Although these stressful times can lead to sleepless nights, it’s important for all kinds of health reasons to make the effort to get enough good quality sleep.  But the most pertinent reason right now is that it helps prevent viral infections. But how much sleep do you need to avoid getting a cold or perhaps COVID-19? According to a 2015 study, the answer is more than 6 hours a night. While poor sleep and not getting enough sleep had been implicated before in increased susceptibility to infectious illness, prior studies relied on subjective measures—that is individuals’ own assessments of their experience.  This study was different in that it used an objective measure called wrist actigraphy to assess occurrences of the common cold after the researchers gave 164 healthy participants nasal drops containing the rhinovirus.  Like COVID-19, the common cold is a coronavirus that infects the respiratory system. The study’s conclusion? Less sleep increased ris…

Sometimes the simplest health practices are the most powerful.  Unfortunately we tend to forget or minimize them as we run after the latest supplement du jour.  But if you want strong immune protection against the COVID-19 virus, getting plenty of pure water is critical. Even a small amount of dehydration will negatively affect all the chemistry in your body. Yet studies show that most people are chronically dehydrated, especially over the age of fifty. In addition, we’re all under extra stress these days, and stress itself is dehydrating.  Here are eight ways staying well-hydrated supports your immune system: Almost all biochemical reactions involve water, and every cell depends upon water to wash away waste and toxins (including viruses) and to supply nutrients.  Your immune system relies on your bloodstream to transport oxygen and other nutrients and important communication signals to your organs. This transportation is less efficient when…

Doing nothing is better than wasting time – Viktoras Kulvinskas Feelings of anxiety and stress have become an unavoidable aspect of life in this new COVID-19 era. Yet stress reduction is something we are advised to include in our antiviral lifestyle—a real Catch-22! But there are simple ways to reduce our stress overload, and they’re free and close at hand.  It just means making the time to include them in our lives.  What exactly is the problem with stress?  Well, for one thing it promotes the release of adrenal hormones that knock out immunity!  A good example of this is the increase in the number of colds college students get during exam time.  Stress can also activate latent viruses we usually carry around with us without a problem, as someone who experiences Herpes I and II outbreaks can attest.  Stress can also interfere with sleep—so important for strong immunity, and it can nudge us into unhealthy habits like overeating, eating the…

Roberto Assagioli MD was an Italian psychoanalysis who was a contemporary and student of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.  But he was also deeply influenced by his mother, a serious student of Eastern religion.  He wound up combining Western science with Eastern spirituality in a new type of psychotherapy called psychosynthesis.  But more than his credentials, Roberto, as he was known, exhibited a calm sense of joyfulness and kindness that was quite independent of external events.  People reported feeling happy just being around him. So he can be considered an expert on the subject of serenity. In this anxious COVID-19 time, we might benefit from the following exercise he advocated for cultivating serenity, copied from his book, Psychosynthesis: EXERCISE FOR EVOKING SERENITY Assume a physical attitude of serenity: relax all muscular and nervous tension; breathe slowly and rhythmically; express serenity on your face with a smile.  (You can hel…

While many factors determine whether or not you will get a coronavirus infection, how bad the infection will be, and how long it will take to recover, there is one all-important factor—the state of your immunity.  Beyond Health’s protocol for building and maintaining a strong immune system includes having your vitamin D blood levels tested with a 25(OH)D test, and getting them up to 40-60 ng/mL (100-150 nmol/L) or more depending on your medical situation. Your immune system requires adequate amounts of vitamin D to function the way it’s supposed to. If you’re low on D, it’s like fighting the coronavirus with one hand tied behind your back. You can raise your vitamin D levels with sun, food and supplements. SUN Sunlight is an inexhaustible source of free vitamin D! The sun’s UVB rays convert cholesterol in the skin into vitamin D. However, since these same UVB rays cause sunburn, light-skinned people need to build up a protective tan gradually. The best approach is…

While the world’s attention is riveted by COVID-19, pervasive magnesium deficiency has been an ongoing health crisis for at least sixty years, causing death, disease, and reduced quality of life. Magnesium plays many important roles in heart health, and a deficiency of this important mineral is a major risk factor for having a sudden, fatal heart attack! As one of the body’s most significant anti-inflammatory compounds, magnesium also helps to prevent the chronic diseases that plague our time, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other “co-morbidities” that increase chances of being hospitalized with and dying from COVID-19. In fact, virtually every known illness can be associated with magnesium deficiency.  Magnesium plays many essential roles in the immune system. It contributes significantly to anti-viral immunity, and has other properties that may make it especially useful for COVID-19. Meanwhile, low magnesium levels can seri…

Insulin resistance has become a major problem in our overweight, sedentary, stressed out, sleep-deprived, refined sugar-eating society, and is a probable co-morbid complication in COVID-19. What is insulin resistance, and how does it lead to diabetes?  Excessive sugar in the blood is a dangerous, inflammatory situation.  It is the hormone insulin’s job to keep blood sugar levels from getting too high by escorting sugar into the cells where it can be either burned to make energy or stored.  However when cells are constantly asked to take on excessive amounts of sugar they become “insulin resistant.”    The body responds by making more insulin, forcing more sugar into the unwilling cells. But over time, the cells become increasingly resistant. Eventually sugar builds up to unhealthy levels, a condition called pre-diabetes.   According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1/3 of our population has prediabetes. …

. . . In my experience, depression is relatively easy to cure with diet, supplementation and detoxification. Common causes of depression include deficiencies of essential fatty acids, B vitamins, magnesium, zinc and vitamin D. Mercury toxicity and food allergies are two other common causes. Antidepressant drugs do not address these causes.  Raymond Francis, Beyond Health News, May-June 2007 Do you need to spend years on a psychiatrist’s couch to overcome anxiety or depression, or could you just pop a few magnesium tablets and save the time and money?  A 2006 paper reported reversing major, long-standing depression in four individuals in less than a week by supplementing with 125-300 milligrams of magnesium at each meal and at bedtime!  One of these subjects, who had been addicted to tobacco, alcohol and cocaine, announced that his cravings for all these substances had disappeared!  George and Karen Eby, the study’s authors, argue for the” ... poss…

A recently published Opinion Article suggests that the omega-3 fatty acids EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) may have an important role to play in preventing or at least managing the so-called “cytokine storm” that has caused the deaths of many COVID-19 patients. The authors say that supplementing with these two omega-3 fatty acids should be "considered as both a supportive therapy and a prevention strategy" in patients infected with the virus. Cytokines are protein messengers in the body that initiate and regulate the immune system’s response to an attack, including its inflammatory response. Inflammation is used to kill invading pathogens, but if it isn’t well-regulated, it can do serious damage to healthy cells and tissues as well. This is exactly what happens in “cytokine storm.”  Cytokine storm is like an out-of-control hurricane destroying everything in its path. Many COVID-19 patients have died not from the virus itself but from this out…

When you think about immune-building nutrients, vitamin E probably isn’t among the first that come to mind.  But it should be.  Vitamin E is one of the most effective nutrients known for supporting immune function—especially when it comes to fighting off viral infections, and even a marginal deficiency will throw a monkey wrench into your immune system’s response to a challenge. Laboratory, animal and human studies have shown that vitamin E has a variety of effects on immune cell production, differentiation, proliferation and activity; that vitamin E insufficiency diminishes these effects; and that supplementing with vitamin E at higher than government recommended levels enhances them. Yet as we confront the current viral pandemic, approximately 90% of the US population isn’t getting enough vitamin E from their diets to meet even minimal government standards. The average American diet supplies less than half the government’s Recommended Dietary Intake (RD…

Last year in an article on vaping we concluded that although it might be a slight improvement over cigarette smoking, vaping was far from safe. Since then thousands of vapers have become ill with a serious disease called Evali (e-cigarette or vaping-associated lung injury), and a recent study found that vaping greatly increases the risk of contracting COVID-19.   All the more reason to “just say no” to vaping.   A New York Times article gave a harrowing description of 20-year-old Janan Moein’s experience of Evali. After vaping regularly with a cannabis-laced brand for 6 months, Mr. Moein found himself hospitalized with a collapsed lung and in a medically-induced coma. Diagnosed with Evali, he was given a 5% chance of survival. He lost nearly 50 pounds in 2 weeks and now recalls, “My lips were blue. They had to tape my eyes shut. I was hallucinating the entire time that the nurses were trying to kill me, that the walls were made of human skin.  It was a…

Recently we’ve been writing about an antioxidant plant flavonoid called quercetin as an essential component of an immune defense arsenal.  But there are many other reasons to include quercetin, which has been used for centuries as a component of healing herbs like St. John’s Wort and Ginkgo Biloba, in your supplement program, whether you want to get well or just stay well. Quercetin is a potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, and it stimulates the body to produce a wide range of additional antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and detoxifying chemicals. Quercetin has demonstrated anti-diabetic, antiviral, and antibacterial properties.  It supports cardiovascular, urinary, and nervous system health, and has been shown to protect against stress, cataracts, osteoporosis, and heavy metal toxicity.   Quercetin helps shed excess weight, it increases and sustains a high level of energy and endurance, maximizes physical and mental performance, and helps to redu…

Oxidation in our bodies is a major cause of aging and disease. If you want to feel your best, avoid diseases down the line and maximize your healing potential, you need to keep oxidation under control. Fortunately antioxidants do just that.  Antioxidants are compounds made by our bodies and derived from our diets or supplements that curtail oxidation and its damaging effects. Unfortunately, however, the oxidizing effects of stress, environmental pollution and other toxins, chronic illness and excess body fat that characterize modern life have multiplied our need for antioxidants, so that most of us are suffering from “oxidative stress”—meaning we don’t have enough antioxidants to manage our level of oxidation.  For the vast majority antioxidant supplementation has become necessary.  Taking an array of different antioxidant supplements is the best approach since they work somewhat differently, complement and synergize with each other, and regenerate each…

In the last NewsClips we told you about a new test for oxidized LDL that should revolutionize cardiology.  It turns out that LDL cholesterol isn’t the problem—it’s only oxidized LDL that causes heart attacks and strokes.  And now a blood test for oxidized LDL has become widely available. But oxidation doesn’t just cause heart disease; it plays a role in all of the chronic diseases and in aging itself.  If you want to stay youthful and healthy, oxidation is something you need to address.  You can do that with antioxidants from food and supplements.  Oxidation is a normal biochemical reaction—it’s necessary to create energy from the food we eat; it’s also used to kill invading pathogens. But it can have destructive effects, creating something called free radicals ─ reactive molecules that damage DNA, cells and body tissues. Fortunately the body has a way of keeping oxidation in check: compounds called antioxidants.  Our bodies make antioxidants, li…

Although most people have trouble getting even the minimal 5-9 servings of fruit and vegetables per day. Recommended by the USDA, it seems that everyone agrees that eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables is very important for optimal good health. But why are fruits and vegetables so good for us?  Well, apart from being high in vitamins, minerals, and fiber, plant foods are good for us because they’re a rich source of antioxidant compounds called polyphenols.  Polyphenols protect plants from the oxidative stress caused by the sun’s UV rays, and by environmental pollution and pathogens. Humans who eat these plants get many benefits from the polyphenols they contain, including protection from asthma, allergies, cancer, cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure, diabetes and infections, as well as inflammation and premature aging.     Over 8,000 different polyphenols have been identified. Quercetin, the most common polyphenol, is also one of the most important and…

Here’s another reason to unglue yourself from that computer and move your butt—prolonged sitting can lead to deadly blood clots! Although blood clots generally don’t become problematic until after the age of forty, a case report on a 32-year-old man is a cautionary tale. This relatively young man spent a good part of his life sitting at a computer terminal, both during the day at work and at home at night—all told about 12 hours most days and sometimes 18 hours a day. He would typically sit anywhere from 4½-6 hours at a time without getting up. One fine day he blacked out and found himself in the hospital with a potentially life-threatening venous thromboembolism (VTE). Fortunately, he was given clot-busting drugs in time and survived. According to the American Heart Association, a VTE is a blood clot related to two life-threatening conditions: (1) deep vein thrombosis (DVT): a clot in a deep vein, usually in the leg; and (2) a pulmonary embolism (PE): a DVT clot that breaks…

The Opioid Epidemic is big news these days. Committees are meeting to discuss ways to get Americans off these dangerous drugs, while scientists look for new drugs with less destructive side effects than our current choices. Too bad Dr. Stanley W. Jacob, MD, one of the great innovative scientists of our time, was never given the attention he deserved. Dr. Jacob helped to develop two sulfur-based natural supplements—DMSO and its derivative, MSM—and spent his life advocating for them and using them to help thousands of patients alleviate pain. But he died in 2015, at age 91, without having managed to convince conventional medicine in the US of the value of these two compounds. However, that didn’t stop people from coming to his DMSO Clinic at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland from all over the world for treatment. This clinic-of-last-resort for pain problems that nothing else had helped had an estimated success rate of about 70%. Jacob became interested in using DMSO…

Do you seem to catch every cold or flu going around? Do you have an ongoing infection, like the yeast infection candida, that you can’t get rid of?  Or do you have the opposite problem—an overactive immune system leading to allergies or to an autoimmune disease? Do you have, or have you had cancer?  These are all indications that your immune system isn’t protecting you as it should, and it’s likely that a primary reason for that is that you don’t have enough glutathione. Glutathione is a critical protein that your body produces. It can also be obtained from food and supplements.  Glutathione has been called “the mother antioxidant” because our antioxidant system can’t function without it. Neither can our detoxification system. And neither can our immune system. Glutathione has the following six essential roles in immune function: Glutathione patrols the bloodstream directly killing many pathogens before they can begin…