Lose Them Pounds

Over the years, I’ve done several interviews with Dave Asprey, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, founder and CEO of bulletproof.com, including one in which we discuss how ketones may be useful against COVID-19. Here, we discuss his latest book, “Fast This Way: Burn Fat, Heal Inflammation, and Eat Like the High-Performing Human You Were Meant to Be.”
As the name implies, the book is about fasting and all the magnificent health benefits it provides. Is it for everyone? No, and he will be the first to admit that. But it can benefit most of us, certainly, those of us who are either overweight or obese. In his book, Asprey tells his own journey into fasting and what he’s learned along the way.

“The word fasting is associated with pain, and I wanted to teach people some hacks for fasting,” Asprey says. “I also put a whole chapter in for women, because fasting doesn’t work for everyone and there is no one best kind of fasting. The evidence seems pretty clear that fasting the same way every day or every week is probably also not the best strategy.

So, how do you make it so you can fast without pain when you have stuff to do? And how do you make it so you fast with all of the emotions of fasting when you want to really dig deep and do the meditation, personal development side of fasting? Sorting through all that hasn’t been done in a book, so that’s why I wrote it.”

Breaking the Starvation Myth

As noted by Asprey, a common concern is that fasting will put your body into starvation mode, thereby actually preventing fat loss. This is a persistent belief, but it’s not true. That said, some strategies will indeed activate starvation mode, such as when you’re eating a low-calorie diet for months on end. Asprey tells a personal story that encapsulates this dilemma:

“On my journey of losing 100 pounds, I was doing what everyone said would work. I went to the gym an hour and a half a day, six days a week, halfway tough cardio until I could max out all but two machines, and I would do 45 minutes on the treadmill at a 15-degree angle wearing a backpack — really just pushing it.

And, I went on a low-fat, low-calorie diet. At the end of 18 months, I’m sitting at a Carl’s Jr. with friends. I’m eating the chicken salad with no chicken and no dressing and my friends are eating double western bacon cheeseburgers. I looked around and I’m like, ‘I exercise more than all my friends and I eat less than all my friends, even though I’m taller than they are. Maybe I’m just eating too much lettuce.’

To have a 46-inch waist after that much exercise, low-calorie dieting and all the suffering and intense hunger … My god, the sense of personal failure that comes with that, it’s one thing that holds people back and makes us stay heavy.

What’s going on there is there is a hunger set point that is caused by ghrelin, one of the hunger hormones. It’s a precursor to leptin. Research has shown that when you lose weight using a low-calorie diet or excessive exercise — and I was doing both — your hunger set point will remain your fat set point, and it will always do that.

The thing that turns your set point for hunger to your actual weight instead of to your fat weight is ketones. So, if you were to fast for a couple days or use the fasting hacks that I talk about in the book — there are three fasting hacks to turn off hunger, and two of them are going to help get your ketones up — even just one dose will reset your hunger levels.”

As explained by Asprey, yo-yo weight loss and weight gain occurs because you’re on the wrong diet. Key dietary principles for losing the excess weight and keeping it off include:

Getting at least half or more of your daily calories from healthy fats
Eating the right type and amount of protein
Avoiding inflammatory foods, including inflammatory vegetables (culprits include lectins and oxalic acid, for example)
Having periods of time when you fast (abstain from food)

Key Benefits of Fasting
So, what are the main benefits of fasting? Is it just the ease of weight loss? As explained by Asprey, there are many other health benefits to fasting beside the fact that stubborn weight will fall off. Importantly, the primary benefit of fasting is that it makes your body better at making energy.
This in turn has several benefits, one of which is improved blood sugar regulation, which will allow you to stave off insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction and all the diseases of aging associated with that. As noted by Asprey, if you can avoid cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease, you’re probably going to live longer, as these are the primary killers.
Fasting is also antiaging because it improves autophagy in your mitochondria and cells. Autophagy is a natural process that cleanses and detoxifies your mitochondria and cells. By breaking down old, damaged organelles, fresh, new ones can be made to replace them. And, with healthy, new mitochondria, your body can make more energy, more efficiently.

“That’s an unappreciated side of fasting,” Asprey says. “High-intensity interval training will do something similar, but when you combine that with fasting, your body is like, ‘Get rid of that old stuff.’ It’s kind of like a snake shedding its skin. It’s that autophagy process that is a really big deal.”

The Most Important Fat to Avoid

As mentioned, about half or more of your daily calories should come from fats, but it’s crucial to avoid certain types of fats. I’m currently writing a book on what I believe might be the primary disease-maker in the Western diet, namely omega-6 linoleic acid (LA).
LA makes up the bulk — about 90% — of the omega-6 consumed and is the primary contributor to nearly all chronic diseases. While an essential fat, when consumed in excessive amounts, LA acts as a metabolic poison.
The reason for this is because polyunsaturated fats such as LA are highly susceptible to oxidation. As the fat oxidizes, it breaks down into harmful sub-components such as advanced lipid oxidation end products (ALES) and oxidized LA metabolites (OXLAMS). These ALES and OXLAMS are actually what cause the damage.
One type of advanced lipid oxidation end product (ALE) is 4HNE, a mutagen known to cause DNA damage. Studies have shown there’s a definite correlation between elevated levels of 4HNE and heart failure. LA breaks down into 4HNE even faster when the oil is heated, which is why cardiologists recommend avoiding fried foods. LA intake and the subsequent ALES and OXLAMS produced also play a significant role in cancer.
HNE and other ALES are extraordinarily harmful even in exceedingly small quantities. While excess sugar is certainly bad for your health and should typically be limited to 25 grams per day or less, it doesn’t cause a fraction of the oxidative damage that LA does.
Processed vegetable oils are a primary source of LA, but even food sources hailed for their health benefits contain it, and can be a problem if consumed in excess. Cases in point: olive oil and conventionally raised chicken, which are fed LA-rich grains. To learn more about this hidden source of LA, see “Why Chicken Is Killing You and Saturated Fat Is Your Friend.”
Many now understand that your omega-6 to omega-3 ratio is very important, and should be about 1-to-1 or possibly up to 4-to-1, but simply increasing your omega-3 intake won’t counteract the damage done by excessive LA. You really need to minimize the omega-6 to prevent damage from taking place. For more details about how to track your LA intake and minimize it, please view my recent article on how to do this.

Simple Hacks That Make Fasting Easier

Contrary to popular belief, fasting doesn’t have to be difficult or painful. Asprey details three fasting hacks in “Fast This Way.” The first one is to increase your ketone level. As explained by Asprey, hunger hormones start shifting when your ketone level hits slightly below 0.5, which is not yet the level at which you enter nutritional ketosis. He explains:

“Ghrelin will drop at 0.38, so almost no ketones. The hunger that comes with the ghrelin turns off. But there’s also a satiety hormone, the one that makes you feel full, which is called CCK or cholecystokinin. CCK, when you hit levels of 0.48, CCK makes you feel full. So, if you can get your ketones up to that level in the morning, then you will not pay attention to food.

The first step to get your levels up is mycotoxin-free black coffee — the Bulletproof beans are that. I did the original research about this. Anything that causes inflammation is going to make you hungry because inflammation just means the electrons that should be powering your thoughts are going to create inflammation in the body. They must go somewhere.

These toxins are present in very small amounts. Coffee that has more than five parts per million is illegal to sell in China, Japan and Europe, but it gets sent to the U.S., and we wonder why we get really hungry two hours after we have coffee and why we want sugar in our coffee.

It has to do with toxins, not coffee itself. A study at UC San Diego is really interesting. They found that the amount of caffeine present in two small cups of black coffee will double ketone production.
The second way is to make the coffee ‘bulletproof.’ And what that means is, you take your mycotoxin-free beans and you add some MCT oil. The 8-carbon chain (C8) MCT is the correct one. C8 MCT raises ketones four times more than coconut oil. [Then] you [add] butter and blend it or really shake it.”

Asprey funded research at the University of Washington with Dr. Gerald Pollack, who determined that when water is mixed with grass fed butter or MCT oil, it creates a very large exclusion zone (EZ) in the water, and this EZ is important during fasting.
When you drink regular water, your body takes the water and puts it near your cell membranes, which are made of tiny droplets of fat. Body heat warms the water, converting it from bulk water into EZ water, which your body requires for ATP production and other biological processes, including autophagy and protein folding.

“When you put that tiny bit of butter and the MCT oil and you blend it in the morning, the MCT is going to raise your ketone levels very meaningfully. I can always get to 0.5 with just a Bulletproof coffee. But you’re also getting this water in the form of the coffee that is already primed for your body to use it to start burning fat, to start making energy,” Asprey explains.
“This is why taking a bite of butter and drinking a cup of coffee isn’t going to do it for you. It’s a different process. And I have noticed profound differences from doing that … I have found that for women, in particular, starting out with this really helps, especially if you’re over 40.”

The Importance of Prebiotic Fiber

A third fasting hack is to make sure you’re getting enough prebiotic fiber. According to Asprey, long term fasting and/or eating a carnivore-like, zero-carb diet for extended periods of time without cycling healthy carbs back in can alter your gut microbiota, which in turn can cause sleep disruptions.
Adding prebiotics to your morning coffee is compatible with fasting and will prevent hunger.
When you feed your gut bacteria with prebiotics, they convert the prebiotics into propionic acid and butyric acid (butyrate), and butyrate is very pro-ketogenic.

“In fact, you can get into a state of ketosis by taking a handful of butyrate capsules,” Asprey says. “You want more butyric acid if you want to live a long time and have a healthy metabolism, and studies show massive hunger suppression when you do this.

So, if you put prebiotic fiber, which has essentially no flavor, in your coffee in the morning … you’ll also find that you care nothing about food. I was able to quadruple the number of species of [beneficial bacteria] in my gut using this. It’s totally compatible with fasting and it turns off hunger like no one’s business.

So now you’re saying, ‘Wait, a minute. I could have the coffee I was going to have anyway. I don’t put the sugar and artificial crap in it. I get the mold-free coffee and then I have a choice of drinking a black, of adding butter and MCT, and/or adding prebiotic fiber.’

What you do then is you drink this and you just stop caring about food, you go into the zone and you have the best morning you’ve ever had. Then the next morning, maybe you only have black coffee or maybe you have tea or maybe you have nothing at all, but it’s OK and it’s even preferable to mix up your length and style of fasting.”

Cyclical Keto and Fasting Are the Safest Approaches
In the interview, Asprey discusses several of the diet traps that people get themselves into. As a general guidance, Asprey and I both agree that the best strategy to stay out of trouble is to cycle in and out of whatever routine you’re doing, be it low-carb keto or fasting.
While you may need to be very strict in the beginning, once you’re metabolically flexible, mix things up once or twice a week. Eat three meals instead of one and/or spread them out. Add in more carbs.

“The idea is to be flexible about your fasting regimen,” Asprey says. “I don’t even like the word regimen. It’s just a practice that we do and it’s a practice that makes us feel good, it makes us perform better. And it makes us age less, but doing it too much is a real danger.

If you’re going to do something like a four-day fast, after about 48 hours, there’s all sorts of additional forms of autophagy that turn on. Once every three or six months, doing a 48-hour fast is really well-advised. But man, as a weekly practice, that’ll mess you up …
Women will hit the wall before men do. I think there are evolutionary reasons for this. But it’s a big problem and I oftentimes see thyroid problems manifest and autoimmunity. There are good studies that show chronic stressors trigger autoimmunity, and over-fasting is a chronic stressor almost by definition.”

How Activated Charcoal Can Help

One reason why fasting is a stressor is because it releases toxins from your fat cells. A simple intervention to address this is the use of activated charcoal when you’re fasting. This is particularly beneficial if you’re also doing saunas.

“The universal thing that will happen is you will experience massive brain fog. You’ll feel like a zombie. This was a big thing for me because I had toxic mold exposure [and] I had heavy metals. You have these very interesting things in your gut, these gut bacteria that make lipopolysaccharides (LPS).

LPS’s can cross the gut barrier and then they cause inflammation in the body and trigger cravings in the brain. So, when the bad bacteria in your gut are going, ‘I didn’t get my sugar. I didn’t get any food. Oh, my god, it’s a mortal threat. If there’s a threat, I should release toxins.’

So, they ramp up their LPS production and then you’ll feel like garbage. Then you have to use even more willpower to get through your fast — or you could take activated charcoal that binds directly to LPS. Then you don’t feel the hunger and you don’t have to take the biological hit of all the toxins you’re releasing from your fat, and that really makes a big difference.”

Tripling Down on mTOR

In his book, Asprey also discusses how to integrate exercise into your fasting regimen. The best time to exercise is at the end of your fast. He explains:

“There’s something in the body called mTOR, which drives growth. mTOR will drive muscle [growth]. So, if you want to get a bicep, then you need some mTOR. But if your mTOR is chronically elevated, your risk of cancer and the diseases of aging go up. If you eat too much protein, especially certain amino acids, your [mTOR] level goes up and stays up, and that’s not good for you.

It’s not enough to trigger muscle growth, but it’s just enough to trigger inflammation. The way mTOR works is you suppress mTOR and then when you stop suppressing it, it surges forth and you get a big spike, which is what causes the benefits.

There’s three things that suppress mTOR and I call the strategy ‘tripling down on mTOR.’ The first thing that is shown to increase mTOR is fasting. The longer you fast, the lower your mTOR goes, which is good for triggering autophagy and things like that.

Other things that lowers mTOR are coffee and exercise. So, by having coffee during the fast, you keep cranking down on it, and then you exercise and it’s really low.

Then when you eat, which releases mTOR, and you have adequate protein in that meal, the body is like, ‘Woo-hoo, I’ve got a huge surge of mTOR and I’ve got protein present. Now, I’m going to go to work and I’m going to fix everything. I’m going to replace all the cells I got rid of during autophagy. I’m going to grow the new mitochondria.'”

This is why you get more out of exercise when you do it at the end of a fast. I’m convinced this strategy has helped me radically build my muscles and improve my strength. One small tweak that may be helpful if you’re doing very heavy exercise is to eat a small amount of food about 30 to 60 minutes before you start, essentially breaking your fast right before your exercise.

“There’s great logic in that advice,” Asprey says. “You fasted and then you broke the fast right before the exercise, because by the time those calories are digested and hit the blood sugar, you will be done with your workout. It’s going to be a good half hour before that stuff really hits the bloodstream.

So, I would totally support that unless you’re doing the kind of high-intensity workouts that I’m a fan of, the ones where if I tried to do it with a full stomach, I think I might throw up. They’re very short but they’re very intense.”

More Information

Asprey discusses a number of other antiaging strategies in this interview as well — things like hormone regulation and the use of testosterone, and how fasting affects these levels — so for those details, be sure to listen to the whole interview.
He also goes into some of the problems that can occur when you’re on a plant-based diet, and/or if your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio is off-kilter, as well as how your diet and exposure to sunlight influence your circadian rhythm, and which supplements are helpful when fasting and which should be avoided.
Naturally, you’ll also want to pick up a copy of his book, “Fast This Way: Burn Fat, Heal Inflammation, and Eat Like the High-Performing Human You Were Meant to Be,” where he covers everything in greater depth. In addition to everything already mentioned, his book also includes information about intermittent hypoxic training and breathing exercises.

“What we know now, and what is in ‘Fast This Way,’ is that when you show your body that it will be required to regularly go without something it thinks it needs, you walk away from that as a stronger person.

Your willpower is stronger, but more importantly, your cells are stronger, and then they will give you more energy all the time. And, going from a 300-pound tired, fat, uncomfortable guy to where I am now, even though I’m 48, if I could do it, I think anyone could do it,” Asprey says.

Sign Up for a Guided Fast

To help you on your way, Asprey also provides a two-week program where he guides you through a 24- or 48-hour fast and answers questions on a daily basis. All you need to do is preorder “Fast This Way,” and then send a copy of your receipt to FastThisWay.com and sign up for the program. There’s an upload form on the website.

“I’ll teach you the fasting hacks. We’ll do some intermittent fasting together in a community, and then towards the end of this, we will actually do a 24-hour or 48-hour fast. I’m going to lead you through it,” he says.
“We also [cover] mediation and the gratitude side of this. I just want to teach you this book because I spent thousands of hours writing it and I want you to get it.

You can send your receipt in any time. The training starts right after the book comes out. The book hits shelves January 19, and January 21 I’m going to start the fast. So, if you want to ask me questions, I’m going to be there for you.”

In recent weeks and months, there’s been an upshot of studies1 demonstrating the benefits of vitamin D against COVID-19. The evidence is so compelling, more than 100 doctors, scientists and leading authorities have signed an open letter2 calling for increased use of vitamin D in the fight against COVID-19.

“Research shows low vitamin D levels almost certainly promote COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. Given its safety, we call for immediate widespread increased vitamin D intakes,” the letter states, adding:3 “Vitamin D modulates thousands of genes and many aspects of immune function, both innate and adaptive. The scientific evidence shows that:

• Higher vitamin D blood levels are associated with lower rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Higher D levels are associated with lower risk of a severe case (hospitalization, ICU, or death).
• Intervention studies (including RCTs) indicate that vitamin D can be a very effective treatment. Many papers reveal several biological mechanisms by which vitamin D influences COVID-19.
• Causal inference modelling, Hill’s criteria, the intervention studies & the biological mechanisms indicate that vitamin D’s influence on COVID-19 is very likely causal, not just correlation.”

The letter recommends taking enough vitamin D to achieve a blood level of at least 30 ng/mL (75 nmol/L). They also urge testing of all hospitalized COVID-19 patients and adding vitamin D to the treatment protocol for any patient whose level is below 30 ng/mL. Many other doctors are also urging government health agencies to get onboard with vitamin D recommendations. As reported by NL Times:4

“‘There is a growing consensus in the scientific world about the important role of vitamin D,’ says Manfred Eggersdorfer, professor of Healthy Aging at the University Medical Center Groningen. He argues that ‘it can reduce the chance that you will get corona and the infection can last shorter.’
The wait-and-see attitude adopted by governments does not sit well in the scientific community. Professor of immunology at Wageningen University, Huub Savelkoul, called the attitude ‘frustrating.’
He states that ‘there are more and more studies showing the benefit of vitamin D. I think it is a kind of arrogance that the government wants to wait for a meta-study first. It seems as if we don’t care that people come to the hospital and die in the meantime. You have to be careful with that comment, but that’s where my frustration lies.'”

Vitamin D Optimization Is Powerful Prevention
In a December 23, 2020, Fox News interview5,6 (above), Dr. Peter Osborne with the Origins Nutrition Center stated that the most recent studies suggest 9 out of 10 COVID-19 deaths could have been prevented had people had adequate vitamin D levels.
While I suspect this might be an overestimation, there’s no doubt in my mind that optimizing vitamin D levels among the general population would significantly lower COVID-19 incidence and death.

“At the East Virginia School of Medicine there’s a COVID protocol that includes Vitamin D,” Osborne said. “So, if you’re hospitalized for COVID, they’re automatically putting you on between 20,000 and 60,000 units of vitamin D. This is part of their standard of care protocol in that hospital system.”

Osborne also recommends using vitamin C and zinc, as well as quercetin, which allows for greater zinc absorption. Quercetin also boosts type 1 interferon, which signals infected cells to produce proteins that stop the virus from replicating, and works synergistically with vitamin C. This is all good advice. As noted in a December 2020 Frontiers in Nutrition review:7

“… Zinc and vitamins C and D stand out for having immunomodulatory functions and for playing roles in preserving physical tissue barriers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the adequate intake of zinc and vitamins C and D may represent a promising pharmacological tool due to the high demand for these nutrients in the case of contact with the virus and onset of the inflammatory process.”

However, vitamin D is not my first choice for acute illness that requires immediate treatment. While high-dose vitamin D loading may be helpful in some respects, my No. 1 choice for treating acute respiratory illness is nebulized hydrogen peroxide, which I’ll discuss at the end of this article. It goes to work immediately, while vitamin D requires time, at bare minimum, days, to make a difference.
With respect to preventing COVID-19 deaths, I strongly believe that nebulized hydrogen peroxide could easily prevent at least 90% of the deaths if administered properly. It deeply saddens me to see so many die needlessly because they don’t use this incredibly inexpensive and safe therapy.
Vitamin D Improves COVID-19 Outcomes
Now, bear in mind that prevention and treatment are not the same. I firmly believe that vitamin D optimization will help prevent COVID-19 infection and reduce your risk of severe symptoms should you contract it.

In fact, I launched an information campaign about vitamin D back in June 2020, which included the release of a downloadable scientific report that detailed the science behind vitamin D. This report, as well as a two-minute COVID risk quiz is available on StopCovidCold.com.

There’s also evidence to show high-dose vitamin D loading can improve COVID-19 outcomes even in acute and severe cases. According to a December 2020 randomized, double-blind study8 in the European Journal of Integrative Medicine, giving critically ill COVID-19 patients high doses of vitamin D significantly reduced the number of days they had to spend in the ICU. They were also less likely to need ventilation. According to the authors:9

“Thirty patients completed the study. The results show that injection of vitamin D leads to a significant increase in the mean changes of vitamin D level on the seventh day of the study and TAC [total antioxidant capacity] levels.
ICU length of stay was 18.3±8.4 and 25.4±6.6 days in the intervention and placebo arms of the study. Twelve patients in the placebo group and 5 in the vitamin D group died within the 28-day study period. The duration of mechanical ventilation was 15.7± 9.3 vs. 22.6± 9.1 days in vitamin D and placebo arms, respectively.”

Similarly, a mathematical reanalysis10 of a calcifediol trial concluded there’s a “strong role for vitamin D in reducing ICU admissions of hospitalized COVID-19 patients.” The analysis looked at data from an earlier trial11 done on hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Córdoba, Spain. As explained by the authors of the analysis:12

“… the treatment was associated with reduced ICU admissions with very large effect size and high statistical significance, but the study has had limited impact because it had only 76 patients and imperfect blinding, and did not measure vitamin D levels pre- and post-treatment or adjust for several comorbidities.”

In an effort to account for these shortcomings, they reanalyzed the data using statistical techniques, concluding that “the randomization, large effect size, and high statistical significance address many of these concerns.”
For starters, they found that “random assignment of patients to treatment and control groups is highly unlikely to distribute comorbidities or other prognostic indicators sufficiently unevenly to account for the large effect size.”
They also demonstrated that the imperfect blinding did not have a negative impact, as it would have had to have “an implausibly large effect to account for the reported results.”
To double-check their findings, they also compared the data with two other randomized clinical trials of vitamin D supplementation for COVID-19, one from India and another from Brazil. In conclusion, the authors stated that:

“… the Córdoba study provides sufficient evidence to warrant immediate, well-designed pivotal clinical trials of early calcifediol administration in a broader cohort of inpatients and outpatients with COVID-19.”

Irish Experts Call for Increased Recognition of Vitamin D

In addition to the open letter mentioned earlier, the Irish Covit-D Consortium is also calling for greater use of vitamin D against COVID-19, citing evidence showing it can lower the risk of death from COVID-19 in the elderly by as much as 700%.13
Studies … show an increased risk of infection in those with low vitamin D levels and a 25 to 30-fold reduced risk of ICU admission and a substantial reduction risk of death in older COVID-19 patients supplemented with vitamin D. ~ Dr. Dan McCartney
In a position statement14 published in the Irish Journal of Medical Science, the team urges health professionals and policy-makers “to recognize the importance of enhanced vitamin D in … the optimization of immune response” and to “Develop explicit population guidance and clinical protocols for vitamin D supplementation at … effective doses.” As reported by the Herald:15

“Dr. Dan McCartney, programme director of Human Nutrition and Dietetics at TU Dublin and Trinity College Dublin, said ‘the accumulation of evidence linking low vitamin D levels and COVID-19 is now considerable.
This evidence includes studies which show an increased risk of infection in those with low vitamin D levels and a 25 to 30-fold reduced risk of ICU admission and a substantial reduction risk of death in older COVID-19 patients supplemented with vitamin D.'”

Vitamin D Speeds Viral Clearance
Another recent study,16 published in November 2020 in the Postgraduate Medical Journal, looked at oral vitamin D supplementation on SARS-CoV-2 viral clearance. This study included only asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic SARS-CoV-2-positive individuals who also had vitamin D deficiency (a vitamin D blood level below 20 ng/mL).
Participants were randomly assigned to receive either 60,000 IUs of oral cholecalciferol (nano-liquid droplets) or a placebo for seven days. The target blood level was 50 ng/mL. Anyone who had not achieved a blood level of 50 ng/mL after the first seven days continued to receive the supplement until they reached the target level.
Periodically, all participants were tested for SARS-CoV-2 as well as fibrinogen, D-dimer, procalcitonin and CRP, all of which are inflammatory markers. The primary outcome measure of the study was the proportion of patients testing negative for COVID-19 before day 21 of the study, as well as changes in inflammatory markers. As reported by the authors:17

“Forty SARS-CoV-2 RNA positive individuals were randomized to intervention (n=16) or control (n=24) group. Baseline serum 25(OH)D was 8.6 and 9.54 ng/mL, in the intervention and control group, respectively.
10 out of 16 patients could achieve 25(OH)D>50 ng/ml by day-7 and another two by day-14 … 10 (62.5%) participants in the intervention group and 5 (20.8%) participants in the control arm became SARS-CoV-2 RNA negative. Fibrinogen levels significantly decreased with cholecalciferol supplementation unlike other inflammatory biomarkers.
[A] greater proportion of vitamin D-deficient individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection turned SARS-CoV-2 RNA negative with a significant decrease in fibrinogen on high-dose cholecalciferol supplementation.”

Vitamin D Slows COVID-19 Spread

As reported by KRGV 5 News (above), a Texas news station, doctors in the Rio Grande Valley are also urging people to check their vitamin D levels and supplement if they’re deficient. The reason?
Research18,19 published in the Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism suggests people who have low vitamin D levels are more prone to contracting SARS-CoV-2 infection, and that also makes them more likely to spread the infection to others. As noted in that paper:

“Vitamin D deficiency was found in 82.2% of COVID-19 cases and 47.2% of population-based controls … Vitamin D-deficient COVID-19 patients had … a longer length of hospital stay than those with serum 25OHD levels ?20 ng/mL …
According to our results, vitamin D treatment should be recommended in COVID-19 patients with serum 25OHD deficiency, since this approach might have beneficial effects in both the musculoskeletal and the immune system.”

How Vitamin D Impacts COVID-19
October 31, 2020, my own vitamin D review,20 co-written with William Grant, Ph.D., and Dr. Carol Wagner, both of whom are part of the GrassrootsHealth expert vitamin D panel, was published in the peer-reviewed journal Nutrients. You can read the paper for free on the journal’s website.

As noted in that paper, dark skin color, increased age, pre-existing chronic conditions and vitamin D deficiency are all features of severe COVID disease, and of these, vitamin D deficiency is the only factor that is readily and easily modifiable.
You may be able to reverse chronic disease, but that typically takes time. Optimizing your vitamin D, on the other hand, can be achieved in just a few weeks, thereby significantly lowering your risk of severe COVID-19.
In our paper, we review several of the mechanisms by which vitamin D can reduce your risk of COVID-19 and other respiratory infections, including but not limited to the following:21

Reducing the survival and replication of viruses22 and inflammatory cytokine production
Maintaining endothelial integrity — Endothelial dysfunction contributes to vascular inflammation and impaired blood clotting, two hallmarks of severe COVID-19
Increasing angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) concentrations, which prevents the virus from entering cells via the ACE2 receptor — ACE2 is downregulated by SARS-CoV-2 infection, and by increasing ACE2, you also avoid excessive accumulation of angiotensin II, a peptide hormone known to increase the severity of COVID-19 

Vitamin D is also an important component of COVID-19 prevention and treatment for the fact that it:

Boosts your overall immune function by modulating your innate and adaptive immune responses and reduces respiratory distress23 and improves overall lung function
Helps produce surfactants in your lungs that aid in fluid clearance24 and lowers your risk of comorbidities associated with poor COVID-19 prognosis, including obesity,25 Type 2 diabetes,26 high blood pressure27 and heart disease28

Data from 14 observational studies — summarized in Table 1 of our paper29 — suggest that vitamin D blood levels are inversely correlated with the incidence and/or severity of COVID-19, and the evidence currently available generally satisfies Hill’s criteria for causality in a biological system.30
COVID-19 Features Related to Vitamin D Status
Our paper31 also details several features of COVID-19 that suggest vitamin D deficiency is at play in this illness. For starters, SARS-CoV-2 emerged in the winter in the northern hemisphere, and as we moved into summer, positive tests, hospitalizations and death rates fell. So, generally, COVID-19 prevalence has been inversely correlated with solar UVB doses and vitamin D production, just like seasonal influenza.
Secondly, people with darker skin have higher COVID-19 case and death rates than Caucasians. Vitamin D is produced in your skin in response to sun exposure, but the darker your skin, the more sun exposure you need in order to maintain an optimal vitamin D level. As a result, vitamin D deficiency tends to be far higher among Blacks and dark-skinned Hispanics. Blacks and Hispanics are also high-risk groups for COVID-19.

Thirdly, one of the lethal hallmarks of COVID-19 is the cytokine storm that can develop in severe cases, which manifests as hyperinflammation and tissue damage. Vitamin D is known to regulate inflammatory cytokine production, thereby lowering this risk. Lastly, vitamin D is an important regulator of your immune system, and dysregulation of the immune system is a hallmark of severe COVID-19.
Nebulized Peroxide — My Favorite Treatment Choice

As mentioned earlier, while vitamin D is certainly important, if you develop symptoms of COVID-19, or any other respiratory infection for that matter, downing vitamin D may be too little, too late. I believe your best option at this point is to use nebulized peroxide. This is a home remedy I recommend everyone familiarize themselves with, as in many cases it can improve symptoms in mere hours.

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 both prophylactically after known exposure to COVID-19 and as a treatment for mild, moderate and even severe illness.

Dr. David Brownstein, who has successfully treated over 100 COVID-19 patients with nebulized peroxide, published a case paper32 about this treatment in the July 2020 issue of Science, Public Health Policy and The Law. He also reviews its benefits in “How Nebulized Peroxide Helps Against Respiratory Infections.”
Nebulized hydrogen peroxide is extremely safe, and all you need is a desktop nebulizer and food-grade hydrogen peroxide, which you’ll need to dilute with saline to 0.1% strength. I recommend buying these items beforehand so that you have everything you need and can begin treatment at home at the first signs of a respiratory infection. In the video above, I go over the basics of this treatment.

1 According to recent research, the reason why some COVID-19 patients develop life-threatening organ failure is because they:
Are deficient in calcium
Consume excessive amounts of unsaturated fats such as omega-6 linoleic acid
A compelling report in the journal Gastroenterology offers a novel explanation as to why some COVID-19 patients develop life-threatening organ failure, namely their high unsaturated fat intake. Unsaturated fat intake is associated with increased mortality from COVID-19, while saturated fat intake lowers your risk of death. Learn more.
Eat too many eggs
Have not exercised enough

2 Which of the following vaccine ingredients is suspected of being the culprit causing allergic, including life-threatening anaphylactic responses in some recipients of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine?
mRNA
Thimerosal
Polyethylene glycol (PEG)
Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine contains polyethylene glycol (PEG), and studies have shown 70% of people develop antibodies against this substance. This suggests PEG may trigger fatal allergic reactions in many who receive the vaccine. Learn more.
Egg albumen

3 The SARS-CoV-2 PCR test was developed based on:
Viral isolate of SARS-CoV-2 collected from patient zero in Wuhan, China
Viral isolate from a single American with cold symptoms
The full genetic sequence obtained from viral isolate
An incomplete genetic sequence published by Chinese scientists
The SARS-CoV-2 PCR test was developed based on a genetic sequence published by Chinese scientists, not the viral isolate. Missing genetic code was simply made up. Learn more.

4 Which of the following is a technique that allows scientists to make a pathogen more virulent?
Serial passaging
One technique that allows scientists to make a pathogen more virulent is called “serial passaging.” By passing the virus through a series of cells from different animals, the virus progressively adapts to the new host cell. Learn more.
Sequential massaging
Fromage processing
Prime addition

5 Which of the following countries detained or arrested the greatest number of journalists in 2020?
The Philippines
China
China tops the list of countries where suppression of journalism is taking place. As of December 1, 2020, 117 Chinese journalists had been arrested, many because of their reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic. December 28, 2020, the Shanghai Pudong People’s Court sentenced citizen journalist Zhang Zhan to four years in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” Learn more.
Norway
Serbia

6 According to financial guru and former assistant secretary of housing, Catherine Austin Fitts, the riots that occurred in the U.S. during 2020 were:
An emotional response to racial inequality
The result of poor upbringing
Part of a real estate acquisition scheme
The riots in the U.S. were not random. According to Catherine Austin Fitts, the pattern suggests they were part of a real estate acquisition plan. Learn more.
An outgrowth of pandemic restrictions

7 Which of the following “hacks” will make fasting easier by preventing hunger pangs?
Eating a high-carb breakfast
Never fasting for longer than 12 hours
Avoiding exercise while fasting
Having coffee, with or without MCT oil, butter and/or prebiotics, first thing in the morning
A simple hack that will make fasting easier is to raise your ketone level with black mycotoxin-free coffee, with or without added MCT oil and grass fed butter. Adding prebiotics to your morning coffee will also prevent hunger. Learn more.

Milk thistle (Silybum marianum) is a member of the Asteraceae family and an herbaceous perennial native to Southern Europe and Asia. The plant enjoys full sun and grows to a height of nearly 5 feet. It blooms between July and August with deep purple to pink flowers.1
Throughout history, people have used the fruit and seeds of the milk thistle plant as a treatment for liver disorders. The plant goes by several other names, including Holy thistle, Mary thistle, Our Lady’s thistle, wild artichoke and St. Mary thistle.2
Traditionally, the leaves have been harvested to use in salads and the flower may be roasted and used as a coffee substitute. However, it is the seeds of the milk thistle that were prized for their medicinal activity.
According to the NIH, the oldest recorded use of the plant was by Dioscorides, who believed it could be used as a treatment for snake bites.3 During the Middle Ages it was used as an antidote for liver toxins and by 1898 physicians were using it to treat liver, kidney and spleen disorders. Currently, the German Commission E lists milk thistle for the treatment of hepatic cirrhosis and toxin-induced liver damage and to support chronic inflammatory liver conditions.
Milk Thistle Protects Your Liver Health

The main bioactive compound in milk thistle is a group of flavonolignans called silymarin.4 Flavonolignans are a group of flavonoids with known hepatoprotective properties.5 Silymarin consists of seven different flavonolignans among which silybin has the highest concentration and biological effect. Nearly 70% of silymarin is in the form of silybin A and silybin B.6
Silymarin can be isolated from milk thistle seeds, and while the term milk thistle and silymarin have been used interchangeably, it is technically inaccurate. Multiple studies have demonstrated the ability of silymarin to help protect your liver, and it is regularly used in individuals whose liver has been damaged by nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, hepatitis and liver cancer.7,8
Silymarin also has a protective effect against amatoxin, a deadly toxin produced by the death cap mushroom. Nearly 90% of fatalities from mushrooms worldwide are due to the death cap mushroom.9 Symptoms manifest six to eight hours after ingestion and are followed by kidney and liver failure.
In one review, researchers found nearly 1,500 documented cases where the mortality was less than 10% in patients treated with Legalon:registered: SIL, a pharmaceutical silibinin compound. In another case report,10 doctors successfully treated two patients who accidentally ingested the death cap mushroom with a combination of n-acetylcysteine, cimetidine, silibinin and high-dose penicillin.
Benefits to liver health from silymarin likely result from the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antifibrotic properties of the compound. Silymarin also has demonstrated the ability to reduce virus-related liver damage and has a direct antiviral effect when administered intravenously in patients with hepatitis C.11
Silymarin has a positive effect on nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), which is a more advanced form of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.12 The compound can also help reduce the fibrotic changes that lead to liver cirrhosis.13 In combination with vitamin E, researchers found silymarin helps improve liver function tests and can be:14

“… an alternative valid therapeutic option particularly when other drugs are not indicated or have failed or as a complementary treatment associated with other therapeutic programs.”

Your Liver: The Great Detoxifier

One of the largest organs in your body is your liver, and for good reason. It performs many metabolic and detoxifying functions, helping to convert toxic substances into harmless substances that are then released from your body.15
Your liver is in your upper abdominal cavity just under your right diaphragm, where it sits on top of your stomach. A normal healthy adult liver weighs about 3 pounds and is made of two lobes connected by a band of connective tissue.16
Just inside the hollow under the liver is the gallbladder, where your body stores bile. At any given time, your liver holds about 13% of your body’s blood supply, which it filters and then excretes toxins in 800 milliliters to 1,000 milliliters of bile each day.17 This is emptied into your gallbladder.
In addition to detoxifying your blood, your liver also produces some of the proteins for blood plasma, converts excess sugar into glycogen and helps balance the production of glucose.18 Your liver is also responsible for regulating blood clotting mechanisms, resisting infections and clearing bilirubin that is formed when hemoglobin breaks down.
Silymarin offers significant benefits to your liver, including the ability to increase glutathione, which is a powerful antioxidant crucial for liver detoxification.19 Researchers have also found it may help your liver cells to regenerate, supporting the only organ in your body capable of regeneration.20
Incidence of Liver Disease on the Rise

As you can imagine, liver damage affects these functions and more. Although many tend to equate liver disease with alcohol use, as many as 100 million people suffer from nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD),21 which is associated with obesity.22 As the incidence of obesity in the U.S. has risen, so has NAFLD. In 2017-2018, the age adjusted prevalence of obesity in the U.S. was 42.4% of adults.23 
Risk factors for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease include obesity, diabetes, high triglyceride levels and poor eating habits. The condition is sometimes called a silent disease because you may not experience any symptoms and many people may live with the condition without developing further liver damage.24 If NAFLD progresses with signs of inflammation and cell damage, it is called nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
NAFLD is also the most common type of liver disease found in children.25 Data released in January 202026 from a large cohort in the U.K. found 20% of young adults had NAFLD.
When the researchers widened the data set, they found over 20% had evidence of NAFLD and 2.5% had developed fibrosis. Breaking out the data further, they found at 17 years, 2.5% had moderate to severe levels, yet by age 24 this had risen to 13%.
Silymarin Reduces Cellular Inflammation

Many of the health benefits attributed to silymarin are the result of the compound’s capacity to help reduce cellular inflammation. Research has suggested silymarin does this using a two-phase process similar to that used by other natural compounds such as curcumin and epigallocatechin gallate, found in green tea.27
During the first phase there was a rapid increase in genetic expression that is linked with cellular stress. After this follows a longer sustained depression of genetic expression that is found with inflammation. As described by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, in this study, silymarin:28

Induced endoplasmic reticulum stress
Triggered activating transcription factor 4 (ATF-4) and AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), and inhibited mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR)
Modulated the actions of many types of metabolites
Inhibited inflammatory signaling pathways, when given on a prolonged basis (at 24 hours, in this study)

An important factor in those steps is the activation of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). This is an enzyme that sometimes is called the “metabolic master switch” since it plays an important role in regulating metabolism.29 According to the Natural Medicine Journal, AMPK regulates biological activities to normalize energy imbalances. In addition:30

“AMPK helps coordinate the response to these stressors, shifting energy toward cellular repair, maintenance, or a return to homeostasis and improved likelihood of survival. The hormones leptin and adiponectin activate AMPK. In other words, activating AMPK can produce the same benefits as exercise, dieting, and weight loss — the lifestyle modifications considered beneficial for a range of maladies.”

More Health Benefits With Milk Thistle

These factors mean milk thistle offers a wide range of health benefits. Milk thistle extracts have been tested for anticancer actions in prostate cancer both in the lab and in clinical trials. According to one study, “extracts enriched for isosilybin B, or isosilybin B alone, might possess improved potency in prostate cancer prevention and treatment.”31
The plant also has neuroprotective effects and has been used in the treatment of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease in modern society and neurological diseases such as cerebral ischemia for well over 2,000 years.32 The antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties may contribute to the neuroprotective effects that help prevent a decline in brain function as you age.33
In one study, researchers used silymarin to reduce oxidative stress and inflammation in an animal model that helped reduce the potential for dementia in obese animal subjects.34 Other studies have also demonstrated the ability of milk thistle to reduce amyloid plaques in animal models associated with Alzheimer’s disease.35,36
Silymarin has also demonstrated antiosteoclastic activity in animal studies, causing one research team to conclude it significantly prevents bone loss, potentially “either due to direct interaction with Erbeta [an estrogen receptor beta-isoform] or increasing bone formation parameters including calcium, phosphorus, osteocalcin and PTH.”37
The American Pregnancy Association writes that blessed thistle has been used for hundreds of years to raise a woman’s milk supply, and it is especially effective when taken with fenugreek.38
One published study of 50 healthy lactating women demonstrated oral supplementation with 420 milligrams per day of silymarin boosted their milk supply by 85.94% as compared to the women taking a placebo whose milk supply went up 32.09%.39 None of the women dropped out and no one reported unwanted side effects.
Considerations Before Planting Milk Thistle at Home

Before planting milk thistle in your garden or picking up a milk thistle supplement, there are a few things to consider. Research has found silibinin is poorly absorbed as it has low water solubility. Using a novel formulation, combining silibinin with phosphatidylcholine, researchers were able to improve the solubility and bioavailability, which markedly improved the therapeutic efficiency.40
If you’re hoping to grow your own plants in your backyard and harvest for tea and salads, be forewarned the plant is highly invasive and spreads quickly. While you may not mind having it all over your yard, it doesn’t respect your neighbor’s boundaries and will likely end up in their yard as well.
Milk thistle is also highly toxic to livestock, so if you have grazing animals it’s important you don’t plant it outside.41 Milk thistle has adapted to growing even in poor quality soil. The plants enjoy full sun and once the flowers have begun to dry, they’ll be ready for harvest.42
Cut the flowers and place them in a paper bag, storing the bag in a dry place so the flower heads dry. Once all the moisture is gone, shake the bag to separate the seeds, which can then be kept in a dry airtight container.
The seeds can be powdered in a coffee grinder and sprinkled on your salads, added to smoothies or even raw juice. You can use the seeds to make your own tea, which you’ll find a recipe for in “Magnificent Milk Thistle.”

Informed consent to medical treatment is a right that ensures patients receive information about the recommended treatment so they can make a well-informed decision about their medical care.1 Medical practitioners are both ethically and legally obligated to ensure their patients have an opportunity for informed consent, which means disclosing both the risks and benefits of potential medical treatments.
In the case of the COVID-19 vaccine, it’s not possible to provide a full list of potential risks, considering the unprecedented speed with which they were developed and released to the public — the long-term effects are completely unknown.
Significant concerns have been raised, however, surrounding antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), and the possibility that COVID-19 vaccines could worsen COVID-19 disease via ADE.2
Anyone receiving this experimental medical procedure would certainly want to be informed of its potential to worsen the very disease they’re trying to avoid, but it’s not included as part of the informed consent disclosure — despite researchers recommending back in October 2020 that it be “prominently and independently disclosed.”3
COVID-19 Vaccine Recipients Should Be Warned About ADE Risk

Writing in the International Journal of Clinical Practice, Timothy Cardozo of NYU Langone Health and Ronald Veazey with the Tulane University School of Medicine, noted, “Patient comprehension is a critical part of meeting medical ethics standards of informed consent in study designs.”4
As such, they set out to determine if enough research existed to require clinicians to disclose the specific risk that COVID-19 vaccines could worsen disease if the recipient is exposed to circulating virus. First, they reviewed preclinical and clinical evidence, which revealed that ADE is a significant concern. They noted:5

“COVID-19 vaccines designed to elicit neutralizing antibodies may sensitize vaccine recipients to more severe disease than if they were not vaccinated. Vaccines for SARS, MERS and RSV have never been approved, and the data generated in the development and testing of these vaccines suggest a serious mechanistic concern:

that vaccines designed empirically using the traditional approach (consisting of the unmodified or minimally modified coronavirus viral spike to elicit neutralizing antibodies), be they composed of protein, viral vector, DNA or RNA and irrespective of delivery method, may worsen COVID-19 disease via antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE).”

Their next step involved reviewing clinical trial protocols for COVID-19 vaccines to determine if this risk was properly disclosed to research subjects (at the time, the vaccines had not yet been released to the public). It was not, leaving people largely in the dark instead:6

“This risk is sufficiently obscured in clinical trial protocols and consent forms for ongoing COVID-19 vaccine trials that adequate patient comprehension of this risk is unlikely to occur, obviating truly informed consent by subjects in these trials.”

The conclusion reached by the study was that, in order to meet medical ethics standards of informed consent, people taking part in COVID-19 vaccine trials, as well as those who have received it after approval, should be clearly warned of the “specific and significant COVID-19 risk of ADE.”7
This, however, has not occurred, and most receiving it have likely not even heard of ADE, much less its association with the experimental COVID-19 vaccine.
What Is Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE)?

When your body is exposed to a pathogen, it first ramps up a nonspecific response as part of your innate immune system. Next, your adaptive immune response takes over, generating neutralizing antibodies against the pathogen, which work to bind to the offender so it can’t enter your cells.
While vaccines may generate neutralizing antibodies, they can also induce binding antibodies, sometimes referred to as non-neutralizing antibodies, which increase the ability of a virus to enter your cells and worsen the disease.
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia explained, “ADE occurs when the antibodies generated during an immune response recognize and bind to a pathogen, but they are unable to prevent infection. Instead, these antibodies act as a ‘Trojan horse,’ allowing the pathogen to get into cells and exacerbate the immune response.”8
It’s possible for pathogens to cause ADE, the most well-known being dengue virus, which has four different serotypes. If a person is infected with one serotype, neutralizing antibodies may effectively fight back against the disease.
However, if they’re exposed to a different serotype later, the neutralizing antibodies already circulating in their system can bind to the virus and enhance its entrance into cells, causing a severe form of the disease known as dengue hemorrhagic fever.9
Vaccinations are also known to cause ADE. In 1969, attempts to create a vaccination against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) catastrophically failed after it led to increased rates of severe illness in infants. Eighty percent of vaccinated infants ended up hospitalized compared to only 5% of the nonvaccinated infants, and two vaccinated infants died due to enhanced RSV infections caused by the vaccine.10
RSV is an upper respiratory illness that is very similar to that caused by coronaviruses. In my May 2020 interview with Robert Kennedy Jr., he talked about the failed RSV vaccine:

“At the time, they did not test it on animals. They went right to human testing. They tested it on I think about 35 children, and the same thing happened. The children developed a champion antibody response, robust, durable. It looked perfect, and then the children were exposed to the wild virus and they all became sick. Two of them died. They abandoned the vaccine. It was a big embarrassment to FDA and NIH …”

An early version of the measles vaccine also resulted in ADE (measles belongs to the same family as RSV). Children who were vaccinated with the formalin inactivated measles vaccine were more likely to develop a severe, atypical measles infection, including high fever, unusual rash and pneumonia, leading the vaccine to be withdrawn from the market.11
Coronavirus Vaccines Linked to ADE

As Kennedy further noted, coronavirus vaccines remain notorious for creating ADE, or paradoxical immune enhancement. Coronavirus vaccine development, which began in 2002, followed three consecutive severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreaks. SARS is caused by SARS-associated coronavirus, or SARS-CoV.
By 2012, Chinese, American and European scientists were working on SARS vaccine development and had about 30 candidates. Of those, the four best vaccine candidates were then given to ferrets, which are the closest analogue to humans with lung infections. In the video above, which is a select outtake from my full interview, Kennedy explains what happened next.
While the ferrets displayed robust antibody response, which is the metric used for vaccine licensing, once they were challenged with the wild virus, they all became severely ill and died, mirroring the severe effects that occurred during the failed RSV trials.
At the time, even long-time pro-vaccine advocate Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and professor of pediatrics and molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, was shaken. According to a feature published in PNAS:12

“When SARS, also a coronavirus, appeared in China and spread globally nearly two decades ago, Hotez was among researchers who began investigating a potential vaccine.

In early tests of his candidate, he witnessed how immune cells of vaccinated animals attacked lung tissue, in much the same way that the RSV vaccine had resulted in immune cells attacking kids’ lungs. ‘I thought, ‘Oh crap,’’ he recalls, noting his initial fear that a safe vaccine may again not be possible.”

According to Kennedy, the same thing happened in 2014 with the dengue vaccine DENVax. “They knew from the clinical trials that there was a problem with paradoxical immune response,” Kennedy says, but they gave it to several hundred thousand Filipino kids anyway.
They got a great immune response from the vaccine, but those exposed to wild dengue got horribly sick and 600 of the children died. “Today, the Philippine government is prosecuting criminally a bunch of the people locally who were involved in that decision,” Kennedy says.
Risk of ADE in COVID-19 Vaccines ‘Compelling’

The International Journal of Clinical Practice researchers called the risk of ADE in COVID-19 vaccines not only nontheoretical but also compelling.13 They noted that vaccine-elicited enhancement of disease has been previously found with SARS and Middle East respiratory syndrome-related (MERs) coronaviruses, as well as feline coronavirus, all of which are closely related to SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.
A 2019 study involving macaques and SARS14 raises additional concerns. According to the researchers:15

“Inflammation and tissue damage in the lung in this animal model recapitulated the inflammation and tissue damage in the lungs of SARS-infected patients who succumbed to the disease. The time course was also similar, with the worst damage occurring in delayed fashion in synchrony with ramping up of the immune response.

Remarkably, neutralizing antibodies controlled the virus in the animal, but then would precipitate a severe, tissue-damaging, inflammatory response in the lung. This is a similar profile to immune-complex mediated disease seen with RSV vaccines in the past, wherein vaccinees succumbed to fatal enhanced RSV disease due to the formation of antibody-virus immune complexes that precipitated harmful, inflammatory immune responses.

It is also similar to the clinical course of COVID-19 patients, in whom severe COVID-19 disease is associated with the development of anti-SARS-CoV-2 serum antibodies, with titers correlating directly with the severity of disease. Conversely, subjects who recover quickly may have low or no anti- SARS-CoV-2 serum antibodies.”

The goal of most COVID-19 vaccines is to produce neutralizing antibodies, and they believe that vaccine-elicited ADE is therefore likely to occur “to some degree” with COVID-19 vaccines.
“A finite, nontheoretical risk is evident in the medical literature that vaccine candidates composed of the SARS-CoV-2 viral spike and eliciting anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, be they neutralizing or not, place vaccinees at higher risk for more severe COVID-19 disease when they encounter circulating viruses,” they explained.16
Current data on COVID-19 vaccines do not reveal a risk of ADE, but data are limited and studies have not been designed to follow what happens when subjects are exposed to circulating virus after vaccination, which is when ADE could occur.
“Thus,” the researchers added, “the absence of ADE evidence in COVID-19 vaccine data so far does not absolve investigators from disclosing the risk of enhanced disease to vaccine trial participants, and it remains a realistic, nontheoretical risk to the subjects.”17
True Informed Consent Is Required to Weigh Risks and Benefits

It’s often recommended that patients weigh the risks versus the benefits of medical procedures before making a medical decision. But this is only possible if informed consent provides an accurate picture of risk. In the case of COVID-19 vaccines, the researchers believe informed consent has failed:18

“Based on the published literature, it should have been obvious to any skilled medical practitioner in 2019 that there is a significant risk to vaccine research subjects that they may experience severe disease once vaccinated, while they might only have experienced a mild, self-limited disease if not vaccinated.”

Unfortunately, only minor risks such as injection site reactions, rare risks from the past or risks from unrelated vaccines and viruses are typically disclosed on vaccine trial informed consent forms. Further, generic statements about more severe systemic adverse events and death are the norm.
Given the strong evidence of ADE risk from COVID-19 vaccines, the researchers believe that a separate informed consent form should be given out to those receiving the vaccine, warning them of the specific risk of worsened COVID-19 disease from vaccination, and demonstrating consent that they understand this risk.19 If you received such a form, would it change your mind about getting the shot?

Will the COVID-19 vaccine become mandatory? That’s a question many are asking these days and, by the looks of it, the answer may well be yes — although as I’ll explain later, I suspect the harms of the vaccine will become so apparent that it’ll kill such efforts before they become widespread.
In a January 1, 2021, Newsweek interview,1 Dr. Anthony Fauci said he was “sure” some institutions and businesses will require employees to be vaccinated, and that it’s “quite possible” the vaccine will be required for overseas travel.
When asked about the possibility of mandating the vaccine on a local level, such as for children attending school, he stated that “Everything will be on the table for discussion.” That said, he pointed out that since “we almost never mandate things federally” — with regard to health — he doesn’t believe a national vaccine mandate will be enacted.
In related news2 December 21, 2020, presidential candidate Joe Biden rolled up his sleeve to get publicly inoculated against COVID-19, stating that the vaccine was “nothing to worry about.” He’s also gone on record saying he will push for a 100-day mask mandate in federal buildings if he wins the presidency.3
Can Experimental Vaccines Be Mandated?
While many vaccines are required by state or local law, the thing that sets the COVID-19 vaccine apart from all others is the fact that it is still an experimental vaccine. While Moderna and Pfizer have been granted emergency use authorization for their respective vaccine candidates, they still haven’t even completed Stage 3 clinical trials yet.
The mRNA technology used in these vaccines is also experimental, and the sheer speed at which the vaccines have been developed and tested precludes us from knowing much about their side effects, especially in the long term.
As of December 18, 2020, the adverse event rate in the U.S. was 2.79%.4 This means your risk of harm from the vaccine is far greater than your risk of dying from COVID-19, which has an overall noninstitutionalized infection fatality rate of just 0.26%.5 Among those under the age of 40, the infection fatality rate is a mere 0.01%.6
If an experimental vaccine were to be mandated, it would set a frightening precedent and pave the way for all sorts of nonconsensual medical experimentation on the general public, going forward.
In a December 29, 2020, article7 in JAMA, the authors discuss the legal possibility of mandating COVID-19 vaccines, stating that “SARS-CoV-2 vaccines hold promise to control the pandemic and help restore normal social and economic life.”
However, this is questionable, considering the fact that the effectiveness of the vaccines is only measured by their ability to lessen moderate to severe COVID-19 symptoms such as cough and headache. Presumably, this would lower the risk of hospitalization and death for vaccinated individuals.
However, as explained in “How COVID-19 Vaccine Trials Are Rigged,” the vaccines were not evaluated for their ability to actually prevent infection and transmission of the virus. And, if the vaccine cannot reduce infection, hospitalizations or deaths, then it cannot create the vaccine-acquired herd immunity required to end the pandemic.
What’s more, in a November 26, 2020, BMJ article,8 Peter Doshi, associate editor of The BMJ, points out that while Pfizer claims its vaccine is 95% effective, this is the relative risk reduction. The absolute risk reduction is actually less than 1%. He also stresses that severe side effects appear commonplace:

“Moderna’s press release states that 9% experienced grade 3 myalgia and 10% grade 3 fatigue; Pfizer’s statement reported 3.8% experienced grade 3 fatigue and 2% grade 3 headache. Grade 3 adverse events are considered severe, defined as preventing daily activity. Mild and moderate severity reactions are bound to be far more common.”

New York Considers Forced Vaccination Bill

None of these open questions is stopping the New York Senate from considering a forced vaccination bill (A4169). As reported by constitutional attorney KrisAnne Hall:10

“January 6 New York Assemblymen will be asked to vote on a bill that will authorize the Governor and/or health officials to seize custody of New Yorkers, imprison, and force vaccinate them without due process.

This bill is not only a threat to the Constitution of New York, the people of New York, but also everyone in America if you consider the way certain legislation can spread throughout America in the age ‘crisis’ …

If passed this legislation will place in the hands of the Governor, or his designated agent, the full and autonomous authority to ‘order’ the ‘removal’ and ‘detention’ of every person the Governor or his ‘delegee’ determines ‘may pose’ a ‘significant and imminent threat to public health’ …

Once some health department worker thinks a New Yorker is a carrier or contact to a carrier, that person will be seized and held without hearing, trial, due process, or bond for a period of time to be determined by the health department.”

As noted by Hall, this bill violates the U.S. Constitution in several different ways. For starters, it eliminates your right to due process before forcing you into the custody of health officials, as well as your right to trial “as required by Article I sec 1 and Article VI Sec 18a of the New York Constitution.”
It also “arbitrarily reduces the well-established standard of strict scrutiny required for the infringement of these fundamental rights to the lesser standard of ‘clear and convincing evidence’ which will be determined solely by the Governor or some worker in the New York Health Department.” This, in turn, violates the constitutional principle of separation of powers.
Thirdly, “A-416 is a bold violation of Article 1 sec 5 and Article 1 sec 12 of the New York Constitution” as it would deprive you of your “inherent rights to due process related to a search and seizure” of your property and/or your body.

“New Yorkers cannot allow that to happen. Everyone in New York needs to contact their Senator and Assemblyman and DEMAND they vote no on A-416. Everyone in America needs to contact their State and demand that such legislation never be drafted,” Hall writes.11

In her blog post, Hall includes sample letter and phone scripts you can use when contacting your representatives.
Blackmailing the Public to Force Vaccine Uptake
Getting back to the JAMA article12 discussing the legal possibility of mandating COVID-19 vaccines, the authors point out that mandating a vaccine while it’s still under an emergency use approval is “legally and ethically problematic.”

“Vaccine mandates are unjustified because an EUA requires less safety and efficacy data than full Biologics License Application (BLA) approval. Individuals would also likely distrust vaccine mandates under emergency use, viewing it as ongoing medical research,” the article states.

Once the vaccine is fully licensed, however, vaccine mandates “could be imposed in multiple sectors,” according to the authors. Still, they point out that “Given the rarity of adult mandates, states are unlikely to enact mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for the adult population, especially in the absence of long-term safety data.”
Private companies, on the other hand, can require vaccination as a condition of employment, and according to a Yale CEO survey, 71% of company executives supported the implementation of COVID-19 vaccine mandates in the workplace.13
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has already ruled that businesses can compel their employees to get vaccinated, and that they may fire those who refuse. Employers must, however, allow for medical exemptions and “offer reasonable accommodations based on religion or disability.”14
Schools may also end up requiring COVID-19 vaccination for students, faculty and staff, and it seems likely the vaccine may simply be added to the ACIP-recommended list of childhood vaccinations. Most troubling, however, is the proposal to require vaccination as a condition of service. According to the JAMA article:15

“It is foreseeable that businesses in certain high-risk settings could require proof of vaccination as a condition of service, such as in long-distance travel (plane, rail, bus), restaurants, and entertainment (sports, movies, theater).

While states might be constitutionally barred from requiring vaccines to participate in religious worship, it is conceivable that some churches, synagogues, or mosques might consider such conditions for congregants. Local or state governments could also require vaccination as a condition of service.”

To be clear, even if state and federal governments don’t mandate the vaccine, by barring unvaccinated people from traveling, participating in social events and even entering into government buildings, they are essentially mandating it. Unvaccinated people would become second-class citizens that aren’t permitted to work, travel, conduct business or engage socially. What kind of life is that?
Yet this is precisely what we may be facing. As noted by the JAMA authors, “If scientific and logistical challenges can be overcome, linking vaccinations as a condition of providing service could be an effective incentive for vaccination.” They really should call it what it is: blackmail.
Many Front-Line Workers Refuse COVID-19 Vaccine
Distribution of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines began at the end of December 2020. In the U.S., most states have elected to begin distribution among front-line health care workers and in senior care facilities. However, despite media fanfare, many health care workers are leery of the vaccine.
According to news reports, about half of all front-line workers in Riverside County, California, have refused the vaccine,16 as have 60% of nursing home staff in Ohio,17 40% of staff at Chicago’s Loretto Hospital18 and 40% of LA’s front-line workers.19 Similar rates of vaccine refusal are being reported in several European countries.20
Interestingly, a survey by the National Association of Health Care Assistants revealed a whopping 72% of certified nursing assistants plan to refuse the vaccine,21 as are 55% of firefighters in New York, according to a December 2020 poll by the Uniformed Firefighters Association.22 The reason for this widespread hesitation is as understandable as it is justifiable. As noted in the Western Journal:23

“Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, any skepticism about the virulence of the virus or wisdom of draconian shutdowns was met with the mantra ‘follow the science’ to stifle any serious debate.

All along the way, however, officials did anything but as they imposed useless mask mandates, allowed Black Lives Matter protests despite closing businesses and imposing social distancing on everyone else, and even expressed skepticism about any vaccine simply because it was developed at the behest of President Donald Trump.

But worst of all, officials undermined science by suggesting that vaccination distribution begin based on race rather than in the nursing home populations that were actually ravaged by the virus.

In short, governments and the medical community killed any credibility they had at the beginning of the pandemic with their repeated hypocrisy and mixed messages. It’s no wonder these workers are reluctant to follow them now and are instead relying on their gut instincts to mistrust the untested vaccine and COVID-19 agenda.”

Side Effects and Deaths Are Stacking Up
The fact that high rates of side effects and sudden deaths are already being reported will hardly improve matters in coming weeks and months. For example, January 4, 2021, RT reported24 that health authorities in Portugal were “on alert” after the sudden death of a 41-year-old pediatric surgery assistant who had been in good health. She was found dead in her bed just two days after being inoculated with Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
December 30, 2020, the Daily Star reported25 the death of an elderly resident in Lucerne, Switzerland, five days after receiving the Pfizer vaccine. The man had previously “reacted negatively” to the seasonal influenza vaccine. According to the report, he suffered from dementia but was otherwise in good health.
December 26, 2020, a Boston doctor with severe shellfish allergy suffered a life-threatening anaphylactic reaction to the Moderna vaccine. As reported by RT:26

“Within minutes, Sadrzadeh’s tongue and throat began to tingle and go numb, a reaction that he associated with his shellfish allergy. Even more concerning, his blood pressure then dipped so low that it wasn’t even detectable with a monitor. Luckily, the doctor had brought his own EpiPen, which he administered on himself before hospital staff rushed him to the emergency room …

‘I feel that if I did not have my EpiPen with me, I would be intubated right now, because it was that severe,’ he said, adding that it was the worst allergic reaction he had experienced since he was 11 years old. The physician said he now recommends that people with allergies receive the vaccine in a hospital setting, instead of getting it from a clinic or local provider …

The concerning case is the first of its kind to be linked to the Moderna jab. Officials with the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating at least six cases of severe allergic reactions occurring in people who took the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.”

A December 21, 2020, article27 in The Defender reported the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating a series of allergic reactions to the Pfizer vaccine. Aside from the Boston doctor, other reports of allergic reactions, including anaphylactic shock, include four health care workers in Illinois and three health care workers in Alaska.28 Cases of anaphylaxis also emerged within days of the rollout of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines in the U.K.29
Thousands Injured in Mere Days
According to the CDC,30 by December 18, 2020, 112,807 Americans had received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. Of those, 3,150 suffered one or more “health impact events,” defined as being “unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from doctor or health care professional.”
That’s 2.79%. Extrapolated to the total U.S. population of 328.2 million, we can then expect 9,156,780 Americans to be injured by the vaccine if every single man, woman and child is vaccinated. Is this really reasonable for a virus that has an average survival rate of 99.74%?31

In the end, I suspect and predict that widespread mandates for COVID-19 vaccination will not take place. I believe there will simply be too many injuries and deaths from the first and second rounds of vaccinations, and that will destroy any and all vaccine mandate arguments.
Allergy Alert
Many suspect polyethylene glycol (PEG), found in both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines, might be the culprit causing allergic reactions and anaphylaxis. According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “studies show that 1 in 7 Americans may unknowingly be at risk of experiencing an allergic reaction to PEG.”32
Kennedy believes “everyone should be screened for anti-PEG antibodies before getting the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines,” adding that “It is unconscionable that, instead, the FDA and CDC are encouraging people to go ahead and risk a life-threatening anaphylactic reaction and just assume that someone will be on hand to save them.”33
It’s worth noting that the CDC has updated its vaccine guidance in response to reports of allergic reactions to the Pfizer vaccine, stating that:34

“If you have had a severe allergic reaction to any ingredient in an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, you should not get either of the currently available mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. If you had a severe allergic reaction after getting the first dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, CDC recommends that you should not get the second dose.

CDC has also learned of reports that some people have experienced non-severe allergic reactions within 4 hours after getting vaccinated (known as immediate allergic reactions), such as hives, swelling, and wheezing (respiratory distress).

If you have had an immediate allergic reaction — even if it was not severe — to any ingredient in an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, CDC recommends that you should not get either of the currently available mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

If you had an immediate allergic reaction after getting the first dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, you should not get the second dose … People who are allergic to PEG or polysorbate should not get an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.”

COVID-19 Outbreaks Occurring Among Vaccinated
Yet another interesting problem that has arisen is that many newly vaccinated individuals are suddenly testing positive for COVID-19. In a San Jose, California, hospital, 51 employees tested positive within 10 days of vaccination, although it’s unclear whether all of them had actually received the vaccine.35
One died from COVID-19 complications. Interestingly, the outbreak is being blamed on an employee who showed up wearing an inflatable Christmas costume. The same pattern has been reported elsewhere.
For example, in Israel, 21 residents of a retirement home tested positive for the virus after receiving the vaccine.36 Authorities pointed out that since two doses are required to provide protection against SARS-CoV-2, you can still catch it after the first dose. The same argument was made in the San Jose hospital case.
A doctor in Philadelphia also tested positive after taking the vaccine,37 as did a nurse in San Diego.38 In each case, health authorities have insisted that it’s not the vaccine causing the problem but, rather, the fact that the shot needs time to work.
Overall, there’s plenty of reason to be cautious and delay COVID-19 vaccination as long as possible. As mentioned earlier, I believe that, in time, the harms will become apparent enough that any talk about mandating these vaccines will simply evaporate.

While vitamins C and D have garnered much attention in the fight against COVID-19, B vitamins can also play an important role, according to two recent papers — niacin (B3) in particular.
The first, “Be Well: A Potential Role for Vitamin B in COVID-19,”1,2,3,4 was published in the February 2021 issue of the journal Maturitas. The paper is the result of a joint collaboration between researchers at the University of Oxford, United Arab Emirates University and the University of Melbourne, Australia.
While no studies using B vitamins have been performed on COVID-19 patients, the researchers stress that, based on B vitamins’ effects on your immune system, immune-competence and red blood cells (which help fight infection), supplementation may be a useful adjunct to other prevention and treatment strategies. As noted by the authors:5

“There is a need to highlight the importance of vitamin B because it plays a pivotal role in cell functioning, energy metabolism, and proper immune function.
Vitamin B assists in proper activation of both the innate and adaptive immune responses, reduces pro-inflammatory cytokine levels, improves respiratory function, maintains endothelial integrity, prevents hypercoagulability and can reduce the length of stay in hospital.
Therefore, vitamin B status should be assessed in COVID-19 patients and vitamin B could be used as a non-pharmaceutical adjunct to current treatments …
Vitamin B not only helps to build and maintain a healthy immune system, but it could potentially prevent or reduce COVID-19 symptoms or treat SARS-CoV-2 infection. Poor nutritional status predisposes people to infections more easily; therefore, a balanced diet is necessary for immuno-competence.”

B Vitamins Play Many Roles in COVID-19 Disease Process
Importantly, B vitamins can influence several COVID-19-specific disease processes, including:6

Viral replication and invasion
Cytokine storm induction
Adaptive immunity
Hypercoagulability

The paper goes on to detail how each of the B vitamins can help manage various COVID-19 symptoms:7

Vitamin B1 (thiamine) — Thiamine improves immune system function, protects cardiovascular health, inhibits inflammation and aids in healthy antibody responses. Vitamin B1 deficiency can result in an inadequate antibody response, thereby leading to more severe symptoms. There’s also evidence suggesting B1 may limit hypoxia.

Vitamin B2 (riboflavin) — Riboflavin in combination with ultraviolet light has been shown to decrease the infectious titer of SARS-CoV-2 below the detectable limit in human blood, plasma and platelet products.

Vitamin B3 (niacin/nicotinamide) — Niacin is a building block of NAD and NADP, which are vital when combating inflammation.

Vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid) — Vitamin B5 aids in wound healing and reduces inflammation.

Vitamin B6 (pyridoxal 5?-phosphate/pyridoxine) — Pyridoxal 5?-phosphate (PLP), the active form of vitamin B6, is a cofactor in several inflammatory pathways. Vitamin B6 deficiency is associated with dysregulated immune function. Inflammation increases the need for PLP, which can result in depletion.
According to the authors, in COVID-19 patients with high levels of inflammation, B6 deficiency may be a contributing factor. What’s more, B6 may also play an important role in preventing the hypercoagulation seen in some COVID-19 patients.

Vitamin B9 (folate/folic acid) — Folate, the natural form of B9 found in food, is required for the synthesis of DNA and protein in your adaptive immune response.

Folic acid, the synthetic form typically found in supplements, was recently found8 to inhibit furin, an enzyme associated with viral infections, thereby preventing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein from binding to and gaining entry into your cells. The research9 suggests folic acid may therefore be helpful during the early stages of COVID-19.

Another recent paper10 found folic acid has a strong and stable binding affinity against SARS-CoV-2. This too suggests it may be a suitable therapeutic against COVID-19.

Vitamin B12 (cobalamin) — B12 is required for healthy synthesis of red blood cells and DNA. A deficiency in B12 increases inflammation and oxidative stress by raising homocysteine levels. Your body can eliminate homocysteine naturally, provided you’re getting enough B9 (folate), B6 and B12.11

Hyperhomocysteinemia — a condition characterized by abnormally high levels of homocysteine — causes endothelial dysfunction, activates platelet and coagulation cascades and decreases immune responses.
B12 deficiency is also associated with certain respiratory disorders. Advancing age can diminish your body’s ability to absorb B12 from food,12 so the need for supplementation may increase as you get older. According to “Be Well: A Potential Role for Vitamin D in COVID-19”:13

“A recent study showed that methylcobalamin supplements have the potential to reduce COVID-19-related organ damage and symptoms. A clinical study conducted in Singapore showed that COVID-19 patients who were given vitamin B12 supplements (500 ?g), vitamin D (1000 IU) and magnesium had reduced COVID-19 symptom severity and supplements significantly reduced the need for oxygen and intensive care support.”

Niacin — A Missing Piece of the COVID-19 Puzzle?

The second paper,14 “Sufficient Niacin Supply: The Missing Puzzle Piece to COVID-19 and Beyond?” (which is a preprint and has yet to undergo peer review), focuses specifically on niacin (B3), raising the question of whether this vitamin might actually be a crucial player in the COVID-19 disease process. As noted in the abstract:

“Definitive antiviral properties are evidenced for niacin, i.e., nicotinic acid (NA), as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) therapy for both disease recovery and prevention, to the level that reversal or progression of its pathology follows as an intrinsic function of NA supply.
This detailed investigation provides a thorough disentanglement of how the downstream inflammatory propagation of ensuing severe acute respiratory virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection is entirely prohibited or reversed upstream out the body to expeditiously restore health with well-tolerated dynamic supplementation of sufficient NA (i.e., ~1-3 grams per day).”

As noted in this paper, a primary hallmark of COVID-19 pathology is the cytokine storm, which can lead to multiple organ failure and death. Marked elevations in proinflammatory cytokines are to blame for this chain of events, most notable of which are interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-1? (IL-1?), tumor necrosis factor-? (TNF-?) and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1).
If you can decrease and control these damaging cytokines, you stand a good chance of thwarting the cytokine storm and the downstream damage it causes. Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) plays an important role in this, and niacin is a building block of NAD. As explained in “Be Well: A Potential Role for Vitamin D in COVID-19”:15

“NAD+ is released during the early stages of inflammation and has immunomodulatory properties, known to decrease the pro-inflammatory cytokines, IL-1?, IL-6 and TNF-?. Recent evidence indicates that targeting IL-6 could help control the inflammatory storm in patients with COVID-19.”

Aside from markedly decreasing proinflammatory cytokines, niacin has also been shown to:16

Reduce the replication of a number of viruses, including vaccinia virus, human immunodeficiency virus, enteroviruses and hepatitis B virus
Reduce neutrophil infiltration
Have anti-inflammatory effect in patients with ventilator-induced lung injury

Niacin Modulates the Bradykinin Storm
COVID-19 also triggers bradykinin storms. Bradykinin is a chemical that helps regulate your blood pressure and is controlled by your renin-angiotensin system (RAS). The bradykinin hypothesis provides a model that helps explain some of the more unusual symptoms of COVID-19, including its bizarre effects on your cardiovascular system.

Researchers have discovered SARS-CoV-2 downregulates your body’s ability to degrade or break down bradykinin. The end result is a bradykinin storm, and this appears to be an important factor in many of COVID-19’s lethal effects, perhaps even more so than the cytokine storms associated with the disease. As bradykinin accumulates, the more serious COVID-19 symptoms appear.

Vitamin D has a significant impact on the RAS,17 and can therefore help prevent a bradykinin storm, but niacin also plays an important role. As noted in “Sufficient Niacin Supply: The Missing Puzzle Piece to COVID-19 and Beyond?”:18

“Immediate-release NA [niacin] administration has been reported as highly effective in preventing the lung tissue damage involved in this … pathology. As a matter of fact, authors of a March, 2020, paper19 in Nature for this very reason conclude with suggestion of niacin supplementation to COVID-19 patients as a ‘wise approach.'”

The paper also expounds on the role of NAD+, and why niacin is a useful strategy for boosting NAD+:20

“The major effects of COVID-19 are evidenced to involve tryptophan metabolism and the kynurenine pathway towards depletions of these precursors of NAD+ …
Exclusively sufficient dosage of immediate-release NA — through its processing in the mammalian body to form NAADP [nicotinic acid adenine dinucleotide phosphate, a calcium mobilizer] — leads to an inverse potential energy pump back upstream, from the core up and ultimately out the body, of the downstream ensuing propagation of such inflammatory disease that spreads into the cells.
This is made possible by the capability of NAADP to be readily formed by sufficient NA supply to induce Ca2+ [calcium] channeling back upstream out the body of built-up or ensuing inflammation, representing kinetic energy … that by electron gradient, moves downstream into the body.
Attempting to restore NAD+ with other NAD+-precursors aside from NA (e.g., nicotinamide, nicotinamide riboside, nicotinamide mononucleotide) only actually temporarily and in a sense, artificially, raises NAD+ levels, until they imminently deplete back down with further ensuing inflammation.
NA is in fact the only compound to readily produce NAADP if needed in acidic environments (as is characteristic to ensuing inflammatory disease pathology), which in turn provides a potential energy/H+ pump-out action of its inverse, downstream kinetic (heat) energy inflammation to ultimately restore NAD+ to normal, pre-inflammatory levels, as well as other inflammatorily-depleted cofactors and biochemical pathways towards a more thermodynamically homeostatic health status …
The ‘niacin red flush’ in fact is this thermodynamic exfoliation of ensuing disease, toxins, and (restoration of) free radical-damaged compounds being H+ (potential energy) pumped out the body.
It represents the anti-inflammatory or thermodynamic (i.e., energy transfer-like) therapy in action that only and exclusively sufficient oral intake of immediate-release NA is capable of (readily) accomplishing with potency.”

Recommended Use

The paper21 goes deep into the biochemical aspects of how niacin works in your body, so if you’re interested in that, you may want to read through it. In summary, as it pertains to COVID-19, the important thing to understand is that there appears to be a causative link between low niacin status and SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Nothing outside of sufficiently … supplied niacin is capable of readily leading to the NAADP supply needed … for therapeutic action that counteracts inflammatory disease progression.
According to the authors, SARS-CoV-2’s ability to invade your body is dependent on whether calcium signaling can properly proceed, which in turn is dependent on the presence of NAADP. And, as explained in the quoted section above, niacin forms NAADP in your body. NAADP-dependent calcium signaling is responsible both for the inhibition of viral entry into cells and driving the virus out of already infected cells.
And, again, the authors stress that “nothing outside of sufficiently, dynamically supplied niacin is capable of readily leading to the NAADP supply needed in these acidic environments for therapeutic action that counteracts inflammatory disease progression.”
They also point out that the flushing you get from niacin is part of how the niacin drives inflammatory free radicals out of the cells. As you continue to take the supplement at a consistent, sufficiently high dose, that flushing will gradually lessen, which is a sign that your body is reaching a healthy homeostasis.

“This represents perhaps the ideal state that should be worked up to and maintained thereafter — in terms of niacin dosing — to respectively reverse out and prevent inflammation,” the authors state.22

While the flushing can be uncomfortable, the authors stress that it is “indeed safe,” and actually “should be sought when needed for its anti-inflammatory properties.”
Suggested Dosing

As a “health restorative therapy” for those diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2, they recommend starting with a dose of 500 milligrams of immediate-release niacin, two to three times a day, ideally within the first 48 hours of symptom onset. As your flush response lessens, increase your dose to 1,000 mg, two to three times a day.23

“For the subgroup of patients still suffering with high cytokines profiles from deep, remnant damage of previously experienced SARS-CoV-2 infection — termed the ‘long-haulers’ — alleviation from ailment(s) towards complete health restoration to pre-infection state from initiating and maintaining the aforementioned dosage regimen has consistently been reported to assume within two days and to incrementally follow further over the course of weeks.”24

Although the authors suggest you can use niacin prophylactically, using that same dose, I disagree. According to the authors:25

“By readily providing sufficient NAADP, this same NA dosage regimen is capable of serving as prophylaxis, which can be interpreted as the physical/biochemical inability of sufficient progression of SARS-CoV-2 in order to enter into the body and/or thereafter induce replication, infection onset, or disease progression in a previously uninfected host.”

There may be some value to the high doses in acute COVID-19 infections but I am skeptical. I am a huge fan of NAD+ augmentation and have been using it for years. My research suggests you really only need about 25 mg per day of niacin, which will not cause flushing in nearly anyone. I believe most would benefit from taking 25 mg of niacin daily, preferably in a well-balanced B complex, which would have thiamine (B1) that has also been shown to be useful in COVID-19.
Other alternatives to high-dose niacin would be nicotinamide riboside (NR) and nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN), which is my personal favorite. I believe that compounding these into rectal suppositories would avoid most of the methylation of the supplement and supply you with higher NAD+ tissue levels.
Another downside of high-dose niacin is that it breaks down to nicotinamide and in high doses, nicotinamide will inhibit Sirt1, which is an important longevity protein.
Personally, I believe a superior strategy to high-dose niacin in acute COVID-19 would be to use nebulized hydrogen peroxide at 0.1%. I have never seen or heard of this intervention failing in the treatment of COVID-19.

How to Improve Your Vitamin B Status
As a general rule, I recommend getting most if not all of your nutrition from real food. This will work well for most B vitamins, but not if you’re using niacin therapeutically, as described above. For that, you will need to take a supplement.

That said, the list below will show you which foods contain which B vitamins, as well as provide general guidance on dosage if you’re taking a supplement. If you’re trying to improve your vitamin B status, also consider limiting sugar and eating more fermented foods.

The reason for this is because the entire B group vitamin series is produced within your gut, assuming you have healthy gut flora. Eating real food, including plenty of leafy greens and fermented foods, will provide your microbiome with important fiber and beneficial bacteria to help optimize your internal vitamin B production.

Nutrient
Dietary Sources
Supplement Recommendations

Vitamin B1
Pork, fish, nuts and seeds, beans, green peas, brown rice, squash, asparagus and seafood.26

The recommended daily allowance for B1 is 1.2 mg/day for men and 1.1 mg/day for women.27

Vitamin B2
Eggs, organ meats, lean meats, green vegetables such as asparagus, broccoli and spinach.28

The RDA is 1.1 mg for adult women and 1.3 mg for men.
Your body cannot absorb more than about 27 mg at a time, and some multivitamins or B-complex supplements may contain unnecessarily high amounts.29

Vitamin B3
Liver, chicken, veal, peanuts, chili powder, bacon and sun-dried tomatoes have some of the highest amounts of niacin per gram.30
Other niacin-rich foods include baker’s yeast, paprika, espresso coffee, anchovies, spirulina, duck, shiitake mushrooms and soy sauce.31

The dietary reference intake established by the Food and Nutrition Board ranges from 14 to 18 mg per day for adults.
Higher amounts are recommended depending on your condition. For a list of recommended dosages, see the Mayo Clinic’s website.32

The dosage recommended as an anti-inflammatory, health-restorative therapy in “Sufficient Niacin Supply: The Missing Puzzle Piece to COVID-19 and Beyond?”33 is 500 mg two to three times a day, working your way up to 1,000 mg, two to three times a day as the flushing lessens.

Vitamin B5
Beef, poultry, seafood, organ meats, eggs, milk, mushrooms, avocados, potatoes, broccoli, peanuts, sunflower seeds, chickpeas and brown rice.34

The RDA is 5 mg for adults over the age of 19.
Pantothenic acid in dietary supplements is often in the form of calcium pantothenate or pantethine.35

Vitamin B6
Turkey, beef, chicken, wild-caught salmon, sweet potatoes, potatoes, sunflower seeds, pistachios, avocado, spinach and banana.36,37

Nutritional yeast is an excellent source of B vitamins, especially B6.38
One serving (2 tablespoons) contains nearly 10 mg of vitamin B6.
Not to be confused with Brewer’s yeast or other active yeasts, nutritional yeast is made from an organism grown on molasses, which is then harvested and dried to deactivate the yeast.
It has a pleasant cheesy flavor and can be added to a number of different dishes.

Vitamin B9
Fresh, raw, organic leafy green vegetables, especially broccoli, asparagus, spinach and turnip greens, and a wide variety of beans, especially lentils, but also pinto beans, garbanzo beans, kidney beans, navy and black beans.39

Folic acid is a synthetic type of B vitamin used in supplements; folate is the natural form found in foods.
(Think: Folate comes from foliage, edible leafy plants.)

For folic acid to be of use, it must first be activated into its biologically active form (L-5-MTHF).
Nearly half the population has difficulty converting folic acid into the bioactive form due to a genetic reduction in enzyme activity.
For this reason, if you take a B-vitamin supplement, make sure it contains natural folate rather than synthetic folic acid.
Nutritional yeast is an excellent source.40
Research41 also shows your dietary fiber intake has an impact on your folate status.
For each gram of fiber consumed, folate levels increased by nearly 2%.
The researchers hypothesize that this boost in folate level is due to the fact that fiber nourishes bacteria that synthesize folate in your large intestine.

Vitamin B12
Vitamin B12 is found almost exclusively in animal tissues, including foods like beef and beef liver, lamb, snapper, venison, salmon, shrimp, scallops, poultry, eggs and dairy products.
The few plant foods that are sources of B12 are actually B12 analogs that block the uptake of true B12.

Nutritional yeast is high in B12, and is highly recommended for vegetarians and vegans.
One serving (2 tablespoons) provides nearly 8 mcg of natural vitamin B12.42
Sublingual (under-the-tongue) fine mist spray or vitamin B12 injections are also effective, as they allow the large B12 molecule to be absorbed directly into your bloodstream.

Mead is a village in Saunders County, Nebraska, with a population of just 580 people.1 Their website focuses on what they do best: small town living. “If you’re ready to escape the city, come join us in Mead, Nebraska,” their official site reads.2 This close-knit farming community is also home to AltEn,3 an ethanol plant that is producing toxic byproducts that are poisoning the community.
“It’s definitely within sniffing distance. I come out here to do yard work and I can barely breathe,” Jody Weible, who lives half a mile from the plant, told a news outlet.4
The stench is coming from a byproduct of ethanol production called distillers grain, which is produced after the starch is removed from corn. Also known as “wet cake,” distillers grain is sold by most U.S. ethanol plants as livestock feed, but AltEn’s waste is different.
The company secured a free source of corn to make ethanol by billing itself as a “recycling” plant that accepts seeds treated with pesticides, including toxic neonicotinoids. The resulting waste is too contaminated to sell as feed for animals, so AltEn has been spreading the waste on farmland and holding the rest of it — a “smelly, lime-green mash of fermented grains” — on the grounds surrounding its plant.5
Pesticide Contamination ‘Off the Charts’

Neonicotinoids are the most widely used insecticides worldwide.6 If you were to visit a conventional farm, you’d likely see evidence of their use in the form of brightly colored red corn seeds and blue soybean seeds, which are color-coded to denote treatment with neonicotinoids. Even when used agriculturally, these seeds have been found to harm pollinators like bees at alarming rates.7
There are other concerns as well, like the fact that planting neonicotinoid seeds kills off insects that prey on slugs — prominent corn and soybean pests — thereby reducing crop yields.8
They’re also known to persist in the environment. When researchers screened oilseed crops in the European Union for neonicotinoids during the five-year moratorium, they found neonicotinoids in all the years it was banned in bee-attractive crops, with residue levels depending on soil type and increasing with rainfall.
They concluded that this poses a “considerable risk for nectar foraging bees” and supports “the recent extension of the moratorium to a permanent ban in all outdoor crops.”9 In 2018, the European Union banned the outdoor use of three neonicotinoids (clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam), while the United Nations has also recommended severely restricting their use.10
They’re still widely used in the U.S., however, and in Mead, where the excess waste from the treated seeds is piling up, astronomical levels of the chemicals have been detected.
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) attorney Dan Raichel told The Guardian, “Some of the levels recorded are just off the charts. If I were living in that area with those levels of neonics going into the water and the environment I would be concerned for my own health.”11
In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency has set an upper “safety” limit of 70 parts per billion (ppb) for neonicotinoids in food and water, while levels deemed “safe” for aquatic life are capped at 11 ppb for clothianidin and 17.5 ppb for thiamethoxam. Yet, The Guardian reported:12

“On the AltEn property, state environmental officials recorded levels of clothianidin at a staggering 427,000ppb in testing of one of the large hills of AltEn waste. Thiamethoxam was detected at 85,100ppb, according to testing ordered by the Nebraska department of agriculture.

In an AltEn wastewater lagoon, clothianidin was recorded at 31,000ppb and thiamethoxam at 24,000ppb. A third dangerous neonic called imidacloprid was also found in the lagoon, at 312ppb. The EPA aquatic life benchmark for imidacloprid is 0.385ppb. AltEn’s lagoon system holds approximately 175m gallons.

High levels of 10 other pesticides were also found in the plant lagoon. At least four pesticides in the corn used by AltEn, including clothianidin and thiamethoxam, are known to be ‘detrimental to humans, birds, mammals, bees, freshwater fish’ and other living creatures, state regulators noted in an October letter to AltEn.”

Sick Dogs, Dead Bees and Birds Reported

The area’s residents are already experiencing ill effects they attribute to the pesticide-laden waste. Pet dogs have become sick after ingesting waste dumped on farm fields, and dying birds have also been reported.
Nebraska’s department of agriculture eventually told AltEn to stop spreading the waste on fields, so the company piled up more of the waste on site as well as began incinerating it or storing it offsite in “biochar” bags.13
State regulators aren’t monitoring for contamination near AltEn’s Mead plant, but researcher Judy Wu-Smart, with the University of Nebraska’s department of entomology, believes area insects are being decimated. The university has a research farm about 1 mile from the city, where every beehive has died, and the bee deaths are associated with AltEn’s usage of pesticide-treated seeds.
She also has evidence of birds and butterflies that appear to be neurologically damaged, and found residues of neonicotinoids in plants, which she traced to waterways connecting the land to AltEn. In an interview with The Guardian, she called the findings a red flag, noting, “The bees are just a bio-indicator of something seriously going wrong.”14
AltEn Given Two Months to Clean Up Waste

Children and adults living in Mead have also reported illnesses that occurred after the ethanol plant arrived, while the stench from the waste has caused people to move and businesses to close. Schoolchildren often cannot go outside because of the smell alone, and there’s a high likelihood that local air and water are now contaminated.
The Guardian’s exposé was published January 10, 2021. At the time, the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy (NDEE) said they had no opinion on the area’s bee deaths and did not have jurisdiction in the matter, but were reviewing AltEn’s operations and activities.
NDEE waste permits specialist Blayne Glissman also told The Guardian that AltEn officials were “hard-working people trying to make a living.”15
On January 12, 2021, News Channel Nebraska reported that NDEE cited AltEn for noncompliance of pollution rules due to waste at the plant contaminating air and water, and gave the company until March 2021 to clean up the pollution. AltEn said they’re “on schedule” and working with NDEE to do so.16 In a statement, Malia Libby, a conservation associate with Environmental America, condemned AltEn, stating they should have known better:17

“Residents of Mead, Neb., are experiencing a significant threat to their personal health and to the safety of pets, bees and wildlife in the surrounding area. And the sad reality is that this threat is both unnecessary and avoidable.

Coating corn seeds with bee-killing neonics has become common practice for seed companies, often leaving farmers with little choice but to spread these chemicals in their fields, whether the pesticides are needed or not.

And when the seeds go unused by farmers, we end up with disasters like this. AltEn should have known better. This small town in Nebraska is the latest example for why America needs to rethink how food is grown in this country.”

US Farmland 48 Times More Toxic Than It Was 25 Years Ago

From 1992 to 2014, researchers found that synthetic insecticide use shifted from mostly organophosphorus pesticides to a mix of neonicotinoids and pyrethroids. This shift, they believe, is the reason why agricultural lands are now 48 times more toxic than they were a quarter-century ago, as in 2014, neonicotinoids represented up to 99% of the land’s total toxic load.18
“Our screening analysis demonstrates an increase in pesticide toxicity loading over the past 26 years, which potentially threatens the health of honey bees and other pollinators and may contribute to declines in beneficial insect populations as well as insectivorous birds and other insect consumers,” they noted19 — concerns that have been echoed by similar studies.
One of the observed effects of neonicotinoids in bees is a weakening of the bees’ immune systems.20 Forager bees may bring pesticide-laden pollen back to the hive, where it’s consumed by all of the bees.
About six months later, their immune systems fail, and they end up contracting secondary infections from parasites, mites, viruses, fungi and bacteria. The chemicals have also been shown to trigger immunosuppression in the queen bee, possibly leading to an impaired ability to resist diseases.21
“Neonicotinoids are suspected to pose an unacceptable risk to bees, partly because of their systemic uptake in plants,” a study published in Nature revealed in 2015.22 Other species are also at risk. For instance, researchers found annual catches of smelt from Lake Shinji in Japan fell by 90% in the 10 years after the application of neonicotinoids to adjacent rice paddies.23,24
An exposé by The Intercept,25 which obtained lobbying documents and emails, revealed an extensive playbook used by the pesticide industry to downplay the pesticides’ harms by influencing beekeepers, regulators and academia. Meanwhile, bees and other pollinators are still in decline and the pesticide industry has gotten richer:

“The global neonic market generated $4.42 billion in revenue in 2018, roughly doubling over the previous decade, according to new figures provided to The Intercept from Agranova, a research firm that tracks the industry.”

Ethanol, Neonicotinoids Pose an Ecosystem-Wide Threat

Plants take up only about 5% of the neonicotinoids’ active ingredient, which leaves the rest to be widely dispersed into the environment.26 Worldwide, more than 40% of insect species are threatened with extinction in the next few decades.27 Researchers cited “compelling evidence” that agricultural intensification is the main driver of population declines in birds, small mammals and insects.
In order of importance, habitat loss due to land converted to intensive agriculture, as well as urbanization, are major problems, but the next most significant contributor is pollution, primarily that from synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.28 Ethanol is advertised as an environmentally friendly solution, but it’s actually part of the problem because it’s driving valuable grassland to be converted into chemical-heavy corn crops.
Between 2008 and 2013, wild bees declined 23% in the U.S., particularly in the Midwest, Great Plains and the Mississippi valley, where grain production, primarily corn for biofuel, nearly doubled during the same period.29 Further, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), more than 8 million acres of grassland and wetlands have been converted to corn from 2008 to 2011.30
Overall, since the U.S. government began requiring ethanol in fuel in 2007, corn (and soy) crops have taken over more than 1.2 million acres of grassland.31 Converting more diverse grasslands into corn crops for biofuels is the opposite of what’s needed to save the environment — and creating ethanol out of excess neonicotinoid-treated seeds represents one of the worst outcomes of all.
Adding insult to injury, an investigation by the U.S. EPA even found that treating soybean seeds with neonicotinoids provides no significant financial or agricultural benefits for farmers.32 Regenerative farming, on the other hand, improves biodiversity of the soil, does not harm the environment and increases farmers’ net profits, a win-win situation for all. As Environment America’s Libby said:33

“We need to assist farmers in transitioning to healthier, sustainable agriculture practices, which can dramatically reduce the need for pesticides and remove residual chemicals from the environment.

The USDA has programs to help farmers embrace crop diversity, prairie strips, cover crops and more, but this horrible scenario in Mead reminds us that we must move faster. This can be done if Congress decides to deeply invest in sustainable farming.”

Many consumers have long known their favorite lotions and sunscreens contained parabens, or synthetic chemicals used as preservatives. But with more and more products being touted as “paraben-free,” many are now wondering, “What, exactly, are parabens, and are they dangerous?”
Parabens, which inhibit the growth of bacteria, yeast, and molds, have been used in personal-care products like shampoos, conditioners, deodorants, and sunscreens for years, allowing these products to survive for months, or years, during shipping and on store shelves.
Studies have now shown that parabens mimic the activity of the hormone estrogen, which is associated with certain forms of breast cancer.
Organic Consumers Association September 4, 2007
 

Mice lacking the insulin receptor substrate are more resistant to aging than normal mice, according to University College London researchers.

The finding further confirms the link between insulin signaling pathways and aging, and may have implications on aging in humans.

In the study, mice were engineered to lack either insulin receptor substrate IRS-1 or IRS-2, both proteins that are activated by the hormone insulin, which regulates glucose and fat metabolism. Compared with normal mice, the mice lacking IRS-1 had:

A 20 percent increase in their average lifespan (30 percent for female mice)

Better health as they aged

In contrast, mice lacking IRS-2 had shorter lives than normal mice, and developed signs of obesity and type 2 diabetes. 

Sources:

The FASEB Journal October 10, 2007

UPI.com October 23, 2007