It had gone haywire and began to attack itself — a syndrome known as a “cytokine storm.” The immune system normally uses proteins called cytokines as weapons in fighting a disease. For unknown reasons in some COVID-19 patients, the immune system first fails to respond quickly enough and then floods the body with cytokines, destroying blood vessels and filling the lungs with fluid. The doctors tried a drug called Actemra, which was designed to treat rheumatoid arthritis, but also, approved in 2017 to treat cytokine storms in cancer patients.
April 3, 2020 “Our role was to quiet the storm,” said Dr. Samuel Youssef, a cardiac surgeon. “Dr. Padgett was able to clear the virus” once his immune system was back in balance. Dr. Matt Hartman, a cardiologist, said that after four days on the immunosuppressive drug, supplemented by high-dose vitamin C and other therapies, the level of oxygen in Padgett’s blood improved dramatically. On March 23, doctors were able to take him off life support. Four days later, they removed his breathing tube. He slowly came out of his sedated coma, at first imagining that he was in the top floor of the Space Needle converted to a COVID ward. He soon became more conscious of his surroundings and had a FaceTime conversation with family members, who hadn’t been able to visit because of the hospital’s coronavirus lockdown. “It’s an incredible thing to survive a brush with death and not be able to see and be with your most loved people,” Padgett said. “And when everyone on staff who comes to see you has to be in a spacesuit, you just feel like this pariah. The isolation was pretty devastating at times.” On March 31, balloons, gifts and letters came in the door. It was his 45th birthday. “My birthday cake was an ice chip,” he said, recalling how grateful he was for his first sustenance by mouth. As Padgett got to know Youssef, Hartman and other team members, they told him about a 33-year-old woman — a mother of three — who was in the hospital as well, also having experienced a cytokine storm. He saw the team’s excitement when they tried the approach on her, and she too recovered. Padgett went home on April 5. He said Monday that he faced a long, slow recovery, physically and cognitively. He expects to be a better doctor, reminded how devastating an illness can be to a patient and a family. Returning to the ER won’t be easy, he said. “But that’s my home, that’s what I do,” he said. “I enjoy that everyone-in-the-foxhole mentality. And one day before then, Padgett and his fiancee, Connie Kinsley, plan to have Had a small wedding ceremony with a few friends on their boat moored on a Seattle lake.
According to the Bing Covid-19 Tracker, global COVID-19 cases have reached 3,428,422. Active cases hit 2,091,402, a surge of 45,262. Recovered cases moved to 1,093,189, up 36,863. Deaths reached 243,831 Total confirmed cases in the U.S. hit 1,158,536, 34% of the world’s total. Active COVID-19 cases reached 939,967, an increase of 18,246. Recovered cases were 151,502, higher by 9,796. Fatal cases in American hit 67,067, 28% of the world’s total, a jump of 1,462. In a sign that the disease is still spreading, active cases are still ahead of recovered cases both globally and in the U.S.
Los Angeles Continues To Avoid The Worst Of It The spread of cases and deaths from COVID-19 are unlike one another in America’s two largest cities. New York has a population of 8,398,748 residents. The comparable number for Los Angeles is 3,990,456. Confirmed cases in the Los Angeles area are 52,237. Deaths number 2,172, up 99. However, these numbers are for Los Angeles County which contains The City of Los Angeles and about another six million people. The country includes 13 other cities with populations over 100,000. The figures for cases and death count for LA alone clearly must be much lower than the county’s. The comparable figures for New York are 172,354. Deaths of 13,365, which rose 197. The New York figures are only for the city, and not surrounding areas. In another contrast, the death toll in Los Angeles County is not much higher than in another of America’s cities which is much smaller. Detroit has a population of 672,662. Wayne Country, Mich., is made up almost entirely of The City of Detroit. Wayne County’s confirmed cases total 17,106. Deaths are 1,884, up 82. Despite its much smaller population, deaths in Los Angeles County are only 15% higher than those in Wayne County, What accounts for the difference between New York and Los Angeles? Social distancing rules do not appear to be much different between the two cities. But, the population density of New York is about three times greater than LA. Also I would venture to guess though Vitamin D levels play a major factor as well. However, until there is widespread testing, the reasons for the contrast will remain only a guess.
As states ease restrictions, expert forecasts ‘new waves’ of coronavirus through summer. Coronavirus in the U.S.: Relaxed Rules and Warm Weather Will Test States?
New York Times: Coronavirus Live Updates: Trump Administration Models Predict Near Doubling of Daily Death Toll by June!!
Experts will tell you though, there are so many ways to boost immunity affordably and outsmart a virus?
The best ways of outsmarting a virus and bacterial infections can be easier than you ever thought possible. Stanford University Researchers say. that as little as five minutes of small, gentle rocking back and forth repetitive motions will tamp down your body’s release of immunity-hampering stress hormones, Chinese researchers say, “when you curb inflammation, it frees up your body’s natural resources When a hectic day leaves you feeling tensed and you don’t think you have time for 30 minutes of meditation. Simply take 10 deep belly breaths, feeling your abdomen expand with each inhale and contract with every exhale. Harvard scientist state, “this reduce anxiety by 67%, lowers your blood pressure 10 points and helps you feel calmer within 60 seconds.” Those are the same results you get if you meditate for 30 minutes. Also no need to walk 10,000 steps each day, Harvard also state, women who walk 4400 steps daily (about 2 miles or 30 minutes of moderate walking) reduce their mortality rate by 41%.
Another way to help curb an illness is live by the 3 to 1 rule. For every negative thought – think of 3 things that you’re grateful about in your life. Scientist state this lowers your blood pressure, raises your immune response to invaders and defense to cancer. It also slows the aging process of your blood vessels and organs. In fact, scientist state doing this daily can add 12 healthy years to your life. Health experts suggest drinking 16 ounces of water every three walking hours each day which thins your blood, warding off harmful clots.
Its also important to eat green and clean: The Lancet found munching on just 3 servings of vegetables and fruit provide the same protective benefits as if you eat the recommended five to nine servings. So if you struggle to eat the recommended amount, don’t worry? One big green salad a day provides a healthy punch of fiber, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that works in synergy to balance blood pressure, lower cholesterol and repairs cellular damage, which eases strain on your heart. Also socializing (talking on the phone helps if you can’t get out) is proven to sharpen thinking as you age.
University scientist say, that the elderly with a strong network of friends have the sharpest memories. Chatting with friends provides mental exercise to keep your brain cells biologically younger than your actual age. Numerous studies proves those that laugh and smile, compared to those who tend to be more sober-faced have lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol — which has been linked to diabetes, heart disease, stroke and suppressed immunity. Get enough sunshine to boost your Vitamin D levels each day is vital as well.
Also enhance your smile while making sure you floss daily. It helps relieve the odor between your teeth that causes bad breath, keeps gums healthy, it reduces dementia risk by 65%. Remember too: oral bacteria can travel to the brain where it can cause inflammation that leads to Alzheimer!!!
London (CNN) When Suryakant “Suri” Nathwani returned from the hospital, the reserved 81-year-old grabbed his son’s hand and pleaded to be allowed to die at home. “He said, ‘Please promise me one thing: If I’m going to go, I’m going to go here. Do not take me back there,'” his son Raj Nathwani said. Read More:
O God, support us all the day long, Until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.
Then in your mercy grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last, through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
James O’Keefe, 58, is a cardiologist at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, MO. A self-proclaimed “exercise enthusiast,” O’Keefe says there was a time—decades, in fact—when he would routinely spend 2 to 3 hours a day running and working out vigorously. “I rarely took a day off,” he recalls. But if you see O’Keefe exercising today, you’ll likely spot the MD on a post dinner stroll with his family. He also enjoys practicing yoga or doing some gentle backstrokes in the swimming pool.
What changed? O’Keefe investigated the effects of intense physical activity on the human heart and body. The fruits of his and others’ research inspired him to dial down his own routine. “If your goal is exercising for overall health and to improve your longevity, then walking is ideal,” he says.
Running Is Hard On Your Heart!!! In one of his studies, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, O’Keefe and his colleagues found that people who run most days of the week at a pace faster than 7 miles per hour have the same risk of death as sedentary individuals. Another study, presented at the EuroPRevent2012 meeting in Dublin, Ireland, found that those who run more than 25 miles per week have no mortality benefit, compared with nonrunners. Both studies suggest that moving at a gentler pace—such as a brisk walk or a slow jog—for 1 to 2.5 hours every week lowers your risk of death by 25%. “We’re not meant for sustained levels of exercise for long periods of time,” O’Keefe explains. “After 60 minutes of intense physical activity, like running, the chambers of your heart begin to stretch and overwhelm the muscle’s ability to adapt.” He also says levels of harmful free radicals rise, adrenaline increases, and inflammation occurs inside your coronary arteries. Intense training over the course of many years can also lead to permanent changes in your heart—changes that can set the stage for serious cardiovascular problems, he says. “The increase in blood flow to your heart leads to microtears,” he explains. “It’s not a big deal if you do it once or twice. They’ll heal in a few days. But when you do this over and over again for many years, it causes stiffness and scarring in the heart that can accelerate aging and contribute to congestive heart failure and atrial fibrillation.”
Run Harder, Get Sicker? Your heart isn’t the only part of you that might suffer from vigorous exercise. Excessive endurance training may also dampen your immune system and increase your risk for illness. Researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign found that prolonged intense activity increases levels of certain inflammatory proteins that can allow viruses—such as the common cold—to thrive. That means you might get sick more frequently, and feel worse during bouts of illness, if you’re taxing your body with vigorous exercise on a regular basis.
What About Weight Loss? Despite common assumptions that exercise “torches” body fat, vigorous workouts aren’t often linked with dramatic weight loss. A close look at the medical literature reveals that diet changes, not exercise, are the big drivers of dropped pounds. One example: A recent study in the journal Obesity found that after a full year of aerobic exercise— 5 days a week for 45 minutes—overweight or obese women lost just over 2% of their body weight. That leaped to 11% among women who combined exercise with diet changes. Another study, this one in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that an intense workout boosts women’s appetites so much that they tend to eat enough calories to entirely replace the ones they burned. Exercise is undeniably healthy for you—and in countless ways. But if you think you need to run hard in order to lose weight, there’s not much data to back that up…
Walking For Wellness So should you scrap your plans for your upcoming event or marathon? Not necessarily. “I don’t think that short-term training for marathons or another singular event is deleterious to our health,” says Todd Astorino, PhD, professor of kinesiology at California State University, San Marcos. “What becomes problematic is chronic training over a long period of time with inadequate recovery.” This, he says, makes you more susceptible to overtraining, injury, and illness. (Try one of these new walking workouts that blast fat.) But if you struggle to find motivation to run, and you’ve always assumed walking isn’t hard-core enough to improve your health, set those fears aside; walking appears to bestow all the same health benefits as running—without the risks. MORE:The 8 Most Effective Exercises For Weight Loss In a new study published in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, regular walkers turned out to be healthier than their running counterparts. Risk for hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, and heart disease all dropped more significantly among walkers, compared with runners. Both O’Keefe and Astorino advise embracing the CDC’s physical activity guidelines, which recommend 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise—such as brisk walking—most days of the week, combined with a couple of days of strength training. O’Keefe adds: “As important as exercise is, it’s important to get the right dose.
You Can’t Control Who Enters Your Life, But You Can Control Who Stays? The insula is a region of the brain as mysterious as it is crucial to understanding human behavior. Some say it’s where our “conscience” is located. Currently, neurologists can only say that this structure functions more like the source of our emotions. It’s where our empathy and intuition live.
Neuroscience is a fascinating discipline that never ceases to amaze. A few years ago, it was discovered that some people are able to quit smoking overnight with no withdrawal problems. Why? When they had an MRI, researchers found a small lesion in the insula. They also found that alexithymia is related to a problem in this very same region. Alexithymia is when a person has significant difficulty empathizing with the emotions of others. In essence, they have trouble recognizing their emotions and expressing a feeling verbally. And it turns out it’s intimately linked to this particular little spot. Indeed, the insula is like a magical fountain infusing every structure of the brain with sensations and emotions. These, in turn, allow us to react, whether positively or negatively. Because the insula is what gives us feelings like disgust, pride, and lust. It’s also the structure that helps us understand people and even respond emotionally to music…
The insula, a multifunctional structure | the Source of Our Emotions and Empathy! To reach it, you’d have to dive into the deep fissure separating the frontal and parietal lobes from the temporal lobe. The insula is a small region of the cerebral cortex located inside the lateral groove. Interestingly, if this were the 80’s, the only thing we could say is that it’s a dark area of the brain. A structure with unknown functions, the subject of hundreds of hypotheses over the years. However, the 90’s shed some light on it. Thanks to advances in analytical and diagnostic techniques, this theoretical spot is dark no more. Amazing discoveries were made. Multiple studies were done on patients with brain damage in the insula. They showed that the insula actually plays a very large role in many of our daily activities. Thus, if we were to ask scientists now what processes this area carries out, they could give a full, interesting response. It’s involved in so much: pain, love, emotions, cravings, addictions, musical enjoyment, decision-making, wine tasting, and the conscience. Incredible, isn’t it?
The insula, is the Cornerstone of our consciousness!!! Neuropsychologists tell us that we must be very careful when attributing a function as huge and important as consciousness to any region of the brain. However, given the involvement of the insula in a large part of our social and emotional behavior, it’s not hard to come to this hypothesis. First, because it’s an attractive term. Second, because of how complicated defining with total accuracy which tasks, functions, and processes this area carries out. As a side note, something else that’s been proven is that people who suffer severe damage to the insula are completely disconnected from their environment and even themselves. They’re characterized by deep apathy and a lack of empathy. They’re unable to enjoy any aspect of life, even unable to experience disgust. That is, they couldn’t differentiate fresh food from rotten.
The insula just well may be our soul and plays into our self-image!!! Scientists tell us that the insula is where our being comes together. In other words, where you become aware of your body and mind. However, to understand it better, let’s clear one thing up. No brain structure works independently. When we make the mistake — common as it may be — of saying that a certain person uses the right hemisphere because they’re very creative, we’re forgetting that the brain is “a whole.” Every part of the brain is connected to all the others. The organ works in perfect harmony. The same thing happens with the insula. It’s physiologically connected to the body, plays a role in your sense of smell, and generates subjective feelings. The insula is involved in the feeling of hunger and even receives information from skin receptors and other organs. This structure helps us react when we’re cold or hot, or when something stings or itches. It’s the instinct that tells us things like “get out of here. You need air to clear your mind…” That said, animals also have this amazing structure in their brains. Therefore, they also have that sense of physical and emotional awareness. So when a cat, a dog, a Tasmanian devil, or a lemur is hot, it will look for shade. When it finds food, it’ll choose the fresh over the rotten.When an animal comes across another animal, its intuition will tell it whether the other animal has good or bad intentions. It’ll know instinctively whether it’s going to become prey. Or if, on the contrary, it is someone they can socially relate to. Also, neurobiologists say that human beings, large primates, whales, and elephants have much more complex and sophisticated insulae.
The insula, in turn, can be broken down into different areas. For example, the frontal insula is related to our emotions. Love and hate, gratitude and resentment, shame and distrust, empathy and contempt. There’s a certain point between the frontal area and the anterior cingulate cortex.
This is where processes associated with addictions are located. When a person tries to quit smoking, certain stimuli increase the desire and withdrawal symptoms. Certain scents, social situations, and scenarios intensify the anxiety that secretly governs the insula. All of this because the insula is intimately connected to the limbic system. There are many studies that show how this small structure plays into addictive behavior. It has to do with what is known as the “craving“ phenomenon, or an intense desire to consume. In conclusion, the insula can help us humans be the best we can be; it gives us empathy and positive feelings. But it can also bring out our negative, addictive side. Perhaps soon new discoveries will be made about this complex little area of the brain that makes us human. Here’s a final thought. Whenever you enjoy music or a glass of wine, remember what allows you to enjoy such pleasures. Thank your insula 🙂 Leslie Krusinski Thanks
Medical Daily Why Walking Is The Best Exercise During Coronavirus Lockdown By Charmaine Lastimosa
Everyone in the world is currently dealing with the threats posed by the coronavirus pandemic and struggling with the drawbacks of not being able to freely go outside. And for most people, there is a struggle to remain healthy since gyms and other establishments are closed. For people who have fitness and exercise equipment at home. Staying healthy may not be a problem as long as they are motivated to work out. But for many people who do not have the privilege of owning any exercise tool, losing weight or staying fit is an uphill battle. However, experts say there is one exercise that everyone can do to remain healthy amid the coronavirus lockdowns, and it is walking. Below are the reasons why walking is the best exercise to do during the COVID-19 pandemic, as first shared by USA Today. Improves muscle strength Walking has been proven to counter the effects of aging on muscle strength. As humans age, their muscle strength is greatly reduced. Walking addresses this problem by building muscle mass and toning muscles in certain areas of the body, especially in the back and legs. Promotes stronger bones Bones tend to become weaker as people age. According to MedlinePlus, this explains why posture and gait drastically change when humans get older. Walking has been found to strengthen bones. This form of exercise gives a certain amount of stress to the bones and bone cells called osteoblasts respond well to this type of stress, preventing bone density loss. Burns body fat Walking is one good exercise that can make one lose weight without having to rely on gym equipment. Studies found that walking regularly does help in losing weight by burning fat. Obese people who frequently walk were even found to benefit from the fat-burning effect of walking. Stimulates good mood Many people are suffering from anxiety and mood swings amid the coronavirus pandemic. Walking is a good way to counter these issues because this physical activity has already been proven to have a palliative effect on a person’s mood. Boosts heart health Another good reason why walking is the best exercise to do while in quarantine has to do with its effects on heart health. Apparently, walking makes the heart stronger. Since it is an aerobic activity, walking promotes greater efficiency of the heart by increasing heart rate and blood pressure. As such, walking reduces the risk of developing heart disease. Dr. Ron Weiss, 58, is a primary care & urgent care physician who helped treat the first COVID-19 patient in New Jersey in March. Since then, he’s seen hundreds of patients with the disease.
Experts explain why some myths about the coronavirus can be dangerous!!! By Audrey Cher
Our common enemy is #COVID19, but our enemy is also an “infodemic” of misinformation. To overcome the #coronavirus, we need to urgently promote facts & science, hope & solidarity over despair & division. https://www.un.org/en/coronavirus
“There seems to be barely an area left untouched by disinformation in relation to the Covid-19 crisis,” said Guy Berger, director for policies and strategies in communication and information at UNESCO, according to an article on the U.N. website earlier this month.
Believing and acting on false information can be gravely dangerous. After U.S. President Donald Trump suggested that consuming or injecting disinfectants could help fight Covid-19, health experts swiftly fired back and warned that such unsound medical advice “could seriously harm people.” Trump later tried to walk back on those comments. Experts who spoke to CNBC debunked the following myths about the coronavirus that are also spreading.
Will strong sunlight protect me from Covid-19? No, exposing yourself to the sun — or to temperatures above 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit) will not stop you from contracting the disease, according to the World Health Organization. The virus can be transmitted anywhere, even countries with hot and humid weather, WHO said. Much of Southeast Asia has a tropical climate. But the region has not been spared from a surge in coronavirus cases — Singapore has more than 16,000 cases while Indonesia has nearly 10,000 reported infections, according to Johns Hopkins University data. In the Saudi Arabia, where the desert sun can get hotter than 50°C (122°F) at the peak of summer, more than 21,000 cases have been reported, according to Hopkins. Extreme heat can kill the virus, but that degree of heat will also kill the person, said Dr. Leong Hoe Nam, infectious disease specialist from Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, in an email to CNBC. He said 90°C of heat for 15 minutes will effectively destroy the virus, but no human can survive the intensity of that level of heat either. Conversely, “there is no reason to believe that cold weather can kill the new coronavirus or other diseases. The normal human body temperature remains around 36.5°C to 37°C, regardless of the external temperature or weather,” said the WHO. Trump had also speculated that exposing people to “ultraviolet or just very powerful light” could help kill the coronavirus, but experts warned about its dangers. While the virus is susceptible to ultraviolet (UV) light which can make it harder for the virus to reproduce, you can’t possibly get UV light inside your body, as it will be blocked by your skin, explained Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center, during a video interview with CNBC. All that UV light will do is to increase the risk of skin cancer, Offit said.
Can I drink vodka or whiskey to wash out the coronavirus? Just last month, hundreds of people in Iran reportedly died after ingesting methanol — a false remedy for Covid-19 that was spreading through social media. The number of deaths as a result of ingesting methanol has since risen to 700, according to a recent report by the Associated Press. While alcoholic beverages, including vodka, could make you “a little drunk,” they are not useful for treating the virus or for preventing the virus infection, William Schaffner, Vanderbilt University professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases, told CNBC. He added that alcoholic beverages would be of no effect on the coronavirus, or any other virus. “It doesn’t make any sense to try to wash out the virus at all, or even to rinse out the mouth with … an alcoholic beverage.” Other experts warned that trying to kill the coronavirus with alcohol could come at the expense of one’s own life. “Alcohol kills the virus. But at very high concentrations that will scald … the lining in your mouth, your nose and your throat. You certainly kill the virus but you kill yourself too,” Leong said. Offit concurred, adding that “you can never consume enough alcohol to kill all the virus in your body without first killing yourself.” Apart from consuming alcohol, spraying alcohol or disinfectants all over the body would not help kill the coronavirus either, according to experts. “Alcohol is useful as a hand disinfectant, a hand sanitizer — but taking it either internally or over the body is not useful at all,” Schaffner said. Instead, experts recommend good hand hygiene, including washing hands with soap and water several times a day, as well as the use of hand sanitizers. Does it mean I don’t have the virus if I can hold my breath for 10 seconds without discomfort or coughing? Another dangerous claim that’s spreading on social media is a so-called self-check breathing test which falsely claims that people who are able to hold their breaths for 10 seconds, without coughing or discomfort, do not have the virus infection. The false claims have been spreading on Facebook and Twitter. Dr. Faheem Younus, chief of infectious diseases at the University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health, debunked that myth. “Most young patients with Coronavirus will be able to hold their breaths for much longer than 10 seconds. And many elderly without the virus won’t be able to do it,” he tweeted.
But getting enough vitamin D is a good idea. There is an exception to the general rule that supplements won’t really help prevent illness, and that’s vitamin D (in moderate doses). Research has shown that the immune system needs vitamin D like wise selenium and zinc to fight off viruses – while it won’t protect your from getting the virus if you’re exposed,it could reduce the severity of the illness and help make recovery easier. It’s also a common cause of nutrient deficiency. You can get vitamin D naturally through sunlight, which many people have less access to during darker, colder months of flu season. It’s also found in some foods, including fatty fish like salmon, tuna and mackerel, and in small amounts in beef liver, eggs, cheese, and mushrooms. Sleeping is crucial for your body’s ability to recover and defend itself. One of the most evidence-supported ways to stay healthy, though, also happens to be free – getting enough sleep. That means 7-9 hours each night for most people, according to Harvard Health. While you’re asleep, your body uses that time to do critical recovery and repair of essential functions, including your immune system. Just one night of poor sleep can reduce your immune cells by as much as 70%, research shows. . Exercise can boost your mood as well as keep you healthy. Exercise can also keep your body functioning well, since research shows that it reduces inflammation and supports infection-fighting cells. If you’re working from home or staying out of the gym, there are plenty of ways to still get your sweat on – body weight movements like burpees, lunges, push-ups and more give you a quick full-body workout with no equipment. As an added bonus, endorphins from exercise also reduce stress.
If you drink alcohol, do so in moderation. During the stress of a viral outbreak, and the pressure of being stuck at home for long periods of time, it might seem natural to turn to some liquid courage and stress relief. The occasional glass of wine in moderation is unlikely to be a threat, particularly if it has the benefits of helping you relax. But avoid overdoing it – not only will you feel worse and need to rehydrate and rest even more, excessive alcohol use can also impair the immune system and the body’s ability to heal itself, according to research.
Please wash your hands. Experts consistently agree that the best way to prevent the spread of the coronavirus is to wash your hands, with soap and warm water, consistently and thoroughly. Best practices include washing your hands for at least 20 seconds, and drying them thoroughly. No form of supplement or habit can replace good hand-washing, and includes heaps of hand sanitizer, which can be a good substitute if you’re in a pinch, but doesn’t work as well as good old fashioned soap scrubbing. Trying to manage stress — even during anxious and uncertain circumstances. Is one of the most important ways to stay healthy. Stress can also make a big difference for your immune system, particularly when there are alarming or uncertain events happening in the world around you. Yes, this means managing fears about the coronavirus itself – good strategies include taking breaks from social media and relying on trust media sources for information, both of which can help you avoid panic and misinformation. How you choose to relax will vary from person to person, whether that’s taking a walk outside, curling up with a favorite book, or taking time to meditate or practice yoga or another soothing habit each day. Companion animals can be one great source of stress relief and fortunately, current evidence suggests we don’t have to worry about them getting or spread the coronavirus.
The World Health Organization pointed out, “The best way to confirm if you have the virus producing COVID-19 disease is with a laboratory test. You cannot confirm it with this breathing exercise, which can even be dangerous.” According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are two kinds of tests available: viral tests and antibody tests. A viral test allows you to determine if you presently have the infection, while an antibody test shows if you have been previously infected before.
Was the virus caused by 5G networks? I am not to sure about that!! Cell towers in the U.K. were torched earlier this month, after conspiracy theories flooded Facebook claiming the coronavirus outbreak was caused by 5G, the next generation of mobile internet. Viruses cannot travel via radio waves or mobile networks, the WHO said. “The virus is extremely sneaky and has exceeded all expectations of other viral infections, but they have not learned the skill of teleportation via the electric cables — and certainly not true electromagnetic waves via 5G,” said Leong from Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital. “There’s nothing electronically that transmits the virus, it’s very simple — (it’s caused by) person-to-person transmission and … (through) inanimate environment like tables, doorknobs and things like that, that’s why we like to disinfect the inanimate environment around us,” Schaffner said. An infected person — who may or may not show any symptoms of flu — breathes out the virus through droplets, typically in a cough or a sneeze. The virus can settle on an inanimate surface somewhere and other people could pick it up on their fingertips or hands, infecting them after they touch their noses or mouths, William Schaffner explained.
Faheem Younus, MD
✔ So I’m hearing many myths about #COVID-19 and would like to quickly clear the record.
Coronavirus will go away in Sumer months.
Wrong. Previous pandemics didn’t follow weather patterns plus as we enter summer, there will be winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Virus is global.
LEARN WHY the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has lied, is lying, and will continue to lie to protect its regime, and how it has been attempting to deceive, infiltrate, and dominate the world and to steal land space and Natural Resources from the United States? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coO7uPBX3IU
What is the true reason behind why China wants to expand at all cost? In today’s educational and informative video, we’re taking a look at everything we know about China, it’s politics and where it is heading before their country has a social economic collapse? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGFtFFrsQ7c I did not think I would like this, but here I am liking it.
My age is 26 and I just recovered from the novel Coronavirus or Covid-19. And I have a message for all the young people out there, ‘You are not invincible’. I am here today to share my story after a long battle with the deadly virus which lasted for more than two weeks and ‘I’ am still in the process to cope up with normal life. My normal life had a great share of exercises in the morning, a lot of jogging on the treadmill and then some work-outs. I am not able to get back to that, not only because I am feeling weak, but I still have that shortness of breath lingering as my lungs are severely damaged! I was healthy even a month ago – now I am undergoing physical therapy to regain my strength. I know a lot of people are still under the belief that ‘I am young and healthy, therefore it would not have any serious effect on me’ or ‘it only affects the elderly’, but let me tell you a truth: obviously from my case and several others I have heard of, that mentality is not always true. I spent two weeks at the hastily set-up military hospital in Daegu, after what started like a cold soared into severe chest pain and trouble breathing. The pain was unbearable, similar to hundreds of needles piercing the lungs! I still remember the night when I could not sleep even for a minute, as I was not able to breathe and sessions of cough were ravaging my night. The temperature of my body was above 103 degree Celsius and severe body ache. Before that night I was at home-isolation since I was checked positive 2 days ago and my fever was not that severe, but that night changed everything. The next morning I was admitted to the hospital and the war began. At the peak of my war against the virus for survival, I was unconscious and was on a ventilator. Whenever I was conscious, the pain used to kill me and I would call the nurse for giving me some relief. At first the doctors were trying to reduce my fever with doses of paracetamol and I was told by them that I would have to fight on my own as there is no medicine for the disease. Then the situations worsened and I was taken to the ICU. I was frightened, as I could remember my father dying in one such ICU some 4 years ago. But I was fighting, and my determination was unbreakable that I will see to the end of this.
I just wanted to return to my home, to see my mom again and to pet my little dog. But the end was probably not far, as my condition worsened even more and the doctors told me that my lungs were not working properly and I was to be given ventilation. This might sound very scary now, but at that moment I felt relieved as I was almost unable to breathe and the chest pain was not subsiding even with stronger medications. After that day I was mostly unconscious. I want to mention here one specific night which changed the game completely. That night suddenly I was awake and it was pitch dark. There was no sound except for the mechanical ups and downs of the ventilator. There was a glass window beside my bed, and it was pitch dark outside too. Suddenly a flash of light came and slowly the room was filled with light. It was dawn and the sun had risen from the east. I went to sleep again, but this time with the ray of hope, ray of light. I started to recover from the afternoon. The supportive care started to work. The intruders in my body were retreating and I started to win. In the next three to four days the fever receded. The chest pain was almost gone, but the shortness of breath prevailed. The ventilators were removed and I was transferred to a general bed but in isolation. I wanted to see my mother and I expressed my wish to the doctor who used to visit me twice every day. He was visibly exhausted and so were the nurses. The doctor smiled at my request and told me that I would be free to go back to home by the end of the week and I could see my mother; but not before that. Although I was disappointed, I realized that it would be best to her interest that she should stay at home.
The end of the week was near, the doctors handed me over a set of reports. And then the bad news came along. Some parts of my left lung are severely damaged at the moment and might turn out to be a backlash against my normal daily routine. I was suggested physical therapies and medications and was released the next morning. When I returned home, I saw my mother after 14 days and finally hugged her. Both of us were still wearing masks because I was afraid from the initial stages for her, as she is above 60. Fortunately the prompt test and isolation were very effective to contain the spread in my house. Now that I am out of the hospital and taking rest in my home in isolation, I tell myself that my case could have been more tragic and there was a significant amount of chance that I could have not made it through this. In December 2019 the Chinese authorities notified the world that a virus was spreading through their communities. In the following months it spread to other countries, with cases doubling within days. This virus is the “Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus 2”, that causes the disease called COVID19, and that everyone calls Coronavirus. What actually happens when it infects a human and what should we all do? ▼▼ More infos is just a click away ▼▼ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtN-goy9VOY
Loved this interview and typed up some notes for those interested: Who is most at risk? On March 24th in Korea 8,961 confirmed cases – 3,166 recovered with111 deaths – they found 20 % showed no symptoms – for those over 80 years old 11.6% death rate – those in there 70’s the death rate was 6.3% – and 1.5% in there 60’s | 0.4% in there 50’s – Korea has one patient die in there 40s & 30s – so the death rate in there 40s and 30s is 0.1% and they seen no deaths of people in there teens or twenties. Can you get the flu again? – Usually people who get the flu, the bodies develop antibodies and they recover in 2 weeks and don’t get sick again. – For Covid, people who have been discharged are getting the virus again . How do you get infected? – 3 ways to get infected: 1. Droplet Transfer: Directly being coughed or sneezed on by someone and being with their droplets. 2. Indirect Transfer: When patient coughs or sneezes and the droplets land on keyboards/tables/doorknobs. Virus can survive up to 3-4 days on surfaces like tables/door knobs, and 1 day for fabric/clothes. 3. Direct Transfer: When someone coughs/sneezes on hands and you shake their hands and subsequently touch your face/mouth/eyes etc… Can you get it just by breathing? – Yes, Aerosol Transmission possible in certain cases (i.e. Airborne transmissions) – Airborne transmission likely in densely packed areas. But, in outdoor environments and not in closed spaces, not as likely through airborne transmission. What are the symptoms of the virus? – Loss in appetite, mild aches, fevers, sore throat, difficulty breathing. – 30% of those who get the virus can’t smell or taste anything – Lose your sense of smell or taste Can you get infected if it’s on skin? – You get infected by it going through eyes/mouth/nose because there are mucous membranes in those areas. – However, you can’t get the virus from it just being on your skin. That’s why it’s important to wash your hands. How effective is wearing mask? – Very effective. – In the west, not many people wear masks which is odd. The US Surgeon General and WHO recommend people not to wear masks, but he disagrees. Wearing mask is extremely effective. – They probably said that so medical ppl. can have more masks and normal people stop hoarding. – If everyone wears masks, there will be less infections in general. WHO encourages normal people not to wear masks. But in Asia, because of cultural differences, they encourage ppl to wear masks. – As a result, US/Europe spreading much faster than Asia did. If it gets warmer, will the virus go away? Hard to predict, but won’t go away quickly. – Several scenarios: – 1st Scenario: Covid ends like SARS did when it got warmer. SARS started in Nov 2002 and ended July 2003. But, back then people travelled less and infection was much smaller (mostly Asia + Canada only). For Covid-19, IF the whole world cooperates, it can end by July/August 2020 and it won’t infect people again. – However, only 10% probability this may come true. – 2nd scenario: Covid=19 stays in the summer and it’ll spread to southern hemisphere when it’s their winter and it’ll come back again in our winter. – Just like regular flu cycle. – 3rd scenario: we develop a vaccine and put a end to it once and for all. But this scenario is difficult to achieve. – Inventing a new vaccine usually takes 10-15 years and costs US$800M. Covid-19 is only 121 days old. Doctors have only had 2 months to understand their DNA structure so far. – At fastest, IF everything goes smoothly (big if), and it’ll take 18 months if all goes well to develop vaccine. – However, even if US / China develops a vaccine, would they share the vaccine? Also, it’ll be impossible for U.S. with 329 million population to vaccinate everyone. It becomes a choice of priority. Who gets the cure first? What cures are being used now? Best thing we can do is “drug repurposing”: Try to find a drug that’s being used to treat another disease that can also be effective for Covid-19. – Ex. A drug that is used for Malaria was found to be somewhat effective in treating Covid-19 and used for critical patients right now. – Another way: – Take the blood of patients who recovered and use the antibodies in the blood to give to critical patients. So recovered people should donate their bloods if they can. Any last comments? – Currently, doctors working 2 months nonstop and very worn out. Their bodies are tired as a result so they can catch the virus from patients more easily. They are more vulnerable than normal people. Last advice to people in teens, 20s, 30s? – You may be fine, but if you spread to an elderly family member, it could be fatal. – Wear mask. Socially distance. You need to protect yourself so you can protect your family. Watch the Second Interview with Prof. Woo Joo – Kim Here!!
Dr. Jerome Kim is a gifted communicator and the perfect person to interview, honestly, Stephen’s questions make what he says way better though. It is so refreshing to get trustworthy, non-politicized information. Dr. Kim is the Director General of the International Vaccine Institute (IVI), for sharing his expert insight on the development of a vaccine for COVID-19. Visit IVI’s website for more information: https://www.ivi.int0:47 Dr Jerome Kim 2:51 SARS-1 vs COVID-19 4:23 What is a Vaccine? 9:15 Time to Develop a Vaccine 9:39 HIV vs COVID-19 14:47 Vaccine Cost/Timeline 27:02 Which CV Vaccine? 28:38 CV Vaccine Distribution 31:28 Flu vs COVID-19 35:08 Herd Immunity 38:44 Scientist & Doctor Misinformation 41:34 Watch The New Normal!!!
As much of the globe continues to stay home to practice social distancing, vibrant cities have gone quiet, and animals are freer to roam. The rare absence of human activity grants us a special glimpse of what the world might be like without us in it. Jeffrey Brown has the story for ongoing coverage of arts and culture, Canvas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5awa3cW6RmM
Poor air quality increases death from the COVID-19 virus – but because we are all staying home – the air is cleaning up! Amy Freeze explains. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7nB1yuspxA
A quick look at some of the positive changes that have occurred in the environment since the coronavirus outbreak of 2020 to cold. Is COVID-19 healing our planet, allowing animals to roam free and pollution to drop to the lowest levels in years? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i426fmdOEC8
The lockdown: One month in Wuhan The predictions about the coronavirus catastrophe grow more ominous by the day, and despite the best efforts of countries like Australia in enacting emergency action plans to contain the disease, its spread continues at a worrying rate. Even the World Health Organisation forecasts a world of pain. It says the virus poses a greater global threat than terrorism. That’s bad enough, but medical experts tell 60 MINUTES it’s actually even more terrifying. Professor Gabriel Leung, who led the fight against the SARS virus, believes 60 per cent of the world’s population could become infected with COVID-19 and that up to 45 million people might die from it. For this story, Liam Bartlett has travelled to Hong Kong and Thailand to find out the likely cause of the disease, as well as the latest ongoing efforts to combat it. At all times he and his crew have followed medical advice and undertaken strict protocols to limit their exposure to potential danger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7nZ4mw4mXw
Dr. Bruce Hollis, has been studying vitamin D for more than 35 years at the Medical U of South Carolina.
Knowledge of vitamin D in the health of children has grown greatly over the years, extending past the importance for calcium homeostasis and bone growth. There is growing recognition of the role vitamin D plays in health impacting the innate immune system to prevent infections and the adaptive immune system to modulate autoimmunity. Other studies are starting to reveal the neurohormonal effects of vitamin D on brain development and behavior, with a link to mental health disorders.
Many of these effects start well before the birth of the child, so it is important that each pregnant woman be assessed for vitamin D deficiency and supplemented for the best possible health outcome of the child. It is recommended that targeting a 25(OH)D level of 40–70 ng/mL for each individual would provide optimal health benefits and reduce health care costs. Current recommended doses of vitamin D supplementation fall short of what is needed to obtain ideal serum levels. A vitamin D supplementation program to prevent disease, much like the current vaccination program, could potentially have a dramatic impact on overall health worldwide. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4928729/
Why governments are $elling Vitamin D $hort Vitamin D deficiencies can lead patients to be prone to respiratory infections. In the past decade, researchers have uncovered intriguing links between low levels of vitamin D and a host of immune system problems, including respiratory infections and “cytokine storms,” the runaway inflammation that also kills many COVID- patients. Dr. Reinhold Vieth is frustrated. A thin, bald professor at the University of Toronto’s Department of Laboratory Medicine and Patho-biology, Dr. Vieth is also among the most knowledgeable people in the world on the subject of vitamin D. He began studying it as a graduate student in 1974 and hasn’t changed his focus since. “I stick with vitamin D and follow it where it goes,” he says. In recent years, vitamin D has been going to some exciting places. Reports of new and promising studies seem to emerge almost weekly. A 2007 analysis of vitamin D studies also found that individuals with higher vitamin D levels are significantly – as much as 50 per cent – less likely to develop colorectal and prostate cancer. Another 2007 study found that women who took 1,100 International Units (IU) of vitamin D per day together with a calcium supplement reduced their overall cancer risk by 60 per cent.
And the excitement is not only about cancer prevention. Low vitamin D levels have been linked to an increased risk of osteoporosis, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, depression and rheumatoid arthritis, among other diseases. Perhaps not surprisingly, in light of the other studies, one recent review of the health records of more than 13,000 Americans found that individuals with the lowest vitamin D levels were 26 per cent more likely, in an eight-year period, to die than those with the highest levels.
So why is Dr Vieth so frustrated?
You might think he’d have cause for celebration. But for him and other vitamin D researchers around the world, the good news comes with a bitter aftertaste. They believe they can prove vitamin D could help millions live longer and be healthier and yet they have not been able to convince their own governments. In the United States and in Canada, official vitamin D policy is set by the Institute of Medicine. And in the opinion of Dr. Vieth, the current recommendations – 200 International Units per day for people under 50, 400 IU. for people aged 51-70, and 600 IU. for those 71 and older – are outrageously low.
Bruce Hollis, professor of paediatrics at the Medical University of South Carolina, calls 400 IU a day “a joke”. That’s because the best research suggests that to achieve the higher vitamin D blood levels associated with disease prevention, most adults in the US would need to take 1,000-2,000 IU a day: five to 10 times more than the current official recommendation for adults. In the UK, the government’s Committee on Medical Aspects of Food and Nutrition Policy has declined to set a “Reference Nutrient Intake” value for people “leading a normal lifestyle”, arguing that you can get the vitamin D you need from food and sunlight. But they fall in line with the Americans where they do make recommendations: for people confined indoors, the elderly and pregnant women, they suggest a daily intake of 10 micrograms a day.
That’s equal to 400 IU. … Vitamin D was discovered in the early 20th century as scientists searched for a cure for rickets, a disease that softens the bones of children, leaving them bowlegged and deformed. It had been known for some time that children in cities were more likely to suffer from rickets than those in the countryside. But it wasn’t until the 1920s that scientists in the US and UK realised rickets was caused by a vitamin D deficiency, caused in city kids by lack of sunlight. We obtain our other vitamins from our food; but while it’s possible to get vitamin D from oily fish and some other foods, most of the vitamin D in our bodies doesn’t come from diet at all but from a chemical process that takes place when the sun’s ultraviolet light strikes our skin. In the 1950s and 1960s, when American and other dietary guidelines first specified vitamin D intakes of up to 400 IU for adults, nobody understood that vitamin D could do anything other than regulate calcium. And since 200 IU is enough to prevent rickets in children – assuming they have at least a moderate amount of calcium in their diet – it was assumed that 200 IU was sufficient. It was only in the following decades, as scientists came to understand how vitamin D works in our bodies, that the picture changed. After it forms in our skin, vitamin D undergoes two critical transformations.
First our liver metabolises it, turning it into calcidiol. If you have your vitamin D blood levels checked, it’s the amount of calcidiol in your blood that will be tested. From the liver, calcidiol makes its way to the kidneys, where it is turned into calcitriol, arguably the most potent steroid hormone in the body. In other words, while vitamin D is lumped together with other vitamins, by the time our bodies are done with it, it has more in common with testosterone or oestrogen than with vitamins A or C. If you have only a small amount of D in your body, it will all be used by the kidneys to produce calcitriol and maintain blood calcium levels.
But when there is more vitamin D available, something very different happens. As scientists have discovered in recent decades, it’s not only the kidneys that can make calcitriol from the calcidiol produced in the liver. Many tissues throughout the body can as well. These tissues use the hormone locally, within the cells, to regulate their behaviour. “Calcidiol is like a blank piece of paper,” Vieth explains. “And calcitriol is like the message written on to it. Calcitriol is needed by our bodies to convey many kinds of messages, and virtually every cell in our body has a receptor that can read and respond to it.” The first real evidence for the cancer-fighting properties of vitamin D emerged in the early 1980s, when researchers found that if they added calcitriol to immature malignant leukaemia cells, the cells would stop growing. They could only guess why this was, but scientists have since shown that vitamin D interacts with an unusually large number of genes and has the apparent ability to turn them on and off. … This new understanding of how vitamin D works in our bodies, together with a large quantity of evidence of the benefits of higher vitamin D levels, might make it seem like an obvious move for the world’s governments to adjust their recommendations for daily intake.
However, Dr. Vieth and other vitamin D advocates have good reason to think there will be minimal changes made to dietary guidelines. Last December, the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer issued a 465-page report that concluded there was no need to raise vitamin D recommendations. The reason is not a lack of research but a lack of the right kind of research, say vitamin D sceptics. Most evidence for vitamin D and health is based on epidemiological surveys. Many of these studies, particularly early ones, were based on geography. Epidemiologists have found, for example, that multiple sclerosis – a disease of the central nervous system – and a number of cancers become more common the farther you move away from the equator. In the US, you are four times more likely to develop MS if you live in a state that borders Canada than if you live in the south. The theory is that as you move away from the equator, you receive less “UVB” ultraviolet sunlight (UVB is a subtype of UV light and the most important for vitamin D production), and thus fewer opportunities to make vitamin D in your skin. This may sound like persuasive research to lay readers, but for scientists, such correlations aren’t generally convincing, as there could be plenty of other possible reasons why people living at higher latitudes are more likely to suffer from MS.
Every person is different. But for the average person of median skin complexion, 30 minutes to an hour in the sun without sunscreen will create adequate amounts of vitamin D. Morning exposure might have to be a little longer than this due to less sunlight intensity than midday sun (10 AM to 3 PM, as recommended by the National Institutes of Health.
The more compelling evidence for the connection between vitamin D and disease onset comes from the wide range of studies in recent years that have actually measured vitamin D levels in blood. But even these studies only show correlations. They can demonstrate, as one Harvard School of Public Health study did in 2006, that the vitamin D status of healthy young adults can predict their future risk of developing MS, but they can’t definitively demonstrate that higher vitamin D levels prevent MS. It’s possible, for example, that there is another mechanism at work in the early stage of MS that causes vitamin D levels to drop during the first stage of a progressive disease. Few mainstream researchers would disagree that a single correlation study should not be given much weight in determining public policy. It’s only when looked at in aggregate that these survey studies – together with the many small clinical trials and our new knowledge of how vitamin D works at the cellular level – begin to make a powerful case for increasing the current vitamin D recommendations. And yet, if the WHO report of 2008 is any indicator, such a case isn’t always strong enough to sway a sceptical committee. All the recent research notwithstanding, vitamin D is still missing the gold standard of evidence-based medicine: large, randomised controlled trials which can demonstrate its ability to prevent major diseases.
The WHO report concludes that “we should wait for the results of new randomised trials” before changing vitamin D recommendations. It’s a position echoed in the UK by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (Nice), which advises the government on whether drugs should be paid for by the state. After reviewing the vitamin D literature, in 2003 Nice pointed to the absence of randomised clinical trials and suggested that there was no need even to recommend vitamin D to pregnant women – a conclusion that was overruled by the government’s chief medical officer after paediatricians objected. … For Britons, the most alarming aspect of these government responses is that people living in the UK have so much to lose. For much of the year, it is impossible in this country to obtain vitamin D from the sun – for the same reason it is impossible to suffer sunburn. There is simply not enough UVB ultraviolet radiation in our winter and autumn sunlight. And unless you happen to consume a lot of oily fish, it’s very hard to get much vitamin D from your diet. (In addition to oily fish, eggs and fortified foods have small amounts of vitamin D.) It’s no surprise, then, that a 2007 study of middle-aged British adults found that 90 per cent had less-than-optimal levels of vitamin D during winter and spring. In the US, by comparison, three-quarters of teenagers and adults are estimated to be deficient in vitamin D.
Advocates of changes to the vitamin D recommendations in the UK and elsewhere don’t disagree that large, randomised control trials are important. The trouble is, trials that could convince policymakers to advise an across-the-board increase to vitamin D recommendations for all children and adults might never take place. There are a number of obstacles to the research, but the simplest, and biggest, is money. Vitamin D is not a proprietary compound. It’s cheap and easy to produce. A bottle of 180 1,000-IU capsules can be purchased online for about £9. No pharmaceutical company is going to put up the many millions of dollars necessary to conduct the trials. Michael Gleimer, a research fellow at Harvard Medical School who has no connection to the vitamin D controversy, notes that it is easy for a medical research fellow to do a small-scale study on something like vitamin D. “It is non-controversial, easy to get approval for, and popular-sciency enough that it may land you in the science section of BBC news,” Gleimer says. “But to do a large, definitive, long-term study, one needs cash. This is something a pharmaceutical company could do. But why would they want to push vitamin D? It’s cheap and there is no patent for it.” Vitamin D also has to overcome the baggage of other vitamins.
Asked for his thoughts on the US and Canada’s current daily vitamin D recommendations, Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, said that “similar ‘signals’ regarding other vitamins and nutritional supplements – suggesting that they decreased the incidence of certain cancers – have not been borne out in subsequent randomised clinical trials.” The main culprit here is vitamin E, which caused a great deal of excitement in the early 1990s. The enthusiasm for vitamin E at the time was great enough to convince the US government to invest millions in just the sort of large clinical trials that have yet to be conducted for vitamin D. But E turned out to be a disappointment, showing no benefits whatsoever in preventing cancer. There’s a third obstacle in the way of large clinical trials with vitamin D. Like other nutrients, it faces a systemic problem. A typical clinical trial follows what Vieth calls a “pharmaceutical drug company model”, where a group of sick people are given a carefully selected dose of a drug to see if it makes a difference to their condition, compared with a second group of sick people who receive a placebo. The drawback of this model is that it doesn’t work nearly as well if the goal of the study is not to determine if a person gets better but to determine if the substance can prevent you from becoming ill at all.
“It takes a great deal of time and huge population to look at healthy people and see what develops,” says Mariela Glandt, an endocrinologist and the former director of the Diabetes Clinical Trials Center at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. “It’s just much more expensive and time-consuming.” Not even the recent announcement of a $20m study by Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston is enough to make Vieth optimistic. Funded by National Institutes of Health and other institutions, the research will look at vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids (which have also shown disease-fighting promise) in the primary prevention of chronic disease in adults ages 60 and over. If the results are good, they could help make the case for raising vitamin D recommendations for older adults. But Vieth believes it would still be difficult to persuade policy-makers of the need to raise vitamin D levels for everyone. “‘If you start with people older than age 65 and do clinical trials with them’, policy-makers say, ‘Why should we impose this drug on everyone in society?’” And if it remains challenging to raise enough money to study prevention in older adults, it’s nearly impossible to find the money to study younger people; a younger population is less susceptible to disease, so any convincing study would require an enormous number of participants. … Then there is a problem that is more specific to vitamin D.
The latest research suggests that it takes 1,000 IU a day or more to achieve vitamin D’s anti-cancer benefits. But often when a smaller vitamin D trial does receive funding, it is conducted with the current lower vitamin D recommendation – and then fails to prove effective. These failures, such as a highly publicised Lancet study in 2005 that found 800 IU of vitamin D and calcium given in prevention trials (trials in which many participants did not take the supplements regularly) did not prevent bone fractures, are then used by review committees as grounds for leaving the current vitamin D recommendations in place. It was precisely such studies that convinced the authors of the WHO report that there was no need for action on vitamin D.
The report concluded that vitamin D recommendations did not need to be raised because there was not yet evidence that supplementing with 400-840 IU of vitamin D could prevent cancer. What the conclusion left out, as though the authors couldn’t imagine anyone taking more than 840 IU, was a randomised clinical trial which found that 1,110 IU taken daily is effective in preventing cancer in women. With so many factors weighing against a large vitamin D trial for anyone who is not old or sick with cancer or another serious disease, the best hope for advocates of higher vitamin D recommendations may be convincing the medical authorities and the public to take the epidemiology survey studies more seriously. (Even if a large trial did get off the ground, it would probably be at least a decade before there were results.)
It’s not an impossible task. In other instances, the medical community has been ready to recognise survey evidence: “The evidence favouring vitamin D is probably as good as the evidence that shows smoking is bad for you,” Vieth says, explaining that just as smoking is correlated with certain cancers, so are low vitamin D levels. “But when these government officials see the same kind of evidence that deals with vitamin D as they see with smoking they go, ‘Oh wait a minute. We can’t really trust this.’” Vieth pauses, as though he can barely stand to talk about such a miserable state of affairs. “It’s easy to say ‘don’t do something – don’t smoke’. It’s very hard to say ‘take this. Take vitamin D.’”
Vitamin D reduces respiratory infections Date: November 16, 2016 Source: University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus Summary: Vitamin D, scientists have discovered, reduces respiratory infections, a potentially life-saving discovery in older patients at high risk for these illnesses.
Can we overdose? One of the debates surrounding vitamin D is whether too much can be toxic. The US’s Institute of Medicine’s recommendations – unchanged since 1997 – were influenced in part by a 1984 study concluding that 3,800 IU of vitamin D per day could cause hypercalcemia, or too much calcium in the blood. Symptoms include kidney stones, vomiting and muscle atrophy. But the 1984 study was flawed: it failed to measure the amount of vitamin D administered; based on the findings of other studies, it now looks as though subjects were given 100 times more vitamin D than intended.
Moreover, how could it be that 3,800 IU was toxic, when 20 minutes of midday sunbathing in the summer makes at least 10,000 IU of vitamin D in our bodies? In 1999, Reinhold Vieth published a review of vitamin D research in response to the IOM conclusions. In it, he argued that there was no evidence that amounts lower than 20,000 IU a day could be toxic. “Throughout my preparation of this review, I was amazed at the lack of evidence supporting statements about the toxicity of moderate doses of vitamin D,” Vieth wrote. Studies have since shown 10,000 IU a day of vitamin D to be safe. While any substance will become toxic in excess, vitamin D researchers today accept that the current vitamin D recommendations could be more than quadrupled with no fear of toxicity.
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