Tag: zinc

Immunity Hx: The Super Immune Supplement

Immunity Hx: The Super Immune Supplement

Immunity Hx Dr. Claire Arcidiacono, ND   I wanted to do my product highlight on what I consider to be the cornerstone of immune heath. In fact Immune is in its very name, Immunity Hx! Immunity Hx is a combination of vitamin C, vitamin D3 

Lowering the risk of Cardiac Arrest, Part 2, Invite Health Podcast, Episode 616

Lowering the risk of Cardiac Arrest, Part 2, Invite Health Podcast, Episode 616

Subscribe Today!   Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode. LOWERING THE RISK OF CARDIAC ARREST, PART 2- INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 616 Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph. *Intro Music* InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro:[00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast where our 

New Data, Vitamin D & the Immune System. Invite Health Podcast, Episode 610

New Data, Vitamin D & the Immune System. Invite Health Podcast, Episode 610


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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.

NEW DATA, VITAMIN D & THE IMMUNE SYSTEM, INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 610

Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph.

*Intro Music*

InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro:[00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast where our degreed health care professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health. You can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that Invite Health has to offer at, www.invitehealth.com/podcast. First time customers can use promo code podcast at checkout for an additional 15% off your first purchase. Let’s get started. [00:00:34]

*Intro Music*

Jerry Hickey, Ph: [00:00:40] An insufficient level of vitamin D in your blood is connected with an increased risk of developing all kinds of infections fungal infections, bacterial infections, viral infections, having low vitamin D is connected with an increased risk of developing a respiratory tract infection, which would include COVID type infections, the flu, colds, but also lacking vitamin D, just low levels increased the length of time. You may remain infected, you’ll be sick for a longer time, and possibly most importantly, lacking vitamin D is connected with an increased risk of a severe infection and winding up in the hospital and having, if it’s a respiratory tract infection, having severe, a severe attack on your lungs. Sadly, habitually lacking Vitamin D is also associated with an increased risk of dementia. Now, it’s important to put all of these things on the table, because most of the time they’re just talking about vitamin D and its effect on bone is, does it have an effect? Does it not have an effect? I think it has a very good effect on both. So hi, my name is Jerry Hickey. I’m a nutritional pharmacist, I’m the senior scientific officer over here at Invite Health. Welcome to my episode, new Data, Vitamin D, Immunity and Brain Health. You can find all of the invite podcast episode for free wherever you listen to podcasts or just go to Invitehealth.com/podcast. You can also find invite on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at Invite Health. All of the information related to this episode is listed at the description on the website, so let’s get going. Oh, and by the way, you can also find Invite on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at Invite Health. I said that, I said that. [00:02:31]

[00:02:32] So let’s look at some of the data. Here’s the British Medical Journal in 2017. Now it’s a meta analysis, a meta analysis means the researchers put together a bunch of studies looking at the same thing. And they go through these studies and they pick out the ones that have good data, that are explained well, that are real, that lack any type of bias. So it’s important because a good, well-done meta analysis can tell you if something works or it doesn’t work. So they found a bunch of very dependable studies, that sufficient vitamin D is repeatedly associated with a decreased risk of respiratory tract infections. You know, like the nose and a mouth, the trachea, the bronchi, the lungs, a 20% decreased risk. That’s pretty powerful if you consider how often people get respiratory tract infections like a cold or flu, reducing the incidence or risk by that figure, 20%, that’s profound. That’s a lot of people who are not getting sick. And if you’re older, where the immune system may not be as powerful as it used to be, and well functioning as it used to be, or if you have some weakened state from a condition like severe hypertension that’s not being treated or diabetes that’s not being treated, this really becomes incredibly important. Now, this is based on significant data. And they also found that daily doses of vitamin D or weekly doses work better than bolus doses, a bolus dose is like one huge dose at one time. For instance, 30,000 units like once a month didn’t really work. What worked best was taking a thousand units to 3000 units every day. So today they’ve changed the way they, they look at vitamin D, the potency of it, a thousand units would be 25 micrograms, mcg and 3000 units would be 75 micrograms. And always take your vitamin D with food, it’ll be absorbed better because it’s somewhat fatty soluble. And also look for the D3 form, which is called cholecalciferol it really seems to be superior to vitamin D2, which is ergocalciferol. [00:04:57]

[00:05:00] Now research shows that sufficient vitamin D, you could be low on vitamin D or you could be really low in vitamin D. Okay, there’s different categories, but, having sufficient vitamin D reduces your risk of infections in general, reduces your risk of upper respiratory tract infections. So that’s, you know, that’s like the mouth and the throat, reduces the severity of infections. So they’re weaker, lacking vitamin D increases your susceptibility to a variety of infections, including COVID 19 and other coronaviruses, tuberculosis, colds, influenza, another name for the flu and bacterial vaginosis. You have an increased risk of ARDS, that stands for acute respiratory distress syndrome, terrible, that’s when people need, like, a ventilator or oxygen. You have an increased risk of requiring oxygen. It can lengthen your your stay in a hospital lacking vitamin D, but it also increases morbidity, which is how sick you get, and mortality, which is obviously the end of the road from respiratory tract infections. So vitamin D is incredibly important for the immune system. And we’ll go into why in a second. Now, Vitamin D regulates the immune system, it’s the B cells and the T cells. These are sort of the educated part of the immune system, we’ll go into this. They’re loaded with receptor sites for vitamin D, so B cells, this is the acquired immune system. You basically have two parts of the immune system, there’s the innate immune system that you’re born with, pretty much born with, and then there is acquired immune system which is educated for specific infections. So that would be your T cells, which are like tigers, the tigers of the immune system, they shred things, they shred viruses and bacteria, fungi and parasites and cancer cells and B cells, which is what gives birth to your antibodies. So they’re loaded with receptors sites for vitamin D, showing how important vitamin D is for the immune system. Meaning that if you lack vitamin D, these receptors sites are not full, they don’t fill up and the cells will not work efficiently and you can have real problems.† [00:07:36]

ICYMI: IS IT A COLD? INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 605>>LISTEN NOW!

[00:07:39] So the macrophages and dendritic cells are also loaded with vitamin D receptor sites, a receptor site, it’s like a specific key to unlock a specific lock. In this case, it’s to activate something and control something. So only vitamin D can fit into these receptor sites. So the macrophages are these huge stay put cells like you have in the lining of your intestines and your liver, etc. and they gobble things up, they literally swallow things and release biological weapons that dissolve the infectious organism, that’s called phagocytosis. And dendritic cells are kind of like cells that coordinate the immune system, so both of these require vitamin D. So vitamin D is required for innate immunity and it’s required for adaptive immunity. In other words, it’s required for survival. Vitamin D, actually at the cellular level activates immune system proteins. Now, the second most common thing in the human body are proteins. Proteins make your connective tissue like your cartilage, proteins make your bone, proteins make your muscle, but proteins also make enzymes and hormones and things that make the body work. And in this case, these are proteins involved with the immune system. And these proteins are activated by vitamin D, and they fight viruses and they fight bacteria and they fight fungal infections, you know, like Candida albicans. So examples of these proteins are cathelicidin and defensins. These are very powerful antimicrobial peptides, tiny proteins. So a cathelicidin typically would be CAMP which stands for Cathelicidin anti-microbial peptide. An Infection triggers the vitamin D receptors in the lungs to release CAMP and CAMP helps to kill these infections. The defensins are expressed in leukocytes, leukocytes are all your white blood cells, but also epithelial cells. So these are like the cells that line your blood vessels and line your digestive tract, they line your lungs, etc. So does alpha and beta defensins. So these are these are called on by vitamin D, if you like vitamin D, perhaps not enough of these are going to be activated to keep you alive if you start to develop a severe infection. So the cathelicidins and defensins can bind to things such as the influenza virus or the flu viruses, and this reduces their ability to infect your cells. They can’t get into the cell, they can’t stick onto the cell, they can’t kill the cell, they can’t spread to other cells that care propagate. Likewise, these vitamin D related peptides inhibit bacteria, and typically across the board, viral replication, the increase in population size, increase titers of these infectious organisms.† [00:10:49]

[00:10:50] But this is also important. Vitamin D also helps protect us from our own immune system. Our own immune system can shred us. I mean, this was happening with COVID 19. People were developing a condition where their immune system was reacting to the infection to COVID 19 and causing acute respiratory distress syndrome, where certain cytokines, it was called cytokine storm, certain cytokines, chemical messengers from the immune system, like interleukin 6, were causing devastating inflammation of the lungs. The lungs were swollen with fluid and people were put on to ventilators and dying. You remember that early on with COVID 19? I Like in Central Italy and places like that, in Queens, New York, it was terrible. So Vitamin D helps prevent the over production, the over proliferation of pro-inflammatory cytokines. So that helps protect you from your immune system, destroying your lungs. I mean, examples of your immune system destroying you are all of those more dangerous forms of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus, erythematosus, mixed connective tissue disease. These are bad diseases. It shows you how violent the immune system can be against us, the owners of the immune system, if it’s not properly controlled and you need vitamin D to help control it. So the   cytokine storm, if you’re lacking vitamin D, not only increases morbidity, how sick you get winding up in the emergency room on oxygen, etc., but also mortality. Vitamin D also helps control T helper cells. T helper cells sometimes can get out of control and it can cause too much inflammation and too much cytokine production, so vitamin D helps to control the production of interferon gamma related to T helper cells and TNF alpha, TNF alpha is also called cachexia, that’s involved with that wasting syndrome you see in people with advanced cancer. Another name for TNF Alpha is tumor necrosis factor alpha, it can be nasty when it’s out of control. Vitamin D has been shown to reduce the risk of developing COVID, the flu and cold infections.† [00:13:06]

[00:13:07] Here’s a fairly recent study from Boston University School of Medicine. It’s in PLOS One, which is a great group of journals, American journals that are open access, meaning anybody can go in there and read them. You don’t have to pay for it because we taxpayers pay for it. So here’s Boston University School of Medicine Research, in patients who are hospitalized with COVID 19, blood levels of vitamin D at or greater than 30 nanograms per milliliter, that’s, you want a minimum of 39 nanograms per milliliter, we’ll go into your blood level of vitamin D later, and what that means. They had a decreased and their risk of becoming unconscious, they had a decreased risk of becoming hypoxic, in other words, being starved for oxygen and added decreased risk of dying from COVID shows you the connection between vitamin D and the immune system, but also their Hs-crp was lower, that’s very interesting. I have my hs-crp checked at least once a year,    hs-crp stands for highly sensitive C-reactive protein. It’s a peptide, a small protein made by the liver when you’re inflamed. So we don’t know exactly what it does, if it harms you or if it’s meant to protect you. But it’s a proxy for inflammation. So you want your Hs-crp to be below one, that’s normal, that’s normal level of inflammation, things are going as expected. If it’s two, because this is a very sensitive measure, it indicates that you have inflammation in your blood vessels and you’re  actually developing atherogenesis as we speak, athrogenesis is starting to clog your arteries, you know, developing blockages in the arteries, hardening of the arteries. And if it’s over three in a research shows that you have an increased risk not just of developing heart disease, but also of that plaque becoming highly unstable, plaque vulnerability and breaking off and causing a stroke or heart attack. So you want your hs-crp lower and they show to even in these people with a severe infection, their hs-crp was more under control. That’s a great finding.† [00:15:11]

[00:15:12] They also had a higher concentration of lymphocytes. Now that’s good. Lymphocytes are the acquired immune system, what we call before the educated immune system. There’s basically three groups of cells in there. There is the natural killer cells, there’s the T cells, there’s the B cells, there’s the T cells, and there’s the natural killer cells. The B cells develop the antibodies, that’s where the antibodies are formed. And the antibodies are very specific for specific viruses and bacteria, etc. So, for instance, if somebody had the flu, they develop specific antibodies to that flu. The next time that flows around, they have a lower risk of becoming sick or at least becoming very sick. They have a lower risk of becoming very sick. And that’s what the flu shots are based on. So B cells create antibodies. T cells do a lot of things, they’re like, oh, they could be monsters. I mean, they go in there and they shred infections, they control the immune system, they bring in immune cells, and they at the end of the infection, if they’re working properly, they call off the immune system. And then there’s natural killer cells, which are bridge cells that have kind of a memory, all these cells have a memory. And the acquired immune system, they all have a memory for specific infections. So the natural, what happens your innate immune system, the part you’re kind of born with, with that kind of peters out after about three days, it’s getting fatigued like the neutrophils that are becoming fatigued that your most common white blood cell, so the lymphocytes are not ready to function yet, the T cells are not functioning yet. You haven’t made antibodies yet, you need a bridge cell between those, that’s called a natural killer cell. So you need vitamin D also for the natural killer cells, just like you need vitamin C and Zinc, by the way.† [00:17:11]

[00:17:13] Now, getting back to this Boston University School of Medicine study, their hs-crp was lower, so they were less inflamed, that’s a good sign. And they had a higher concentration of these lymphocytes, like the the antibodies and the T cells and having sufficient vitamin D decreased the risk in general of catching COVID 19 by 54% by 54%, having sufficient Vitamin D. So what do you look for? What do you look for with vitamin D? Well, you want D3 the studies show that D3 seems to work longer and more efficiently and effectively in humans than D2. D2 is called ergocalciferol, D3 is cholecalciferol, and you want 25 micrograms to 75 micrograms a day. You take it with food, it’s absorbed better because it’s fatty soluble. 25 micrograms, the old way would be a thousand units, 75 micrograms would be 3000 units. And the blood, when they do a blood test, they look at 25 hydroxy-cholecalciferol. So I’ll give you a little background on that, and I don’t think we’re going to get to the part about vitamin D and memory and Alzheimer’s today in brain health. Well, we’ll probably have to do a separate episode because this is taking longer than I thought it would.† [00:18:35]

[00:18:38] When a doctor takes your blood test for vitamin D, they’re looking at the inactive form. They’re not looking at the active form. The inactive form is called 25 hydroxycholecalciferol, so if you have young skin and light skin and you get enough sun, the sun hits the cholesterol in your skin and convert to 25 hydroxycholecalciferol, which is stored in the liver. That lasts about a week in the bloodstream and then that’s released and through the function of magnesium and the kidneys, it’s converted to the active form of vitamin D, which is 125- dihydroxycholecalciferol. So when doctors check your vitamin D, they’re not looking at the active form. They’re looking at the storage form because it lasts longer. The active form only last less than a day, so it’s hard to test. So the trick with having the active form of vitamin D is make sure you get enough of the mineral magnesium you want, really about 350 to 400 milligrams of the mineral magnesium every day. We’ve done a number of episodes on magnesium as a very important mineral. You might want to listen to some of those episodes. Now, there’s an increased requirement for vitamin D in obese people because the vitamin D gets trapped in their fat cells and it’s not getting its chance to function and protect them. This is true of other nutrients also, not just vitamin D. And diabetics really have an increased requirement for vitamin D. The vitamin D works in conjunction with magnesium and zinc to help control their blood sugar. So obese people and diabetics need more vitamin D than the general public, now, who shouldn’t have it? Well, it’s possible that people with mixed connective tissue diseases shouldn’t have it. I don’t know, that remains to be seen. They’re a very rare and severe type of autoimmune disease and people with very high blood levels of calcium. See, vitamin D allows you to absorb calcium and phosphorus from the intestines, but if you vitamin D is high, it’s also gonna trap the calcium in your body. So if your calcium is very high in your blood, you don’t want a lot of vitamin D, possibly people with parathyroid disease, not sure about this. Now, parathyroid is not your thyroid gland, your thyroid gland is involved with regulating your metabolism and energy and your cholesterol, etc. And it’s very important for your brain and your memory and your IQ, etc. The parathyroid means para near the thyroid, they’re like little grains of sand and they’re involved with calcium. That’s how important calcium is to the human body involved with regulating calcium. So I did read many years ago, but I haven’t followed up on it because parathyroid disease is not something I come across very often. I think in my entire career I’ve come across one person with parathyroid disease, so it’s not something we normally see or if somebody has it, they may not know, but it’s very rare. And in people with parathyroid disease, their calcium blood level is going high. So they seem to be urinating out their vitamin D or excreting their vitamin D somehow to try and regulate their calcium. So people with mixed connective tissue diseases, people have elevated calcium in their blood, that’s very high, and people with parathyroid gland disease may not be able to use vitamin D. They really need to talk to their doctor about that, doctor who specialize in that.† [00:22:28]

[00:22:29] So what’s a desired blood level? Certainly over 30 nanograms per milliliter under 30 nanograms per milliliter. You’re missing many, many, many of the benefits of vitamin D. Now, ideally, for the many studies I’ve read, you want your vitamin D between 55 and 75, but don’t worry, over 45 is great. There’s not much difference between a blood level of 45 and 55 as far as the benefits, it’s just a tiny difference. If your blood levels are higher than 100, it becomes toxic. But this is extremely rare. I know it’s very hard to get a vitamin D level that high. It’s hard to get a vitamin D level of 45, never mind 100. Now, if you’re doing a lot of vitamin D, you want vitamin K, there’s different forms of vitamin K, and I’ll tell you why. As far as calcium, vitamin D just brings calcium into the body and keeps it around, so it’s for calcium availability, but it doesn’t chaperon calcium, it doesn’t tell the calcium where to go, that’s vitamin K. So vitamin K will keep calcium away from men’s prostates and away from your heart, your blood vessels in your heart and away from women’s breasts. And the Vitamin K will literally lift the calcium and shove it into the bone. So there’s three different vitamin K, the vitamin K dependent enzymes that achieve this. So if you’re doing a lot of vitamin D, you want to pay attention to your vitamin K, you could get vitamin K in beans and soy foods and tea and also in green leafy vegetables, which is where I get most of my vitamin K from. And you can also take a vitamin K supplement, low potency vitamin K supplement.† [00:24:12]

[00:24:14] Vitamin D is also needed to activate melatonin, now, that’s important because melatonin, there’s also receptor site for melatonin on immune cells. You need melatonin to be activated for the immune system to work. So Vitamin D not only activates and regulates the immune system and helps prevent inflammation on the body caused by the immune system, it also activates melatonin, which is part parcel of immune system function. We’ve done podcast episodes on that also, you might want to look at that melatonin and the immune system. Melatonin also is needed to build bone. So that’s a different way that vitamin D is needed for bone health. It’s not just regulating calcium, but it activates melatonin. Melatonin at night is really important for building bone. The vitamin D is needed for your immune system. Of course, vitamin D, when it activates melatonin, melatonin is needed for good digestion, for digestive health function. And melatonin has some kind of effect on sleep. And you also need melatonin for your memory and learning. So Vitamin D has a lot of benefits that may not be discussed very frequently. Now, you you might want to look at my last episode, which was vitamin C and the one before that, which was the common cold, because all of these things weave together. So I did one recently. Is it a cold or is it something else? I did one recently on vitamin C and immune system, an update. Other things that help with the immune system of course, some physical activity, not overdoing it. Overdoing physical activity suppresses the immune system, but if you get a good half hour a day, a good exercise, it’s great for the immune system. Of course, if people can cover their nose and their mouth with their elbow, when they sneeze or cough, it’s good for everybody. Sufficient sleep is needed for a properly functioning immune system. Eating good foods and protein is needed.† [00:26:15

ICYMI: AN UPDATE ON VITAMIN C & THE IMMUNE SYSTEM, INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 606>>LISTEN NOW!

[00:26:17] Green tea is helpful with the immune system, very interesting. I’ve done podcast episodes on that also. Having a lot of sugar suppresses the immune system for hours and drinking alcohol, especially over two drinks, suppresses the immune system for hours. So you really might want to avoid that right now. Now, my intention was also to talk about vitamin D and the brain. I just got a whole bunch of good data, but I’m going to have to do that separately. So thanks for listening today. You could find all of our podcast episodes from Invite Health anywhere where you listen to podcasts for free or just go to invitehealth.com/podcast and if you could subscribe and leave a review, it’s very helpful, thank you. We’re also found on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at Invite Health. I want to thank you for listening today and hope to see you next time on another episode of your InViteⓇ Health Podcast which will be on Vitamin D and the brain. Very interesting stuff has come out very recently. Jerry Hickey signing off and thanks for listening.†  [00:26:17]

*Exit Music*

Zinc is key to more than Immune Health, Invite Health Podcast, Episode 609

Zinc is key to more than Immune Health, Invite Health Podcast, Episode 609

Subscribe Today! Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.  ZINC IS KEY TO MORE THAN IMMUNE HEALTH, INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 609 Hosted by Amanda Williams, MD, MPH *Intro Music* InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro:[00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our 

An Update on Vitamin C & the Immune System, Invite Health Podcast, Episode 606

An Update on Vitamin C & the Immune System, Invite Health Podcast, Episode 606

Subscribe Today! Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.  AN UPDATE ON VITAMIN C & THE IMMUNE SYSTEM, INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 606 Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph. *Intro Music* InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where 

Is it a Cold? Invite Health Podcast, Episode 605

Is it a Cold? Invite Health Podcast, Episode 605


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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.

IS IT A COLD? INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 605

Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph.

*Intro Music* 

InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast where our degreed health care professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health. You can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that InVite Health has to offer at www.invitehealth.com/podcast. First time customers can use promo code podcast at checkout for an additional 15% off your first purchase. Let’s get started.† [00:00:34]

*Intro Music*

Jerry Hickey, Ph: [00:00:40] Is it a cold? Is it something else? Colds are common. A typical healthy adult might suffer with up to four colds a year. It’s typical 2 to 4 colds a year. A kid? 6 to 8. But why suffer? In this episode, I will cover how to feel better safely. That’s important when you have a cold and perhaps how not to get one in the first place. And what can you do if you have a cold? How do you get over it faster? What is it? Where does it come from? How do you protect yourself? Well all this and more in my episode, is that a cold? Or I could call it How to Feel Better and Get Better from a cold. Hi, this is Jerry Hickey. I’m a nutritional pharmacist, licensed pharmacist. I love doing these podcast episodes for InVite Health. And by the way, you can find all of InViteⓇ Health Podcast for free wherever you listen to podcasts or just go to their website. Invitehealth.com/podcast. Please subscribe, they love that and leave a review because that’s very helpful. You can also find Invite on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at InVite Health and all the information, the description of this podcast is load, is loaded up a new podcast description. So why are colds common in the winter? Is it because we’re inside grouped together? Actually, there seems to be a lot more to it than that. In fact, scientists just published brand new data today, December 6th, 2022, in the Journal of Allergies and Clinical Immunology, it’s brand new. Cold air weakens our immune systems, and it weakens especially our ability to fight off viruses. And this occurs especially in our nose. Now, that’s a problem because our nose is a major transit site for the entry of viruses that affect our respiratory tract. So cold air, even just a nine degree Fahrenheit drop in temperature, inhibits our immune system’s response to infections. Now, this is data from Harvard Medical School. And this nine degree Fahrenheit drop causes us to lose approximately 50% of our virus fighting activity in our nose. So one thing you could do, obviously, you could wear a good mask or a double mask or wear a scarf over your nose when you’re outside with people and it’s cold.† [00:03:16]

[00:03:18] So what is a cold? How do you help prevent it? How do you get over it fast? Or how do you recover faster? How do you treat it? Are there complications? Well, let’s tackle each one of these questions. Now, a common cold. The technical name is acute rhinitis. Acute means sudden, sudden onset rhinitis. Breakdown the word rhino is the nose, itis, inflammation of the nose. So it’s inflammation of the nose. That’s that’s a cold. It’s not in the throat. It’s not in the lungs. So it’s a virus that infects the upper respiratory tract. Now, the upper respiratory tract is from your voice box, which is your larynx, which is located at the top of your trachea, that’s your windpipe. So it’s from your larynx up to your nose, that’s your upper respiratory tract. So colds affect the upper respiratory tract. So obviously it’s a winter issue. I said the incidence before kids can have 4 to 8 colds a year. Healthy adults, 2 to 4 year. Now, what are the microbes involved? While they’re all viruses, there’s over 200 viruses involved from all these different families. So the number one group of viruses that can cause a cold are called rhino viruses. Viruses that affect the nose is over 100 serotypes, so 100 different viruses. That’s why it’s very hard to help prevent all colds, because there’s so many different viruses that can cause a cold. So 30 to 50% of all colds are caused by rhinoviruses.† [00:04:50]

ICYMI: IMMUNE SYSTEM, PART 1: THE BASICS – INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 491>>LISTEN NOW!

[00:04:51] Now, the second group is coronaviruses. I don’t mean COVID 19, that’s different. There’s four common coronaviruses in the United States. They cause 10 to 15% of all cases of the common cold. Then there’s the influenza virus, which is 5 to 15% of all cases. And a respiratory synctial virus, which is more common in children right now. 5% of all cases, now, what about a summer cold? Well, those are enteroviruses and coxsackievirus. Those are, those are summer colds. So how do you transmit a cold? Well, cold viruses are rarely in saliva. There were things in saliva, like myeloperoxidase, which can kill cold viruses. So only about 10% of all samples of saliva have the virus in the saliva. It’s really nasal discharge, the stuff in your nose. 90% of all colds are caused by nasal discharge. So it could be a sneeze. Now, I once read a study, sneezes can travel at 50 miles per hour for up to five feet, coughs or even worse, a cough can travel ten feet at 100 miles per hour. So how do you dodge that? You’re sitting in a bus, somebody coughs. How are you going to dodge that? Now, contaminated hands. Oh, that’s my dog. I’m sorry about that. Contaminated hands, this is called a fornight, for instance an infected person, somehow, they touch their mucous and then they touch furniture or a doorknob or something. The virus can last on furniture for up to 2 to 4 hours. So you don’t want to touch things when there’s someone infected, a lot of people in the winter and then rub your eyes, nose or mouth. In fact, you never want to rub your eyes, nose and mouth in the winter unless you can really wash your hands, because it’s a problem. Now, I don’t shake hands in the winter. I don’t like shaking hands anyway. You never know where someone else’s hand has been. They don’t know where my hand has been, I do a fist bump or preferably an elbow bump and by the way, sneeze at your elbow. People who cough and sneeze into your elbow, there’s this wonderful study from Paris, France, several years ago. People who coughed or sneezed into their elbow, the transmission of the flu or colds was dramatically less, dramatically less. And also, by the way, in that same study, this was a surprise.† [00:07:11]

[00:07:13] Drinking green tea greatly cut down on the incidence of colds and flu infections. So what increases your risk of catching a cold besides it being cold weather or rubbing your nose and eyes or touching a contaminated table? What increases your risk? Well, obviously, sick contacts. Like what’s the number one source of a sick contact? Children in daycare, they’re like little petri dishes. Alcohol, just one alcoholic drink per day in a woman weakens her immune system. For men, it’s two alcoholic drinks a day that’ll weaken your immune system right away. Lots of sugar. Sugar weakens your immune system for hours, so think about that the next time you want to add three or four teaspoons of sugar to your cup of coffee. Smoking, absolutely no doubt about it. Smoking is strongly connected with an increased risk of upper respiratory tract infections, a history of infections, or having breathing issues like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or asthma. Psychological stress, stress greatly inhibits the immune system. When you’re stressed, you release stress hormones, cortisol type hormones from your adrenal glands, which are these little triangular glands that sit atop each kidney. This has many effects, but one of the effects is sabotaging your immune system. [00:08:33]

[00:08:35] There was a couple of studies like this. L-Theanine comes out of the tea plant. So they gave concentrated l-theanine to health care workers and green tea capsules and the incidence of upper respiratory tract infections in these health care workers greatly reduced. It was an American study. So L-Theanine and green tea. We’ll talk a little bit more about green tea in a little while. Lack of sleep and daytime fatigue definitely connected with an increased risk of developing an upper respiratory tract infection. One reason for this is melatonin. Melatonin is really important to the immune system. Your immune cells actually have receptor sites for melatonin. Melatonin is that nighttime hormone you release when it starts to get dark out to set you up for sleep, etc.. Melatonin has many benefits for bone, for sleep, obviously, but one of them is for the immune system. And if you’re not expressing melatonin, it’s not a good thing because the immune system will just be broken. Decreased physical activity, this is incredibly important. More important than we ever thought. Now, don’t overdo it. If you over exercise, it creates a lot of free radicals. Free radicals inflame the body and increase your risk of developing a cold because you’ll use up your vitamin C, as it’s the antidote to free radicals in the body. We use up to vitamin C at a very fast rate, and then a vitamin C isn’t around to feed the immune system and make it work properly. We’ll get into that. Next week I’ll do a podcast on vitamin C and vitamin D and perhaps zinc, because they’re so key to the immune system.† [00:10:13]

[00:10:14] So physical activity, without overdoing it is very important for your immune system. There’s a Dr. David Nieman at Appalachian State University now. His team followed a thousand adults down in the Carolinas for three months. The number one way to help prevent an upper respiratory tract infection was physical activity. Exercising 5 to 6 days a week, cut the risk of a cold and other upper respiratory tract infections by 43%. That’s almost an half. And even a 20 minute walk once a week was better for preventing an infection than no physical activity at all. It’s just better for the immune system. Physical activity is key for the immune system. Same study, eating fruit, lowered your risk of an upper respiratory tract infection. They found people who had fruit, good quality fruit like three times a day cut the risk of upper respiratory tract infections. It’s the flavonoids. Flavonoids are found in apples and oranges and blueberries and really high quality fruits like that.† [00:11:17]

[00:11:17] So let’s discuss green tea here. Green tea is concentrated with catechins that are powerful flavonoids that do a number of things with flu and cold viruses. Now, flu and cold viruses need enzymes like neuraminidase and hemagglutinin to infect you, to hold on to your mucous tissue, to invade the cell, to propagate and multiply and spread throughout the body. So they found that the catechins, the type of flavonoids specific in green tea, because not all flavonoids are as powerful as one another for inhibiting colds and other infections. The green tea catechins these specific flavonoids in green tea to egcg and egc, etc. They weaken the flu virus, a cold virus, by inhibiting the enzymes the viruses need to shed and infect you. But the green tea also stimulated Gaba Delta T-cell activity, which coordinates the immune systems’ ability to fight off an infection. Now back to how do you improve your resistance? Well, vitamin D, vitamin D does so many things. You need vitamin D for the immune system to function, but you also need vitamin D to protect yourself from the immune system. Like, for instance, people with COVID 19, they wound up with a bad situation in the lungs where they had a cytokine storm, a cytokine, an immune messenger called interleukin six, IL 6, built up in the lining of their lungs. This caused the lungs to get inflamed. The virus was also causing the lungs to get inflamed. As a result, they had a buildup of fluid and it became very difficult for these people to breathe and they could develop acute respiratory distress syndrome. So not only does vitamin D coordinate and activate the cells involved with immune system, but it helps prevent the immune system from damaging you during an infection. You want your vitamin D blood levels, it’s called 25 hydroxy vitamin D or, 25 hydroxy cholecalciferol. So you want it to be above 30, below 30, you’re in trouble. Zinc. Zinc does a host of things. In fact, they found that people who had the first symptoms of a cold, if they did a bunch of zinc lozenges equaling about 80 milligrams a day of zinc, they were able to a fight off the cold or b they got over too cold, much faster. Vitamin C is also required. It does so many things for the immune system. The immune system cannot function without vitamin C. You need vitamin C for CHEMOTAXIS, which is the ability of the immune cells like neutrophils to migrate to the side of the infection, which is your nose. And then you need vitamin C for the immune cells to release all of those weapons. They have to kill the virus. That’s called Chemotaxis excuse me, that’s called respiratory burst. And then you need vitamin C to protect yourself, immune system again, because the virus and the immune system release what we call free radicals that cause all kinds of symptoms and complications. And weigh you down, vitamin C is the antidote to that. It’s an antioxidant, it’s the antidote to free radicals. So vitamin C is important.† [00:14:17]

IMMUNE ADVICE FOR THE FALL MONTHS>>LISTEN NOW!

[00:14:18] A supplement called nucleotides, which has been shown to help people going for surgery and help people who are in acute situations, dangerous situations in hospitals and also the immune system in general. Nucleotides, a supplement that helps your immune system function better. My wife swears by it. I don’t think my immune system is like a tiger. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. It’s certainly good to help prevent a cold or flu, but I don’t know if that means in the future I’m at higher risk of autoimmune diseases, but my immune system is very powerful and I tend to fight off colds very quickly or the flu. Also certain strains of probiotic bacteria like bifidobacterium animalis subspecies lactis get your immune system functioning much better within a week or two to fight off colds. Black elderberry, a whole bunch of studies on Black Elderberry helping people fight off colds and beta glucans, beta glucan can be found in yeasts, but they’re common in certain types of mushrooms and beta Glucan stimulate the immune system to fight off infections. There’s good data on that. We’ve been looking at that data for decades.† [00:15:23]

[00:15:27] Now, colds are in the nose and the symptoms, of course, would be a runny nose and sneezing. And you might have a cough, but it’s not a typical cough. It’s a cough because the mucus is running down the back of your throat. So you have post nasal drip. So it’s not usually accompanied by a fever, a cough because of a sore throat or a contaminated throat. There’s not usually a lot of fatigue with a cold. So if you have these symptoms, they help tell the difference between a cold and perhaps the flu or COVID 19. And colds have complications, that’s why it’s important to try to avoid them. For instance, if you already have a lung condition or you’re prone to infections like you have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or asthma, colds can worsen it. They can make the symptoms more severe. Colds weaken the immune system and open you up for what we call a secondary infection, typically a bacterial infection such as acute otitis media. The doctor looks inside your ear and they see the tympanic membrane, meaning is all inflamed and red and bulging out. This means that you have an infection in the middle ear, so there’s swelling in there or pneumonia, it’s easier to develop bacterial pneumonia, which is very dangerous, in pneumonia, there’s an infection in the lining of the lungs and the alveoli. So it’s harder to breathe because it’s harder to get rid of carbon dioxide and bring in oxygen because there’s fluid lining the lungs. Sinusitis, you know, severe inflammation in the sinuses, which can cause terrible headaches. So you really don’t want a cold, cold symptoms typically in a healthy person or a self-limiting, they’re usually the worst in the first 1 to 3 days and they’re usually gone within seven days. But you can have a long lasting cough from post nasal drip that can last weeks after, the incubation time, how long it gets sick, how long it takes to get sick after somebody sneezes on you is typically 1 to 5 days. So what else helps a cold? Fluids. Fluids help thin your mucus and it’s easier to expel the mucus. Clear up the mucus. So I tell people, you know what, have green tea with lemon and honey. Lemon has flavonoids that have anti microbial activity. Honey is soothing and it has some nutrients in it, and green tea itself has antiviral. Green tea is also soothing because it has a little bit of l-theanine to calm you down and this helps your immune system function better. Rest for the immune system, rest is very important for the immune system function and sleep. Gargle with salt water. The Japanese health authorities recommend that people gargle with salt water twice a day, and studies show that this cuts down on the incidence of flu and colds by about 30%.† [00:18:30]

IMMUNE SYSTEM, PART 4: DIET AND SUPPLEMENTS – INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 494>>LISTEN NOW!

[00:18:32] Drinking green tea has been shown a human clinical trial to cut down the incidence of flu and cold, so in the winter, I’m brewing green tea two or three times a day for my wife and me. Now, also, drugs for colds can be an issue. Oh, by the way, gargling with the salt water, doesn’t seem to kill the virus, it seems to clear out the virus. So rinse your mouth with salt water. But now drugs for colds. Some of them have lots of alcohol, so that’s a problem. Alcohol suppresses the immune system and some people can’t have alcohol. Decongestants can be dangerous, they can increase your heart rate, your heart could be racing, they can increase your blood pressure. That could cause a spike in your blood pressure. And some people who are very prone to it, they could trigger a stroke and it makes sleeping rather impossible because they’re stimulants. Many of the decongestants are a molecule or two away from speed and instead, use normal saline nasal rinse a couple of times a day. Normal saline means the amount of salt in the water is the same as the amount of salt in your blood 0.9%. And this way it doesn’t irritate your nose. So those are my recommendations.† [00:19:42][

[00:19:45] I told some people who are older, get on a good probiotic to help prevent a cold. Probably a certain strains of probiotic, Lactobacillus rhamnosis, Lactobacillus plantarum, And especially bifidobacterium, any model subspecies lactos really helps the immune system function much better to require for cold season. Drink green tea throughout the day or take a good tincture or a capsule of green tea twice a day. All of these have been proven to lower the incidence of colds in American studies, not just Japanese studies and European studies. If you start to get sick, take nucleotides like three capsules twice a day for three or four days, it won’t hurt you. It’s it’s a tonic for the immune system. It gives the immune system instant energy. And by the way, every day get your vitamin D and your zinc and your vitamin C, all of these have ability to improve the immune system’s functions to fight off an infection. In any event, thanks for listening. You can find all of the invite podcast episode for free or whereever you listen to podcast or just go to Invitehealth.com/podcast. And please subscribe and leave a review. You can also find Invite on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at InVite Health. I want to thank you for listening today. Hope to see you next time. On another episode of the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, Jerry Hickey signing off. Have a great day.† [00:19:45]

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