I just wanted to write a quick post about proactive things that could be helpful in defending against what my daughter rightfully refers to as “the stupid dumb coronavirus.”
As you read this, the internet is ablaze with people attacking anyone who advocates a natural method to fortify the immune system, insisting that “That is not a proven therapy for the coronavirus!” No shit Sherlock. Nothing is a proven therapy for the corona virus at this point.
All us advocates of natural approaches to health problems are saying, is that such-and-such might be helpful against COVID-19, and it’s healthy anyways. I wanted to add my voice to that conversation, and go beyond the typical stuff like echinacea, elderberry and curcumin that we know are helpful against, well, less novel viruses.
I’m going to look at therapies which have some degree of evidence for their specific effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2, and virtually zero risk of harm. In fact, they are all things that support the health of your body, and the hope is that these specific things do so in a way that is particularly helpful against SARS-CoV-2 due to its specific viral characteristics.
Let’s get right to it. First, let’s agree on some terms. SARS-CoV-2 is the technical name for the VIRUS. COVID-19 is the name of the disease state it causes.
Now, let’s get into exactly how SARS-CoV-2 affects and relates to the immune system.
The immune system is obviously quite complicated and has many moving parts. One important part that you might not have heard of, but is very relevant to our conversation here is inflammasomes. Inflammasomes are a kind of signaling molecule in your immune system that trigger a series of downstream effects. They sense pathogens in your body like virus and bacteria, as well as potentially harmful uric acid crystals and cholesterol. The activation of inflammasomes releases pro-inflammatory cytokines, called IL-1β and IL-18. This is all part of the inflammation process that your body uses to help fight certain pathogens.
One specific type of inflammasome called NLRP3 has been identified as key to the induction of acute respiratory distress syndrome; which is the lethal part of COVID-19. This is the pneumonia part, essentially. This inflammasome, NLRP3, proportionally activates IL-1β, and if IL-1β becomes overactive this leads to acute respiratory stress and hypoxemia (below normal oxygen levels in the blood). The body’s production of IL-1β is tightly controlled by NLRP3.
So, how is NLRP3 connected to COVID-19 exactly? Virtually all harmful viruses encode proteins that interfere with the innate immune response. Some viruses inhibit the host’s immune response, and others over stimulate it (essentially “tricking it” for lack of a better term). Either way, it is dangerous. In this case the SARS-CoV-2 virus over-stimulates the inflammasome NLRP3 to the point of being dangerous. This leads to massive overproduction of the inflammatory cytokine IL-1β, and that leads to pathological inflammation and tissue damage in the lungs (or more specifically it would do this in any tissue the virus happens to be, it’s just that 99% of the time it’s in the lungs).
Fortunately we know a few ways to regulate NLRP3, to tamp it down a bit, and this may be a good way to fight against the serious effects of SARS-CoV-2.
The two most effective ways to do this may be #1 – ketones; beta hydroxybutyrate generated by the body in response to ketosis or fasting, and #2 – melatonin; the sleep hormone.
Melatonin may in fact be the reason children tend to have mild cases of COVID-19; children produce about ten times the amount of melatonin as adults, and it declines slowly with age. One to five year olds produce about twice as much as five to eleven year olds, after which it starts to seriously decline. Volt et al published two papers in 2016 and 2017 that confirmed melatonin’s ability to seriously down-regulate the NLRP3 inflammasome. In animal models of acute respiratory distress, melatonin significantly attenuated progress of the condition.
My only gripe with melatonin is that it’s typically massively over-supplemented. Which is ironic, considering mostly I complain about supplements being under-dosed. However, melatonin is a hormone, not a nutrient, God forbid we get enough nutrients. Most supplements are dosed 10 to 30 times what the body itself produces. The appropriate dose for melatonin is about 300 mcg. It’s difficult to find that relatively small dose in a pill.
I usually recommend this liquid melatonin because you can titrate it appropriately, and of course it’s dirt cheap. A bottle lasts a year or so, for $12! I use just a few drops, approximating 200-300 mcg, and in the case of SARS-CoV-2, you can bet I’ll be taking it every night from now until whenever this virus has run its course throughout the world. If I’m suspicious of any impending SARS-CoV-2 threat in my life, I’ll increase the dose and hopefully sleep like a baby while my NLRP3 inflammasomes get tamped down.
I’d be of course remiss not to remind my readers that blue light destroys melatonin. It signals your brain to convert it to serotonin. Wear orange-colored blue blocking glasses appropriately and dim the lights and screens in the evening. This is key to your body producing healthy amounts of melatonin.
There are a few other easy-to-get health-promoting compounds that may directly keep NLRP3 under control:
- Vitamin C
- Resveratrol
- Arginine
Vitamin C has been found to reduce NLRP3; there’s a 2016 paper out of China called “Vitamin C inhibits the activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome by scavenging mitochondrial ROS.” It’s not clear what dose is appropriate here. China seems to think Vitamin C mega-dosing has therapeutic potential against COVID-19; they are doing trials with IV Vitamin C, and although the quality of the trials is low due to the situation over there being so frantic, doctors there seem to think it’s helpful, from what I’ve read. There’s also reports that China shipped in 50 tonnes of Ascorbic Acid to Wuhan a few weeks after the outbreak there. I have no idea how true that is. There were pictures of the shipments on twitter, but I take it with a grain of salt. It seems to me that taking a reasonable dose, say 1000mg once or twice per day, until more information becomes available, makes the most sense as a potential preventative.
A 2015 study showed Resveratrol’s helpfulness with regards to NLRP3, “Resveratrol inhibits NLRP3 inflammasome activation by preserving mitochondrial integrity and augmenting autophagy.” Autophagy is the process by which the body rids itself of damaged cells; including cells which have damaged or insufficient mitochondria. Really the most effective way to activate autophagy is with intermittent fasting and/or ketosis, but resveratrol is likely helpful even in addition to those things. Preserving mitochondrial integrity seems to be best accomplished by any kind of intense exercise (specifically short bursts of intense exercise), getting enough sleep, and through some supplements like NMN, PQQ, CoQ10 and Resveratrol. So as the study says, resveratrol acts in two different ways to help tamp down NLRP3.
For Arginine, it’s effect on Nitric Oxide is what’s helpful, as per a 2013 paper published in Cell Research called “Nitric oxide suppresses NLRP3 inflammasome activation and protects against LPS-induced septic shock.” Anything that up-regulates nitric oxide should help tamp down NLRP3 – so all those ‘massive pumps!’ supplements bodybuilders take? Those would probably be great too (beet extract, citrulline, arginine, etc all seem to do the trick).
Nitric Oxide is also critical for cardiovascular disease (see the excellent book NO More Heart Disease by the nobel-prize winning MD Louis J. Ignarro who discovered Nitric Oxide’s role in cardiovascular health, and compounds he used to improve it). It’s common for people with cardiovascular disease to have low levels of Nitric Oxide in the blood. Is this why it’s the most prominent comorbidity factor for COVID19?
It’s hard to judge the magnitude of effect for lowering NLRP3, but my best guess for most-effective to least, would be #1 Ketosis and/or Intermittent Fasting and #2 Melatonin – and then the last three are more difficult to guess, but perhaps, #3 Arginine, #4 Vitamin C, and #5 Resveratrol.
This may be why we’ll see different cultures and age groups with different mortality, and the unhealthy and elderly get hit the hardest. We keep hearing about the risk of age, but the more data that becomes available, the more we see comorbidities such as heart disease and diabetes playing a huge role in the severity of COVID-19. So it turns out that because of the particular mechanisms of this virus, having a very healthy lifestyle may be particularly effective. This was not true at all with the Spanish Flu of 1918, because of that virus’ specific characteristics.
The best practices for both overall health and resistance to this virus are therefore likely:
- almost-daily intense exercise (improving mitochondrial function)
- a 14-16 hour fasting window per day (improving autophagy)
- avoiding artificial light & getting out in the sun (improving natural melatonin levels)
- taking a couple of health promoting supplements, in this case resveratrol, vitamin c, arginine and extra melatonin
Now, perhaps you’ve also heard that Chloroquine is a potential drug therapy for Corona – it’s what’s being researched the most, and was used as triage by both China and South Korea, and even before FDA rushed approval for it against coronavirus in america, there were reports of Doctors using it anyways.
What you may not have heard about Chloroquine is the mechanism by which it works: it shuttles Zinc ions into your cells. Intracellular zinc prevents the SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA from hijacking the cell’s machinery; the mechanism through which the virus replicates. This is true with all corona viruses, not just this novel strain. This was shown in a 2010 study called “Zn2+ Inhibits Coronavirus and Arterivirus RNA Polymerase Activity In Vitro and Zinc Ionophores Block the Replication of These Viruses in Cell Culture.”
This would indicate that Zinc itself is a potential preventative, and works completely differently than everything mentioned above. I don’t think it’s possible to get enough Zinc into your cells short of using Chloroquine to have a drug-like effect. If you’ve got COVID-19, by all means try the drug if your doctor recommends it. But, it’s entirely plausible that improving your zinc status before encountering the virus, and especially making sure you’re not at all deficient, might indeed improve one’s chances of fighting the thing off. Oregon State University’s 2009 paper estimates that in north america only about 12% of the population is deficient in Zinc, however they estimate that up to 40% of the elderly may be deficient due to inadequate absorption.
In particular, liposomal zinc is very effective at getting into cells. It’s difficult to find this online, but there is one company I discovered that makes it:
Epigenetics International Liposomal Zinc @ 30mg zinc per dose
Besides this specific effect on disabling coronavirus’ mechanism for replication (which essentially completely disables the virus), zinc has been shown in quite a few studies and meta-analysis to be generally quite helpful for the immune system (let alone skeletal system, male hormones, and nervous system).
There are two small caveats to zinc supplementation; #1 – studies show that it tends to be more effective for males compared to females, I’d guess because men need higher levels of zinc on account of its role in sperm production, #2 – long term excessive zinc supplementation can cause a copper deficiency. Supplements are therefore generally limited to a maximum of 50mg of zinc per daily recommended dose, but without liposomal zinc you’re unlikely to absorb more than about 7 mg at a time – so if you go for zinc capsules it’s best to get smaller doses and take them twice a day. Because of this limitation with zinc, don’t exceed whatever dose is recommended on your supplement for too long.
Good dietary sources of copper might offset any issues with zinc supplementation and include lobster, chocolate, oats, & cashews. Oysters are the best food-source of zinc (and also copper), they’re one of the best super-foods out there, but might be even more super against the stupid dumb coronavirus.
Too much? It’s not photoshopped!
I’ll update this post if any of the information above changes. Things are evolving quickly.
