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The body needs inflammation to help itself heal after injury or illness, but what happens when there’s too much inflammation in the body? This can cause your cells to stop working properly, creating an issue known as inflammaging.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare experts have been discussing the importance of Vitamin D. Hear about new and updated studies on this powerful nutrient in this episode of the InVite Health Podcast.
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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph.
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InVite Health Podcast Intro: Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our degreed healthcare 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!
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Jerry Hickey, Ph.:
[00:00:40] There’s an awful lot of research that green tea helps fight viruses. If you go into PubMed, the Library of Congress website that collates studies, and you type in “green tea” and the word “virus”, you’ll see many, many, many studies coming up. And right now we’re in flu season and we’re also in COVID-19 season. So can green tea help you with these? The answer seems to be, quite frankly, yes.† [00:01:11]
[00:01:13] So green tea is loaded with specific ingredients. There’re types of polyphenols. Now there’s thousands of polyphenols. For instance, the polyphenols in milk thistle are good for the liver and the kidneys. The polyphenols in grape seed extract are great for the heart and circulation. The polyphenols in resveratrol are great for the brain. Well, the polyphenols in green tea do many things. That’s because there are so many of them. There’s about 20 that we know of at this point. But the ones most involved with viruses are EGCG, also called Epigallocatechin gallate, and EGC, which is Epigallocatechin. So these are polyphenols and other polyphenols that are further broken down to flavanols, which there’s also thousands of, and from flavanols, they’re broken down to catechins. So the ingredients in green tea that are great for viruses are called catechins. So there’s different studies available that green tea may help slow down the Zika virus, that green tea might slow down particular hepatitis viruses that green tea slows down chikungunya virus. But there’s a lot of research that green tea slows down influenza, and it seems to be for all of the strains of the flu virus.† [00:02:39]
[00:02:43] So welcome to our episode, Update on Green Tea and the Flu. Hi, my name is Jerry Hickey. I’m a nutritional pharmacist. I’m also the Senior Scientific Officer over here, @invitehealth. You can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or visit invitehealth.com/podcast. You can also follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @invitehealth. All of the information on today’s episode is linked at the episode description.† [00:03:13]
[00:03:14] So let’s just quickly in my brain review the studies on green tea and the flu. There is many studies out of Japan because, of course, Japan is famous for growing green tea, so they’re going to do research on green tea. Now, the health authorities in Japan tell people to gargle with water several times a day to lower their risk of the flu, and it actually works. Even just rinsing your mouth out with water several times a day reduces your risk of the flu. But if the children rinse their mouth with green tea, it very powerfully reduced their risk of the flu, we’re talking like a 65% reduction in the risk of having a diagnosis by a pediatrician for the flu in a child. There’s also studies in several precincts of Japan, where they have green tea plantations, and the children there tend to drink these tiny cups of green tea. And they found that there was a dose-response relationship, meaning the more green tea to a point, the lower their risk of having a sore throat and flu-like symptoms. And they found that the children who had up to five tiny little cups a day, had a much lower risk of developing fevers and sore throats and coughs, etc., symptoms related to flu and cold.† [00:04:33]
GREEN TEA AND LONGEVITY – INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 336. Listen Now>>
[00:04:35] Now, the University of Florida, Gainesville did a study, you know, the Gators, Gatorade. In any event, they did a study in American adults over a winter, and they gave them concentrated green tea capsules. And they found that far fewer of them developed the symptoms of the flu. Far fewer of them got sick. But for those who did get sick, they got better, a lot faster and their symptoms were much milder. So on one hand, it was lowering the risk of getting the flu. And on the other hand, if you did get it, it was like a weak infection. It didn’t mean as much as it could have. There’s a study in New York in healthcare professionals. They gave them green tea capsules, plus an element that comes out of green tea called L-theanine. And the incidence of colds and flu infections over the winter dropped dramatically in 200 healthcare professionals. There’s also research that green tea lowers the risk of getting infections in people in assisted living homes, what we used to call nursing homes. People are in assisted living homes for a reason. Maybe they had a stroke. Maybe they have a touch of Alzheimer’s. Maybe they had broken hips, but for some reason they’re weakened. They can’t take care of themselves anymore. Maybe they’re just extremely old and fragile. In any event, they get immunized for the flu, but it doesn’t mean that much because their immune system is getting old and not as functional anymore, so they don’t make enough antibodies to the flu. So these were a whole group of people in assisted living homes who were immunized for the flu. If they gave them green tea after that, it further cut down on the risk of the flu by about 75% because they could still get the flu because, like I said, their immune system is becoming slowed down and weakened and compromised, and that’s just not working effectively, even if they get immunized. So there is a lot of studies. In fact, there was this other study from Japan. Older women that supped a lot of green tea had a much lower risk of dying from pneumonia. So there’s a lot of data looking at green tea and the flu.† [00:06:56]
[00:07:00] So this is a very recent review and a meta analysis. They went through all of these web sites that collate research and hunted for new research on green tea and influenza, green tea and the flu. It’s from the Biological Science Research Labs in Tokyo, Japan, and the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Shizuka University in Japan. They do a lot of great research there. It’s an, it’s published in the European Journal of Nutrition. So they’re looking for studies specific to green tea and the flu. And they found six randomized, placebo-controlled human clinical trials and four prospective cohort studies. Prospective cohort studies are very interesting to me. They get a large population of people. So maybe they’ll get 30,000 people in Seattle, Washington, and then they’ll look at all of their health data and the way they eat and do they take vitamins and do they have any illnesses, and they follow them for years and you get a huge amount of data out of that. You could get data on, you know, what increases your risk of diabetes or what increases the risk of breast cancer or prostate cancer. So they, they, they really data mine for all these different things because if you look at 30, 40,000 people, you could get a lot of data out of it. So in this case, there were four of those studies, four huge population based cohort studies, looking does green tea lower the risk of of viruses and the flu? And six randomized, placebo-controlled human clinical trials, which are gold standard state of the art studies. And they found that green tea catechins, that’s the EGCG and the EGC, those two especially, inhibit the spread of viruses by creating a protective sort of barrier in your pharynx. So what’s your pharynx? In the back of your mouth, your throat bends down to your esophagus. The esophagus is the tube from your throat down to your stomach. That bend is called a pharynx. So apparently drinking green tea kind of stops the viruses from getting past the pharynx. Well, that’s a good thing. And they also found in all these studies that green tea strongly reduces the risk of upper respiratory tract infections. So what’s the upper respiratory tract? Well, the nose, the mouth, the nasal pharynx, that area, so that could be a sore throat, a cold, stuffy nose. They found that EGCG and EGC, these are two of the primary catechins in green tea, bind to hemagglutinin, the spike of hemagglutinin on the outside of the viral envelope, and neuraminidase. Now that’s really interesting. These are enzymes that the virus uses to cling on to you. So somebody sneezes on you, the virus hits you, it’s got to hold on. It’s got to penetrate into the cell, multiply and spread from cell to cell. And they found that green tea inhibited these enzymes. In other words, green tea was preventing influenza. They’re looking at influenza. And the more green tea you consume, the better you’re protected. So once again, there’s a dose response. One cup of green tea is protective. Two cups, two cups of green tea a day, not at the same time, are more protective, and three cups is even better. So the more green tea you consume, the better you’re protected from all flu strains, all flu strains.† [00:10:46]
[00:10:47] So now let’s look at coronavirus. Coronavirus is actually a family of viruses, like there’s a bunch of colds in the United States caused by something like five different strains of coronavirus. But the one we’re concerned with now is the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. That’s the name of infection, but the virus is actually called SARS-CoV-2. So this is Yonsei University in Korea. That’s a pre-clinical study. A pre-clinical study means it’s not in people. That’s in the journal Viruses. So the first part is in vitro, which means it’s in a dish, it’s not in something living. Green tea blocked the ability of the coronavirus to infect cells by blocking its infectious enzymes like hemagglutinin, like green tea was doing with the flu in the other study. Then they did an in-vivo study. In-vivo means something living, like a rabbit or a hamster or a mouse or a rat. So in this case, it was mice and they infected the poor mice with coronavirus. If they gave them green tea with greater than 60%t catechins, but also rich in EGCG… So if it was just 60% catechins or it was just very powerful EGCG, either one of them blocked coronavirus, it blocked human coronavirus to a very good degree, but it also kept the virus out of the lungs of the mice.† [00:12:22]
[00:12:24] So here’s the Department of Virology, Paul Ehrlich Institute, that’s in Germany, and the German Center for Infection Research. It’s in the Journal of General Virology. And they found that green tea and especially EGCG blocked COVID-19. It was blocking the spike protein, it was blocking the ability of COVID-19 to infect you. But here’s the interesting thing. Before COVID-19, years ago, there was MERS. That was in the Middle East like Saudi Arabia, and there was the original SARS virus, the SARS-COVID virus. This is SARS-CoV-2. This is the latest strain. And they found that green tea also inhibited MERS and SARS-COVID, the original viruses.† [00:13:25]
[00:13:27] So here’s the journal Molecules. It’s the Department of Immunology, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine and The Central Research Institute, both in Japan. And when they exposed COVID-19 virus to green tea, it reduced the detectable number of virus cells to one one-hundredth. And it killed 99%, on contact, of the COVID-19 virus. It killed 99%. Now, then they went a further step. They took the EGCG, green tea rich in EGCG, that’s the major polyphenol. That’s the one that’s looked at for prostate cancer and breast cancer and colon cancer and aging and muscle health and brain health, et cetera. They took green tea very rich in EGCG, and they also added some black tea to theaflavins. This is what we did in our Green Tea HxⓇ capsule, by the way. This was even stronger against COVID-19. Reduced infectivity have made it harder for the virus to infect the cells. It reduced viral replication, the virus couldn’t spread. The virus couldn’t reproduce, and it also inhibited the spread of virus from cell to cell. There really seems to be something about green tea and viruses.† [00:14:50]
[00:14:52] Now, I just did an update on Vitamin D and COVID-19. And now I’m doing an update on green tea and mostly influenza, but possibly an effect on COVID-19. So why not sip green tea? It’s delicious. It’s healthy. I would do a minimum of three cups a day. I would brew it and let it cool down. Don’t add sugar and don’t add milk to it. Add lemon. It kind of protects the green tea catechins, and you absorb them better, and the more you absorb, the better it is for your health. So I would definitely get my Vitamin D levels higher right now, because there’s a lot of evidence that it keeps you safer from COVID-19. And I would definitely be sipping green tea.† [00:15:37]
[00:15:39] So thank you for listening to today’s InViteⓇ Health Podcast broadcast, you can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or just visit invitehealth.com/podcast. You can also follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at @invitehealth. And by the way, when you listen to our podcast, if you could subscribe and leave us a review, it would be helpful. I want to thank you for listening. I’m signing off, Jerry Hickey. Hope to see you next time on another InViteⓇ Health Podcast episode.† [00:15:39]
*Exit music*
Gabapentin is a drug that is commonly prescribed for nerve pain, but this medication may cause you to lose important nutrients that are necessary for the health of your brain, heart and more.
In this episode of the InVite Health Podcast, Amanda Williams, MPH concludes her series on the workings of the immune system. Learn about the important role nutrients such as Vitamin A, Vitamin E and mushroom extract play in your immune defenses.
immune system
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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Hosted by Amanda Williams, MPH
*Intro music*
InVite Health Podcast Intro: Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our degreed healthcare 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!
*Intro music*
Amanda Williams, MPH: [00:00:39] We’ve come to part three on our immune system podcast series, where I’m going to be discussing autoimmune conditions, what that actually means, and understanding the difference between passive and active immunity. So I’m Amanda Williams, MD, MPH, and we’ve covered a lot of ground. We’ve talked about the immune system, how its basic function is, talked about the impact of inflammation, talked about the end results of an aging immune system and immunosenescence. So today I want to talk about autoimmune and looking really at passive and active immunization. So when we think about the way that our immune system reacts when we’re exposed to a particular virus or bacteria, whatever pathogen it may be, we have a immune system response. So we have this acquired immunity, which is attained either through passive or through active immunization. So when we think about passive immunization, this is really talking about the transfer of immunity and this goes from one person to another. So when we think about maternal antibodies being passed off to the developing baby, so that would be an example of that passive immunity. So we can also get passive immunity through antibody-containing blood, such as an immune globulin. So you see certain disease conditions where immune globulins are utilized. So this is a form once again of passive immunity.† [00:02:31]
[00:02:33] Now, when we think about active immunity, this results when we have exposure to a particular disease organism that triggers the immune system to produce antibodies. So what are we now thinking about? We are thinking about antibody or adaptive or delayed immune response. So active immunity can be acquired through natural immunity or through vaccine-induced immunity. So natural immunity means we’re exposed to a particular pathogen and our body creates a means to fend this off if we are exposed to it again. Now, vaccine-induced immunity is acquired through either, you know, a killed vaccine or a weakened formed of that vaccine. There’s many different vaccines. Now we have the mRNA vaccines. So in either way, if the person comes in contact with that particular disease pathogen in the future, then the immune system recognizes this and will immediately produce the antibodies needed to fight it. So active immunity is very long-lasting in many cases, and in certain conditions, it’s actually lifelong. So when we think about someone who gets vaccinated for hepatitis B, for example, that has a long-lasting immunity. Now there’s other types of pathogens, when you think about tetanus, for example. Someone has to get re-vaccinated to that. So when it comes to understanding vaccination, this is quite complex. But at the end of the day, we know that the immune system works via active immunity and passive immunities. Passive immunity is what we get when we’re born or if we’re going under treatment for an immune globulin treatment therapy. Active immunity is going to be derived either via natural immunity or through vaccine-induced immunity.† [00:04:38]
[00:04:40] So how can things go haywire? This is where we come in to autoimmune. So an autoimmune disease or disorder occurs when the body’s immune system attacks the body. And usually when people think about autoimmune conditions, they think of the most common ones. You think about rheumatoid arthritis, you think about lupus, Graves’ disease, Hashimoto’s, psoriasis. These are common. There’s hundreds of autoimmune conditions and some are very common. We know that in the United States alone, one out of every 15 people, one out of every 15, has an autoimmune condition. So when we think about things like ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, myasthenia gravis, type one diabetes is an autoimmune condition. Understanding how this occurs is what’s important because we know that when our immune system is exposed to something, it’s going to eventually generate antibodies to this particular antigen. When the immune system cannot distinguish between what’s healthy and what is not, then it starts to destroy or attack the healthy organ or the healthy cell. And hence this is a big problem. So we see this in rheumatoid arthritis when the immune system is driving up this inflammatory response within the joint and it’s destroying that joint. So that destruction of a tissue, the abnormal growth of an organ, the change in function of an organ… We see this in Graves’ disease and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. We know that autoimmune conditions can affect more than one system, more than one organ. We know that one autoimmune condition can drive another autoimmune condition in the body. And we’ve seen this. It’s becoming more common where you can have multiple autoimmune disorders.† [00:06:48]
[00:06:51] So how does this happen? How is it that the immune system just decides to go haywire and start attacking? Well, there’s many different schools of thought on this, but one of the most common theories out there is that it’s driven because of microorganisms. So when we think about different bacteria, viruses, drug-induced autoimmune can trigger a change in the immune system because remember, we’re dealing with this multi-functional system, remember, that’s reliant on micronutrients, macronutrients, fatty acids, the gut microbiome. So if something occurs that shifts, say you have a viral infection, and because of that viral infection, the immune system gets a little confused and it’s like, “I’m not sure what we’re supposed to be doing here. Let’s just try and destroy.” That’s a big problem.† [00:07:51]
[00:07:53] They just came out in the last month and are looking, Cedars-Sinai are finding evidence of overactive immune response, meaning the immune system goes haywire, as I describe it, when we’re talking about autoimmune in the setting of SARS-CoV-2. That’s the virus that causes COVID-19. We know that there’s all of these different autoantibodies, when people talk about natural immunity that the body generates. The problem that they’re finding is that many people who are asymptomatic or mild symptoms have these autoantibodies that are stressing the immune system to such a degree, and they are persistent much longer over time, so we’re not talking about natural protective immunity. What we are looking at is autoantibody, so that autoimmune, which is linking people to these problems with chronic inflammation, post-COVID infection that’s affecting joints, that’s affecting the nervous system. Many of these autoantibodies that they are detecting are being linked to autoimmune conditions. Remember, I said when the immune system goes haywire, one thing can spiral out of control to affect another thing. So if we can see that an infection with COVID can trigger and drive these variable responses, then we need to once again be focusing on that. How do we strengthen the immune system? How do we go about making sure that the immune system isn’t taking an exposure to an antigen and creating an autoantibody to that? So autoimmune disorders are very problematic. And to rid the system of an autoimmune condition is very hard.† [00:10:02]
[00:10:03] I mentioned a lot of these diseases, you see how far they’ve made it with many of them not far. They give people different drugs, immunosuppressant drugs to try to downregulate that immune system over-response. You have different medications that help to try to regulate thyroid function in the setting of autoimmune thyroid conditions. But at the end of the day, we have to be cognizant of the fact that our immune system goes through so much from the time that we’re born to the time that we leave this world, and when we factor in nutrient depletion, when we factor in immunosenescence, when we factor in stress and the impact that lowering levels of DHEA can play, chronic autoimmune diseases are becoming more readily acquired, we can say. Seeing more and more people who are being diagnosed with autoimmune conditions. And many of these things are tracing back to different infections. So we can’t fool ourselves and say, “OK, because I had an exposure to this, now I have natural immunity.” Because sometimes that natural immunity backfires and we actually generate autoantibodies, which are now destroying good, healthy tissues and organs and pathways.† [00:11:38]
HOW DHEA SUPPORTS HEALTHY IMMUNITY – INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 80. Listen Now>>
[00:11:42] So understanding how the immune system is working, understanding that passive immunity, understanding passive immunity is short term. It’s like the innate immune response, it’s short term. Passive immunity generally only lasts for a few weeks or few months. Active immunity, which correlates with our adaptive immune response, is longer lasting. So there’s a lot of moving parts, once again, when we think about our immune system and the causative reasons as to why our immune defenses can get so incredibly disrupted. When you see people who have an autoimmune disease. And they’re given these really costly, incredibly expensive and often come with a whole list of nasty side effects, these different medications that suppress their immune system, which now leaves them more vulnerable to another infection.† [00:12:53]
[00:12:56] So there’s a lot of different ways that we can help to regulate our immune system. There are many ways in which we can make small modifications to our diet, to our exercise, making sure we’re getting adequate exposure to those micro and macronutrients to enhance the body’s ability to fend off any type of a pathogen and to boost the immune function. There’s so much research out there now that shows how different nutrients, different herbal extracts can help to enhance or downregulate the way that the immune system is over-producing these different cytokines and prostaglandins. So the overactive response by the immune system can certainly get us into trouble, so we need to make sure that the immune system knows when to turn on and when to turn off. And the best way in achieving this is through healthy lifestyle. And you can do everything right. You can be eating right, exercising and still end up with an autoimmune condition. Yeah, there can be a genetic variant that’s the driving cause, can be an environmental exposure that’s unavoidable that can be weakening the immune system. But we have so much control over the action of our immune system. But you have to take the right steps. So on the next podcast, I’m going to talk about nutrients. Nutrients to support our immune system. And there are so many. We’ll look at the basic nutrients. We’ll look at some of the advanced ways in which different herbal extracts can help to enhance. We think about mushroom extract, for example, all of the different ways that we can take different supplements that can help to enhance our immune defenses.† [00:15:01]
[00:15:01] So I want to thank you so much for tuning in to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast. Remember, you can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or by visiting invitehealth.com/podcast. Now, do make sure that you subscribe and you leave us a review. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @invitehealth and we will see you next time for another episode of the InViteⓇ Health Podcast. [00:15:01]
