Lose Them Pounds

In 2019, the beauty industry had reached a value of $532 billion and is projected to rapidly rise in the coming years.1 Personal care products are benefiting from targeted pricing, social media and companies aiming at sustainable alternatives. In other words, personal care products and cosmetics is big business.
At least since the times of ancient Egypt, women have been using products to enhance or alter their appearance.2 With this long-lasting growth, toxins such as formaldehyde, parabens and phthalates have made their way into personal care products.3
One compound you may not have considered toxic is talcum powder. One of the largest companies to sell talcum is Johnson & Johnson, which launched their iconic baby powder in 1894. By 2018, their total annual sales were more than $81.6 billion.4
What’s in Your Makeup May Give You Cancer

The powdery ingredient that the beauty industry uses can be listed as talcum powder, talcum, cosmetic talc, or magnesium silicate. Talc is a mineral, which when crushed is particularly useful in a wide variety of products.5 The unique qualities include the ability to absorb odor, lubricate and resist high temperatures. This made it useful in cosmetics, powders, crayons, children’s toys and even in roofing materials and polished rice.
The New York Times reports it’s also used in pharmaceutical pills, supplements and chewing gum.6 Groups that test children’s toys have found it in crime scene kits and crayons. Until the 1990s, it was used in surgical gloves and condoms.
A recent study published in Environmental Health Insights by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) has once again linked personal care products talcum containing with exposure to asbestos.7 One of the products tested in the study was designed specifically for use by children. So how does asbestos, a known carcinogen, contaminate talc?
Asbestos is the term given to six naturally occurring minerals that are made of flexible fibers. When these fibers are inhaled or ingested, they can be permanently trapped in your body. Over time they trigger inflammation and eventually genetic damage that can lead to an aggressive form of cancer called mesothelioma.
In nature, asbestos minerals are found with talc minerals so, during processing, there’s a significant risk talcum can become contaminated with asbestos. When you think of asbestos you might first imagine home insulation, as that’s where it was primarily used for consumers. But the qualities of the product made it useful to the military, heavy construction and shipbuilding, as well. It became part of the beauty industry due to its ties to talcum.
Talcum can be found in over 2,000 personal care products including blush, face and body powders and eyeshadow. In their study, the EWG found 14.2% of the cosmetics that were tested were contaminated with asbestos. Tasha Stoiber, Ph.D., was one researcher in the study and scientist at EWG. She spoke to ZME Science about the results saying:8

“The prevalence of asbestos found in cosmetics from this study is troubling given that most people don’t expect asbestos to be in their make-up, especially not in children’s toy make-up. This highlights the lack of adequate screening of talc.”

Baby Powder Is Dangerous for Babies

The lack of adequate screening places the public at risk. The Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrances Association, which represents the personal care product industry, stated in 1976 that all cosmetic products sold in the US “should be free from detectable amounts of asbestos according to their standards.”9
But, as ZME Science points out, testing is not standardized, and this became a loophole the industry exploited.10 Additionally, the testing that is done on talcum powder is voluntary by the manufacturers and the FDA has no authority to recall products when contamination is found.
The testing the industry uses currently is not sensitive enough to detect contamination, which is why the EWG is lobbying for a more reliable method to be used across the U.S. Talcum powder is the main ingredient in Johnson & Johnsons core baby product. However, while most parents would presume it’s safe for babies because it’s labeled for babies, the American Academy of Pediatrics has warned parents of baby powder dangers since 1969.11
In March 2020, the FDA released the results of a year-long study in which they tested 52 cosmetic products and found nine to be contaminated with asbestos.12 One of those products was Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Powder. Three others were makeup sold by Claire’s and the remaining five were makeup sold by City Color.
The FDA (17.3%) and EWG (14.2%) tests found a similar percentage of personal care products were contaminated with asbestos. Another study published in 2014, found anthophyllite and tremolite, two asbestos minerals, in one brand of talc tested for litigation after a woman died from mesothelioma.13
The study did not name the brand of talc the woman had used for years, but the researchers wrote that a study published in 1976 found this same brand of talc had the highest level of asbestos of 20 commercial brands tested.14 The scientists in the study published in 2014, wrote:15

“Furthermore, we have traced the asbestos in the talc to the mines from which it originated, into the milled grades, into the product, and finally into the lung and lymph nodes of the users of those products, including one woman who developed mesothelioma.

Based on the testing and re-testing conducted by the authors, it is evident that this product line has been consistently contaminated with asbestos tainted talc derivatives. The amount of asbestos was variable based on the time of manufacture and the talc source.

In conclusion, we found that a specific brand of talcum powder contained identifiable asbestos fibers with the potential to be released into the air and inhaled during normal personal talcum powder application.

We also found that asbestos fibers consistent with those found in the same cosmetic talc product were present in the lungs and lymph node tissues of a woman who used this brand of talc powder and developed and died from mesothelioma.”

Johnson & Johnson Aware of the Issue Since 1957

In a 1995 letter to the editor published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, two physicians wrote of the health risks women faced when their partners used condoms covered in talcum powder, namely infertility and ovarian cancer.16 The doctor’s interest in talc began when they found it was an unwanted contaminant in 70% of the silicone gel breast implants they evaluated.
Johnson & Johnson was well aware of the health risks associated with talcum powder long before this. It wasn’t until the company was sued by over 11,000 plaintiffs, who all claimed the baby powder had asbestos, that the full extent of their knowledge came to light.
In the documents the company had to be forced to release, it was revealed that they were aware of tainted samples in 1957 and 1958 when they asked an external lab to do an analysis.17 As reported by Reuters, when the FDA questioned Johnson & Johnson about asbestos contamination in the talc, the company issued a statement in which they denied any knowledge, saying:18

“Our fifty years of research knowledge in this area indicates that there is no asbestos contained in the powder manufactured by Johnson & Johnson.”

Despite indisputable evidence that asbestos is linked to cancer,19 and over 40 years of evidence that talcum powder can be contaminated with asbestos,20,21,22 some experts continue to waffle on whether talcum powder can be dangerous.
For example, the American Cancer Society acknowledges that talc with asbestos is “able to cause cancer if it is inhaled.” But continues: “The evidence about asbestos-free talc is less clear.”23
They make no mention of the lack of standardized testing, how to determine if the talc you’re buying has been tested and go on to say: “There is very little evidence at this time that any other forms of cancer are linked with consumer use of talcum powder.”24
Company Uses Pandemic as a Reason to Pull Baby Powder

A study released in January 2020 pulled data from four cohort studies of 252,745 women. The results made headlines because the scientists asserted there “was not a statistically significant association between use of powder in the genital area and incident ovarian cancer.”25
However, when carefully read,26 the National Women’s Health Network (NWHN) found the participants were not asked about the type of powder used (talc or cornstarch) and the researchers acknowledge “specific exposure windows could not be examined, nor could type of powder used” [limitations].
Yet, the authors extrapolated the results to all powder, including talc. The NWHN goes on to reveal several more discrepancies that do not warrant the researchers’ conclusion.
Another study in the International Journal of Toxicology calls the talc and asbestos relationship “commonly misunderstood”27 and “Industry specifications state that cosmetic-grade talc must contain no detectable fibrous, asbestos minerals.”
Johnson & Johnson continues to assert that talcum powder is safe, and their No. 1 reason is because “talc has been used for centuries.”28 Then, in February 2020, the company announced they would voluntarily take their baby powder off the shelf in the U.S. and Canada.29
USA Today reported the company did this “to focus on products with a higher priority during the coronavirus pandemic.” In other words, the company is using the pandemic response as a smoke screen to pull baby powder from the shelves.
The plan is to only remove it from the U.S. and Canadian market, which represent 0.5% of their total consumer health business.30 Forbes reports this market was $13.8 billion in 2018.31

“Demand for talc-based Johnson’s Baby Powder in North America has been declining due in large part to changes in consumer habits and fueled by misinformation around the safety of the product and a constant barrage of litigation advertising.”

Take Care With Your Personal Care Products

Unfortunately, many still believe that if a product is sold in the stores, it is likely safe for use. But, as this fight to remove cancer-causing talcum powder blatantly shows, manufacturers are willing to pay millions to make billions. The thousands of pending lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson are a reminder that it’s a buyer beware market when it comes to personal care products.
Women may be exposed to an average of 168 chemicals daily and men, 85.32 Many of these have been linked to cancer, reproductive toxicities, asthma, allergies and other health problems.
There is no safety testing required before these personal care products hit the grocery store shelf and few chemicals have been banned in the U.S. since the industry is largely self-regulated. In other words, it’s like the fox guarding the hen house.
You do have choices and the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep33 database can help you make those choices. It contains a list of ingredients and safety ratings for close to 75,000 cosmetics and personal care products. This is an important step, since your skin is an excellent drug delivery system. What goes on your body is as important as what goes in your mouth.
Products bearing the “USDA 100% Organic” seal are among your safest bets if you want to avoid potentially toxic ingredients. Be aware that products boasting “all-natural” labels can still contain harmful chemicals, so be sure to check the full list of ingredients.
Better yet, simplify your routine and make your own products. A slew of lotions and hair treatments can be eliminated with a jar of coconut oil, for example, to which you can add a high-quality essential oil, if you like, for scent.
When it comes to talcum powder, my recommendation is to avoid it altogether. Also remember that adult women are not the ones most commonly exposed to talc. Most parents generously apply baby talcum powder to their baby’s bottom at each diaper change, exposing both the parent and baby to inhaling the powder.

Reiner Fuellmich,1 who has been a consumer protection trial lawyer in California and Germany2 for 26 years, is a founding member of the German Corona Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee (Außerparlamentarischer Corona Untersuchungsausschuss,3 or ACU),4,5 launched July 10, 2020.
Fuellmich is leading the committee’s corona crisis tort case — an international class-action lawsuit that will be filed against those responsible for using fraudulent testing to engineer the appearance of a dangerous pandemic in order to implement economically devastating lockdowns around the world.
He estimates more than 50 other countries will be following suit. In the video above, Patrick Bet-David interviews Fuellmich about how and why the group was formed and the status of this work.
The Backstory

Early on, as Fuellmich started hearing concerns from family and friends in Germany about a new respiratory virus, one particular name kept popping up: professor Christian Drosten, Ph.D., a German virologist.
As head of the Institute of Virology at the University of Bonn Medical Centre, Drosten is best known for developing the first diagnostic test for SARS in 2003. He also developed a diagnostic test for the swine flu,6 and in 2009 helped drum up panic with doomsday prophesies about H1N1.
When COVID-19 initially emerged in early 2020, Drosten kept saying there was no cause for concern. Then, seemingly overnight, he changed his tune, “as though someone had given him a signal.” All of a sudden, Drosten was saying that this virus was extremely dangerous and that drastic measures to contain it had to be implemented.
Based on whistleblower testimony, the German government relied on the opinion of Drosten alone when deciding on their pandemic response, which included the lockdown of healthy citizens and the suspension of constitutional rights for an indefinite period of time.
Interestingly, Fuellmich’s team recently discovered that Drosten’s Ph.D. dissertation is a fraud. It was only created this year when people began investigating his background.
Aside from Drosten, other individuals who have prominent roles include Lothar H. Wieler, the head of the German equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization and Neil Ferguson of the Imperial College of London.
Unsure of what was going on, Fuellmich contacted an old friend, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, a former member of the German Congress and the Council of Europe. Wodarg urged him to investigate and suggested some names of experts to look into, such as professor John Ioannidis at Stanford University and professor and Nobel Prize winner Michael Levitt.
The more he investigated the facts available, the more Fuellmich realized COVID-19 was being grossly oversold. Eventually, he started making inquiries to see if there were any other lawyers out there raising questions about the legality of the pandemic and the global response to it.
He discovered that Beate Bahner, an attorney specializing in medical law, had in fact spoken out, arguing that Germany’s quarantine measures were unconstitutional. She was arrested and held in a psychiatric ward for a number of days. Needless to say, that wasn’t an encouraging start.
Separation of Power Has Been Breached

Disturbingly, while the governments of many nations have the same separation of power as the U.S., where you have separate legislative, judiciary and executive branches, we are now finding that this separation has been breached and nearly destroyed in most places.
Rather than being run by the legislators that we voted into power (and who have the legal power to make law), we’re being ruled by the executive branch, such as our local governors, who are creating rules and regulations without having the legal and constitutional power to do so.
They may issue emergency orders for a few days, but really that’s the extent of their legal power. After that, the legislature must be brought in. Yet here we are, several months into the pandemic, and local governors and mayors all over the world are still issuing long-term mandatory mask and social distancing orders, many of which call for the arrest of those who don’t follow the rules.
We now have plenty of data showing its lethality is on par with the common flu and that the absolute risk of death is equivalent to the risk of dying in a car accident.
As noted by Fuellmich, the judiciary branch must step in, and now, finally, they are starting to do so. In Austria, the constitutional court issued an order November 12, 2020, not only clarifying the separation of powers and stressing that the legislative branch must be involved, but also that there must be a comprehensive discussion where both sides are heard. There are other scientists besides those anointed by the government, and their opinions must be considered as well.
Suing the World Over Faux Pandemic

As noted by Bet-David, there are several important questions that must be answered:

What caused the pandemic?
Who started it?
Who needs to be held accountable?
In what way must they be held accountable?

Fuellmich agrees, saying that answering these questions is the reason for why ACU was formed. Governments appear unwilling to investigate the answers to these questions, and that’s why he and three other attorneys decided to take on the task of preparing class-action lawsuits. The primary questions the ACU seeks to answer are:

How dangerous is the virus, really?
How trustworthy is the PCR test; what does a positive test really mean?
How much damage do the anti-COVID measures inflict to the economy and the health and well-being of the population?

What Do We Now Know?
The last question is easily answered, Fuellmich says. Evidence shows pandemic measures have caused tremendous harm, killing more people than the virus itself by restricting routine medical care to people with acute and chronic health conditions that have nothing to do with COVID-19.
As for the danger of SARS-CoV-2, we now have plenty of data showing its lethality is on par with the common flu7,8,9,10,11 and that the absolute risk of death is equivalent to the risk of dying in a car accident.12,13 It may be different in terms of symptoms and complications, but the actual lethality is about the same.
According to Fuellmich, even the WHO has now admitted that the mortality of COVID-19 is on par with seasonal influenza. In October 2020, the WHO also reversed its stance on lockdowns, stating they no longer recommend using lockdowns as a primary control method.14
Several experts have also stressed that there is no excess mortality,15,16 meaning we’ve had an average number of deaths during the pandemic as would normally die anyway. And, if there’s no excess mortality, how can there be a lethal pandemic? It doesn’t add up.
Fraudulent Testing Is Driving Pandemic Narrative

Of the three questions, the second one is perhaps the most important, as mass testing is driving the narrative that we’re in a lethal pandemic. As explained by Fuellmich, reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests have several weaknesses that appear to be taken advantage of to create needless fear.
The fact is, the PCR test is not designed to be used as a diagnostic tool as it cannot distinguish between inactive viruses and “live” or reproductive ones.17 This is a crucial point, since inactive and reproductive viruses are not interchangeable in terms of infectivity. If you have a nonreproductive virus in your body, you will not get sick and you cannot spread it to others. 
Secondly, many if not most laboratories amplify the RNA collected far too many times, which results in healthy people testing “positive.” The video above explains how the PCR test works and how we are interpreting results incorrectly.
In summary, the PCR swab collects RNA from your nasal cavity. This RNA is then reverse transcribed into DNA. However, they must be amplified to become discernible. Each round of amplification is called a cycle, and the number of amplification cycles used by any given test or lab is called a cycle threshold.
When you go above 30 cycles, even insignificant sequences of viral DNA end up being magnified to the point that the test reads positive even if your viral load is extremely low or the virus is inactive and poses no threat to you or anyone else.
According to Fuellmich, the consensus is that anything over 35 cycles is scientifically indefensible. Yet Drosten’s test and tests recommended by the World Health Organization are set to 45 cycles.18,19,20
When labs use these excessive cycle thresholds, you end up with a far higher number of positive tests than you would otherwise. At present, and going back a number of months now, what we’re really dealing with is a “casedemic,”21,22 meaning an epidemic of false positives.
Remember, in medical terminology, when used accurately, a “case” refers to someone who has symptoms of a disease. By erroneously reporting positive tests as “cases,” the pandemic appears magnitudes worse than it actually is. For this reason, Fuellmich and his team are primarily focused on the PCR test issue.
They’ve taken testimony from a number of well-respected immunologists from around the world, all of whom agree that the PCR test is incapable of telling us anything about the transmission of COVID-19.
The Panic Paper

According to Fuellmich, the sole reason the PCR test is used, and used in an incorrect way, is to create enough fear that no one will question the pandemic measures being put into place and simply do as they’re told. He goes on to review the so-called “Panic Paper,”23,24 written by the German Department of the Interior.
This classified paper, which was leaked to the press, reveals there was an intentional plan at the level of the German government to drive people into a panic.
One of the strategies laid out in the paper was to guilt children into compliance, to make them feel responsible “for the tortured death of their parents and grandparents if they do not follow the anti-corona regulations.” According to Fuellmich, what we have is a staged PCR test pandemic. It’s not a lethal virus pandemic, “and I can prove this in court,” he says.
What’s the End Game?

As noted by Fuellmich, more and more people around the world are now starting to wake up to the fact that the restrictions put into place under the guise of protecting public health are not going away anytime soon. They’re part of a much larger, long-term plan, and the end goal is to usher in a new way of life, devoid of our previous freedoms.
The judicial branch is “the last anchor of democracy,” Fuellmich says. He brings up an important point. The WHO, the World Economic Forum and the United Nations are all private corporations, yet they wield tremendous power over the governments of the world.
The World Economic Forum, founded by Klaus Schwab, is incredibly influential and lobbies politicians around the globe. Together, private corporations and politicians have in some instances usurped power from the government and are acting above the law of the land.
Big Tech plays an important part in this usurpation of power. The most important human right around the world is the right to free speech. It’s foundational for any democracy. Yet the tech giants have all banded together to censor certain segments of the global population.

“We have to take back the power from them and put it back where it belongs, with the government, and we have to take a really close look at who is in government and who became too close to these corporations,” Fuellmich says.

Key Players

While the full picture is still being put together, Fuellmich and his team have some ideas of who the key players are, at least in Germany. They include the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of Germany, Drosten, Wieler (the head of the German equivalent of the CDC), Ghebreyesus (head of the WHO), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.
These individuals have repeatedly met over the years, including in May 2019, at which time they discussed plans for a coming pandemic. During this meeting, Drosten explained how his PCR test would be used to identify infections — “A blatant lie, as we now know it,” Fuellmich says.
These were the same individuals who in 2020 rolled out the narrative for the COVID-19 pandemic and pushed for the global implementation of PCR testing, mask wearing, social distancing and the shut-down of economies around the world.
According to Fuellmich, Germany is at the center of this global fraud, and three of the key criminals in this case appear to be Drosten, Wieler and Ghebreyesus — and the organizations behind them.
That said, he also admits there must be others behind these public marionettes that are pulling the strings. Fuellmich believes that through pretrial discovery, these shadowy figures will eventually come to light.
Battle Plan

As mentioned earlier, we must now push the judicial branch of our government to step in. Fuellmich explains:

“We have the power [to ask] courts of law to step in, but we have to show in a court of law that this is not a corona pandemic but rather a staged PCR pandemic, which was made up — invented — for completely different purposes, for these corporations.
We do not know exactly who is responsible, but we see that some of the corporations that are now censoring us are in part responsible; we know some people — such as Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab or Blackrock — were investing their money into pharmaceutical and technical companies. Also, the mainstream media, they [have been] brought into line and are not going to report on the other side of the story.
In order to bring out this story, we have to have a court of law that will take a look at the evidence that is there … And that’s what we’re doing right now. We’re doing this both in Germany and in the United States … The U.S. and Canada are so important in this because they are the two countries that have class-actions.”

At present, class-action lawsuits are being prepared in the U.S. and Canada. Lawsuits are also being prepared in Germany. Germany does not permit class-actions so, there, the process is being done a bit differently. ACU is also working on the creation of legal guidelines and data caches that attorneys around the world will be able to use to file their own lawsuits.
As for the average person, Fuellmich urges everyone to, first of all, don’t give up, and secondly, ask lots of questions. Continue asking questions because the more questions are asked, the more answers will come to light. Continue to counter the censorship by asking questions. Once court hearings begin, the information will start to spread more quickly.
To learn more, all ACU meetings are live-streamed and available on the Committee’s YouTube channel25 (at least for now). Fuellmich can be contacted via www.fuellmich.com, and the Corona Inquiry Committee via corona-ausschuss.de. Information in multiple languages should also be available on www.ACU2020.org.

Controlling the humidity level in your home, or even simply in your bedroom while you sleep, may lower your risk of contracting infectious diseases like influenza, colds or possibly even COVID-19 during the winter months.1 Humidity is an often overlooked factor in the spread of viruses, which become more transmissible in cold, dry winter climates.
This is why many viral diseases are seasonal in nature, peaking during the colder, less humid winter. Dr. Stephanie Taylor, a graduate of Harvard Medical School who also has a master’s in architecture, believes so strongly in the role of humidity in infection control that she’s petitioning the World Health Organization to make relative humidity part of standard recommendations for indoor air, along with other air quality measures like pollution and mold.
Taylor, along with researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, collected data from 125 countries regarding pandemic responses, COVID-19 cases and environmental data, including estimates of indoor relative humidity.
They analyzed the data for a period of three months, revealing that indoor relative humidity had the most significant correlation with daily new coronavirus cases and daily COVID-19 deaths.
In the northern hemisphere, as indoor humidity levels rose in the summer, COVID-19 deaths had a sharp decline. Likewise, in the southern hemisphere, COVID-19 deaths rose as humidity levels declined during the winter months. “It’s so powerful, it’s crazy,” Taylor told Wired.2 Though the research hasn’t been published yet, years of research support the importance of humidity levels when it comes to warding off infectious disease.
Dry Air Impairs Respiratory Tract Defenses

Back in 2011, researchers found that SARS, another type of coronavirus, was more stable in low temperature, low humidity environments compared to those in higher temperatures and relative humidity.3 It’s also been found in animal transmission studies that when relative humidity is kept in the “Goldilocks” zone of 40% to 60%, viruses become inactivated.4
“It is assumed that temperature and humidity modulate the viability of viruses by affecting the properties of viral surface proteins and lipid membrane,” researchers wrote in the Annual Review of Virology. “… An ideal humidity for preventing aerosol respiratory viral transmission at room temperature appears to be between 40% and 60% RH (relative humidity).”5
The mucosal surface of your respiratory tract is involved in part of a multi-tiered defense system against inhaled pathogens. Your mucus can catch bacteria and viruses, allowing you to expel them via a cough or swallow them before they’re able to enter your cells.
However, proper mucus hydration is required for this to work efficiently, and when you breathe dry, low humidity air it dries out the mucus layer and immobilizes cilia, hair-like structures that help move pathogens out of the body with their wave-like motions.6
Airway epithelial cells act as the second line of defense after the mucus layer, acting as a physical barrier within your respiratory tract. Inhaling dry air has been found to lead to “epithelial cilia loss, detachment of epithelial cells, and inflammation of the trachea” in animal studies, and may also impair epithelial cell repair in the lung after infection with influenza.7
Mucociliary clearance (MCC) is another one of your lungs’ defense mechanisms, which helps eliminate inhaled pathogens and irritants from the epithelial surface in your respiratory tract. Inhaling cold, dry air also impairs MCC, leading to impaired viral clearance following infection with influenza, for example. As noted in the Annual Review of Virology:8

“Given that the MCC depends on the maintenance of double mucus layers with two different viscosities and a delicate osmotic balance, proper mucus hydration is required for an efficient mucus transport.

A review on the relationship between temperature and humidity of inhaled air and properties of airway mucosa found that 100% RH at core temperature is the optimal condition for the efficient mucosal functions and airway defense in humans. Mucus dehydration caused by breathing air of low humidity leads to decreased MCC.”

Exposure to low humidity may even affect your antiviral innate immunity, including the expression of interferon-stimulated genes that help induce an antiviral state.9
Low Humidity in Hospitals, Schools Increases Infections

Considering the strong seasonality of influenza, and the fact that flu outbreaks have been associated with reductions in absolute humidity, researchers decided to raise humidity levels in a preschool to see if it would affect influenza infections. Humidifying classrooms from January to March to approximately 45% RH led to a significant reduction in influenza A virus, both in the air and on objects.10
The control rooms, which were not humidified, had 2.3 times more cases of influenza-like illness than the humidified rooms.11 Taylor, in an interview with the editor-in-chief of Engineered Systems, also described research showing that changing humidity levels in hospital rooms altered the rate of infections:12

“Starting in 2012-2013, I was involved in some research that was initially done in hospitals that clearly pointed to the correlation between low relative humidity in patient rooms and an increase in bacterial and viral infections.

I was startled by this. Subsequent studies in nursing homes, schools, and in offices have shown that people are much healthier, obtain fewer infections, have increased productivity, and sleep better at night with this range of humidity.

So, in doing more and more research on the relationship between 40%-60% indoor relative humidity and human health and decreased infections, it’s absolutely a rapid, holistic, and effective disease infection control strategy.

And, now, here comes COVID-19 and it’s more important than ever that we decrease transmission of respiratory viruses. Relative humidity in that range is so effective and, in my opinion, it should be mandated.”

Humidity Between 40% and 60% May Be Ideal

Many studies point to humidity levels between 40% and 60% as a key range for lowering infection risk. In a study on mice, those housed in a low-humidity environment were more susceptible to influenza and had more severe disease.13
Mice exposed to an aerosolized influenza virus and housed at 20% relative humidity, for instance, had more rapid weight loss, drop in body temperature and shortened survival compared to mice housed at 50% relative humidity.
The dry air compromised the mice’s resistance to infection, and those housed at lower humidity levels had impaired mucociliary clearance, innate antiviral defense and tissue repair function, the study found.
The results from another animal study demonstrated that raising relative humidity to 50% decreased mortality from flu infections,14 while yet another study found maintaining indoor relative humidity greater than 40% could significantly reduce the infectivity of influenza virus in the air.15
Studies on the survival of influenza virus also show a humidity connection, with one suggesting that aerosolized influenza survived the longest when the relative humidity was below 36%.16
In an opinion piece published in the Journal of Global Health, it’s again highlighted that indoor relative humidity greater than 40% will significantly reduce the infectivity of aerosolized influenza virus particles. Unfortunately, humidity in residential and commercial spaces in the U.S. is often below 25%,17 which enhances viral transmission. Even in the summer, when humidity levels are naturally higher outdoors, air conditioning limits humidity indoors.
The article, which was written by a collaboration of Croatian, U.S. and German researchers, also suggested that humidified air could be a solution to protecting hospital patients and fighting COVID-19:18

“In addition to being a protection against initial infection, functional mucosal barrier is also important in suppression of viral progression in already infected patients. Since many hospitals have very dry air, providing humidified air to patients in early stages of the disease may be beneficial.

… Considering the evident detrimental effect of dry air on our mucosal barrier and its role of the first line of defense against infection, in a situation of rapidly progressing COVID-19 pandemics it would be essential to aggressively promote active re-humidification of dry air in all public and private heated spaces.

Furthermore, wherever possible patients on ventilators should be ventilated with humidified air.”

Put a Humidifier in Your Bedroom

Using a portable humidifier in your bedroom during the winter months could reduce the survival of influenza virus in the air, according to a study published in Environmental Health.19 A model of a two-story residential residence was used under two ventilation conditions: forced hot air and radiant heating.
Portable humidifiers were used to control moisture content in the air, which was monitored for absolute humidity and concentrations of influenza virus. The addition of a portable humidifier with an output of 0.16 kilograms of water per hour in the bedroom increased absolute humidity 11% and relative humidity 19% during sleeping hours compared to having no humidifier present.
Along with the increases in humidity came a decrease in the survival of influenza virus, by 17.5% to 31.6%. The distribution of water vapor through the whole home was also beneficial, with increases of 3% to 12% AH/RH associated with reductions in influenza virus survival of 7.8% to 13.9%.20
The results suggest that not only could adding a humidifier to your bedroom prove to be an easy way to protect against the flu and other infections, but increasing humidification in public settings could also be beneficial for public health.
In fact, when Japanese researchers used the Fugaku supercomputer to model the transmission of virus particles in indoor environments, they found air humidity of lower than 30% led to more than double the number of aerosolized particles than occurred at humidity levels of 60% or higher.21
How to Monitor Humidity Levels

It should be noted that higher isn’t always better in the case of humidity. If your home’s humidity is higher than 60%, it increases the risk of mold and fungal growth.22 So, you’ll want to keep the level within the 40% to 60% range for ideal health benefits. The best way to test levels in your home is with a hygrometer. This device looks like a thermometer and measures the amount of moisture in the air.
Some humidifiers come with a built-in hygrometer, or humidistat, to help the humidifier maintain relative humidity in your home at a healthy level. If not, you can purchase a hygrometer at most hardware stores.
In one study, adding a humidifier to the bedroom occasionally resulted in relative humidity levels that exceeded 60%, especially when radiant heat was used,23 so you may need to adjust accordingly to keep levels in the optimal range. A dirty humidifier can also lead to the growth of mold and bacteria, so keeping it clean is important.
A hydrogen peroxide solution and soft bristle brush can be used to clean your humidifier, which should be done every three days. If your humidifier has a filter, be sure to change it at least as often as the manufacturer recommends and more if it’s dirty.24

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

Sharyl Attkisson is an award-winning investigative journalist with uncompromising integrity. Her latest book, “Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism,” is scheduled for release right around Thanksgiving, November 24, 2020.
In this, her third book, she addresses one of the most pressing issues of our time: media bias and the deterioration of objective journalism — a topic on which she has first-hand experience.
A former anchor at CNN and CBS News, Attkisson now produces her own Sunday television news program, “Full Measure,” as well as two podcasts: “Full Measure After Hours” and “The Sharyl Attkisson Podcast,” in which she covers the kinds of stories that mainstream news no longer touches.
Slanted Media

Propaganda through media certainly isn’t a new thing. Starting in the late 1940s,1 the CIA ran a well-documented but at the time covert campaign called “Operation Mockingbird,” in which they recruited journalists as assets to spread propaganda — news slanted in one way or another. While the program is always referred to in the past tense, as it is said to have been ended in the 1970s,2 evidence suggests it never really stopped.  

“There are all kinds of ways the Intel community has, and can, manipulate the news,” Attkisson says, “but we reached a new level in 2016, 2017, because they don’t even have to whisper in our ear to get us to report stuff. We hired them. Meaning, Brennan, Clapper, Comey — all of them were hired as consultants. They were invited on the news directly.
You didn’t have to put them through a filter and anonymous sources, although plenty of anonymous sources were also used. But daily putting forth their propaganda, much of which, obviously, was proven false, particularly on the Trump, Russia narrative.
But every day, we allowed them to plaster the airwaves, even after they were proven admittedly wrong … After two years of spewing this false information, they’re still consulted by the media. They’re still used. So, it’s so easy for an Intel operation if they wish to use the media towards whatever goal they may have …
I firmly believe that there have been ongoing [propaganda] campaigns that continue today. Maybe separate operations by intelligence agencies and officials to manipulate the news, and certainly have things reported a certain way to try to push for certain outcomes in politics here at home and internationally.”

Big Industry Also Influences the News
Multinational industries, the drug industry in particular, also has a similar level of influence over content relating to their particular interests. In 1996, direct-to-consumer drug advertising was legalized, and as drug advertising became a major income stream for media companies, their reporting on health and medicine became increasingly biased.
The reason is simple. They cannot afford to “bite the hand that feeds them.” If an advertiser doesn’t want the public to know about a particular finding, all they have to do to influence the reporting is to threaten to withdraw its advertising, which will hurt the media company’s bottom line.
Drug companies have also become major sponsors of medical education; thus, doctors are taught to prescribe drugs for all ills, but they’re not taught about the side effects and drawbacks of those drugs.
Today, the drug industry also controls fact-checking organizations such as NewsGuard, as it is funded by Publicis, which is supported by drug companies. When feeding from the Big Pharma trough, how could they possibly be objective in their fact-checking? Reality shows us they can’t because they aren’t.
Big Tech — Master Manipulators of Minds

Big Tech companies, of course, are also masters of censoring anything that might hurt themselves or their technocratic allies. As just one of countless examples, you can no longer post a link to Mercola.com on Twitter.
First, they added a false warning that made it look like my site contained dangerous malware when readers would click on a posted link. After a while, they simply blocked the ability to post links to our site altogether.

“This started, and I traced this in my second book, ‘The Smear,’ to Media Matters … the left-wing propaganda group that supported Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and is a big smear organization,” Attkisson says. “They acknowledged going to Facebook about the time when they were worried that Donald Trump was going to get elected.
They really felt that the only thing giving him a leg up, and they still believe this today, is his social media outreach. They tried to think of a way to control, with the kind of social media and news people could get, so Media Matters lobbied Facebook and tried to convince them — and did so successfully — to taking a fact-checking brand-new role that nobody had ever asked for.
We’re not begging for our information to be curated. That was a pretend demand created by the propagandists who wanted to control the information. They had to make us think that we needed a third party to step in and tell us what to think and sort through the information … The fake news effort, the fact-checking, which is usually fake fact-checking, meaning it’s not a genuine effort, is a propaganda effort …
We’ve seen it explode as we come into the 2020 election, for much the same reason, whereby, the social media companies, third parties, academic institutions and NewsGuard … they insert themselves. But of course, they’re all backed by certain money and special interests. They’re no more in a position to fact-check than an ordinary person walking on the street …
They have interests. They make sure certain things are not seen, even if true. And I think this is the most serious threat that I’m looking at right now to our media environment.
I’m afraid that our kids will be telling their kids of a time when you used to be able to go on the internet and find most, any, information you wanted, because we are increasingly being pointed only to that which they, people who control the information, wish for us to see.”

Presidential Treatment Takes on a New Meaning

In her book, Attkisson also spends an entire chapter dissecting the highly-biased treatment of President Trump, and how the media have, through their own admission, suspended traditional journalistic ethics simply because they consider him “uniquely dangerous.”

“Therefore, you don’t have to follow the normal rules and guidelines when it comes to fair and accurate reporting, which I think is one of the most absurd things I’ve ever heard in my life, from someone in our profession, because the standards exist precisely so that we report on everybody the same way,” she says.
“In other words, using the same standards, whether we like them or not. Particularly, perhaps, if we don’t like or agree with the candidate — that’s when the standards become most important. But you need only look at Politico, for example, during the last election.
I interviewed them shortly afterwards. Someone in charge of some of their coverage … in almost every answer to a question, she brought up President Trump and something negative about him.
One of the things she said was how many lies he tells per minute. She said, ‘We actually had a team that calculated the number of lies per minute that President Trump told.’ And I asked the obvious question, ‘Well, what was that compared to Hillary’s supposed lies per minute?’ And she actually said, ‘Oh, we didn’t have the staffing to do Hillary too.’
Can you imagine a national news organization that purports to cover something fairly and we’ll fact-check the lies per minute of one candidate and not the opposing candidate and pretend that that qualifies as fair news?
I also interviewed some noted liberals who have noticed the same thing: That they look at things from a fair-minded viewpoint and are no fan of President Trump, yet are appalled at how the media has dishonestly treated certain topics and information, which should make everybody wonder, ‘Are we getting the truth when it comes to things that don’t have to do with President Trump?
If the media can report so many things out of context and incorrectly when it comes to somebody they don’t like, what else are we getting that’s not in context or that’s not fully true?’”

The Invention of Lying

Prior to President Trump, virtually no one in the media would accuse someone of lying. The standard was to question an individual’s statement or point out a discrepancy to another source, but not call it an outright lie, because it’s easy to get confused on specifics. A lie is a very specific allegation that implies an intent to deceive. Just because you misremember a fact doesn’t mean you lied.

“[In the book] I talk about the fact that … I know I’ve probably been lied to many times, but I don’t believe I’ve ever reported that somebody lied to me in a hard news report. Why? Well, a lie is a specific thing that requires you to know the mind of the person. And you as a journalist have to withhold, even if you think something is true without the evidence, you really can’t say it’s true.
I’ll use the example I used in the book: Ford and Firestone tires. The executives consistently said there was no evidence that these tires were dangerous prior to the scandal around the 2000 time period where there were a lot of deaths. I had documents from a source that showed this very danger many years before.
It appeared that they were lying, but I didn’t call it a lie because there are many other explanations someone could give. They could say, ‘Well, these guys weren’t there at the time. So, they didn’t know that these discussions had been had. They didn’t have access to the emails, their subordinates didn’t tell them.’ So, you don’t know whether they’re mistaken or lying.
And from a journalistic standpoint, we used to always take the objective road and say something like, ‘Their testimony contradicts the documentary record.’ That’s good enough. People at home can make up their own mind.
But there was a turn taken, specifically, to target President Trump, whereby, the media started frequently calling things that he said, lies — even when there was simply something that was a matter of opinion, or could not be proven, or a mistake, none of which are lies.
The New York Times was proud of this when it did it. And I recount in the book the first time they made a headline where they talked about President Trump lying, and how that was cheered on by others in the media who then followed suit.
They were even cheered on by a journalism professor who wrote a big op-ed about how it was time to stop doing this objective reporting and that we needed to call out President Trump’s lies frequently and often. It’s just, again, from a journalistic standpoint, ridiculous … I think this is a new and dangerous tactic that has really destroyed our objectivity in the eyes of the public. And rightly so.”

Massaging COVID-19 Messages
In terms of health, COVID-19 reporting has taken censorship and media manipulation to brand new heights, eclipsing just about all previous efforts. They don’t even hide the bias anymore.
All social media platforms are openly censoring dissenting views about the virus, particularly its origin and treatment. Even well-respected doctors and scientists have been axed for speaking against the desired narrative dictated by the World Health Organization.
August 26, 2020, the CDC had released data3 showing 94% of people who had died during the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. died “with” the virus, not “from” it. Only 6% had COVID-19 listed as the sole cause of death on the death certificate. Hence, the real death toll, those who unarguably died as a direct result of the infection, is only around 10,000.
“For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death,” the CDC stated. This is an important distinction. Yet mainstream media continues to report that nearly 200,000 have died “from” COVID-19 in the U.S, thereby increasing national fear so they can implement their lockdowns and other strategies to limit our personal freedoms and liberty.

“I think we need both numbers, in a separate sense, to have perspective and understanding of what’s really happening,” Attkisson says. “And it’s something that very few people have shown interest in … Early on, it was clear … that the primary victims were those with the comorbidities and the elderly population in nursing homes and so on.
But then we sort of lost track of that. And then there seemed to be a propaganda effort to convince people that, initially, after understanding young people were at very little risk of serious illness and death, there seemed to be an effort to convince people that the youth must be very careful. That more young people are dying and getting sick.
I can only guess as to why that’s important to some interests, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that when the vaccine comes out, the market needs to be aimed.
You can’t rule out young people, you must make them believe they need it, or else you’ve ruled out a huge section of the vaccine market. And they certainly don’t want to make a vaccine that’s not used by a giant percentage of the population. I think they have to create a market. Why do I think this?
Well, I was actually told by a top immunization official for the government, when they learned flu shots are ineffective in the elderly … that the way around that was not to take flu shots away from the elderly — who would think that was dishonest because we’ve been telling it was necessary for so many years — but to convince parents to get their children and babies flu shots so that they wouldn’t ‘carry flu to the elderly.’
I remember him saying to me, ‘The trick is going to be to convince parents to give a vaccine to their children who don’t really need it themselves.’ In other words, for a secondary supposed benefit for the elderly. And darn it, if you didn’t see in the next season, they recommended flu shots for babies and children.
And they didn’t tell anybody at the time that they were doing it because flu shots don’t work in the elderly. They just started telling people that your kids need flu shots.”

When a ‘Case’ Is Not a Case
The media are also grossly misusing the term “case,” in reference to the COVID-19 case load. A case is a medical term for a patient with a symptomatic type of infection. It’s not someone who tests positive for antibodies or pieces of viral DNA. By referring to all positive tests as “cases,” they’re able to fan the flames of panic, making the situation sound far worse than it actually is.
We’re at a pretty scary time when scientists who are experts on these issues fear speaking what they believe is the scientific truth because they’ll be controversialized. ~ Sharyl Attkisson
Many still do not understand that most of those who test positive for SARS-CoV-2 are asymptomatic. They think these are sick people in the hospital and that rising “case” numbers mean there will be a rise in deaths. Statistics reveal this simply isn’t true, and that there’s not a linear correlation between positive tests and deaths.

“There are just so many things that are misreported,” Attkisson says. “But if you try to report them accurately and factually, you get called out by those in the media who either didn’t understand, or are simply so blinded by the propaganda narrative.
The New York Times did this. They actually called me and several other people out as ‘coronavirus doubters,’ although I had never said or written anything that even remotely denies coronavirus or denies the risk of it. But they were working very hard to silence voices who are simply reporting more accurately and with context on what’s really happening.
By the way, when I spoke to some scientists … and I said, ‘Why don’t you speak out or correct what you think is the misconception?’ Separately, several of them told me they feared speaking out publicly because they were afraid they would be labeled a coronavirus doubter, and for fear of contradicting Dr. Fauci.
So, I said, ‘We’re at a pretty scary time when scientists who are experts on these issues fear speaking what they believe is the scientific truth because they’ll be controversialized.’”

Search for Truth and Unbiased Facts
The clear take-home message I got from reading, “Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism,” is that there’s a profoundly serious problem with most mainstream conventional media.
The obvious question is: Where can you go to get the truth? We would like to be informed, but we also want the truth. We don’t have time to waste to be brainwashed by propaganda. At the end of her book, Attkisson lists a variety of sources she’s come to trust. It may be worth getting the book for those recommendations alone.

“I didn’t make a comprehensive list,” Attkisson says. “I’m sure I left many people out, but I tried to point to a few outlets and people, and I consulted some of my colleagues for their recommendations. It’s not an easy answer. There isn’t a place you can go. I can’t say, ‘Watch this news every day or read this publication.’ It’s more granular than that.
You have to find a reporter that you trust on a topic and then chase that reporter around … That’s where I think you can find a segment of truth. And it’s not always, sadly, going to be objective truth.
Some of the reporters I name are coming from the left viewpoint or coming from a right viewpoint, but they have proven themselves to be brave reporters of a particular topic or controversy that I think you can rely on. But it’s just not so simple as it used to be where you could just point to a person or an outlet and say, ‘Watch that, and you’ll get your fair shake at the news’ …
I would say, in closing, that I do think a new paradigm will develop when it comes to news reporting. There are people looking at how news and information can be reported in a way that it cannot be censored by big tech giants, political figures and nonprofits and so on …
I’m told there’s a way to develop a social media platform where you can post freely and also not be subject to censorship. I think things will evolve because people are tired of what they’re seeing. And I hope something really positive, being an optimist, develops out of all of this down the road.”

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

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

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

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

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

As explained by DiNicolantonio:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

High-Dose Melatonin Reduces COVID-19 Mortality

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

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

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

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

Nebulized Hydrogen Peroxide

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simple Strategies to Improve Your NAD+ Level

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There’s good news for those of you who have taken the proactive step to make sure your vitamin D level is optimized. Several recent studies demonstrate vitamin D can have a significantly beneficial impact on your cancer risk, both in terms of preventing cancer and in the treatment of cancer.
Vitamin D Reduces Cancer Mortality

In the first of these studies,1,2 which included 25,871 patients, vitamin D supplementation was found to reduce the risk for metastatic cancer and death by 17%. The risk was reduced by as much as 38% among those who also maintained a healthy weight.
This was a really poorly done study as they only gave participants 2,000 IUs a day and never measured their blood levels. Had there been no improvement, I would not have been surprised, but the fact is it still reduced metastatic cancer and death by 17%, and they found significant benefit among those who were not obese.
This is pretty extraordinary but not as good as epidemiological studies that show a 50% to even 78% reduction in vitamin D sufficient people, as suggested in a study further below. That said, UPI reported the results saying:3

“The benefits of vitamin D3 in limiting metastases — or disease spread to other organs — and severity was seen across all cancers, and was particularly prominent among study participants who maintained a healthy weight …
‘The primary message [of our study] is that vitamin D may reduce the chance of developing metastatic or fatal cancer among adults without a diagnosis of cancer,’ study co-author Dr. Paulette Chandler told UPI.”

The study, published in JAMA Network Open, is a secondary analysis of the VITAL Study4 which, in part, sought to determine whether taking 2,000 IUs of vitamin D per day would reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease or stroke in people who did not have a prior history of these diseases.
The VITAL study itself, which followed patients for an average of 5.3 years, found no statistical difference in overall cancer rates among those who took vitamin D3, but there was a reduction in cancer-related deaths, which is what prompted this secondary analysis.
Obesity May Inhibit Vitamin D’s Benefits
The fact that patients with a healthy weight derived a much greater benefit — a 38% reduced risk for metastatic cancer and death compared to 17% overall — suggests your body weight may play a significant role in whether vitamin D supplementation will provide you with the anticancer benefits you seek.
Obesity may confer resistance to vitamin D effects. ~ Dr. Paulette Chandler

According to study co-author Dr. Paulette Chandler, assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, “Our study highlights that obesity may confer resistance to vitamin D effects.”5
There may be something to that. Research6 published in 2010 found that dietary fructose inhibits intestinal calcium absorption, thereby inducing vitamin D insufficiency in people with chronic kidney disease.

That said, vitamin D tends to be lower in obese people in general, for the fact that it’s a fat-soluble nutrient and when you’re obese, the vitamin D ends up being “volumetrically diluted.” As explained in the paper “Vitamin D in Obesity,” published in 2017:7

“Serum vitamin D is lower in obese people; it is important to understand the mechanism of this effect and whether it indicates clinically significant deficiency … Vitamin D is fat soluble, and distributed into fat, muscle, liver, and serum.
All of these compartments are increased in volume in obesity, so the lower vitamin D likely reflects a volumetric dilution effect and whole body stores of vitamin D may be adequate … Obese people need higher loading doses of vitamin D to achieve the same serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D as normal weight.”

While that particular paper stresses that lower vitamin D in obese individuals might not mean that they’re deficient, others disagree. For example, one study8,9 found that for every 10% increase in body-mass index, there’s a 4.2% reduction in blood levels of vitamin D. According to the authors of that particular study, obesity may in fact be a causal factor in the development of vitamin D deficiency.10
Vitamin D Also Improves Colorectal Cancer Outcomes

A scientific review11 published in the September 2020 issue of the British Journal of Cancer noted that having low vitamin D is associated with poor colorectal cancer survival.
To assess whether vitamin D supplementation might improve survival in these patients, they reviewed the findings of seven trials, three of which included patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer from the outset and four population trials that reported survival in incident cases.
Overall, the meta-analysis found supplementation resulted in a 30% reduction in adverse colorectal cancer outcomes. Vitamin D also improved outcomes among patients already diagnosed with colorectal cancer. According to the authors:12

“Meta-analysis demonstrates a clinically meaningful benefit of vitamin D supplementation on [colorectal cancer] survival outcomes. Further well-designed, adequately powered RCTs are needed to … [determine] optimal dosing.”

Low Vitamin D Linked to Increased Cancer Incidence

Another review and meta-analysis,13 this one published in November 2019 in Bioscience Reports, looked at vitamin D supplementation on cancer incidence and mortality in general. Ten randomized controlled trials with a pool of 81,362 participants were included in the analysis.
While the incidence rate of cancer was very similar between the vitamin D intervention group and the placebo control group (9.16% versus 9.29%), the risk reduction in mortality was deemed “significant.” As reported by the authors:

“The mortality rate of cancer was 2.11% (821 cases) and 2.43% (942 cases) in vitamin D intervention group and placebo group, respectively, resulting in a significant reduction in risk (RR = 0.87).
There was no observable heterogeneity or publication bias … Our findings support a beneficial effect of vitamin D supplement on lowering cancer mortality, especially in subpopulations with no history of cancer, extra use of vitamin D, or calcium supplement.”

Vitamin D Protects Against Breast Cancer
Several studies have highlighted the benefit of vitamin D for breast cancer. For example, an analysis14 by GrassrootsHealth published June 2018 in PLOS ONE showed women with a vitamin D level at or above 60 ng/mL (150 nmol/L) had an 82% lower risk of breast cancer compared to those with levels below 20 ng/mL (50 nmol/L).
An earlier study,15,16 which looked at women in the U.K., found having a vitamin D level above 60 ng/mL resulted in an 83% lower breast cancer risk, which is nearly identical to GrassrootsHealth’s 2018 analysis.
One of the most recent meta-analyses17,18 looking at breast cancer was published December 28, 2019, in the journal Aging. Here, they reviewed 70 observational studies, finding that for each 2 ng/mL (5 nmol/L) increase in vitamin D level there was a corresponding 6% decrease in breast cancer incidence.
Overall, this translates into a 71% reduced risk when you increase your vitamin D level from 20 ng/mL to 60 ng/mL. The following graph, created by GrassrootsHealth,19 illustrates the dose response between vitamin D levels and breast cancer risk found in this study.

GrassrootsHealth’s 2018 analysis in PLOS ONE also analyzed this dose relationship.20 To do that, they looked at the percentage of breast cancer-free participants in various vitamin D groups, from deficient (below 20 ng/mL) to optimal (at or above 60 ng/mL), over time (four years).
As you might expect, the higher the blood level of vitamin D, the lower the incidence of breast cancer. The graph below illustrates this dose-related protection. At four years, the percentage of women who had been diagnosed with breast cancer in the 60 ng/mL group was 78% lower than among those with blood levels below 20 ng/mL.

How to Optimize Your Vitamin D Level

If you live in the northern hemisphere, which is currently heading toward winter, now is the time to check your vitamin D level and start taking action to raise it if you’re below 40 ng/mL (100 nmol/L). As you can see from the studies above, a vitamin D level of 60 ng/mL (150 nmol/L) or higher is recommended if you want to protect against cancer.
An easy and cost-effective way of measuring your vitamin D level is to order GrassrootsHealth’s vitamin D testing kit. Once you know your current vitamin D level, use the GrassrootsHealth vitamin D calculator21 to determine how much vitamin D you might need to reach your target level. To optimize vitamin D absorption and utilization, be sure to take your vitamin D with vitamin K2 and magnesium.
Lastly, remember to retest in three to four months to make sure you’ve reached your target level. If you have, then you know you’re taking the correct dosage. If you’re still low (or have reached a level above 80 ng/mL), you’ll need to adjust your dosage accordingly and retest again in another three to four months.

Choline is an essential nutrient, but it is not usually classified as a vitamin. According to Biology Online, a vitamin is “a low molecular weight organic compound that is essential for normal growth and metabolic processes and is required in trace amounts.”1 Since your body can produce some choline in the liver, it is not classified as a vitamin.
Your body needs fat-soluble and water-soluble vitamins to function optimally. Fat-soluble vitamins are stored in fatty tissue and the liver.2 They include vitamins A, D, E and K. Water-soluble vitamins are not easily stored and the excess is normally flushed out of your body in the urine. Water-soluble vitamins include vitamin C and all the B vitamins.
Choline is found in fat-soluble and water-soluble compounds in your food.3 Enzymes in your body free the choline from the compounds in your food where it’s absorbed in the small intestines and moved to the liver. Choline is then sent around your body to help make cell membranes.
Your body does not naturally produce enough choline to meet your needs. Therefore, you must get some from the food you eat.4 Choline levels are not routinely measured, but most people in the U.S. eat less than the recommended amount of foods containing choline.
While symptoms of a frank deficiency in healthy children and adults are rare, insufficient choline may be linked to health conditions including neurological degeneration and liver disease. Choline functions in the body overlap those of B vitamins, which in part may explain how choline was originally called vitamin B4.
Choline Was Once Considered a Vitamin

The earliest recorded information about choline occurred in 1862 when Adolph Strecker found that when lecithin was heated it generated a new chemical.5 He named that chemical choline. Three years later Oscar Liebreich identified a new molecule in the human brain that he named “neurine” and which later turned out to be identical to choline.
Nearly 100 years later in 1954, Eugene Kennedy described a pathway the body uses to incorporate choline into phosphatidylcholine. By this time scientists had identified many of the B complex vitamins.6
It wasn’t until 1998, though, that the Nutrition Board of the National Academies of Medicine recognized choline as an essential nutrient.7 In the fall of 2020, Elena Gagliardi from the ambulatory nutrition services department at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center spoke with a reporter from U.S. News & World Report and explained that choline is not a vitamin.8
Instead, it is “a chemical compound vital for its many roles in the body.”9 Adenine is a chemical constituent of flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD), which helps convert choline in the mitochondrial matrix.10
There is a close relationship between adenine and choline — so much so that some also refer to adenine as vitamin B411 and others use the terms interchangeably.12 However, it doesn’t matter what term is used, choline is a crucial nutrient for health and wellness.
Choline Is Crucial to Cognitive Function and Liver Health

According to a paper in Nutrition Today, the adequate intake (AI) for choline was calculated when the population levels of it were relatively unknown. Rather than being calculated based on experimental determinations or estimations of intake, it was calculated in part based on a study of adult men who developed liver damage after becoming deficient in it.13
The AI levels for others were then extrapolated based on standard reference weights. However, recent analysis has shown nearly 90% of people living in the U.S. do not eat enough choline-rich foods. Added to this, the 2015 to 2020 dietary guidelines for Americans did not recommend sufficient choline-rich foods to meet your needs.
A deficiency in choline can have wide-ranging effects. For example, there are indications that cholinergic dysfunction impacts the development of dementia. Studies and reviews of the literature supported the hypothesis that cholinergic dysfunction contributes to Alzheimer’s disease.14,15
Subsequently, it was discovered acetylcholine plays a central role in the nervous system, which requires an enzyme to synthesize it from acetyl-CoA and choline.16 The enzyme is called acetyltransferase. This connection likely explains, at least in part, the effect that anticholinergic drugs have on short-term cognitive impairment in the elderly.17
The medications act on acetylcholine, which sends messages that affect muscle contraction and the part of the brain that handles memory and learning. In one study, 347 participants who had experienced a stroke were given citicoline for 12 months. This is a supplemental combination of choline and cytidine.18
At the end of 12 months, the researchers found the supplement improved cognitive decline in the participants and “appears to be a promising agent to improve recovery after stroke.” Choline may also be a key factor in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which is one of the most common forms of liver disease in the U.S.19
In part, NAFLD is triggered by obesity and insulin resistance, which scientists find leads to fibrosis and then cirrhosis or liver cancer. There are two forms that are not associated with alcohol consumption. The first is simple fatty liver or nonalcoholic fatty liver (NAFL) and the second is called nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
NAFL involves little inflammation or cellular damage, while NASH can lead to fibrosis, cirrhosis or liver cancer. In one study published in the Journal of Nutrition, researchers found women of normal weight who had the highest dietary intake of choline had a lower risk of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.20
Choline Has a Significant Impact on More Body Systems

According to Chris Masterjohn, Ph.D., choline deficiency may be more significant in the development of NAFLD than consuming too much fructose. His degree is in nutritional science and he believes the rise in fatty liver conditions is largely due to dietary changes.
In his review of the medical literature, Masterjohn found a link between choline and fatty liver, which was initially discovered in research into Type 1 diabetes. He describes the relationship:21

“In 1949, however, researchers showed that sucrose and ethanol had equal potential to cause fatty liver and the resulting inflammatory damage, and that increases in dietary protein, extra methionine, and extra choline could all completely protect against this effect.

Conversely, much more recent research has shown that sucrose is a requirement for the development of fatty liver disease in a methionine- and choline-deficient (MCD) model. The MCD model of fatty liver disease is the oldest and most widely used dietary model.

The MCD model produces not only the accumulation of liver fat, but massive inflammation similar to the worst forms of fatty liver disease seen in humans. What no one ever mentions about this diet is that it is primarily composed of sucrose and its fat is composed entirely of corn oil!

The picture that is clearly emerging from all of these studies is that fat, or anything from which fat is made in the liver, such as fructose and ethanol, are required for the development of fatty liver. But in addition to this [same] factor — overwhelmingly, it appears to be choline deficiency — must deprive the liver of its ability to export that fat.”

In one study published in the journal Nutrition & Metabolism, researchers enrolled 866 patients with newly diagnosed hepatocellular carcinoma to test survival rates as compared to serum choline levels.22 The data showed patients with higher serum choline levels had better survival rates from liver cancer than those with lower levels.
Choline is a building block of acetylcholine and phosphatidylcholine, a component of very low density lipoproteins.23 The brain uses phosphatidylcholine to make acetylcholine, which affects cognitive function. Phosphatidylcholine is also used in the treatment of several health conditions, including gallbladder disease, premenstrual syndrome and hepatitis.24
Krill Oil Supports Choline Levels and Physical Performance

Donald Layman, Ph.D., from the department of food science and human nutrition at the University of Illinois, talked about the relationship between exercise performance and choline, saying:25

“Exercise increases energy expenditure, helps maintain body composition, and controls body weight. We all know that routine daily exercise is important, but we often forget that good nutrition choices are essential for optimal muscle performance.

Specifically, choline is part of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine—the signal that stimulates muscle contraction, which supports muscle movement and performance. We also know that choline losses occur after exercise of only an hour, with a long run, cycling or a competitive tennis match.”

Choline plays a role in maintaining muscle function. Serum concentrations may be depleted during high-intensity exercise. In one study, researchers engaged 47 triathletes from age 25 to 61 from Ironman distance and Olympic distance triathlons. The group was split into two: 24 received daily krill supplements for five weeks before the race and 23 received a daily placebo of mixed vegetable oils.26
The athletes’ blood was tested before the race, immediately after and the following day. The researchers were analyzing serum choline levels and its metabolites. The data showed serum concentrations decreased significantly in all the races, but those receiving krill oil maintained more of their serum choline than those getting the placebo.
In one lab analysis, researchers found 69 choline-containing phospholipids in krill oil, which confirmed “the complexity of the phospholipid composition of krill oil.”27 The choline composition of krill oil may also be more bioavailable since “It has been suggested that 60% of choline in inorganic salts is lost to conversion to trimethylamine (TMA) by intestinal bacteria.”28
Enzymes may then turn TMA into trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO), a potential biomarker for insulin resistance and heart problems. As noted by the researchers, “Choline in the form of PC is considerably less converted to TMA as demonstrated in a single-dose study with krill oil, potentially resulting in more efficient delivery of choline.”29
For example, evidence has shown that 28 days of krill oil supplementation increased choline levels in healthy young adults.30 Additionally, the researchers in this study noted: “no adverse effects on plasma levels of TMAO and carnitine were found.”
How to Get More Choline

In a study comparing phosphatidylcholine, present in krill oil, and choline bitartrate salt, it was found that the krill oil led to higher levels of the important metabolites betaine and dimethylglycine (DMG) along with lower levels of TMAO, which can lead to health issues, compared to the other choline sources.31
Krill oil also offers more nutrients, including eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which are beneficial for heart health and have been shown to improve blood pressure,32 reduce overall inflammation, reduce the effects of rheumatoid arthritis33 and depression34 and help slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.35
Egg yolks are another excellent choline source. Among egg consumers, approximately 57% met the adequate intake levels for choline, compared to just 2.4% of people who consumed no eggs.36
In fact, the researchers in this same analysis concluded that it’s “extremely difficult” to get enough choline unless you eat eggs or take a dietary supplement, though it’s preferable to get nutrients from dietary sources whenever possible. Other dietary sources of choline include:37,38

Grass fed beef liver
Organic pasture raised chicken
Wild-caught Alaskan salmon

Roe fish eggs
Atlantic cod
Kidney beans

Quinoa
Brussels sprouts
Broccoli

Shiitake mushroom
Cauliflower
Sunflower seeds

1 Certain enzymes may be useful for COVID-19 because they help:
Support quick weight loss
Degrade fibrin, which is a key factor in clot formation
Extracted from earthworms, lumbrokinase is a highly effective antithrombotic agent that reduces blood viscosity and platelet aggregation while also degrading fibrin, which is a key factor in clot formation. Learn more.
Reduce your exposure to infectious agents
COVID-19 mutate into a less virulent virus

2 Which of the following are currently working to eliminate “anti-vaccine propaganda” from public discussion using sophisticated cyberwarfare tools?
Facebook and Twitter
Google
British and American intelligence agencies
All of the above
British and American intelligence agencies are collaborating with Google, Facebook and Twitter to eliminate “anti-vaccine propaganda” from public discussion using sophisticated cyberwarfare tools. Learn more.

3 Taking carnosine is one way to help stop the oxidative damage caused by iron intake in the presence of too many omega-6s. This is especially important if you’re:
Low on sleep
Under high stress
A vegetarian or vegan
Taking carnosine is one way to help stop the oxidative damage caused by iron intake in the presence of too many omega-6s … Eating beef is known to efficiently raise carnosine levels in your muscle, which is why if you’re a vegetarian or vegan this supplement may be particularly important. Learn more.
An office worker

4 The first randomized controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of surgical face masks against SARS-CoV-2 infection found:
Masks did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection
The first randomized controlled trial of more than 6,000 individuals to assess the effectiveness of surgical face masks against SARS-CoV-2 infection found masks did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection. Learn more.
Masks significantly reduced the incidence of infection
Masks marginally reduced the incidence of severe infection
Masks eliminated the risk of infection

5 Recent research looking at data from nearly 10 million Chinese people in Wuhan, China, found people who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 but had no symptoms (asymptomatic) were:
Highly infectious and responsible for majority of infectious spread
Not infectious and had not spread the infection to anyone
A study looking at PCR test data from 9,899,828 residents in Wuhan city found that not a single one of those who had been in close contact with an asymptomatic individual tested positive. According to the authors, asymptomatic individuals have low viral load and are not infectious. Learn more.
As infectious as symptomatic patients
Infectious but to a lesser degree than symptomatic patients

6 Evidence suggests PCR testing for COVID-19 is being used to:
Accurately identify super-spreaders
Accurately identify infected people who need to be isolated
Incite fear in order to benefit an agenda developed by private corporations
The flaws of PCR testing have been capitalized upon to incite fear in order to benefit an agenda developed by private corporations, which include not only Big Tech companies, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, but also the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. Learn more.
Strengthen public trust that government is protecting us

7 Which of the following helps support your immune function?
Nutrients such as vitamin D, magnesium, zinc and selenium
Sauna bathing with or without exercise
Time-restricted eating
All of the above
Diet and nutritional supplementation are two key strategies that can help support your immune function. Topping the list of nutrients required are vitamin D, magnesium, zinc and selenium. Other strategies that help support your immunity through a variety of means include time-restricted eating, exercise and sauna. Learn more.

 

With COVID-19 vaccines on the precipice of mass distribution, news media are on fire as they talk about who will get the vaccine first and how it will be distributed. The one thing they aren’t discussing, however, is the definition of “effective” when it comes to these vaccines.

Early November 2020, Pfizer sent the stock market soaring1 when it announced its vaccine is more than 90% effective.2 One week later, Moderna — which designed its vaccine candidate in just two days3 — boasted a 94.5% effectiveness rating.4

However, if you read Pfizer’s and Moderna’s press releases and other clinical trial information, you’ll see that they have left out some really crucial information. For example:5

They don’t say how many cycles they used for the PCR tests they gave to count COVID-19 cases, which is crucial for determining the accuracy of those tests
They don’t say whether the “cases” had symptoms or not
They don’t mention anything about hospitalizations or deaths, meaning there is no indication it prevents either
There is no indication about how long the vaccine lasts if it truly is effective and protective. Some indications suggest you might need to take this vaccine every three to six months in order for it to be effective

Odds Ratios Can Be Misleading
In an article published by the Mises Institute, Dr. Gilbert Berdine, associate professor of medicine at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, writes:6

“The Pfizer study had 43,538 participants and was analyzed after 164 cases. So, roughly 150 out 21,750 participants (less than 0.7%) became PCR positive in the control group and about one-tenth that number in the vaccine group became PCR positive.
The Moderna trial had 30,000 participants. There were 95 ‘cases’ in the 15,000 control participants (about 0.6%) and five ‘cases’ in the 15,000 vaccine participants (about one-twentieth of 0.6%). The ‘efficacy’ figures quoted in these announcements are odds ratios …
When the risks of an event are small, odds ratios can be misleading about absolute risk. A more meaningful measure of efficacy would be the number [needed] to vaccinate to prevent one hospitalization or one death. Those numbers are not available.
An estimate of the number [needed] to treat from the Moderna trial to prevent a single ‘case’ would be 15,000 vaccinations to prevent 90 ‘cases’ or 167 vaccinations per ‘case’ prevented, which does not sound nearly as good as 94.5% effective.”

Pfizer’s Number Needed to Vaccinate = 256

In a letter to the editor, Dr. Allan Cunningham, a retired pediatrician in New York, also points out that Pfizer’s 90% effectiveness rating fails to tell the story in a way that people can understand, and goes on to estimate the number needed to vaccinate for Pfizer’s vaccine. He writes:7

“Specific data are not given but it is easy enough to approximate the numbers involved, based on the 94 cases in a trial that has enrolled about 40,000 subjects: 8 cases in a vaccine group of 20,000 and 86 cases in a placebo group of 20,000.
This yields a COVID-19 attack rate of 0.0004 in the vaccine group and 0.0043 in the placebo group. Relative risk (RR) for vaccination = 0.093, which translates into a ‘vaccine effectiveness’ of 90.7% [100(1-0.093)]. This sounds impressive, but the absolute risk reduction for an individual is only about 0.4% (0.0043-0.0004=0.0039).
The Number Needed to Vaccinate (NNTV) = 256 (1/0.0039), which means that to prevent just one COVID-19 case 256 individuals must get the vaccine; the other 255 individuals derive no benefit, but are subject to vaccine adverse effects, whatever they may be and whenever we learn about them.”

Major Safety Questions Still Remain
Indeed, when it comes to safety, it’s important to realize that since only a few thousand verified healthy volunteers have been exposed to the actual vaccine, the real beta testers will be the masses of people who line up first to take the vaccines when they come to market.

In his article, Berdine stresses he has yet to find a medical colleague who is willing to be among the first to take the experimental vaccine. Most say they want to review the safety data after a year or so of use before they’ll consider getting it.

“These colleagues are concerned about possible autoimmune side effects that may not appear for months after vaccination,” Berdine writes. It’s worth noting that none of the trials currently underway include immunocompromised volunteers, so the effects of these vaccines on people with suppressed immune function is wholly unknown.

This is a significant problem, seeing how an estimated 14.7 million to 23.5 million Americans suffer from some form of autoimmune disease,8 and these people are also at increased risk for COVID-19 complications and death.

If the vaccine exacerbates autoimmune problems, the outcome could be devastating for an extraordinary number of people. The volunteers currently enrolled in trials are all healthier than the average American, yet side effects appear commonplace even among this “elite” group.
What You Can Expect From the COVID-19 Vaccine
An October 20, 2020, article9 in the Observer lists the known side effects that have emerged in the various trials. Chills, fever, body aches and headache are the most commonplace, but at least two cases of transverse myelitis — inflammation of the spinal cord — have also occurred.

Even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that the vaccine’s side effects are “no walk in the park,”10 and Saad Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, has stressed the need for a broad-based outreach campaign to discuss the reality of side effects, as patients might not come back for the required second dose if the side effects take them by surprise.11
Dr. Eli Perencevich, a professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at the University of Iowa Health Care, has suggested essential workers should be granted three days of paid leave after they’re vaccinated, as many will feel too sick to work.12

A December 1, 2020, CNBC article,13 which looked at the frequency of adverse reactions, noted that 10% to 15% of participants in the Pfizer and Moderna trials reported “significantly noticeable” side effects.

Buried way down at the bottom of the article is a suggestion from a past advisory committee member, who proposes the nomenclature of “serious adverse reaction” be changed to “immune response,” so they can reprogram how people think about these side effects, even if they end up having to stay home from work because of them.
The article also admits they have no idea what, if any, long-term reactions there might be, which means (as we already knew) that this is a great big public health experiment and, of course, anything that happens post-marketing will be labeled a “coincidence.”

In related news, a participant in India’s AstraZeneca trial is now suing the company claiming the vaccine caused “serious neurological damage,”14 and a group of researchers warn the COVID-19 vaccines could potentially increase your risk of HIV infection.15 Then there are the concerns about the COVID-19 vaccine permanently altering your DNA, effectively turning you into a transhuman.16 As you can see, there’s a lot to consider before taking this vaccine.
Do We Really Need a COVID-19 Vaccine?
Berdine also points out that most of his colleagues believe “the uncertainties about safety exceed what they perceive to be a small benefit.”17 Indeed, at this point, a range of data suggest the COVID-19 vaccine may be completely unnecessary. For example:

• COVID-19 mortality is extremely low outside of nursing homes — 99.7% of people recover from COVID-19.18 If you’re under 60 years of age, your chance of dying from seasonal influenza is greater than your chance of dying from COVID-19.19
• Data clearly show that COVID-19 has not resulted in excess mortality, meaning the same number of people who die in any given year, on average, have died in this year of the pandemic.20,21 This is true even among the elderly, as evidenced in a Johns Hopkins University article published just before Thanksgiving. According to the article:22

“The deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19. Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same.”

As soon as the article started trending on Twitter, Johns Hopkins deleted it saying it “was being used to support false and dangerous inaccuracies about the impact of the pandemic.”23

• Studies24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31 suggest immunity against SARS-CoV-2 infection is more widespread than suspected, thanks to cross-reactivity with other coronaviruses that cause the common cold.

• Asymptomatic people are highly unlikely to spread SARS-CoV-2 — A study32 looking at PCR test data from nearly 10 million residents in Wuhan city found that not a single one of those who had been in close contact with an asymptomatic individual (someone who tested positive but had no symptoms) had been infected with the virus. In all instances, virus cultures from people who tested positive but had no symptoms also came up negative for live virus. 

Will COVID-19 Vaccine Save Lives?
Peter Doshi, associate editor of The BMJ, also questions the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines, pointing out that current trials are not designed to tell us whether the vaccines will actually save lives. And, if they don’t, are they really worth the risks involved? Doshi writes:33

“What will it mean exactly when a vaccine is declared ‘effective’? To the public this seems fairly obvious. ‘The primary goal of a COVID-19 vaccine is to keep people from getting very sick and dying,’ a National Public Radio broadcast said bluntly …
Yet the current phase III trials are not actually set up to prove either. None of the trials currently under way are designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or deaths. Nor are the vaccines being studied to determine whether they can interrupt transmission of the virus.”

Doshi points out that when Dr. Paul Offit was asked in an interview whether a recorded “event” in these trials meant moderate to severe illness, he replied yes, “that’s right.” But that’s not, in fact, correct. All Phase 3 trials count mild symptoms, such as a cough, as a “COVID-19 event,” and all will finalize their analyses after a mere 150 or 160 of the volunteers develop symptomatic COVID-19 — regardless of severity.

“Part of the reason may be numbers. Severe illness requiring hospital admission, which happens in only a small fraction of symptomatic COVID-19 cases, would be unlikely to occur in significant numbers in trials.
Data published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in late April reported a symptomatic case hospitalization ratio of 3.4% overall, varying from 1.7% in 0-49 year olds and 4.5% in 50-64 year olds to 7.4% in those 65 and over. 
Because most people with symptomatic COVID-19 experience only mild symptoms even trials involving 30,000 or more patients would turn up relatively few cases of severe disease,” Doshi writes.34
“Hospital admissions and deaths from COVID-19 are simply too uncommon in the population being studied for an effective vaccine to demonstrate statistically significant differences in a trial of 30,000 people.”

These trials also do not tell us anything about the vaccine’s ability to prevent transmission, as this would require testing volunteers twice a week for long periods of time — a strategy that is “operationally untenable,” according to Tal Zaks, chief medical officer at Moderna.35

COVID-19 Vaccine Poses Rare Distribution Challenges
Questions have also been raised about the potential for the COVID-19 vaccines to “go bad” due to improper storage. Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine has to be stored at an unheard of cold temperature even for Antarctica — minus 70 degrees Celsius, or 94 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. Moderna’s can be kept a bit warmer, at “just” minus 20 degrees C, or 4 below zero F. Both pose a problem for providers who will be administering the shots.

To get an idea of why the vaccines have to be frozen, NPR compares them to chocolates that melt easily.36 The reason the vaccines are so fragile is because they’re made with messenger RNA (mRNA), which turn your own cells into little factories that produce SARS-CoV-2 protein that in turn trigger antibody production.

The problem is that mRNA is easily broken down, so it needs the freezing temperatures to keep stable. Pfizer said its special packaging keeps the vaccines frozen with the help of dry ice. Even so, providers will still have to abide by strict guidelines, one of which says the freezer compartment storing the vaccines cannot be opened more than twice a day, and when opened, must be closed within one minute. Once thawed, the vaccine can be kept refrigerated for five days.

The whole situation makes distribution a challenge, too since the smallest amount you can order is 975 doses. That means the vaccines most likely will have to go to places capable of administering large numbers of vaccines in a short period of time to avoid spoilage. What happens if the vaccine is mishandled and spoils? No one knows. At best, it may be ineffective. At worst, it may cause completely unexpected side effects.
The Gold Rush of Vaccines and Indemnity

The risk of side effects is particularly troubling in light of the fact that vaccine manufacturers are indemnified against any harm that occurs from the use of their vaccines. In the video above, Children’s Health Defense (CHD), founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., highlights the gold rush that occurred for pharmaceutical companies when the World Health Organization declared swine flu a pandemic in 2009.

In 2011, the swine flu vaccine Pandemrix (used in Europe but not in the U.S. during 2009-2010) was causally linked to childhood narcolepsy.

Several experimental vaccines were hastily rushed to market following the WHO’s pandemic declaration, one of which resulted in thousands of European children and teens developing chronic narcolepsy and cataplexy (the sudden collapse due to loss of voluntary muscle control triggered by strong emotions or laughter).
In 2011, the ASO3-adjuvanted swine flu vaccine Pandemrix (used in Europe but not in the U.S. during 2009-2010) was causally linked37 to childhood narcolepsy, which had abruptly skyrocketed in several countries.38,39 Children and teens in Finland,40 the U.K.41 and Sweden42 were among the hardest hit.
Further analyses also discerned a rise in narcolepsy among adults who received the vaccine, although the link wasn’t as obvious as that in children and adolescents.43

A 2019 study44 reported finding a “novel association between Pandemrix-associated narcolepsy and the non-coding RNA gene GDNF-AS1” — a gene thought to regulate the production of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor or GDNF, a protein that plays an important role in neuronal survival. 

They also confirmed a strong association between vaccine-induced narcolepsy and a certain haplotype, suggesting “variation in genes related to immunity and neuronal survival may interact to increase the susceptibility to Pandemrix-induced narcolepsy in certain individuals.”

Now, in the midst of another controversial pandemic, we’re facing an eerily similar playbook — with pharmaceutical companies eager to cash in on the first COVID-19 vaccine, which begs the question, “Are we are being played — again?”
Not the First Hoax — Practice Makes Perfect
Pandemics have come and gone around the globe for centuries, but in recent history they’ve been used as points of manipulation that have profited corporations, particularly pharmaceutical companies.
The 2005 bird flu epidemic, for example, was predicted to kill from 2 million to 150 million people. It killed just 98 people, globally, in 2005, 115 in 2006 and 86 in 2007.45 No one in the U.S. died from this infection. The brazenness of the hoax prompted me to write my New York Times best seller book “The Great Bird Flu Hoax.”
In 2006, 2007 and again in 2008, hyped warnings over the bird flu were repeatedly exposed as little more than a cruel hoax, designed to instill fear and line the pocketbooks of industry and various vested individuals. In 2009, there was the swine flu hoax, the vaccination campaign for which, as mentioned, turned into a disaster.
The summer of 2012 was again filled with dire predictions of bird flu sufficiently mutating to cause a human pandemic, immediately followed by urgent calls for fast-tracked vaccines. None of these pandemics ever turned into global killers, and COVID-19 is no different. As mentioned earlier, there’s no evidence of excess deaths due to this novel virus.
The COVID-19 pandemic differs from previous ones, however, in that it’s being used not just to enrich drug companies and justify the existence of gain-of-function research, but also to usher in a “reset” of the entire global economy by the technocrats. While failing economies around the world are blamed on the pandemic, the central bank system has been faltering for some time and is now on its last leg.
The global debt load is now so high, countries cannot even pay off the interest, and thus the system no longer works. It needs to be “reset,” but rather than ditching the central bank system and resetting it to something stable (such as returning to a gold-backed system), the technocrats in charge are ushering in an all-digital centralized currency that will give them total control over the finances of every human on earth.
What’s more, the economic reset is only one part of this all-encompassing totalitarian takeover. The COVID-19 vaccine fits into the scheme by providing an excuse to track and trace everyone’s whereabouts, and connect this medical surveillance together with the digital economy. You can learn more about this in “What You Need to Know About the Great Reset.”
No Accountability for Vaccine Harms

As noted by Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), based on the historical failures of past coronavirus vaccines, a fast-tracked COVID-19 vaccine could become one of the biggest public health disasters in history.

And, no one involved will be held accountable or face any repercussions, just as GlaxoSmithKline was not held accountable for the narcolepsy cases caused by Pandemrix. Instead, they will all continue to profit while an unsuspecting public will beta test yet another potentially dangerous vaccine.

Even if severe side effects are rare, when you’re talking about vaccinating some 7 billion people, even a tiny percentage will translate into millions of people affected.

Davos is a city in Switzerland, known as much for its excellent skiing as it is for hosting the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting. The meeting is formally described as “the most creative force for engaging the world’s top leaders in collaborative activities to shape the global, regional and industry agendas at the beginning of each year.”1
This elite oligarchy, however, is behind a technocratic plan to govern society through technology, programmed by scientists and technicians and automated through the use of artificial intelligence, rather than through democratically elected politicians and government leaders. The video above shows snippets of the World Economic Forum’s 2016 meeting, with narrative by Truthstream Media.2
It’s compared to the meetings of the secretive Bilderberg Group, created by Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands in 1954 to “foster dialogue between Europe and North America,”3 but unlike Bilderberg meetings — the details of which are not made public, but which have reportedly referred to protestors as “cockroaches”4 — WEF is an open forum that may be filmed and released to the public.
This particular discussion, therefore, is eerily polite, but that doesn’t make its content any less chilling.
Scientists Scheming How to Use Your Own Thoughts Against You

What if, one day in the next decade, it becomes possible to read your thoughts? The WEF panelists suggest that different ways of scanning the brain and brain mapping could be incorporated into the legal system, used by lawyers as part of trials, including against you.
Apparently, according to one of the panelists, Jack Gallant, head of The Gallant Lab at UC Berkeley, “Anything that’s in current conscious awareness can be decoded, it’s just a matter of [finding the] technologies”5 to do so.
If brain mapping became mainstream, it could have major applications applicable to the law, such that even if a person chooses not to confess, their brain could be tapped to do it for them. This has already occurred in India, when brain scan technology was used to criminally convict someone based on the data received from their brain, not via their spoken words.6,7
It’s possible, for instance, to decode signals in the brain in such detail that you could reconstruct a movie a person has seen, including not only the objects and actions in the movie, but also how that person felt about the movie — whether it made them feel happy, sad or otherwise.
Already, in 2017, researchers with Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories and Kyoto University created a program to reconstruct images from brain activity.8 In one example, a person saw or imagined an image of a cheetah, which led the program to reconstruct an image of a cheetah, albeit one with a dreamlike, somewhat abstract aura.9
Further, every emotion you feel leaves a signature in your brain that can be “read.” Mindreading, then, is no longer a work of science fiction. WEF cited a study by Carnegie Mellon University researchers who are using mindreading technology to decode complex thoughts.10,11 According to WEF:12

“The technology, the researchers say, is able to understand complex events, expressed as sentences, and semantic features, such as people, places and actions, to predict what types of thoughts are being contemplated. After accessing the mental triggers for 239 sentences, the program was able to predict a 240th phrase with 87% accuracy …

Marcel Just, who is leading the research, said … ‘This advance makes it possible for the first time to decode thoughts containing several concepts. That’s what most human thoughts are composed of.’”

‘The Worst Possible Brain Decoding Device’

There is currently no such thing as protection of “freedom of thought” the way there is protection for freedom of speech, and the notion of “mental privacy” isn’t even on the radar. Yet, this brain decoding technology is being slated for use against the public.
Gallant stated, “There’s a huge government program now to increase measurement technology for neuroscience … as it helps basic research so we can measure the brain better, that will have applications in brain decoding and interpretational brain function that will be applicable to the law.”13
Another panelist, Brian Knutson, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Stanford, describes thoughts and feelings that you may not be able to verbalize, or may not want to verbalize, that still leave a signature in your brain. “And we might be able to decode that,” he said.14
One goal, it appears, may be to decode a person’s brain even without their consent. Rana Foroohar, TIME magazine’s assistant managing editor in charge of economics and business, also a panelist, said:15

“If we could get to the point, where either you can have an unwilling suspect or an unwilling individual having their brain decoded in some sense … legal systems don’t bake in any presumption that we can do that and so there’s no legal protections that can be afforded to you.

So if you look nationally, internationally at whether or not there are any human rights … if there are constitutional protections for something like freedom of thought or mental privacy or cognitive liberty, nothing like that exists yet.”

Scientists have already decoded various aspects of language, such as phonetics, syntax and semantics. From there, it’s just a matter of time before internal speech — your very thoughts and mind — can also be decoded.
“Once you have those models,” Gallant said, “you can actually decode language. Now, of course, the obvious application of that is decoding internal speech. And once you decode internal speech, then you essentially have the sort of worst possible brain decoding device, or best possible, depending on your view. Certainly, the most controversial brain decoding device.”16 Then the panelists laugh.
Are Portable Brain Decoding Devices a Few Years Away?

Gallant said he believes it’s just a matter of time before there will be portable brain decoding technology that decodes language as fast as you can text on your cellphone: “Everyone will wear them, because people have shown that they’re quite willing to give up privacy for convenience.” A prototype could be here in the next decade.
While they bring up the “scary” ethical and privacy questions this raises, there’s no question of whether or not they should move forward. This is already occurring.
“Technology is about to openly bring us an era where government authorities can read people’s minds without their permission and use it against them including in court, pre-crime, thought police/thought crime and labeling people including children as potential criminals based on their brainwaves and all of this was discussed casually at Davos,” Truthstream Media noted.17
In fact, Kent Kiehl, of the University of New Mexico and the MIND Research Network, has used brain scans to uncover what he believes is a specific brain signature for psychopathy.18,19 He’s also noted, “A great deal of research suggests that the core, precipitating features of psychopathy are developmental in nature, with relatively persistent traits becoming apparent before the age of 10.”20
If it turns out you can decipher who may become a psychopath via brain decoding, and identify them by the age of 10 — then what? Scientists are also trying to use brain decoding to figure out how likely it is that someone may commit a crime again, in order to influence criminal sentencing.
The WEF panel even put out a public poll to find out who people would trust with access to their thoughts and memories — government, police, your doctor, your employer, your spouse or none of them? Three percent said they would give over access to the government, compared to 25% to their spouse.
False Memories Can Be Implanted

Part of what makes brain decoding, and the use of mindreading, so terrifying is that memories can be manipulated. Elizabeth Loftus, a professor of psychology at UC Irvine, has done extensive research showing that memory is not only not reliable, but easily manipulated.
“We can easily distort memories for the details of an event that you did experience,” she told The Guardian in 2003. “And we can also go so far as to plant entirely false memories — we call them rich false memories because they are so detailed and so big.”21 What her decades of research have shown is that memory doesn’t always work like a recording device that simply plays back scenarios as they occurred.
“Memory works a little bit more like a Wikipedia page,” she told NPR. “You can go in there and change it, but so can other people.”22 False memories, then, can be implanted in people’s minds, and that’s not all.
Another area of research is pain detection — understanding the circuitries that cause pain. If that can be manipulated, it’s possible that instilling pain could also be used as a coercive measure in the legal system, the WEF panelists noted. “That’s amazing,” one of them responded.
US Government Has History of Mind Control Experiments

If this sounds too conspiratorial, too outlandish to be real life, consider the CIA’s top-secret MK-Ultra project, which engaged in mind control experiments, human torture and other medical studies, including how much LSD it would take to “shatter the mind and blast away consciousness.”23
In decades past, the technocrats — the global, mostly unelected, elite that steer the management of nations worldwide — called for a “new world order.” Currently, terms like “the Great Reset,” “the Fourth Industrial Revolution” and “Build Back Better” are being thrown around, as fear and social control, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, grow.
All of these terms refer to the same long-term globalist agenda to dismantle democracy and national borders in favor of a global governance by unelected leaders, and the reliance on technological surveillance, i.e., brain decoding, digital “health passports” and more, rather than the rule of law to maintain public order.
The warning signs are all around us, if we’re willing to see them for what they actually are. The only question now is whether enough people are willing to resist it to make a difference.