Nutrition. Vitamins. You.
With three COVID-19 vaccines on the market, how do you know which vaccine is best for you? Jerry Hickey, Ph. discusses how they compare, along with the clinically studied nutrients that may make them more effective.
There’s been a huge amount of research on Vitamin D coming out over the past several decades, but recently research is booming. Here’s why.
NAC
Invite Health Podcast, Episode hosted by Amanda Williams, MPH
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Today, I want to do an update on N-acetylcysteine. NAC is an incredibly important and very, very powerful precursor to the making of glutathione, which is one of our endogenous antioxidants. NAC in and of itself has antioxidant properties and it does so much besides just helping to support the natural production of glutathione. It helps to reduce inflammatory cytokines and targets bacterial and viral infections. It can help to downregulate NF-kappa beta, which is one of the master regulators for inflammation in the body. It can also help to enhance insulin sensitivity in the body, so for people who have metabolic disorders including prediabetes and diabetes, NAC can be very helpful. When it comes to different areas of the body where oxidative stress is more pronounced, for example, after exercise, NAC can be very, very beneficial. I want to talk about NAC and revisit it because a lot of researchers have been looking at this nutrient in the setting of COVID-19 as a potential treatment option.†
N-acetylcysteine is the precursor for the primary endogenous antioxidant in the body, glutathione. We have known for a very long time that NAC can help to loosen thick mucus in the lungs when people have COPD and other respiratory issues, so for a lot of people who deal with seasonal allergies, oftentimes adding NAC into their routine during that time can be very beneficial. Not only can it help with the thinning of the mucus, but it is also targeting those inflammatory pathways, which is important because we are typically facing inflammation when we are dealing with seasonal allergies or any type of respiratory issue. NAC can help to tamper that down. Many people know NAC as being the antidote when people take too much acetaminophen. If you overdose on acetaminophen, the way to try to save the liver so you don’t go into acute liver failure is to give a high dose of NAC.†
How To Support Respiratory Health During A Pandemic – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 253. Listen Now >>
NAC is also working within the immune system and that is clear when we look at the way that N-acetylcysteine can help to regulate different genes. Researchers have been able to specifically assess the way that NAC is able to target H. pylori, which we know is that very miserable bacterial infection that is the number one cause for the peptic and duodenal ulcers, as well as gastric cancers.†
N-acetylcysteine is also very targeted when it comes to different viruses. Researchers have certainly looked at influenza and they found that NAC treatment of influenza significantly decreased the frequency, as well as the severity and duration. When looking at the nutrient in that regard, researchers decided to also look at it in regards to COVID-19 patients.†
In October 2020, there was an overview published in the Medical Hypotheses journal talking about NAC as a potential therapeutic agent for COVID-19. In this overview, they discussed how lowered immune function led to an increase in the risk of disease severity and looking at high levels of inflammatory markers such as TNF alpha, interleukin 6 and interleukin 10. When we get an overproduction of these in the body, we have that cytokine storm. Being that experts know that NAC can target these different mechanisms by which inflammation is driven up in the body, they started to really look at NAC as a potential treatment option for COVID-19.†
In this particular study, they were hypothesizing that N-acetylcysteine could actually act as a therapeutic agent in the treatment of COVID-19 through a variety of mechanisms, including increasing the glutathione, improving T-cell response and modulating inflammation. I think it’s quite notable that NAC isn’t just for making glutathione, it’s doing many other things.†
How NAC Supports Healthy Hearing – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 211. Listen Now >>
The Department of Health Sciences at the University of Genoa in Italy looked at the rationale for using NAC for not only the prevention but also the treatment of COVID-19. Through their research, they focused a lot on the cytokine storm and this systemic inflammatory response that is brought on by an overreaction in the immune system due to COVID exposure. Looking at the oral administration of NAC, they said that it is likely to attenuate the risk of developing COVID-19. This would be because we’re lessening inflammation in the body and at the same time we’re heightening the immune system’s ability to be at the ready. This is another area where they have shown that N-acetylcysteine really does have this power about it.†
Thank you for tuning in to the Invite Health Podcast. You can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or by visiting www.invitehealth.com/podcast. Make sure you subscribe and leave us a review! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at Invite Health today. We’ll see you next time on another episode of the Invite Health Podcast.
Tune into the full podcast episode for more information about the benefits of NAC.
When we think about the long-term implications of COVID-19, we have to start to think about its impact on our central nervous system. This includes of cognitive abilities like memory, along with our senses.
Algae, those plant-like green velvet blankets on the surface of ponds and lakes, holds a vault’s worth of nutrition. One of these algae, called Euglena gracilis, supplies and insoluble fiber that stimulates our immune system whenever we need it. This ingredient is called Beta-1.3-Glucan and it’s very well researched in the support of the immune system.
covid mutations
Invite Health Podcast, Episode hosted by Amanda Williams, MPH.
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By now, we’ve all heard that there is a new strain of the COVID-19 virus that is out there and it has been coined the UK strain. A lot of focus has been put on this strain because of the perception that it is certainly much more transmissible and hence more contagious, but they’re not able to definitely show that it is creating higher mortality rates. This means that the original strain of virus going around was infecting and killing people roughly at the same rate as this new strain, which is infecting more people but perhaps killing less people.
Let’s talk a little bit about that in terms of what it actually means when we talk about a variant or a mutation within a virus and why this can be incredibly problematic when we’re looking at COVID-19, as well as what we should be doing throughout this time.
Genetic changes within viruses
We know that viruses as a whole continually change as a result of basic genetic selection, so they’re undergoing these different subtle genetic changes or mutations. Through these mutations, then we can end up with a variant or strain that actually is presenting in a much different way than the original virus.
We can think about the influenza virus, for example. We know that from one year to the next, there are always new strains. With the flu vaccine, they’re always trying to predict what the new mutation might be.
How To Support Respiratory Health During A Pandemic – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 253. Listen Now >>
The mutation rates of viruses certainly are quite high. When we look at RNA viruses in particular, which is what COVID-19 is, they have a much higher mutation rate. Being that RNA viruses seem to mutate at a much higher rate, then we have to look at it and consider how we can track it in terms of its infectiousness. We know that the virus is replaced by many, many different generations of itself and this is what a virus tends to do. They change and evolve many times.
Learn more about the replication of viruses and the variety of coronavirus strains by tuning into the full podcast episode.
What to know as we face mutations in COVID-19
One of the things we know for sure now that we as a scientific community have been researching the rate and spread of COVID-19 for over a year now is how effective masking and social distancing can be. When you start to see a waning of this behavior, we start to see this spike. That’s where the worry is with this new strain of virus because people have COVID fatigue. Now that we have a new strain that’s out there that’s really, really infectious, you have to make sure that you are taking every possible precaution that you can during this time.
There are more and more studies that continue to come out that are shedding more light onto COVID-19 and the different variants that are out there. One thing that came out recently in the journal PLOS One was that males of all ages appear to be affected by COVID-19 at a greater rate than females. The researchers were looking at different data that was available through Houston Methodist Research Institute and they were able to identify different populations and subgroups within those populations that were being strongly impacted by looking at the level of disease and vulnerability of different groups. What they were able to detect overall was that those who were testing positive for COVID-19 were, at a greater proportion, males as compared to females. At this point in time, it is looking like males are more likely to actually contract the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This is certainly something they’re going to be looking into in terms of further investigation and it is important to know now that we’re looking at this UK variant that is now starting to traverse across the United States.
COVID-19 Research Recommends Vitamin D Supplementation – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 251. Listen Now >>
The University of Texas at Austin were looking at the different mutations and talking about how the mutations themselves are what are making the coronavirus more contagious. Sometimes you see this in the opposite way with other viruses, where the more mutations there are, the lower the transmission rate becomes. But we’re not seeing that with COVID-19. The researchers were looking at 5000 different patients who were COVID-19 positive in Houston and were finding that the virus that causes the disease was accumulating greater genetic mutations than they even recognized before.
Tune into the full podcast episode for more information on the research relating to new COVID-19 strains.
We’ve gotten a lot of questions about whether people should be doing anything different to prepare for these new variants. My best advice would be to make sure you’re doing everything in your power to support your immune system during this. Make sure that, every single day, you’re taking things that we know the immune system needs to function properly, like Vitamin C, Vitamin D, zinc and magnesium. Even at bare minimum, I would encourage people to take a multivitamin, as well as Immunity Hx to give you an adequate amount of Vitamin D, Vitamin C and zinc. You also want to make sure that you’re still practicing proper social distancing and you’re limiting your exposure to big, large group settings. If you’re going to be going out, wear your mask.
Thank you for tuning in to the Invite Health Podcast. You can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or by visiting www.invitehealth.com/podcast. Make sure you subscribe and leave us a review! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at Invite Health today. We’ll see you next time on another episode of the Invite Health Podcast.
