Category: Recommended

According to the World Economic Forum — the private, technocratic group leading the global economic “reset” agenda — lab-grown, cultured meat is a more sustainable alternative to conventional livestock. As noted on its website:1

“As the world looks to reset its economy, along with food systems, in a cleaner way post-pandemic, one more sustainable solution coming to fruition is cultured meat … Cultured meat takes much less time to grow, uses fewer of the planet’s resources, and no animals are slaughtered.”

Fake Meat Is a Catastrophe for Your Metabolic Health

Excess omega-6 fat in the form of linoleic acid (LA) is one of the most significant contributors to metabolic dysfunction. It is literally a metabolic poison that, in my opinion, is the primary contributor to the epidemic in chronic disease we have seen in the past 150 years. I am so passionate about this topic, I’m currently writing a new book with Chris Knobbe about this that will be out next year.
Our LA consumption 150 years ago was between 2 and 3 grams per day. Today it is 10 to 20 times higher. This leads to severe mitochondrial dysfunction, insulin resistance, decreased NAD+ levels, obesity and a radical decrease in your ability to generate cellular energy.
It is obvious that fake meat requires basic substrates or building blocks to create the actual food. The genetic engineering is primarily done to reproduce the flavor and texture composition of real meat. What this process fails to do on steroids is reproduce the healthy fatty acid composition of real meat. Why?
Because they are using canola and safflower as the primary source of fats for their products. The safflower oil used in Beyond Meats is nearly 80% LA. The canola oil used in the Impossible Burger is only 21% LA, so it should be better but both are extraordinarily loaded with unhealthy levels of LA.2
You would be exponentially better served by selecting real meat that is organic and humanely raised. This is because the LA content of beef and bison is extraordinarily low and, in my view, one of the primary reasons they are so healthy for you.
This is largely because excess LA is extraordinarily susceptible to oxidation and causes very dangerous oxidation by products called OXLAMs (oxidative linoleic acid metabolites) that devastate your DNA, proteins, mitochondria and cellular membranes.
A half-pound serving of organic grass fed beef will provide less than HALF a gram of LA (500 mg). Compare this to a serving of an Impossible Burger or Beyond Meat burger, which have 10 to 20 times the amount of LA.3
So not only is fake meat failing all the measures discussed in the rest of this article but it is also adding to the catastrophic metabolic deterioration of your health caused by other processed and ultraprocessed foods. I recently interviewed Tucker Goodrich about the dangers of LA, so for more information, refer back to that interview.
Fake Meat Industry Offers No Real Solutions

Over the past several years, a growing number of start-up companies have joined the brave new world movement to replace real meat with ultraprocessed imitation meats “grown” through a variety of means.
Among them are the Israeli company Aleph Farms, which in mid-2019 introduced the first lab-grown steak,4 the Singaporean company Shiok Meats, which specializes in lab-grown shrimp,5 and Beyond Meat, which produces imitation beef, pork and chicken in its Chinese facilities.
Then there’s the Impossible Burger, made with genetically engineered (GE) soy, which is now available in burger chains,6 restaurants,7 grocers8 and Target stores9 across the U.S.
Despite claims of sustainability, a careful review of its 2019 Impact Report10 and other data11,12,13 reveals this soy-based “meat” actually causes greater environmental harm than organic grass fed beef production, which has net negative emissions after all relevant factors are taken into account.14
A Carbon Footprint Evaluation report15 for White Oak Pastures — an organic, grass fed livestock operation — shows that when you include enteric emissions, manure emissions, soil carbon capture, vegetation carbon, miscellaneous farm activities, slaughter and transport, the total net carbon emissions from this type of beef production has a negative 3.5 kilos of carbon emissions per kilo of fresh meat.
This makes this integrated, holistic system six times more carbon efficient than the average CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) production model.16 The same cannot be said for GE soy. Data also show GE soybean and corn farms are a primary source of water17 and air pollution,18 and are primary destroyers of grasslands and forests.19,20
Regenerative grazing is actually a key activity required for the optimal sequestering of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into our rangelands and pasturelands, while GE soy production is associated with resistant super weeds21 and super pests and uncontrollable cross contamination.
Taken together, these data prove that if sustainability and environmental protection are in fact priorities, then regenerative farming practices that incorporate grazing herds are the way to go, not fake meat and junk food manufacturing.
Fake Meat Is Another Effort to Control Food Supply

Considering everything we know, why won’t our leaders support organic, regenerative, biodynamic farming proven to have a beneficial impact on the environment, climate and human health? It seems like doing so would be a no-brainer.
The answer, unfortunately, is that it’s not really about doing what’s best for the planet or its inhabitants. It’s about wealth and power building. In short, the rise of fake meat is yet another attempt at controlling the global food supply through patents, just like staple grains have been genetically altered and patented.
Once living animals are eliminated and replaced with patented plant-derived alternatives — just like tradable heirloom and conventional seeds were replaced with patented seeds you have to pay for each season — private companies will effectively control the food supply in its entirety, and they will be the ones profiting from it rather than farmers.
By controlling the food supply, private corporations will ultimately have the ability to control countries and entire populations. If we allow this trend to continue, biotech companies will eventually push farmers and ranchers out of the equation.

Looking down the road, it’s easy to see that patented foods actually threaten food security. They don’t strengthen it at all.
Environmentalist and anti-GMO activist Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., is an outspoken critic22 of the industrial food movement and the GE food takeover specifically, highlighting the many social and environmental problems a patented food system creates.
As noted by Shiva in a June 18, 2019, article,23 “Biodiversity-intensive and poison-free agriculture … produces more nutrition per acre while rejuvenating the planet. It shows the path to ‘Zero Hunger’ …” She also points out that while industrial agriculture uses 75% of available farmland, it produces just 30% of the food we actually eat.

“Meanwhile, small, biodiverse farms using 25% of the land provide 70% of the food,” she writes.24 “At this rate, if the share of industrial agriculture and industrial food in our diet is increased to 45%, we will have a dead planet. One with no life and no food.
The mad rush for Fake Food and Fake Meat, ignorant of the diversity of our foods and food cultures, and the role of biodiversity in maintaining our health, is a recipe for accelerating the destruction of the planet and our health.”

Fake Meat Is Ultraprocessed Food

Indeed, when it comes to nutrition and health, there’s absolutely no reason to believe any of these imitation meats will be better — or even equal — to real meat.
Products at the far end of the “significantly altered” spectrum have been robustly linked to obesity, ill health and early death.
Any food that isn’t directly from the vine, ground, bush, tree, body of water or an animal is considered processed. Depending on the amount of change the food undergoes, processing may be minimal or significant. A hallmark of ultraprocessed foods is their long ingredient lists.
Products at the far end of the “significantly altered” spectrum have been robustly linked to obesity,25 ill health and early death in a number of studies.26,27,28,29,30
For example, in one study,31,32,33,34 which included 104,980 participants followed for an average of five years, each 10% increase in ultraprocessed food intake raised the cancer rate by 12%, which worked out to nine additional cancer cases per 10,000 people per year. The risk of breast cancer specifically went up by 11% for every 10% increase in ultraprocessed food.
While sugar and unhealthy fats (vegetable oils) are key staple ingredients suspected of causing these effects, there’s every reason to believe fake meat has a similar impact as I referenced in the section above. If you click on the link to the reference I quoted, you can see all the unhealthy ingredients that are loaded into it. All of these factors place fake meat squarely in the higher-risk ultraprocessed category.
Enter Human Cell-Based Meat
Now, in a move reminiscent of something straight out of the dystopian film “Soylent Green,” scientists are even working on meat grown from human cells harvested from the inside of your cheek.35,36
The inventors of this grisly product — presented as “art,” for the time being — are Andrew Pelling, a scientist and founder of the biotech company Spiderwort, Grace Knight, an industrial designer, and Orkan Telhan, an artist. As reported by Tech Times, November 22, 2020:37

“A new ‘DIY meal kit’ that can be used to grow steaks that are made mostly from human cells was just recently nominated by the London-based Design Museum as the ‘design of the year.’38
Called ‘Ouroboros Steak,’ this is named right after the circular symbol of a snake known for eating itself tail-first. This hypothetical kit would later on come with everything that one person would need in order to use their own cells to grow miniature human meat steaks …”

The human-cell steak kits are not yet commercially available, but one wonders what possessed someone to even think this might be a viable idea. Would you eat a lump of meat made from your own body? Critics have raised questions about whether this would be considered cannibalism. Defenders of the concept claim it’s not, since it’s grown from your own cells.39
However, if this concept ever does become commercially available, what’s to prevent you from growing meat using other people’s cells? Is it only cannibalism if you eat the cloned meat of someone other than yourself? These tricky debates aside, the ick factor alone will likely prevent this concept from taking off.
Tech Times points out that this particular concept also isn’t nearly as animal-friendly as people might think, as the human cells are grown in fetal bovine serum — blood extracted from unborn calf fetuses.40 An alternative might be to use expired human blood from blood banks.41
Real Food = Life

In her 2019 article,42 Shiva discussed the progressive attempts at industrializing the global food system with more fake foods and fake meats, and the destruction that inevitably follows:

“Food is not a commodity, it is not ‘stuff’ put together mechanically and artificially in labs and factories. Food is life. Food holds the contributions of all beings that make the food web, and it holds the potential of maintaining and regenerating the web of life.
Food also holds the potential for health and disease, depending on how it was grown and processed … As an ancient Upanishad reminds us ‘Everything is food, everything is something else’s food’ Hippocrates said ‘Let food be thy medicine.’ In Ayurveda, India’s ancient science of life, food is called ‘sarvausadha’ the medicine that cures all disease.
Industrial food systems have reduced food to a commodity, to ‘stuff’ that can then be constituted in the lab. In the process both the planet’s health and our health has been nearly destroyed.
75% of the planetary destruction of soil, water, biodiversity, and 50% of greenhouse gas emissions come from industrial agriculture, which also contributes to 75% of food related chronic diseases.”

When you look at the whole ecological cycle — of which grazing herds are a crucial part — you can clearly see how industrial agriculture and fake meat manufacturing are key drivers of progressive destruction, yet this destructive cycle is defended in the name of affordable food and the need to feed a growing population.
While we certainly need to maximize food production in affordable ways, what’s being proposed is incredibly short-sighted as it shifts all food production into laboratories and factories that produce patented foods, the profits of which never reach the population at large.
One also has to wonder whether humans will be able to live long productive lives eating an all-fake diet. Think about it. Grain production is already dominated by patented GE grains. Add to that imitation “milk” and “egg” products and imitation beef, poultry and seafood and what real food do you have left?
Fruits and vegetables, basically, but even these foods will eventually become fair game for reengineering and patenting. It’s a dangerous trend that poses tremendous risks to food security and global health.
Choose Organic, Biodynamic and/or Grass Fed

For years, I have advocated for an organic (or better yet biodynamic) diet to optimize your health, avoid common health problems, help regenerate the environment and normalize climate. Choosing organic foods reduces your exposure to pesticides, herbicides, GE ingredients, synthetic food additives and nano ingredients, many of which do not appear on the food label.
In addition to protecting the environment and rebuilding soil, buying organic also supports animal welfare and promotes biodiversity of plants and wildlife. Although many see lab-created meat substitutes as the lesser of two evils when compared to the concentrated animal feeding operations currently dominating the market, altering the natural order of the lifecycle is not the answer.
Analyses on regenerative agriculture have demonstrated holistic herd management as having a positive impact on the environment and producing healthy meat and dairy products.
Ultimately, fake food contributes to the rising number of people who suffer from diet-related health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity. For health reasons, ecological reasons and your future, I recommend skipping meat alternatives and opting for real beef raised using regenerative farming practices.

When you do shop for meat, look for a local organic farmer or Demeter (biodynamic) and American Grassfed Association (AGA) certified meats. These accreditations designate foods produced under high-quality, sustainable and environmentally sound practices.

More than 80 percent of schools in America use toxic pesticides as a preventative measure, whether it‘s needed or not. Mark Lame, an entomologist and professor at Indiana University‘s School of Public and Environmental Affairs, believes this is an entirely unnecessary practice that carries more risks than benefits to students and faculty.The most widely used pesticides are, in fact, nerve poisons. They cause uncontrolled nerve firing, and disrupt the delicate hormone systems. The link between pesticide exposure and health problems in children is already well established. Research has connected these endocrine-disrupting pesticides to health problems such as ADHD, autism, and infertility — all of which are on the rise.Professor Lame says pest problems are better managed through an integrated approach — by preventing the conditions that attract pests into school facilities in the first place.Lame serves as a consultant for schools around the country, helping them reduce the toxic load by implementing his Integrated Pest Management (IPM) process.Science Daily July 21, 2007

Positive reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests have been used as the justification for keeping large portions of the world locked down for the past nine months. Not reliable hospitalization or death rates; just positive PCR test numbers — a large portion of which are from people who have no symptoms of actual illness — are the triggers behind the shutdowns.
Experts are now coming forward in growing numbers denouncing mass PCR testing as foolhardy and nonsensical if not outright criminal. Why? Because we’re now finding that PCR tests rarely tell us anything truly useful, at least not when they’re used as they have been so far.
Why PCR Tests Are the Wrong Tool to Assess Pandemic Threat

We now know that PCR tests:

1. Cannot distinguish between “live” viruses and inactive (noninfectious) viral particles and therefore cannot be used as a diagnostic tool — For this reason, it is grossly misleading to refer to a positive test as a “COVID-19 case.”
As explained by Dr. Lee Merritt in her August 2020 Doctors for Disaster Preparedness1 lecture, featured in “How Medical Technocracy Made the Plandemic Possible,” media and public health officials appear to have purposefully conflated “cases” or positive tests with the actual illness.

Medically speaking, a “case” refers to a sick person. It never ever referred to someone who had no symptoms of illness. Now all of a sudden, this well-established medical term, “case,” has been arbitrarily redefined to mean someone who tested positive for the presence of noninfectious viral RNA. As noted by Merritt, “That is not epidemiology. That’s fraud.”

2. Cannot confirm that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms as the test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens.

3. Have not been established for monitoring the treatment of 2019-nCoV infection.

4. Have exceptionally high false result rates — The higher the cycle threshold (CT) — i.e., the number of amplification cycles used to detect RNA particles — the greater the chance of a false positive.

While any CT over 35 is deemed scientifically unjustifiable,2,3,4 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend running PCR tests at a CT of 40.5

Drosten tests and tests recommended by the World Health Organization are set to a CT of 45. These excessively high CTs guarantee the appearance of widespread (pandemic) infection when infection rates are in fact low.
The CT Is the Key to the Pandemic

Many if not most laboratories amplify the RNA collected far too many times, which results in healthy people testing “positive” for SARS-CoV-2 infection and being ordered to take off work and self-isolate for two weeks.

To optimize accuracy and avoid imposing unnecessary hardship on healthy people, PCR tests must be run at far fewer cycles than the 40 to 45 CTs currently recommended.

Beyond 34 cycles, your chance of a positive PCR test being a true positive shrinks to zero.

An April 2020 study6 in the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases showed that to get 100% confirmed real positives, the PCR test must be run at 17 cycles. Above 17 cycles, accuracy drops dramatically.

By the time you get to 33 cycles, the accuracy rate is a mere 20%, meaning 80% are false positives. Beyond 34 cycles, your chance of a positive PCR test being a true positive shrinks to zero, as illustrated in the following graph from that study.7
By running PCR tests at 40 to 45 amplification cycles, you end up with the false appearance of an outbreak, and this grossly flawed testing scheme is what government leaders are basing their mask mandates and lockdown orders on.

Percentage of positive viral culture of SARS-CoV-2 PCR-positive nasopharyngeal samples from Covid-19 patients, according to Ct value (plain line). The dashed curve indicates the polynomial regression curve.

Scientific Review Confirms PCR Flaws

More recently, a December 3, 2020, systematic review8 published in the journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases assessed the findings of 29 different studies — all of which were published in 2020 — comparing evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection with the CTs used in testing. They also looked at the timing of the test, and how symptom severity relates to PCR test results. As reported by the authors:

“The data suggest a relationship between the time from onset of symptom to the timing of the specimen test, cycle threshold (CT) and symptom severity. Twelve studies reported that CT values were significantly lower and log copies higher in specimens producing live virus culture.
Two studies reported the odds of live virus culture reduced by approximately 33% for every one unit increase in CT. Six of eight studies reported detectable RNA for longer than 14 days but infectious potential declined after day 8 even among cases with ongoing high viral loads …”

In other words, if you have symptoms of COVID-19, by Day 8 from the onset of symptoms, the chances of you spreading it to others starts to decline, and in the days following, you are unlikely to be infectious even if you still test positive. This is particularly true if the PCR test is using a higher than ideal CT. As noted by the authors:9

“Complete live viruses are necessary for transmission, not the fragments identified by PCR. Prospective routine testing of reference and culture specimens and their relationship to symptoms, signs and patient co-factors should be used to define the reliability of PCR for assessing infectious potential. Those with high cycle threshold are unlikely to have infectious potential.”

Live Virus Unlikely in Tests Using CT Above 24 

According to The New York Times,10 researchers have been “unable to grow the coronavirus out of samples from volunteers whose PCR tests had CT values above 27,” and if the virus cannot replicate, you will not get ill and are not infectious, so you cannot spread it to others.
The Clinical Infectious Diseases review11 confirms this. Under the heading “The Relationship Between RT-PCR Results and Viral Culture of SARS-CoV-2,”12 they point out that “significantly lower” CTs were used in studies that correctly identified infectious patients.
Five of the studies included were unable to identify any live viruses in cases where a positive PCR test had used a CT above 24. What’s more, in order to produce live virus culture, a patient whose PCR test used a CT at or above 35 had to be symptomatic.
So, to clarify, if you have symptoms of COVID-19 and test positive using a PCR test that was run at 35 amplification cycles or higher, then you are likely to be infected and infectious.
However, if you do not have symptoms, yet test positive using a PCR test run at 35 CTs or higher, then it is likely a false positive and you pose no risk to others as you’re unlikely to carry any live virus. In fact, provided you’re asymptomatic, you’re unlikely to be infectious even if you test positive with a test run at 24 CTs or higher.
Timing of PCR Test Also Matters

The Clinical Infectious Diseases review also confirmed that the timing of the test matters. According to the authors:13

“… there appears to be a time window during which RNA detection is at its highest with low cycle threshold and higher possibility of culturing a live virus, with viral load and probability of growing live virus of SARS-CoV2 …
We propose that further work should be done on this with the aim of constructing an algorithm for integrating the results of PCR with other variables, to increase the effectiveness of detecting infectious patients.”

Another scientific review14,15 that looked into how the timing of the test influences results and your risk of being infectious was posted on the preprint server medRxiv September 29, 2020. Fourteen studies were included in this review.

The data show that your chances of getting a true positive on the first day of COVID-19 symptom onset is only about 40%. Not until Day 3 from symptom onset do you have an 80% chance of getting an accurate PCR result.

By Day 5 the accuracy shrinks considerably and by Day 8 the accuracy is nil. Now, these are symptomatic people. When you’re asymptomatic, your odds of a positive PCR test being accurate is virtually nonexistent.

The graph below, from one of the studies16 included in the review (Bullard et. al.), illustrates the probability of a patient being infectious (having live virus) based on the CT used and the timing of the test. As explained by the review authors:17

“The figure … shows how the probability of SARS-CoV-2 infectious virus is greater (the red bars) when the cycle threshold is lower (the blue line) and when symptoms to test time is shorter — beyond 8 days, no live virus was detected.”

Florida to Require Disclosure of CT Data

Even though health authorities know that high CTs result in high rates of false positives, they do not specify the CT used for the PCR tests they’re reporting. Fortunately, that’s about to change in Florida, which just became the first state to require all labs in the state to report the CT used for their PCR tests.18

The Florida Health Department issued the order December 3, 2020, and labs must comply with the new mandatory reporting rule within seven days.19

This could prove quite interesting, especially if the state health department decides to invalidate positive results obtained from tests run above a certain amplification threshold. Time will tell exactly how this reporting requirement might influence pandemic response measures such as mask mandates and lockdowns. 
Portugal Rules Quarantine Based on PCR Results Is Unlawful
In related news, an appeals court in Portugal recently ruled20,21 that the PCR test is “not a reliable test for SARS-CoV-2” and that “a single positive PCR test cannot be used as an effective diagnosis of infection.” Therefore, “any enforced quarantine based on the results is unlawful.”22

The court also noted that forcing healthy people to self-isolate could be a violation of their fundamental right to liberty. The case was brought by four German tourists who had been forced to self-quarantine after one of them tested positive.

Several scientific studies were brought forth as evidence in this case, including a September 28, 2020, study23 in Clinical Infectious Diseases, which found that when you run a PCR test at a CT of 35 or higher, the accuracy drops to 3%, resulting in a 97% false positive rate. The court ruled that, based on the science presented, any PCR test using a CT over 25 is unreliable.
Fatal Errors Found in Paper on Which PCR Testing Is Based
The Portuguese appeals court is not alone in its critique of the PCR test being used as the sole criteria for quarantine. November 30, 2020, the scientific paper24 describing the work flow of how to use the PCR test to diagnose SARS-CoV-2 infection — which was quickly accepted as the standard by the WHO and applied across the world — was challenged25 by 22 international scientists who demand that the paper be retracted due to “fatal errors.”26
The paper in question was written by Christian Drosten, Ph.D., a German virologist, and Victor Corman, who heads a German working group on virus diagnostics and clinical virology. According to Reiner Fuellmich,27 founding member of the German Corona Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee (Außerparlamentarischer Corona Untersuchungsausschuss,28 or ACU),29,30 Drosten is a key culprit in the COVID-19 pandemic hoax.
One of the key “fatal errors” in the Corman-Drosten paper is that they wrote it — and developed the PCR test — before there was any viral isolate available. All they used was the genetic sequence published online by Chinese scientists in January 2020.
Interestingly, the paper was published a mere 24 hours after it was submitted, which suggests it wasn’t even peer-reviewed before being embraced by the whole world. Undercover DC interviewed Kevin Corbett, Ph.D., one of the 22 scientists who are now demanding the paper’s retraction, who stated:31

“Every scientific rationale for the development of that test has been totally destroyed by this paper. It’s like Hiroshima/Nagasaki to the COVID test.
When Drosten developed the test, China hadn’t given them a viral isolate. They developed the test from a sequence in a gene bank. Do you see? China gave them a genetic sequence with no corresponding viral isolate. They had a code, but no body for the code. No viral morphology.
In the fish market, it’s like giving you a few bones and saying ‘that’s your fish.’ It could be any fish … Listen, the Corman-Drosten paper, there’s nothing from a patient in it. It’s all from gene banks. And the bits of the virus sequence that weren’t there they made up.
They synthetically created them to fill in the blanks. That’s what genetics is; it’s a code. So, its ABBBCCDDD and you’re missing some, what you think is EEE, so you put it in … This is basically a computer virus.
There are 10 fatal errors in this Drosten test paper … But here is the bottom line: There was no viral isolate to validate what they were doing. The PCR products of the amplification didn’t correspond to any viral isolate at that time. I call it ‘donut ring science.’ There is nothing at the center of it. It’s all about code, genetics, nothing to do with reality …
There have since been papers saying they’ve produced viral isolates. But there are no controls for them. The CDC produced a paper in July … where they said: ‘Here’s the viral isolate.’ Do you know what they did? They swabbed one person. One person, who’d been to China and had cold symptoms. One person. And they assumed he had [COVID-19] to begin with. So, it’s all full of holes, the whole thing.”

No Viable Virus Found in Positive Cases
The critique against PCR testing is further strengthened by a November 20, 2020, study32 in Nature Communications, which found no viable virus in PCR-positive cases. The study evaluated data from 9,865,404 residents of Wuhan, China, who had undergone PCR testing between May 14 and June 1, 2020.

A total of 300 tested positive but had no symptoms. Of the 34,424 people with a history of COVID-19, 107 tested positive a second time. Yet when they did virus cultures on these 407 individuals who had tested positive (either for the first or second time), no live virus was found.

Expose the Fraud, End the Misery

A number of experts have now come forward, calling out the COVID-19 pandemic as a cruel hoax perpetuated by fatally flawed testing. Aside from this testing data, there’s no evidence of a lethal pandemic at all. While there is such a thing as COVID-19, and people have and do die from it, there are no excess deaths due to it.33,34,35
In other words, the total mortality for 2020 is normal. The pandemic has not killed more people than would die in any given year — from something, anything — anyway. So, unless we think we should shut down the world and stop living because people die from heart disease, diabetes, cancer, the flu or anything else, then there’s no reason to shut down the world because some people happen to die from COVID-19.
The good news is the hoax is starting to be exposed, and will continue to be exposed as more cases are brought before the courts of the world. Fuellmich and his ACU legal team are leading that charge. As for what you can do in the meantime, consider:

• Turning off mainstream media news and turning to independent experts — Do the research. Read through the science.
• Continue to counter the censorship by asking questions — The more questions are asked, the more answers will come to light. Arm yourself with mortality statistics and the facts on PCR testing, so you can explain how and why this pandemic simply isn’t a pandemic anymore.
• If you are a medical professional, especially if you’re a member of a professional society, write an open letter to your government, urging them to speak to and heed recommendations from independent experts.
• Sign The Great Barrington Declaration,36 which calls for an end to lockdowns.
• Join a group so that you can have support. Examples of groups formed to fight against government overreach include:

? Us for Them, a group campaigning for reopening schools and protecting children’s rights in the U.K.

? The COVID Recovery Group (CRG), founded by 50 conservative British MPs to fight lockdown restrictions37
? The Freedom to Breathe Agency, a U.S. team of attorneys, doctors, business owners and parents who are fighting to protect freedom and liberty

A recent meta-analysis found men and women experienced improvements in waist circumference and blood pressure, two biomarkers of metabolic syndrome, when taking carnitine supplements.1 Metabolic syndrome is a condition characterized by a cluster of physical factors, including:2

Large waist circumference, indicative of high levels of visceral fat around the organs

High blood pressure

High blood sugar and or insulin resistance

High triglycerides

Low levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol

Metabolic syndrome is diagnosed when a person has three or more of these factors, which sets the stage for multiple chronic diseases including Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease,3 nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)4 and more.
The presence of insulin resistance is a primary factor in metabolic syndrome, which has grown to epidemic proportions as the U.S. diet became more reliant on polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) and added sugars. You’ll find PUFAs in vegetable oils, edible oils, seed oils and plant oils, including sunflower, safflower, soybean, corn and other popular oils.
While recent research has identified how carnitine and choline may improve fat metabolism and metabolic flexibility, it’s important to note that taking a supplement cannot overcome the damage to your body from a poor diet high in processed sugars, PUFAs and processed foods.
Carnitine Found to Improve Factors of Metabolic Syndrome

Carnitine is an amino acid that’s found throughout the body. You get most of the carnitine your body uses from your diet or a supplement, and it is crucial to fat metabolism for energy.5 A recent review of the literature on carnitine was published in the journal Nutrients, in which the scientists analyzed the results of nine randomized controlled trials.6
The trials the researchers included in the analysis recorded measurements of waist circumference, fasting blood sugar, blood pressure, triglyceride levels or HDL cholesterol. The studies used dose supplementation between 0.75 grams (gm) and 3 gm per day for eight to 24 weeks.
The researchers found that supplementation was linked to a reduction in systolic blood pressure and waist circumference. They suggested biomarkers of metabolic syndrome (MetSyn) could improve with a dose of 1 gm to 3 gm per day of carnitine. The researchers wrote:7

“To date, no meta-analysis on the use of L-carnitine supplements has been conducted to improve the biomarkers of MetSyn. It is crucial to systematically review the existing evidence regarding L-carnitine intake in improving the biomarkers of MetSyn. This study is the first to investigate the effect of L-carnitine supplementation on the biomarkers of MetSyn.”

Carnitine Improves Impaired Fat Metabolism

Understanding how the body burns fuel has practical applications for athletic performance and to prevent metabolic conditions. There is a complex system that modulates how the body burns carbohydrates and fats. Carnitine plays an important role in fat metabolism and has been studied and used to improve exercise performance.
Researchers and athletes have found short term supplementation with carnitine has little effect on fat metabolism. However, in one study led by Dr. Benjamin Wall published in the Journal of Physiology, the data showed supplementation for six months raised levels of muscle carnitine by 21%.8
As described in another paper in the Journal of Physiology, the research demonstrated differences in lactate and carnitine levels after low-intensity exercise and high intensity exercise.9 It appeared during low-intensity exercise carnitine lowered the body’s use of glycogen and the activity of pyruvate dehydrogenase complex (PDC). This compound mediates carbohydrate metabolism.
In other words, individuals with higher levels of carnitine did not burn muscle glycogen, but instead continued to burn fat for energy. During high intensity exercise the muscles produced less lactate when the participant had more carnitine and PDC activity was increased. Starting in the 1980s, researchers began to develop a better understanding of the role lactate plays in exercise.
As the demand for energy increases with exercise, muscle fibers that burn glucose create pyruvate as a product of the reaction. When the production of pyruvate exceeds the muscles capacity to consume it, pyruvate is reduced to lactate and then transported to oxidative muscle fibers where it can be used as fuel.10
The study led by Wall has implications for athletic performance and prompted subsequent studies showing carnitine had an impact on improving metabolic flexibility. One study evaluated whether carnitine supplementation could change metabolic flexibility and insulin sensitivity in people who had documented impaired glucose tolerance.11
Eleven volunteers underwent a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind study in which they followed a 36-day regimen comparing a placebo or carnitine intervention. The data showed carnitine supplementation helped restore metabolic flexibility in people with impaired glucose tolerance.
Your Muscle Fibers Depend on Fat Metabolism

It is important to note that in the study led by Wall, participants taking carnitine supplements raised their athletic performance and work output by 11% in a 30-minute performance trial. The researchers explained this improvement “by the dual role of carnitine — glycogen sparing at low intensities and reduced muscle lactate accumulation at high intensities.”12
In other words, work output was more efficient, and performance was better when the muscles were burning fatty acids for energy. This is also demonstrated by the symptoms of carnitine deficiency which can include muscle weakness, fatigue, and shortness of breath or swelling if the heart is affected.13
Many cells in the body use fatty acids for energy production. In fact, your heart muscle cells use fat metabolism to meet up to 90% of the energy needs. During rest and mild intensity exercise, fat metabolism is the main energy source for your skeletal muscles.14 Thus, the ability to efficiently and effectively burn fat for fuel can improve your metabolic flexibility and reduce the potential risk of insulin resistance.
Both choline and carnitine help burn fat. In one study, scientists evaluated the effect on energy production with the supplementation of one or both, with and without exercise. The researchers engaged 19 female participants15 and found the interactive effects of the supplements previously documented in animal models was also present in human participants.
The scientists found that when the participants were supplemented with more choline than they would normally get from their diet, the body conserved carnitine in the tissue that enhanced fat metabolism in the participants.
When small amounts of carnitine were then supplemented for seven days, the urinary excretion of carnitine was normalized, which the researchers believed suggested the muscle stores of carnitine were adequate.
Interestingly, when exercise was added they had improved exercise performance and it decreased the participants body weight but not body fat. The data led the researchers to conclude sequencing the supplementation of choline and carnitine resulted in incomplete fat metabolism and energy wasting, which rose with mild exercise.
Does Choline and Carnitine Raise TMAO Levels?

Your gut microbiota metabolizes choline and carnitine to produce trimethylamine, which is further metabolized to trimethylamine n-oxide (TMAO). Some studies have linked the production of TMAO with an increased incidence of cardiovascular disease, prediabetes and thrombosis.16,17,18
However, in a paper published by James DiNicolantonio, Pharm.D., he and his colleagues showed the probable cause of elevated levels is not the ingestion of carnitine and choline, but is more likely hepatic insulin resistance.19 According to DiNicolantonio, a key factor is the significant elevation of TMAO through the flavin-containing monooxygenase-3 enzyme (FMO3). He writes:20

“Factors which upregulate hepatic expression and activity of FMO3, chiefly responsible for conversion of TMA to TMAO, therefore, fall under suspicion. In this regard, it is notable that subnormal hepatic insulin activity reflecting hepatic insulin resistance has been found to boost hepatic FMO3 expression.
Hepatic insulin resistance is typically induced by the excessive FFA influx associated with metabolic syndrome and visceral obesity, well-known risk factors for vascular disease and diabetes.”

DiNicolantonio proposes that elevated FMO3 activity in the liver can reflect insulin resistance in the organ, which in turn influences cardiovascular health risk. This, he believes, “can rationalize the epidemiology of TMAO.” He explains:21

“Hepatic insulin resistance, and its common concomitant hepatic steatosis, are associated with increased cardiovascular risk, as well as elevated risk for Type 2 diabetes — risks likewise associated with elevated TMAO.
It is therefore straightforward to postulate that TMAO can serve as a marker for hepatic insulin resistance, and that this explains at least a portion of the risk for cardiovascular events and diabetes linked to TMAO.”

Cyclical Ketogenic Diet Improves Metabolic Inflexibility

If elevated TMAO raises your cardiovascular disease risk and is indeed a reflection of hepatic insulin resistance after consuming foods high in carnitine, what can you do to correct it and lower your risk? To begin, you’ll want to normalize your weight.
Two strategies that are most helpful in to achieve this goal and improve your metabolic flexibility are a cyclical ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting. To achieve the best results, they should be done together. You can learn more about these strategies in “Boost Your Metabolism With a Cyclical Ketogenic Diet,” and “Why Intermittent Fasting Is More Effective Combined With Ketogenic Diet.”
In these articles you’ll discover how these powerful tools rejuvenate your health. You may also consider certain supplements that may be beneficial in the treatment of hepatic insulin resistance, and therefore reduce the potential damage from TMAO.22

• Berberine — In the body, this functions much like metformin, a commonly used medication for the treatment of diabetes.23 Both work at least in part, by activating adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK). Known as the “metabolic master switch,” AMPK is an enzyme that controls how energy is produced in your body and how it’s used by the cells.24

By activating this enzyme, it helps regulate the biological activities that normalize lipid, glucose and energy imbalances. Berberine, used in Chinese medicine to treat diabetes, has also been shown to counteract hepatic insulin resistance in diabetic rodents.25,26
• Astaxanthin — This is a powerful carotenoid antioxidant, with activity like that of the cholesterol-lowering drug fenofibrate. It indirectly stimulates AMPK in your liver and has been shown to alleviate hepatic insulin resistance in animals fed high fat diets and lowers the risk of cardiovascular events in patients with metabolic syndrome.27,28

• Krill oil — This contains the esterified form of astaxanthin, which increases its bioavailability, along with long-chain omega-3 fats essential for good health, including heart health. As noted in DiNicolantonio’s paper:29

“Krill oil, even when compared to fish oil, suppresses hepatic steatosis in rodents. This may be due to its astaxanthin content, which is not found in fish oil.
Moreover, krill oil, but not fish oil, reduces diacylglycerol and ceramide content in the liver. The phospholipid fraction of krill oil has also been noted to reduce hepatic glucose production, unlike fish oil.
Thus, krill oil, being a source of highly bioavailable form of astaxanthin, appears to have additional advantages for reducing hepatic steatosis and hepatic insulin resistance compared to fish oil.”

In the video above, James Delingpole interviews Patrick Wood, an economist, financial analyst and American constitutionalist who has devoted a lifetime to researching and understanding technocracy — a resource-based economic system created from scratch that really has no equal in terms of what the average person has any understanding of.
Wood has written two fascinating books on this topic: “Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation”1 and “Technocracy: The Hard Road to World Order.”2
As explained by Wood, this new economic system — which is not a natural one — is not based on common pricing mechanisms such as supply and demand or free commerce. Instead, the economy of technocracy is based on energy resources, which then dictates the types of products being produced, bought, sold and consumed. In essence, energy replaces the concept of money as a commodity.

That’s strange enough, but it gets stranger still. Technocracy, which emerged in the 1930s during the height of the Great Depression, the brainchild of which were scientists and engineers, also requires social engineering to keep the system working.
Sustainable Development intends to take control of all resources, all production and all consumption on planet earth, leaving all of its inhabitants to be micro-managed by a scientific dictatorship. ~ Patrick Wood
If people are allowed to do what they want, consumer demand ultimately drives commerce, but that won’t work here. Instead, consumers need to be directed, herded if you will, to consume that which the system needs them to consume, and in order for that to happen, they need to be more or less brainwashed. As a result, the technocratic system requires extensive surveillance and artificial intelligence-driven technologies to keep everyone in check.
Technocracy Is Not a Political System

What’s more, technocracy seeks to eliminate elected officials and government as a whole. They have no place in this system which, when fully implemented, would run itself more or less automatically, with input at the top by the technological masterminds. There’s also no room for nations or nationalism that might influence behavior.
As noted by Wood, Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel “Brave New World” offers a compelling glimpse into technocracy. There’s no political system. It’s all run by engineers and scientists, and the algorithms they create. As noted in the description for “Technocracy: The Hard Road to World Order:”3

As a resource-based economic system, Sustainable Development intends to take control of all resources, all production and all consumption on planet earth, leaving all of its inhabitants to be micro-managed by a Scientific Dictatorship.

While the technocratic plan has been underway for decades, things have been rolled out in rapid succession this year. If you’ve formed the impression that we’re all suffering from some sort of “boiled frog” syndrome, you’d probably be right.
Self-evident rights have been stripped from us and people have more or less grown to accept situations that would have been unthinkable a year ago. We’ve been told to work from home and avoid going anywhere. Our businesses have been shuttered “to protect public health.”
We’ve been told to wear face coverings even while outdoors, while eating and in our own homes. We’re now told we’ll have to have vaccine passports if we want to get on a flight in the future, and world leaders are openly talking about the Great Reset.
Now, the central banks were obviously part of this plan too, from the very beginning. The central bank system is crashing as we speak, having reached the end of its functional life as the global debt burden exceeds countries’ ability to pay the interest, but the reset they’re talking about is not another central bank system.
It will be centralized, yes, but again, the very basis of the global economy will shift away from the commodity of money to the commodity of energy. In the interview, Wood explains how the technocratic elite, members of the Trilateral Commission in particular, have influenced and manipulated economic regulations to ensure their success.
Sustainable Development, Agenda 21 — It’s All Technocracy
As explained by Wood, many of the terms we’ve heard more and more of in recent years refer to technocracy under a different name. Examples include sustainable development, Agenda 21, the 2030 Agenda, the New Urban Agenda, green economy, the green new deal and the global warming movement in general.
They all refer to and are part of technocracy and resource-based economics. Other terms that are synonymous with technocracy include the Great Reset,4 the Fourth Industrial Revolution5 and the slogan Build Back Better.6 The Paris Climate Agreement is also part and parcel of the technocratic agenda.

The common goal of all these movements and agendas is to capture all of the resources of the world — the ownership of them — for a small global elite group that has the know-how to program the computer systems that will ultimately dictate the lives of everyone. It’s really the ultimate form of totalitarianism.

When they talk about “wealth redistribution,” what they’re really referring to, Wood notes, is the redistribution of resources from us to them. My previous article, “The Global Takeover Is Underway,” features a video by the World Economic Forum where they straight up say that by 2030, you will own nothing. Everything you need you will rent.
Technocracy 2030 — A Glimpse Into the Future
A glimpse into this future was also offered in a November 2016 Forbes article written by an unnamed person from the World Economic Forum Leadership Strategy team. It reads, in part:7

“Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city — or should I say, “our city.” I don’t own anything. I don’t own a car. I don’t own a house. I don’t own any appliances or any clothes.
It might seem odd to you, but it makes perfect sense for us in this city. Everything you considered a product, has now become a service. We have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we need in our daily lives …
In our city we don’t pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there.
Once in a while, I will choose to cook for myself. It is easy — the necessary kitchen equipment is delivered at my door within minutes … Shopping? I can’t really remember what that is. For most of us, it has been turned into choosing things to use. Sometimes I find this fun, and sometimes I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my taste better than I do by now …
The concept of rush hour makes no sense anymore, since the work that we do can be done at any time. I don’t really know if I would call it work anymore. It is more like thinking-time, creation-time and development-time …
My biggest concern is all the people who do not live in our city. Those we lost on the way. Those who decided that it became too much, all this technology. Those who felt obsolete and useless when robots and AI took over big parts of our jobs.
Those who got upset with the political system and turned against it. They live different kind of lives outside of the city. Some have formed little self-supplying communities. Others just stayed in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages.
Once in a while I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. Nowhere I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me. All in all, it is a good life.”

However, if you rent everything and have no private property of your own, then who does own all of those things? The technocratic elite that owns all the energy resources does. Disturbingly enough, one form of energy resource that modern technocrats apparently intend to harvest, if patents are any indication, is the human body.
Human Body Activity as an Energy Resource
Microsoft’s international patent8 WO/2020/060606 describes a “cryptocurrency system using body activity data.” The international patent was filed June 20, 2019. The U.S. patent office application,9 16128518, was filed September 21, 2018. As explained in the abstract:10

“Human body activity associated with a task provided to a user may be used in a mining process of a cryptocurrency system. A server may provide a task to a device of a user which is communicatively coupled to the server. A sensor communicatively coupled to or comprised in the device of the user may sense body activity of the user.
Body activity data may be generated based on the sensed body activity of the user. The cryptocurrency system communicatively coupled to the device of the user may verify if the body activity data satisfies one or more conditions set by the cryptocurrency system, and award cryptocurrency to the user whose body activity data is verified.”

The U.S. patent application includes the following flow chart summary of the process.11 This patent, if implemented, would essentially turn human beings into robots. If you’ve ever wondered how the average person will make a living in the AI tech-driven cashless world of the future, this may be part of your answer.
People will be brought down to the level of mindless drones, spending their days carrying out tasks automatically handed out by, say a cellphone app, in return for a cryptocurrency “award.” This kind of merging of digital and biological systems is ultimately what “the Fourth Industrial Revolution” is all about.

Who Are the Technocrats?
While technocracy used to be an actual private club, the technocrats of today do not necessarily have membership cards, so it can be difficult to correctly identify them all. Key players, however, are the members of the Trilateral Commission, Wood says.
You cannot simply join the Trilateral Commission. They select their own members, and it’s by invitation only. A list of the members as of 2020 can be found on FredDonaldson.com.12 Well-known names in the U.S. Trilateral group include David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Michael Bloomberg and Google heavyweights Eric Schmidt and Susan Molinari, vice president for public policy at Google.

Recognizing the necessity of the media, there’s also David Ignatius, a columnist for The Washington Post; David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times; and Gerald Seib, executive editor at The Wall Street Journal.
It’s an interesting list of individuals that can be worth reviewing to get an idea of where, how and through whom technocracy is gaining ground and being implemented. Other groups to look at include:

The Club of Rome
The Aspen Institute, which has groomed and mentored executives from around the world about the subtleties of globalization. Many of its board members are also members of the Trilateral Commission
The Atlantic Institute
The World Economic Forum
The Brookings Institute and other think-tanks

Certain individuals can also be identified by their actions. Examples given in the interview include Bill Gates and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Once you become familiar with the technocratic agenda, you can start to recognize the players rather easily.
The Pandemic Is Part of the Technocratic Takeover Too

Last but not least, the pandemic is part and parcel of the technocrats’ Great Reset that will usher in a whole new world of unimaginable restrictions on freedom. It has already accomplished a massive redistribution of wealth — again, from the middle class, from small business owners, to large multinational companies such as Amazon.
Eventually, don’t be surprised if you hear talk about providing everyone with a basic income — a step toward the 2030 cashless “utopia” where you own nothing — and universal debt forgiveness in return for the forfeiture of all rights to private ownership going forward.
The lockdowns also had the effect of demolishing local economies around the world — an entirely needless manmade situation that is now used as an excuse for why we so desperately need to “reset” the economic system, and while we’re at it, we should “build back better.”
Lockdowns and school closings have ushered in calls for more online learning, which locks youths into the digital surveillance matrix to an even greater extent than before, and as the COVID-19 vaccine is being rolled out, it sets the stage for biometric surveillance, tracking and tracing, which will eventually be tied in with all your other medical records, digital ID, digital banking and a social credit system.
All of this in turn requires 5G, which just so happens to be rolling out in the midst of this pandemic. Again, once you become more familiar with the technocratic agenda, you’ll see how all these seemingly random events are not particularly random at all, but weave together, forming a grand net — and we are what’s for dinner.
The answer is to, first, educate yourself and others. I urge you to listen to Wood’s interview in its entirety, as he goes over a lot that I have not summarized here. Once you can see the plan, the next step is to resist and object to any and all implementations of the technocratic agenda. We can win, for the simple fact that there are more of us than there are of them, but we have to be vocal about it — we need to join forces and present a united front. 

Dr. Mercola Interviews the Experts
This article is part of a weekly series in which Dr. Mercola interviews various experts on a variety of health issues. To see more expert interviews, click here.

“The Immunity Fix: Strengthen Your Immune System, Fight Off Infections, Reverse Chronic Disease and Live a Healthier Life” is a new book written by James DiNicolantonio, Pharm.D., with whom I co-wrote “Super Fuel,” and Siim Land, an esteemed biohacker and author of “Metabolic Autophagy.”

In it, they review how to improve and regulate your immunity — a topic that should be high on anybody’s list these days. The catalyst for this collaboration was a number of academic papers written by DiNicolantonio on the underlying reasons for why some people suffer worse COVID-19 outcomes.

Many who end up with severe illness produce low amounts of Type 1 interferon. There’s also a reduction in their adaptive immune system. As a result, they don’t clear the virus quickly and end up having to rely on a more proinflammatory killing of the virus inside their cells instead.
Immune System Basics
As a refresher, your immune system consists of two primary “arms”:

The innate immune system, which is your first line defense made up of natural killer (NK) cells, macrophages and white blood cells like neutrophils

The adaptive immune system — T cells, and B cells that produce antibodies

As explained by DiNicolantonio:

“We used to think that the adaptive immune system was this system that takes a while to kick in, and once you have immunity from your adaptive immune system, then you have a longer-term protection, which is true. However, the adaptive immune system also seems to have cross sensitivity, meaning if you’ve been exposed to previous coronaviruses, your T cells seem to have some cross sensitivity to SARS-COV-2.
So, essentially, what we see is a reduction in T cells, in the cytotoxicity of these CD8 T-killer cells, which kill viruses in a nice, apoptotic, controlled way.
When you have a reduction in those types of immune cells, you have to rely more on your proinflammatory innate immune system for clearing viruses — things like neutrophils, white blood cells, macrophages. They kill in a much more pro-inflammatory, non-specific way, and they end up killing healthy bystander cells.
What we think is going on is, essentially, you have this reduction in Type 1 interferons … which interfere with the virus. And at the same token, you have a reduction in B cells and T cells. So, what ends up happening is you don’t clear the virus as quickly, and you end up having this proinflammatory killing.
Siim and I collaborated because these things are complex. We need to get this in layman’s terms. What our book boils down to is that your diet and your lifestyle control those types of things, and there’s things that you can do to support your own immune system.”

Your T cell function tends to decline with age. It’s also reduced in those with chronic disease. Reduced T cell function appears to be a primary cause of severe COVID-19, seeing how those with the worst COVID-19 outcomes are the elderly and/or those with comorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease.

These factors worsen the proinflammatory response that you get from SARS-CoV-2, but they also weaken your immunity in general. “The Immunity Fix” reviews lifestyle strategies that help you sidestep and prevent this proinflammatory response. “It’s a very holistic approach to looking at the immune system,” Land notes.
Top Two Nutrient Deficiencies to Address

Diet and nutritional supplementation are two key strategies that can help boost your immune function. According to Land and DiNicolantonio, vitamin D may be the most important nutrient in this respect.
Vitamin D activates more than 2,000 genes, DiNicolantonio notes, including vitamin K-dependent proteins and repair genes. It also helps your body produce powerful antimicrobial and antiviral peptides.

Those over the age of 60 have a ninefold greater risk of dying from COVID-19 than that of younger individuals. If you’re severely vitamin D deficient, your risk can be 15fold greater. So, while you cannot change your age, you can certainly alter your vitamin D status, thereby potentially minimizing your risk.

However, in order to convert the vitamin D into its active form, you need magnesium, so magnesium would probably be the second-most important nutrient deficiency to address. Magnesium is also required for immune cell function, so if your magnesium level is low, your immune function could be impaired. 

“People who have genetically low magnesium in their natural killer (NK) cells and their CD8 T-killer cells … their immune system is down. They have chronic activation of Epstein-Barr, which 95% of us are infected with, and they’re at a much higher risk of lymphoma,” DiNicolantonio says.
“And that’s just one nutrient. Being deficient in one nutrient can potentially cause this immunodeficiency essentially. So, in the book, we go through how nutrients and your immune system interact and why nutrient deficiencies are probably leading to a lot of these poor COVID-19 outcomes.”

Zinc and Selenium Are Also Important
In terms of importance, zinc would probably nab the third spot. Taking zinc lozenges at the first onset of cold symptoms has been shown to cut the duration of the common cold by six to seven days, but you have to take it correctly.

“If you’re using lozenges, you have to take it every two hours,” DiNicolantonio explains. “You got to take it within 24 hours of symptom onset. You have to take about 18 milligrams per dose, and you have to get the total daily dose over 75 milligrams.”

Fourth on the list would be selenium. Not only is selenium deficiency associated with a fivefold higher risk of dying from COVID-19 and a threefold higher risk of having a poor COVID-19 outcome, but it is also associated with coxsackievirus-induced cardiomyopathy (Keshan disease).
So, if you’re deficient in selenium, a nonvirulent RNA virus called coxsackievirus, which typically only causes hand, foot and mouth syndrome in certain children, can become much more virulent, leading to virally induced cardiomyopathy. Patients with this cardiomyopathy, known as Keshan disease, are typically given selenium. Selenium is also important for the production of glutathione, which appears to play a significant role in COVID-19.
The Importance of Melatonin

Another thing that is associated with improved COVID-19 outcomes is melatonin. DiNicolantonio explains:

“Melatonin is interesting. I kind of view it like molecular hydrogen but with some additional advantages. Melatonin can freely pass into any cell membrane, so that’s very key. If you want to get to the oxidative stress, you have to be able to access it and get into the mitochondria. Melatonin and molecular hydrogen are two molecules that can do that and really do that well …
Melatonin is not just this hormone we secrete in the brain. We synthesize it from serotonin, and it can be produced in many cells. So, it’s active throughout the entire day. What’s interesting is that it’s one of the only molecules that seems to increase the transcription of Nrf2.
Most plant polyphenols and all these other Nrf2 boosters only inhibit the inhibitor of Nrf2, which is KEAP1. Essentially, they’re making the current Nrf2 levels more active. When you add melatonin, that increases the transcription of Nrf2. Very few molecules can actually do that.
And Nrf2 is how we boost our endogenous antioxidant enzymes. Really, that’s the key. If you have acute respiratory distress, you want to boost your overall endogenous antioxidant systems, and the best way to do tha is through Nrf2 activators, particularly melatonin.”

High-Dose Melatonin Reduces COVID-19 Mortality

As for dosage, a recent case series involving 10 patients with COVID-19-related pneumonia used 36 to 72 mg of oral melatonin per day in four divided doses, which is far higher than recommended for sleep. DiNicolantonio comments:

“It’s so safe. Doses of melatonin up to 1,000 mg per day in humans have shown virtually no side effects besides grogginess and sleepiness … Melatonin use is associated with an 83% reduction in mortality from COVID-19, a 30 to 50% reduction in testing positive for SARS-COV-2, and in a case series of 10 COVID pneumonia patients, it cut the duration of hospital stay by five days.
And none of those patients who got melatonin ended up on a mechanical ventilator or died whereas in similar severe COVID-19 cases that were hospitalized at the same time, 25% to 40% of those individuals ended up on mechanical ventilators or died.”

As explained by DiNicolantonio, melatonin is actively produced throughout the day and is a master antioxidant, meaning it scavenges free radicals. It also binds to melatonin receptors that upregulate your innate antioxidant defense systems.

“Melatonin actually seems to concentrate in the bone marrow and that’s important because your immune system comes from stem cells produced from your bone marrow,” DiNicolantonio explains.
“From those stem cells, you get your immune cells. Some of your immune cells can even produce melatonin. We think it’s being concentrated in the bone marrow to protect immature stem cells and immune cells from oxidative damage, which actually makes a lot of sense.”

Nebulized Hydrogen Peroxide

While Land and DiNicolantonio hypothesized that inhaled molecular hydrogen at 2% or 3% would be a potential important strategy in COVID-19 patients requiring ventilation in a hospital, this can be significantly expensive. A better alternative, in my opinion, would be nebulized hydrogen peroxide, which you can do at home. This is my personal go-to strategy, and I’ve seen many recover from COVID-19 using this strategy.
You can review my video below for more detailed in formation.

Nebulizing hydrogen peroxide into your sinuses, throat and lungs is a simple, straightforward way to augment your body’s natural expression of hydrogen peroxide to combat infections and can be used to support the immune system.

All you need is a desktop nebulizer, food-grade hydrogen peroxide and some saline. That way, you have everything you need and can begin treatment at home at the first signs of a respiratory infection. Keep in mind food grade hydrogen peroxide must be diluted down to a 0.1% dilution before use.

I believe the hydrogen peroxide works like a signaling molecule, and may even have some direct viricidal effect on the cells in the lining of the lungs and the sinuses where the virus takes hold initially. So, you’re potentially killing it directly, plus supporting your immune responses.
Address Your Metabolic Health

In addition to addressing nutrient deficiencies, in particular vitamin D, magnesium, zinc and selenium, Land stresses the importance of optimizing your metabolic health.

“Research [has found] that metabolic syndrome, obesity and diabetes, all those things, worsen the outcomes of COVID-19 as well as other infections like influenza. Obesity also increases the duration that you can carry the virus and share it for longer. So, it’s especially negative in a society that tends to be in poor metabolic health.
One interesting thing that we discovered during the writing of the book is that one of the molecules that gets activated during an infection is called HMGB1, which stands for High Mobility Box-1.
That gets activated during an infection, and it’s one of the key molecules that kind of offsets the cytokine storm by activating NFKB and NLRP3 inflammasome and eventually causes this massive pro-inflammatory cytokine response …
What we theorized based on this research, is that hyperglycemia, insulin resistance, elevated blood sugar will make it more likely that HMGB1 is going to get into the cell and turn on NFKB and these other pro-inflammatory cytokines that will eventually lead to the cytokine storm.”

The Case for a Low Linoleic Acid Diet
DiNicolantonio and I discussed the importance of avoiding seed oils in our book, “Superfuel.” In it, we dove deep into the importance of healthy fats for metabolic health, and the destructive nature of linoleic acid-rich vegetable oils.

Linoleic acid (LA) is one of the most perishable molecules in food, meaning it’s highly susceptible to damage. When it oxidizes, it turns into oxidative metabolites called oxidative linoleic acid metabolites or oxylipids or OXLAMs that damage proteins, DNA and cell membranes and are likely the primary culprit of chronic disease.

OXLAMs also activate pathways that destroy your immune response. What we didn’t fully appreciate at the time was that even healthy oils, such as olive oil, can have a negative impact, thanks to their LA content. LA is also high in conventionally raised chicken, as these animals are typically fed LA-rich grains.

If you exceed 10 grams of LA per day, and perhaps as little as 5 grams — regardless of their source — you may radically worsen your metabolic health. From a historical perspective, 150 years ago, the average consumption of LA was 2 to 3 grams. Today, many get more than 30 grams a day from their diet. In my view, an LA-restricted diet may be the single most important dietary intervention available.
DiNicolantonio adds:

“That’s a great point, and I think from a COVID-19 perspective, the biggest thing you want to do is increase the resilience of your cells to oxidative stress. Unfortunately, if you’re consuming a diet high in LA, and if it doesn’t get burned for fuel and it gets stored in tissues, the half-life of LA is 680 days, and it can start oxidizing the cellular membranes, including on your immune cells as well.
If you increase your omega-6 intake, that affects the levels in your immune cells. And if you saturate your immune cells with this oxidized LA, you’re probably at a much higher risk of secreting more proinflammatory cytokines in your own cells, and your lungs and your arteries are probably much more susceptible to the damage that occurs when our body tries to kill off viruses.
I’m sure if we were to actually look at the blood levels of oxidized LA in severe COVID-19 patients, they would be sky high … So yeah, it’s likely a huge driver of overall inflammation.”

Simple Strategies to Improve Your NAD+ Level

Another important molecule is nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), which can be increased using precursors such as nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) and/or nicotinamide riboside (NR).
Any type of oxidative stress is going to deplete NAD. So, fix your metabolic dysfunction and improve your nutrient deficiencies first.
NMN appears to be the superior of the two, as it activates a salvage pathway. However, you don’t need to take an expensive supplement to improve your NAD+ level. Strategies such as exercise, hot or cold exposure and time-restricted eating — which costs you nothing — can get the job done. Land explains:

“A lot of the NAD that your body produces is recycled through the salvage pathway. Very little (less than 1%) of it is going to come from food, especially tryptophan or niacin.
The easiest way to prevent losing your NAD as you get older or as you get immunocompromised is to promote the salvage pathway, and one of the activators of this NAMPT enzyme that governs the salvage pathway is AMP protein kinase (AMPK), and AMPK gets primarily turned on by catabolic stressors in the body, such as exercise, sauna, cold, as well as fasting.
What I’ve concluded is that doing this regular intermittent fasting or timed eating is a very efficient way of keeping our energy levels high and preventing the lowering of the other things that lower NAD, like inflammation and oxidative stress.
The problem is that NAMPT is controlled by sirtuins and sirt1 especially. Sirtuins are longevity genes. Sirtuins also control your circadian rhythms. So, what I think is that if your circadian rhythms are misaligned, if you’re doing shift work or you’re jet lagged or something, then sirtuins are not going to be expressed, and you will also then inhibit NAMPT, which will then shut down the NAD salvage pathway.”

In other words, when sirtuins are suppressed from mismatched circadian rhythms, you also suppress NAMPT, as the NAMPT requires sirtuins to work. Sirtuins also consume NAD, so if your NAD level is low, you’re not going to get the benefits sirtuins provide.

“I think the supplemental NR and NMN are very useful if you’re in an NAD-deficient state because the problem is that if you’re already low in NAD, then it’s hard to raise that bar because you’re already so low and depleted,” Land says.
“If your NAD is high, then you experience the less negative side effects from inflammation oxidative stress because your body can repair and deal with it, whereas if you’re immunocompromised, you’re very old or you are just nutrient deficient and have low NAD, then it’s a vicious feedback loop. So, using something like a NAD precursor or a booster can be a quick fix to get yourself back on the right track.”

If you use an NAD or NMN supplement, consider getting it in suppository form. Other alternatives include subcutaneous or intranasal administration, all of which are more effective than oral supplements. That said, as noted by DiNicolantonio, if your NAD is low, your best bet is to address the underlying cause rather than simply adding supplements.

“Ultimately, any type of oxidative stress is going to deplete NAD. So, fix your metabolic dysfunction and improve your nutrient deficiencies first, and ultimately your NAD need is going to go down. Fix the things that are causing you to burn through your NAD.”

One of the most common sources of oxidative stress is electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure, which is the topic of my book “EMF*D.” Two primary enzymes consume NAD. One is poly ADP-ribose polymerases (PARP), which is also known as adenosine ribosyl transferase (ARTD). PARP is used to repair DNA damage, and every time PARP is activated, it uses up 150 molecules of NAD.
The good news is that strategies such as sauna, exercise and fasting not only will improve the production of NAD, but also will reduce the consumption of it. These strategies also lower inflammation, which in and of itself will lower your NAD consumption.
Other Benefits of Sauna Bathing

In addition to preserving your NAD, sauna bathing also mimics a fever, which is your body’s first-line defense against infections. DiNicolantonio explains:

“The reason why we induce a fever to fight an infection is because that allows our cells to secrete heat shock proteins. In order for a virus to replicate, it has to infect your cell, hijack your machinery, and it has to export its ribonucleoprotein complex out of the cell to replicate. In order for that complex to get exported, the M1 protein has to dock onto it.
Heat shock protein 70, which gets released during sauna sessions, can combine to the viral ribonucleoprotein complex preventing M1 protein from docking. [By] inhibiting the export of that viral ribonucleoprotein complex, [heat shock protein] essentially inhibits viral replication.”

According to Land, regular sauna bathing and exercise are among the best things you can do to strengthen your immune system and increase your body’s resilience. The two are also complementary.
Exercise causes preconditioning hormesis, so if you exercise before your sauna, then you significantly bolster your body’s ability to handle infection and other stresses. The heat will also promote recovery from the exercise by boosting growth hormone, repairing damaged proteins and reducing inflammation.
More Information

This interview merely touches on a small number of highlights of the information found in “The Immunity Fix,” so to learn more, be sure to pick up a copy. To connect with DiNicolantonio and Land, see their websites, DrJamesDinic.com and SiimLand.com. Both can also be found on Twitter and Instagram by searching for DrJamesDinic (@drjamesdinic) and Siim Land.

Thomas Lewis, author of “The End of Alzheimer’s: The Brain and Beyond,” is a microbiologist with a Ph.D. from MIT. He’s done a lot of work on diagnostic testing, and in this interview, we explore how retinal assessment and other laboratory tests can be used to stratify your risk factors for chronic disease and COVID-19. Lewis recently published an excellent paper on this.
We first met almost two years ago at the Academy for Comprehensive Integrative Medicine in Orlando, Florida, where he gave a presentation on how assessment of the retina can be used as a diagnostic tool to evaluate your risk for a wide variety of diseases.
The Eye-Brain Connection

As just one example, glaucoma and Alzheimer’s disease are often linked together, with glaucoma occurring first, as they did in Lewis’ father’s case. His dad developed glaucoma several years before he developed Alzheimer’s.
Glaucoma is “Alzheimer’s disease of the eye,” and Alzheimer’s is “glaucoma of the brain.” Similarly, cataracts are a manifestation of your innate immune response against both acute and chronic infection.
Lewis goes so far as to refer to glaucoma as “Alzheimer’s disease of the eye,” and Alzheimer’s as “glaucoma of the brain.” Similarly, cataracts are a manifestation of your innate immune response against acute and chronic infection. If you are, say, 50 years old and you have early nuclear cataracts, it’s a bad sign, as it’s an indication of a chronic infection.
The infection is what’s causing this unfolded protein response to slowly matriculate in the lens of the eye. According to Lewis, “If you have an early cataract, that’s a bad sign for longevity. Most people with cataracts die of some vascular event fairly young.”
Your Eye Is a Window Into Your Overall Health

Lewis explains the general theory for using the eye as a biomarker for systemic disease:

“When you look at disease, in the allopathic system, you’re either healthy or you’re sick. But we really lie on a continuum of health. I say we live on four different continuums, determinants of health, lifestyle, risks, things like that. For physiological health, we measure blood, stool and urine …
For pathology, which is largely ignored, we do ultrasounds, MRIs and CT scans that assess tissue changes. The eye happens to be particularly good at that because the eye is transparent, and the methodology used to measure the eye is low-cost and noninvasive but highly precise and accurate.
For example, optical coherence tomography (OCT) is much more precise at looking at micro vessels, capillaries, compared to MRI because the wavelength of light they use to create the interference is a much shorter wave length. In other words, it gives much more detail than an MRI.”

OCT is a type of tomography that uses safe, nonionizing light waves. At a cash price of about $50, it’s also an affordable diagnostic tool that can tell you a lot about what’s going on in your body.
I was intrigued with the test and found a local optometrist to perform it for me. I hadn’t had an eye exam for a few decades so thought it would be a good checkup. Well, I had no glaucoma, 20/20 vision, near and far without glasses, and my OCT was totally normal, like that of a young adult. It’s great to know that lifestyle changes work. Next month I will share an article on what they have done for my physical body.
Again, because the eye is transparent, OCT allows you to see all the micro vessels, and whatever is happening in this carotid tissue — the vasculature in your eye — is also happening in the rest of your body, as the carotid is the most vascular tissue in your entire body.

“Whereas the brain uses 10 times more oxygen than most tissue on a per mass basis, the retina, which is constantly converting photons to electrons, uses even more oxygen on a per mass basis. If you’re vulnerable, the eye is potentially a canary for that vulnerability,” he explains.

“That’s why we use this test. It’s so simple to see if there are life risks that are translating into physiological risk and then changing into pathological risks. When you’re changing into pathological risk, a bad ending is getting closer because you have tissue damage, basically.”

The COVID Connection

Many common lab tests can also tell you a lot about your health and the state of your immune system. When COVID-19 broke out, Chinese researchers reported patients had elevated ferritin and erythrocyte sedimentation (SED) rate, among other things. Lewis compared the COVID-19 lab panels with the work he’d been doing for the past 15 years, and found they matched up nicely.

“It’s not about treating COVID-19, it’s about measuring how full your vessel is towards these markers that create the cytokine storm, high inflammation, and kill you, and try to modulate that,” Lewis says.

“Why does the Z-Pak treat COVID-19? It doesn’t. It treats bacterial infection, but we all have a subclinical bacterial infectious burden, and that burden is taking up immune system bandwidth, which makes you less able to fight something as virial as COVID-19. That’s why Z-Pak works …
There’s nothing really special about COVID-19 and our immune response, because our immune response is innate and adaptive. It’s [about] being able to more accurately measure your immune compromised status. And almost everything we measure is reversible through very simple processes, supplementation, lifestyle activities, treating the infection, treating the pre-existing virus.”

Understanding Cytokines

One of the most lethal aspects of COVID-19 is the cytokine or bradykinin storm that can develop. A cytokine is a short-lived signaling protein that has regulatory properties on nearby cells. It could be beneficial or it could be detrimental. It could be proinflammatory, or it could be anti-inflammatory.
So, it’s not so much that cytokines are bad — they’re absolutely necessary and you’d be dead in a few heartbeats without them — but when they get out of control, they can kill you. That’s what’s known as a cytokine storm, which I have discussed extensively in previous newsletters. It is one of the reasons why vitamin D works so well; it aborts most cytokine storms through its modulation of your immune response.
Risk Score Versus Diagnosis

What the retinal assessment and various lab assays can do is identify a brewing problem, which can then be addressed using strategies such as nutritional supplementation and lifestyle changes.

“For the average person, knowing where you are on that continuum would be extraordinarily valuable,” Lewis says, “and that’s the testing we’re doing and trying to promote more broadly.”

The key, however, is not to be within the “normal” reference ranges for disease markers, examples of which include fibrinogen, D-dimer, SED rate or C-reactive protein. What Lewis has done is determine the point at which there’s a statistical increase in early mortality. “That sets a completely different set of normal ranges for biomarkers, which is what we use. These ranges are much tighter compared to normal reference ranges, so you are amplifying the signal your body is projecting about your health. We’re not diagnosing people, we’re risk scoring people,” he explains.
Helpful Lab Tests

Screening tests that can help assess the state of your health and immune system include:

1-25 Dihydroxy vitamin D — This is the activated form of vitamin D. Vitamin D increases antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) and improves the activity of neutrophils (white blood cells that fight bacteria).

RBC magnesium — Magnesium is an important cofactor for the activation of vitamin D. Taking magnesium can actually reduce the amount of oral vitamin D you require to optimize your vitamin D level.

Neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) — This marker alone determines prognosis in most solid tumor cancers. Neutrophils go up when there’s a bacterial infection, while lymphocytes are suppressed by viruses. As explained by Lewis, “The NLR is sort of an amplified barometer for your stealth infectious burden. The absolute count should be 1.5 or below.” Anything above 55% neutrophils is indicative of a chronic, likely bacterial, infection.

Red blood cell distribution width (RDW) — Red blood cells are born small and die large. If your RDW is wide, you likely have plaques and inflamed carotid arteries. Above 16 or 17, RDW could be a sign of anemia, but between 12.5 and 16, it’s a pure sign of inflammation.

C-reactive protein — A marker of inflammation. This should be 0.6 or below.

Fibrinogen — As a signaling molecule for tissue repair, fibrinogen is a good marker for how well your body is able to repair itself. If your fibrinogen is between 150 and 285, your repair and recovery is probably meeting or outpacing wear and tear, allowing you to properly heal and recover.
Above 285, you are probably deteriorating more rapidly than you’re repairing. Fibrinogen is also a clotting factor marker, so in COVID-19 and sepsis, for example, high fibrinogen is indicative of a cytokine storm. Pre-cytokine storm levels are also indicative of several chronic diseases, including heart attack and cancer.

Ferritin — Ferritin is an iron transport protein that becomes elevated in COVID-19 and other serious illnesses. Iron catalyzes growth of bacterial pathogens. Typically, when your blood cells are under attack by a pathogen, your body responds by hiding the iron from the antigen (the infection) in the ferritin protein, thereby resulting in anemia (low iron) and high ferritin.
If you have elevated ferritin, the iron may not be available to the pathogen, but it is still available to the cells of your body.
Iron is a powerful oxidant stressor that will radically increase oxidized species, reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species, which activates the NRLP3 inflammasome and radically increases inflammatory mediators and cytokines. The solution for high ferritin is to donate blood. If your ferritin is above 100, consider giving blood periodically.

Fasting insulin — Insulin resistance is a foundational contributor to most chronic disease and significantly increases your risk of complications and death from SARS-CoV-2 infection. Fasting glucose is also a useful test that you can easily do at home.

Uric acid — Uric acid is a multifactorial inflammatory marker. It also helps protect against hypoxia.

Homocysteine — Homocysteine is a vascular toxin associated with heart disease that is influenced by your vitamin B levels. As explained by Lewis:

“LabCorp keeps changing their reference normals, and now they’re as high as 17. But the Framingham’s study shows that with a baseline of 9, every five points higher homocysteine leads to a 40% increase in dementia because it’s a vascular toxicity.”

SED rate — The SED rate is a measurement of how fast your red blood cells settle in a test tube. Red blood cells have a repulsive charge on the outside of their membranes (zeta potential) that allow them to remain buoyant. When this repulsive charge is lacking, they settle faster. As explained by Lewis:

“SED rate is a surrogate for how good your electrical system is working, which I then use as a surrogate for your gut and how well it’s doing at digesting and making minerals bioavailable, because it’s the sodium potassium pump that drives the electric potential of cells, among other minerals.”

Ideally, if your zeta potential is good and high, your SED rate should be close to zero. The lower, the better. The higher your SED rate, the worse off you are, as this means the “battery” of your red blood cells are discharged, which will result in systemic problems and overall low energy levels. Typically, your SED rate will improve once you start to heal and rebalance your gut.

Where to Get These Tests

Your primary care doctor can order any and all of these lab tests for you. However, they may not be able to thoroughly guide your treatment based on your results, which is what Lewis and his team specialize in. So, for testing and a comprehensive analysis, consider turning to www.healthrevivalpartners.com.

“Come through us and we’ll help you solve your problem,” Lewis says. “Under our services tab, we have a COVID-19 service, and there we have five different levels of panels, from just a population screening to a very deep dive. Basically, every marker we talked about today, and more.

Looking at the lipids, the chemistry, liver function, metabolic, all that stuff, is included. We don’t take insurance, but I can order these labs. My team can order these labs anywhere in the country …
We couple the lab test with a highly functional intake survey. What we’ve done, and we were publishing a paper on this, is we’ve created a risk score for every single question and answer that is typically on a functional intake questionnaire, and made it digitized, so it’s online. You take it.
We give you a letter grade, which is sort of a reflection of your total risk portfolio, and then subsections of grades. Then we give you a very detailed color-code report, which really turns into your treatment plan, if you will. We want to ameliorate these different things. And we have health coaches to help you organize them because some things you want to do in series, other things you want to do in parallel. We call this the hierarchy of health.
Anybody who does a blood test gets that. And then our team is trained on how to help you understand your labs from a very detailed chronic perspective, but also look back at the risk factors and show you what risk factors could potentially have led to an elevation in that lab. So, you see a very clear one-to-one correlation.
We give you a letter grade, but there’s a score underneath it. And then we give you what we call our chronic disease temperature, which is the amalgamation of 20 of these important biomarkers into a single score. We have a plot of our chronic disease temperature versus our chronic disease assessment.
It’s a fairly linear thing, showing you that your risks are tied to your physiological health. And then we’ve shown, in populations that we work with, that when we lower their risk grade — just the lifestyle things, cleaning up the teeth, improving the gut, cleaning the diet up, detoxification — as their risk rate goes down, their physiological score goes down, which is a good thing because we want your score as low as possible.

That’s the essence of what we do. We have functional doctors, regular doctors, health coaches.”

Managing Your Expectations

While most health problems can be successfully addressed with nutritional and other lifestyle changes, it’s important to manage your expectations of how long it’s going to take. As noted by Lewis:

“I have a very simple explanation to set expectations up. If it took you 10 years to get into something chronic, it’s going to take you at least 10 months to get out of it. And that’s with diligence, consistency and the proper treatment. When we have really compliant people [working on healing] rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, brain fog, we get this major inflection of health improvement at five months.
Why is that? Because everything in nature is log linear. We are wired to understand that implicitly, but society has taught us instantaneous gratification. We think if we do one thing, we’ll get one result. But really everything is an asymptote, going into disease is an asymptote, so you’re incubating, incubating, incubating, and then suddenly things go wrong.
While getting out of that state is the reverse of that, it takes you a long time to move the needle and start feeling better. Then all of a sudden, you reach that inflection point and you feel better.
Everything in nature, including health, it’s a log linear relationship to get to where you want to be … When people understand that and buy into that concept, then they can stay the course and we can actually make them better. It’s not an overnight thing. That’s the only point I’m trying to make.”

More Information

Again, HealthRevivalPartners.com is where you can sign up for your biomarker panel and receive the guidance you need to address whatever problems you may be having. For more information about the eye-brain connection and what your eye health can tell you about your Alzheimer’s risk, which we touched on at the beginning of this interview, see RealHealthClinics.com.

1 If you are injured by a pandemic vaccine, such as the COVID-19 vaccine, your only recourse is to:
File an injury claim with the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) within four years from the date of the first manifestation of symptoms
Sue the vaccine manufacturer for damages
Sue the doctor and/or health care facility that administered the vaccine for damages, but not the manufacturer or distributors
File an injury claim with the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), run by the Department of Health and Human Services, within one year of vaccination
If you are injured by a pandemic vaccine, you cannot sue any of the parties involved in getting the vaccine to you. Within one year of vaccination, you would have to file a claim with the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), run by the DHHS. The maximum payout is $250,000 per person; however, you’d have to exhaust your private insurance policy first. CICP will only pay the difference between what your insurance covers and the total CICP payout amount established for your case. Learn more.

2 Which of the following vaccine makers are using a fetal cell line in the production of their COVID-19 vaccines?
AstraZeneca and Jansen Research and Development/Johnson & Johnson
Vaccine makers using a fetal cell line in the development of their COVID-19 vaccines include AstraZeneca, which is using the HEK293 cell line, and Jansen Research and Development (owned by Johnson & Johnson), which is using the PER.C6 cell line. Learn more.
Moderna and Merck
Novavax and Sanofi Pasteur
Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline

3 Who is the president of the EcoHealth Alliance, who is now also leading The Lancet’s COVID-19 Commission charged with getting to the bottom of SARS-CoV-2’s origin?
Andrew Cuomo
Peter Daszak
Peter Daszak is heading The Lancet’s COVID-19 Commission. He is also the president of the EcoHealth Alliance, an organization that has received many millions in funding for coronavirus research that was then contracted to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Emails now prove Daszak was behind the plot to obscure the lab origin of SARS-CoV-2 by issuing a scientific statement condemning such inquiries as “conspiracy theory.” Learn more.
Rita Colwell
William Karesh

4 The so-called “Great Reset” will benefit:
Everyone
Primarily the poor
Wealthy, unelected powerbrokers
As reckless government overreach has destroyed many small businesses and engineered catastrophic unemployment around the world, world leaders are joining the World Economic Forum in calling for a Great Reset of the global economy that will benefit wealthy powerbrokers while enslaving and impoverishing everyone else. Learn more.
The middle-class

5 What can the SARS-CoV-2 PCR test tell you?
Whether you have an active SARS-CoV-2 infection
How serious your infection is
Whether you’re infectious or not
Whether you have viral RNA in your body, but not whether it’s from live virus or inactive/noninfectious RNA
PCR tests cannot distinguish between “live” viruses and inactive (noninfectious) viral particles and therefore cannot be used as a diagnostic tool. They also cannot confirm that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms as the test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens. Learn more.

6 Which of the following most aptly describes the OPPOSITE of technocracy?
Freedom
The goal of all technocratic agendas is to capture all the world’s resources for a small global elite so that they can dictate the lives of everyone. It’s the ultimate form of totalitarianism: total enslavement of mind and body, the opposite of which is freedom. Learn more.
Totalitarianism
Wealth redistribution
Enslavement

7 Which of the following conditions is closely related to Alzheimer’s disease and is often predictive of a future Alzheimer’s diagnosis?
Cataracts
Glaucoma
Glaucoma and Alzheimer’s disease frequently follow each other. Glaucoma can be viewed as “Alzheimer’s disease of the eye,” and Alzheimer’s as “glaucoma of the brain.” Learn more.
Lyme disease
COVID-19

 

While lockdowns were supposed to be temporary — initially just a couple of weeks to “flatten the curve” — nine months into the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s still no end in sight. Thanksgiving was canceled in many parts of the U.S., and many government leaders are now urging residents to cancel their Christmas celebrations too.
What many still don’t realize is that the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic has little to do with the spread of an actual virus, and everything to do with the planned global takeover and implementation of a technocratic agenda known as the Great Reset.
Universal mask mandates, social distancing, business shutdowns, online shopping, working and learning, CRP testing and quarantining of asymptomatic individuals are all forms of “soft indoctrination” to get us used to an entirely new, and unfathomably inhumane, way of life devoid of our usual rights and freedoms.
The Other Klaus

Klaus Schwab is the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum. Schwab announced the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset Initiative in June 2020, which includes stripping people of their privately owned assets.
In addition to being a poster boy for technocracy, Schwab also has a strong transhumanist bend, and wrote the book on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a hallmark of which is the merger of man and machine, biology and digital technology.1
According to Winter Oak — a British nonprofit social justice organization — Schwab and his globalist accomplices are using the COVID-19 pandemic “to bypass democratic accountability, to override opposition, to accelerate their agenda and to impose it on the rest of humankind against our will.”
Indeed, Schwab’s book,2,3 “COVID-19: The Great Reset” urges industry leaders and decision makers to “make good use of the pandemic” and “not letting the crisis go to waste.”
Greatest Wealth Transfer in History Is Underway

While the Great Reset plan is being sold as a way to make life fair and equitable for all, the required sacrifices do not apply to the technocrats running the system.
On the contrary, as noted by Patrick Wood in his recent interview with James Delingpole, featured in “Technocracy and the Great Reset,” the wealth distribution and circular economies promoted by the technocratic elite will never benefit the people, because what they’re really referring to is the redistribution of wealth from the people, to themselves.
Evidence of this can be seen in the decision to allow big box stores to remain open during the pandemic while forcing small businesses to close, no matter how small the infection risk.
There’s really no rhyme or reason for such a decision, other than to shift wealth away from small, private business owners to multinational corporations. Walmart and Target, for example, report record sales this year4 while more than half of all small business owners fear their businesses won’t survive.5
Never before has America seen such an accumulation of wealth in so few hands. ~ Frank Clemente, executive director, Americans for Tax Fairness
Yelp’s September 2020 economic impact report showed that, as of August 31, 2020, 163,735 U.S. businesses had closed and 60% of them are permanent closures.6 Similarly, while working-class Americans filed for unemployment by the tens of millions, the five richest men in the U.S. — Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett and Larry Ellison — grew their wealth by a total of $101.7 billion (26%), between March 18 and June 17, 2020, alone.7
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the collective wealth of 651 billionaires in the U.S. rose by more than $1 trillion (36%).8 To put their current wealth in perspective, the assets of these 651 billionaires is nearly double that of the combined wealth of the least wealthy 165 million Americans. As noted by Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, “Never before has America seen such an accumulation of wealth in so few hands.”9
That’s technocratic wealth redistribution for you. Ultimately, the Great Reset will result in two tiers or people: the technocratic elite, who have all the power and rule over all assets, and the rest of humanity, who have no power, no assets and no voice.
That the COVID-19 pandemic is a form of class war is also evident in the way rules are enforced. While citizens are threatened with fines and arrest if they don’t do as they’re told, those who lay down the rules repeatedly break them without repercussions.
The PCR Test Hoax

The reason technocratic world leaders and their loyal minions are now calling for the cancellation of Christmas is — as illustrated in our Christmas parody above — because of PCR testing. The number of positive tests are reportedly on the rise, which is said to be proof that the infection is spreading out of control.
However, evidence shows there’s no relationship between positive tests and deaths, and the reason for this is because the false positive rate for the PCR test is extraordinarily high. We’re simply quarantining and preventing healthy people who pose no risk to anyone from living their lives.
A September 28, 2020, study10 in Clinical Infectious Diseases revealed that when you run a PCR test at a cycle threshold (CT, i.e., the amplification rate) of 35 cycles or higher, the accuracy drops to 3%, resulting in a 97% false positive rate.
According to an April 2020 study11 in the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases, to get 100% confirmed real positives, the PCR test must be run at no more than 17 amplification cycles.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend running PCR tests at a CT of 40,12 and Drosten tests and tests recommended by the World Health Organization are set to a CT of 45.
By using CTs known to result in false positives, you end up with the appearance of widespread infection, which is then used to keep the pandemic measures going. In reality, COVID-19 has not resulted in excess deaths13,14,15 and were it not for the fact that it’s being used as a cover for the Great Reset, life would have returned to normal months ago.
According to Dr. Roger Hodkinson, one of Canada’s top pathologists and an expert in virology, the COVID-19 pandemic is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.”16 Hodkinson is the CEO of Western Medical Assessments, a biotech company that manufactures COVID-19 PCR tests.
Michael Yeadon, Ph.D., a former vice-president and chief scientific adviser of the drug company Pfizer and founder/CEO of the biotech company Ziarco, is also speaking out about how fraudulent PCR testing is being used to manufacture the appearance of a pandemic that doesn’t really exist, as are Dr. Lee Merritt, members of the German Corona Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee17,18 and many others.
What Vaccines Have to Do With It

If you need more evidence that we’re in the middle of a technocratic takeover, look no further than the mass vaccination agenda and the promotion of fake, lab-grown meat. Bill Gates, another frontline technocrat, has repeatedly stated that we have no choice but to vaccinate everyone against COVID-19.
Naturally, he’s heavily invested in said vaccine and stands to gain handsomely from a global mass vaccination campaign. Technocrats are nothing if not self-serving, all while pretending to be do-gooders — much like COVID Claus in our little video.
But the vaccine program isn’t just about selling vaccines. It’s also a way to implement a global biological surveillance network (which is also why 5G is being rolled out across the globe).
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has funded and promoted a new delivery method for the COVID-19 vaccine that uses a microneedle array rather than conventional injection.19 The microneedles are equipped with fluorescent quantum dot tags. The resulting invisible mark can then be read by a smartphone equipped with a special sensor. This mark will also allow government to track you.
Eventually, your personal identification, medical records, finances and who knows what else, will all be tied together and embedded somewhere on or in your body. Every possible aspect of your biology and life activities will be trackable 24/7. You will also be digitally tied into the internet of things, which eventually will include smart cities.
All the different parts of this giant population control grid fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The global vaccination agenda ties into the biometric identity agenda, which ties into the cashless society agenda, which ties into the social credit system agenda, which ties into the social engineering agenda and so on.

When you follow this experiment to its ultimate conclusion, you find all of humanity enslaved within a digitized prison with no way out. Those who rebel will simply have their digital-everything restricted or shut down.
Fake Meat Is Part of the Reset Too
The rise of fake, lab-grown meat is a puzzle piece of the Great Reset agenda too. According to the World Economic Forum, lab-grown, cultured meat is a more sustainable alternative to conventional livestock, and in the future, we’ll all be eating a lot less meat. As noted on its website:20

“As the world looks to reset its economy, along with food systems, in a cleaner way post-pandemic, one more sustainable solution coming to fruition is cultured meat … Cultured meat takes much less time to grow, uses fewer of the planet’s resources, and no animals are slaughtered.”

But don’t think for a second that this has anything to do with environmental protection. No, it’s about controlling the food supply and preventing food independence. 
Already, multinational corporations have taken over a majority of the global food supply with their patented genetically engineered seeds. Patented cultured meats and seafood will allow private companies to control the food supply in its entirety, and by controlling the food supply, they will control countries and entire populations.

Public health will undoubtedly suffer from this dietary switch, as canola and safflower oil are primary sources of fat in these fake meat concoctions. Vegetable oils are loaded with linoleic acid (LA), an omega-6 fat that, in excess, acts as a metabolic poison, causing severe mitochondrial dysfunction, insulin resistance, decreased NAD+ levels, obesity and a radical decrease in your ability to generate cellular energy.
Our LA consumption 150 years ago was between 2 and 3 grams per day. Today it is 10 to 20 times higher. If fake meat becomes a staple, the average LA intake is bound to increase even further.
Make a Christmas Vow to Undo the Great Reset
The Great Reset is well underway, but it’s not yet too late to stop it. Enough people have to see it and understand it, though. And then they must act. If we want to prevent the Great Reset from destroying life as we know it, we must view civil disobedience as a duty. We must resist it from every angle.

We must reclaim our sovereignty, our right to live free, to open our businesses and move about freely. We must communicate with our elected leaders and demand they not infringe on our constitutional rights. We have to engage in political processes and help educate our local sheriffs of their role as defenders of the constitution. We may also need to support legal challenges.

A small step in the right direction that you can take right now would be to celebrate Christmas like you normally would this week, and not allow the Klaus Schwabs and Bill Gateses of the world rob you of valuable time with family and friends.

There are no guarantees in this life, and for many, this will be their last Christmas. So, spend it well. Cherish life by actually living it and spending it with those you love. Refusing to give up our humanity is how we resist the Great Reset.

Although they sound the same, and some people use the terms interchangeably, flavonoids and flavanols are different. Flavonoids are a family of plant compounds, of which flavanols are one subclass. You can find flavonoids in fruits, vegetables, tea, chocolate and wine. Evidence shows it’s flavanol-rich dark chocolate that improves cognitive performance and mood.
The chemical properties of flavanols impact the bioavailability of the compounds and help determine their biological activity. As a family, flavonoids have antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, anticancer and neuroprotective properties.
Oregon State University reports there is evidence that some flavonoids can improve cognitive function, but it is not known if they can help lower risk for those who are at risk for cognitive decline and dementia.1
For at least 4,000 years, chocolate has been a symbol of luxury, wealth and power.2 Of all the treats available, chocolate remains one of the most popular in the world. However, while dark chocolate has known health benefits, the same cannot be said for milk chocolate.
Flavanols Raise Brain Oxygenation and Cognitive Performance

In 2017, a meta-analysis was published in Frontiers in Nutrition evaluating the association between cocoa flavonoids and cognitive performance.3 Cocoa and cocoa products are a substantial source of flavanols. Scientists suggest cocoa can help counteract cognitive decline, especially in people at risk.
They speculated that the administration of cocoa flavanols may improve cognitive function and protect performance that occurs during sleep loss in healthy people. A study published in Scientific Reports delved further into this hypothesis.4
Using a randomized double-blind study design with young healthy adults, the researchers showed that cocoa flavanols increased the speed and capacity of brain oxygenation in response to the administration of carbon dioxide.
The participants also exhibited 11% faster performance than baseline when the demand was high.5 ZME Science spoke with Catarina Rendeiro from the University of Birmingham, who led the study. She described what the researchers were looking for, saying:6

“I have been for the last 10-12 years interested in the health benefits of plant-derived flavonoids, particularly their effects on brain and cognitive function. We have known for many years that flavanols from cocoa (in particular) can improve vascular function in humans by improving vessel/arterial function.

These benefits are apparent even after one single dose. However, the extent to which some of these benefits could translate into the brain vasculature was less clear.”

The researchers engaged 18 healthy people whom they tested in two trials. During the first, the participants consumed cocoa rich in flavanols and in the second processed cocoa with low levels of flavanols. Neither the participants nor the researchers were aware of which type had been consumed during the trials.
Two hours later the participants breathed 5% carbon dioxide (CO2) to increase blood flow to the brain. Normally, the air you breathe is composed of 0.04% CO2.7 CO2 causes vasodilation and vascular changes in the brain, including raising blood flow.8 The air delivered to the participants was just over 100 times greater than the normal concentration of CO2 in the air.
The researchers then measured the increased blood flow and oxygenation to the brain using customized helmets. They found the participants who ate high flavanol cocoa showed three times more oxygenated hemoglobin than those who ate the low flavanol cocoa.
Interestingly, the researchers also found a few participants did not show any benefits from flavanols and had the healthiest oxygenation responses. While speaking to ZME Science, Rendeiro said:9

“It is currently unclear why these subjects had higher responses but it might be related to higher levels of fitness, but we did not measure this in the study.

Consuming foods rich in flavanols, such as grapes, green tea, apples, berries can provide levels of flavanols that are beneficial for brain function. The fact that we can see benefits even in a perfectly healthy brain it is good news for all of us. There shouldn’t be any downsides from consuming flavanols from fresh fruits and vegetables …”

Chocolate Improves Taste of Natural Triterpenes

In a second study of cocoa, researchers used 70% cocoa chocolate as a delivery mechanism for ursolic acid and oleanolic acid.10 These are triterpenoid compounds with known pharmacological effects, including liver protection after chemically-induced injury in laboratory animals11 and antimicrobial activity in the fight against human pathogens.12
Oleanolic acid is sold in China for liver disorders and both are recognized as having anti-inflammatory and antihyperlipidemic properties when tested in lab animals.13 Researchers have found the health benefits of ursolic acid may include “anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antiapoptotic, and anticarcinogenic effects.”14
An animal study found ursolic acid increased calorie burn, skeletal muscle and brown fat development associated with weight loss, and increased strength. It also improved glucose tolerance.15
The objective of the study was to evaluate the effect of consuming 70% chocolate infused with ursolic and oleanolic acids that had been isolated from the Mansoa hirsuta DC plant.16 Initially, the researchers sought a combination with microbiological and sensory properties that were well accepted. There were 100 volunteers who participated in the “acceptance analysis.”
To evaluate the health effect, the researchers engaged 45 volunteers who were divided into a test group, a control group and a placebo group. The test group received a chocolate formulation containing the triterpenes; the placebo group received chocolate without the triterpenes; and the control group was instructed not to eat any chocolate of any kind during the course of the study.
The test group received 25 grams (g) of 70% cocoa chocolate with the added triterpenes over a four-week period. All were asked to maintain their regular activities and diet. Before and after the intervention the participants had their weight, height and waist circumference measured. Lipid profile and fasting blood sugar tests were also done.
In the control group in which no one consumed chocolate, there were no significant changes in the anthropometric measurements or lab tests. In the test group, after eating the chocolate with the ursolic and oleanolic acids, 50% lost approximately 2 kilograms (kg) (4.4 pounds) and 73.3% had reduced waist circumference. In the placebo group, which ate the regular chocolate, 86.6% gained weight.
In Moderation, Dark Chocolate Has Health Benefits

As demonstrated by the research discussed above, dark chocolate in moderation may have health benefits, but too much can raise your risk of weight gain and subsequent insulin resistance. Cocoa beans are rich in fat (54%), fiber (16%), protein (11%) and carbohydrates (31%).17
The largest source of bioactive compounds comes from flavonoids, which can improve central and peripheral vascular function. When consumed in moderation, flavanol-rich dark chocolate may improve insulin sensitivity by reducing your body’s oxidative stress and improving endothelial function. This indicates that dark chocolate rich in flavanols may be a beneficial addition to your diet.
However, while dark chocolate has health benefits, milk chocolate does not. Unfortunately, the vast majority of chocolate sold and eaten is in the form of milk chocolate candy, which is loaded with sugar and has minute amounts of healthy cocoa. Additionally, one study found that the added milk proteins can reduce the bioavailability of epicatechin, a flavonoid important to antioxidant activity, in chocolate candies.18
In addition to the flavonoids, researchers have also found theobromine and other methylxanthines in dark chocolate that may affect health.19 For instance, theobromine improved memory in an animal study. But, as with most foods found in nature, the likelihood is the health effects come from the combination of polyphenols found in the food and not from a single ingredient.
There is some evidence that hearing loss may be inversely associated with chocolate consumption, yet it has no effect on tinnitus.20 Another review of the literature analyzed 13 clinical trials and found athletes experienced a reduction in oxidative stress linked to cocoa ingestion, but no clear conclusion could be drawn on the impact it had on exercise performance or recovery.21
A 2013 paper in The Netherlands Journal of Medicine also reviewed the health benefits of cacao, noting that some consider it a “complete food,” as it contains:22

Healthy fats
Antioxidants
Nitrogenous compounds, including proteins, methylxanthines theobromine and caffeine
Minerals, including potassium, phosphorus, copper, iron, zinc and magnesium
Valeric acid, which acts as a stress reducer despite the presence of stimulants

Bitter Chocolate May Help Improve Your Mood
Human trial data from Loma Linda University, presented at the Experimental Biology 2018 annual meeting in San Diego, revealed chocolate helps improve stress levels, inflammation, mood, memory and immune function. The caveat? It must contain at least 70% cacao and be sweetened with organic cane sugar. According to the scientists:23

“While it is well-known that cacao is a major source of flavonoids, this is the first time the effect has been studied in human subjects to determine how it can support cognitive, endocrine and cardiovascular health … These studies show us that the higher the concentration of cacao, the more positive the impact on cognition, memory, mood, immunity and other beneficial effects.”

A number of other studies have confirmed cacao can benefit your heart, blood vessels, brain and nervous system, and helps combat diabetes and other conditions rooted in inflammation.
As noted in a paper published in the journal Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity,24 “Cocoa contains about 380 known chemicals, 10 of which are psychoactive compounds” and it “has more phenolics and higher antioxidant capacity than green tea, black tea, or red wine …”

“The antioxidant properties of cocoa or cocoa-derived products enriched in flavonoids may help protect against diseases in which oxidative stress is implicated as a causal or contributing factor.

The phenolics from cocoa may thus protect against diseases in which oxidative stress is implicated as a causal or contributing factor, such as cancer. They also have antiproliferative, antimutagenic, and chemoprotective effects, in addition to their anticariogenic effects.”

Another compound found in cacao is phenylethylamine, which has been shown to boost mood in a way similar to that of tryptophan, which your body converts to serotonin. Cocoa also contains chemical compounds shown to boost mood. One study found the polyphenols in a dark chocolate drink mix helped reduce anxiety and induce a sense of calm when consumed daily for one month.25
There were 72 participants who completed the trial, in which they drank a chocolate drink standardized to 500 milligrams (mg), 250 mg or zero mg of polyphenols. The researchers found those taking the high-dose polyphenol chocolate drink increased their self-assessed calmness and contentedness in relation to those drinking the placebo chocolate drink.
When colorectal cell lines were incubated with cocoa extract for 24 hours in the lab, the researchers found the chocolate had an impact on genetic up and down regulation.26 They believe the results suggest “valuable clues for future clinical studies of cocoa health benefits are highlighted as [an] anticancer agent in this study once validation studies are carried out.”
Cacao to Chocolate — Raw Dark Chocolate Is What You Want

The results of these studies demonstrate the importance of consuming dark chocolate rich in flavanols to experience the health benefits. As I show in this short video above, you can create your own delectable and healthy chocolate treat at home that satisfies your sweet tooth.
Although some people use the terms interchangeably, there is a difference between cocoa and cacao. Many of the studies discussed used a cocoa-based product, but it’s helpful to understand the differences. Cacao is the term used for the evergreen plant and the dried seeds, which ultimately become chocolate. Raw cacao nibs have the highest levels of polyphenols.
Ideally, you’ll want to buy them whole and grind them at home. You can use a coffee grinder for this. You can also nibble on them like you would chocolate chips. A healthy amount would be around one-half to 1 ounce per day. I personally grind 1 tablespoon of raw cacao nibs twice a day and put them into my smoothies.
Cacao becomes cocoa when the beans are roasted and ground into a powder from which most of the fat is removed. Cocoa butter, which you can purchase from health food stores and some grocers, is the yellow fat that’s extracted from the beans.
The cacao beans go through 14 steps in processing before resulting in the chocolate that is ready for distribution to your local store. If the chocolate is processed from cacao seeds that are not roasted, then you’re buying “raw chocolate.”
When you are selecting your chocolate, the evidence shows health benefits are greatest in products with a higher percentage of cacao and lower percentage of sugar. Since cacao has a bitter taste, you’ll also find the higher percentage chocolates are more bitter.
It’s the polyphenols that make the chocolate bitter, so some manufacturers remove them, but it’s also the polyphenols that are responsible for many of the health benefits. That’s why, for health benefits, it’s best to choose 70% or higher cacao chocolate.
On the other hand, “white chocolate” contains only the butter extracted from the beans and none of the cocoa, which is the ingredient chocolate gets its name from. Instead, white chocolate is a health-zapping mix of pasteurized milk, vanilla flavoring and processed sugar.