Nutrition. Vitamins. You.
Written by Dr. Claire Arcidiacono, ND For further questions or concerns email me at carcidiacono@invitehealth.com Last week we started off our discussion of arthritis with osteoarthritis (OA). This week we will be looking at rheumatoid arthritis (RA). When most people think of RA they …
Subscribe Today! Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode. ESTROGEN DOMINANCE, INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 603 Hosted by Dr. Kayanne McDermott, ND. *Intro Music* InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our degreed health care professionals …
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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph.
*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!† lack
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Jerry Hickey, Ph.: [00:00:40] By the year 2009, we humans had already made or isolated approximately 50 million different chemicals. Now, this is according to the American Chemical Society. About 140,000 chemicals, different chemicals are used by industry. Now, about 6000 of those chemicals are used very frequently. That might make up 90% of all usage, but it’s still an awful lot of chemicals. And that’s according to the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology. In the United States alone in 2019, there was over 70 million tons of pollution emitted into our air over the United States. That’s the EPA data source for that, the Environmental Protection Agency. Now, these chemicals, millions of millions of chemicals, they don’t exist in a vacuum. They mix together and they make all kinds of combinations, trillions of combinations. And some of these are extremely toxic. There’s a lot of data on this. You have to expel these. You have to rid your body of these chemicals or you are getting into serious trouble, serious health trouble. So I’ll tell you about this and much more in my episode. Manmade or natural, tasty or toxic, you have to detoxify all chemicals.† [00:02:11]
NUTRIENTS TO TARGET THE IMPACTS OF AIR POLLUTION – INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 395 >> Listen Now!
[00:02:12] Hi, my name is Jerry Hickey. I’m a licensed pharmacist who specializes in nutrition, been doing this for decades. So welcome to the episode. You can find all of our episodes, by the way, 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.† [00:02:31]
[00:02:34] So where do toxins come from? Well, we actually make toxins. We you know, we we use up hormones, we use up drugs, we use up enzymes. And if these things accumulate, it could be a problem. But besides making toxins within our body through metabolism, we also eat toxins. I mean, toxins are found naturally. But of course, there’s a lot of manmade toxins. We inhale toxins. This has always happened. This is nothing new. We’ve always inhaled and consume toxins. We’ve always made toxins. So our body came equipped to diffuse these toxins, shut them down, and remove them in at least three basic ways. Now, first of all, you need antioxidants, and we’ll go into what antioxidants are. Briefly and what they do, it’s a little bit dry, but we’ll get through it. These toxins, even in small amounts, can trigger inflammation. Inflammation can damage your genes. Inflammation can damage your cells. These could be cells in your brain. It could be cells in your muscles. It could be cells in your heart. You know, you don’t want this.† [00:03:42]
[00:03:44] So antioxidants are needed to neutralize the inflammatory effects of these free of these free radicals generating toxins. So a free radical is an unstable compound, unstable compounds, cease stability. They do this by ravaging our cells and this destroys our cells, then accelerates aging. And it brings us to disease and it leads to frailty and feeble mindedness, etc. So there are supplements, antioxidants, vitamin C, vitamin E, make sure your vitamin E is natural and a more powerful form of vitamin E, is an antioxidant called Tocotrienols. We’ve done podcast on that. Zinc is at the core of antioxidants talking to others, but of course you can eat a lot of antioxidants, green leafy vegetables like broccoli and spinach, are loaded with antioxidants, carrots, berries, the dark berries like blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, they are loaded with antioxidants. Now antioxidants are needed in another way also, antioxidant enzymes are found in many places in the body like there’s a lot of them in the lining of our intestines. But this mostly takes place in two organs essential to getting rid of toxins, your kidneys, via urination and your liver. They have detoxification enzymes that help to deactivate chemicals, break chemicals down, and they do this by making them more water soluble. So when things are water soluble, they easily pass out of the body. When they’re fatty soluble, they get stored and build up in the body. So the processes of detoxification are basically taking things that are fatty soluble and making them water soluble and trying to shut them down and turn them off and then expel them.† [00:05:33]
[00:05:34] So if the liver and kidneys are the sites of major detoxification processes, that means these toxins wind up concentrating in these organs. So you need antioxidants that really benefit these organs. Like, for instance, a great antioxidant for the liver will go back to Tocotrienols first or vitamin E, that’s great for the liver. Alpha lipoic acid, Milk thistle and, an amino acid called, NAC, N-acetyl cysteine. These are fantastic for the liver and many of them are also good for the kidneys. So you’re protecting both organs from all these toxins. So that is like basic nutrition, nutrition 101, protect your organs. So the reason for detoxification is to break down the toxins. And this takes place once again largely in the liver and kidneys, and it does it in a two phase process, but now they call it a three phase process. We’ll go into it.† [00:06:27]
[00:06:27] But historically, we’ve known as a two phase process. Phase one, you’re taking these fatty substances and you’re starting the process of breaking them down. Now in phase one, that’s all you need for some toxins. But in other toxins, you need a phase two. We’ll go into that. So it’s good to keep these phases in balance because you don’t want to break down the toxin half way and have it lurking around because many times, phase one, if you break a toxin down halfway, you’re actually amplifying its toxicity. You’re actually turning it on as far as a toxin. So you want your phase two to be in balance with phase one.† [00:07:05]
[00:07:05] So as phase one starts, a process of breaking things down to get rid of them, phase two grabs them, finishes the process, and you can expel from the body. So you want and I’ll tell you how to balance those as well as we can. By the way, genetically these phases can vary dramatically from person to person. So you really want to eat good foods and all and take certain supplements that help these processes just to make sure your you stay okay. So phase one starts to break down fatty soluble substances to make them more water soluble. This way we can expelled them in our urine or feces, our poop and our urine, our pee pee. So sometimes you have to talk straightforward, simple. A large family of enzymes are involved here. So you know what, phase one is important, you’re removing many drugs through phase one, most drugs, pesticides, insecticides, old used hormones, alcohol. You don’t want alcohol to build up in the body. So there’s a family of cytochrome p450 enzymes. Pharmacists learn this because it’s so important to controlling drug the amount of drugs in your system because if you slow down key cytochrome p450 enzymes, they break down drugs. If you slow down these enzymes, the drugs build up in the system, it could be fatal. We’ll go into a typical reaction that can cause that in a second.† [00:08:35]
[00:08:37] So cytochrome p450 enzymes are quarter phase one detoxification, it’s 57 of them, 57 different types, but there’s 12 that do most of the heavy lifting examples would be what you’d read in a paper, cyp1a2, cyp3a4. So this is how people get into trouble with drugs frequently. Grapefruit juice has ingredients that slow down key cytochrome p450 enzymes about three or four of them, including cyp3a4. Now, see cyp3a4 breaks down almost 50% of all the drugs on the market. So you can imagine if you slow down this enzyme, about half the drugs you could get in a pharmacy can build up in your system. Think of how dangerous it is. And this happens because it leads people to fatal arrhythmias. Even grapefruit juice can interact with certain statin drugs and make them a little bit more dangerous. So this really shows you how important these two detoxification processes are now. Besides cytochrome p450 enzymes that help get rid of drugs and a whole bunch of chemicals and they break, like I said, they break them down. Basically they’re breaking them down and sometimes this is actually activating things, making them more toxic. So we’ll get into how to finish that off in a minute with phase two. So phase one also has alcohol dehydrogenase, an aldehyde dehydrogenase. So this breaks down alcohol and its byproducts, for instance, acetaldehyde. So if you’re lacking these enzymes, alcohol could build up in the system. We see this frequently in Asian people where they get they have a little tiny bit of alcohol even in like a cough medicine and their face gets all red. That’s more common in Asians, but it can happen in anybody. An acetaldehyde, if you lack that, the byproducts of alcohol build up and you just feel like you have a terrible hangover. So lacking these enzymes leads to alcohol flush syndrome where you get a red face, lightheadedness, a racing heart, nausea, basically a terrible hangover. Phase one also as monoamine oxidase, this is enzymes that break down neurotransmitters. Now, this is really important because we’re talking things like dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin. If you can’t break down serotonin, you get serotonin syndrome where the heart is racing and everything. It’s bad. Phase one also has peroxidase, which removes pesticides, insecticides and oxidized fats. So that’s really important. By the way, resveratrol helps that one work, resveratrol, the nutrient helps remove pesticides and insecticides and oxidized fats from the body. Oxidized fats are fats that are rancid, that can clog your arteries. So there are nutrients required for phase one.† [00:11:40]
[00:11:41] Now, this is a great reason to take a multivitamin in the morning because many of the things involved in the multivitamin, like B vitamins and zinc, are required for the function of the enzymes involved in phase one. So for instance, you need a vitamin B3, which is Niacin, you need vitamin B5, which is pantothenic acid. This helps you process fats, you need B vitamins and Zinc for the cytochrome P450 enzymes, you need molybdenum to catalyze the detoxification of many of the environmental toxins made by chemical companies. Now some foods that have some of these ingredients, poultry, fish, legumes like beans and lentils and peas, grains like whole grains, eggs, meats. But I would, I would definitely take a multivitamin. Multivitamins have so much, so many value for your health. There’s a tremendous value for a multivitamin. So albeit phase one gets rid of a lot of chemicals, sometimes it activates chemicals. And in the body chemicals combine, and some of the combinations that they make are much more dangerous than the original chemical. I read a study, I was writing a book on how to reduce the risk of cancer, looking at foods, etc. and exercise. And one study, I found showed that chemicals when they combine manmade chemicals, when they combine like you mix three of these together in a bond together, they could become 10,000 times more dangerous than the original chemical. So phase one gets rid of chemicals, you need phase one or you’re a goner. But sometimes it’s activating chemicals, making them more toxic.† [00:13:22]
[00:13:23] So that’s why phase two is so incredibly important. And that’s why you want phase two to be very functional so that any of these activated molecules, substances, substrates, whatever they might be, you could get rid of, you can usher out a body. So phase two adds things to the substance that’s called conjugation, and this finishes the process of making them more water soluble so you can get rid of them in your feces or your urine. But it also shuts down the chemicals. There are extremely important pathways here that you can really influence by foods, by supplements. You can really make your phase two very active. You need protein. Protein contains amino acids. That’s what makes protein. Protein makes you by the way, protein number two ingredient in your body especially collagen protein, but it’s made out of amino acids. And the following are involved in phase two conjugation getting rid of toxins. This is not complete. There’s a couple of minor ones like ornithine and arginine but glutamine, glycine, cysteine, methionine, and taurine, that’s why you need your protein. Minerals, magnesium, you need that to activate glutathione, glutathione is involved with at least six or seven different pathways that break down chemicals and turn off chemicals and remove them from the body. So we’ll go into that a little bit in a minute. You need sulfur, you need choline, it’s a B vitamin, you need glucuronic acid, you need vitamin B6, folate and vitamin B12. So once again, a multivitamin, very important. You’re getting a number of these things in a multi. Krill, hopefully you’re getting choline. NAC, there’s an amino acid in food called Cysteine, and Cysteine is very helpful if it goes in the right direction, but unfortunately it’s unstable. It could go in the wrong direction and be a problem. So they stabilize it as a supplement called NAC. NAC is basically, N-acetylcysteine. They attach an acetyl group to the ammonia, to the nitrogen, I should say, and cysteine. And when they do this, it super stabilizes it. NAC itself can attach to heavy metals, it can attach to titanium dioxide, it can attach to aluminum, it can attach to lead and mercury and arsenic and all these horrible disease causing heavy metals and pull them out of the body. So that’s one thing. Secondly, NAC is great for protecting the entire body. It makes the mother of all antioxidants called glutathione. And so it protects your brain, your eyes, your lungs, your heart, your blood vessel walls, your liver and kidneys. And it’s great for protecting the liver and kidneys where you’re breaking down all these chemicals. So the liver and kidneys are faced with the job of breaking down chemicals. So they’re two places most exposed to these chemicals typically. So you really have to protect them in a supplement like an NAC, even one a day really helps protect your liver and kidneys.† [00:16:30]
[00:16:32] As far as foods, cabbage vegetables and cabbage vegetables is a broad array. Mustard greens. I can’t think of a country that doesn’t have a cabbage vegetable like in Asia, there’s bok choy. Down south, there’s collard greens ,in Ireland, when I was a kid, we used to eat kale all the time. But kale, get all the fancy restaurants, right? Broccoli, spinach, not spinach. Broccoli, cauliflower, broccoli rabe, there you go, southern Europe, right. Italy, they love their broccoli rabe. Well, I love broccoli rabe. It’s great with beans, very healthy meal. So it is a lot of cabbage vegetables all over the place. Be careful what your Brussel sprouts, though, because they have arsenic in them. So if you eat too much Brussels sprouts, you build up arsenic. So put that one aside. They have an affinity for soaking up arsenic from the soil, so forget about the Brussels sprouts once in a while, it’s okay, don’t make it a habit. But the cabbage vegetables, first of all, they have all kinds of great nutrients in them, like lutein for your brain and eyes, like strontium and calcium and magnesium for your bones and vitamin D2, which is ergocalciferol, vitamin K1. So there’s a lot of good stuff in there already, but does great stuff for detoxifying because you get sulfur, you get organic sulfur from cabbage veggies. Now people who are allergic to sulfur drugs, that’s different. They can still usually eat, their broccoli and their collard greens and their kale. So don’t worry if you have, you shouldn’t have a problem if you have sulfur drug allergies with these vegetables. But if you have an allergy to these vegetables, you know it. But with all the people I’ve met with weird allergies, I’ve never met anybody allergic to broccoli. Of course, I’m not an allergist, but I’ve never seen that. But the cabbage vegetables beyond sulfur have glucuronic acid, which is incredibly interesting. I’ll get into it in a minute.† [00:18:42]
[00:18:42] Isothiocyanase, that makes Sulforaphane, that triggers Phase two detox by the liver. Glutathione precursors, which is involved with at least six pathways of breaking down chemicals. So that’s two path. That’s three pathways already. Sulfur glutathione and Isothiocyanates. The Glucuronic acid is really interesting. You see this mostly in people who are constipated. That’s one reason why constipation increases your risk of colon cancer. Bad bacteria in the gut. There’s always bad bacteria in the gut. That’s why you want the good bacteria in charge, right? But the bad bacteria in the gut release an enzyme called glucurononidase. And this breaks down the bond between your poop and toxins. And toxins can escape the poop and get recycled and go back into your body. The glucuronic acid in cabbage vegetables attaches to beta-glucuronidase, the enzyme released by the bad bacteria. And you can’t break down the toxins in the poop and recycle them. So there’s a number of good reasons for eating these vegetables.† [00:19:43]
[00:19:44] Now, egg yolks and fish and beans have choline. Krill oil is a great source of choline because it has a source of choline. That’s not just great for the liver and detoxification and your muscles and your heart, but also a form of choline that gets into your brain for your memory and for problem solving. Green leafy vegetables have molybdenum. You don’t want to overdo molybdenum, but it’s in there. Berries are also helpful. They help balance phase one and phase two because they have things like pur. The good bacteria in your intestines convert into punicalagins into ellagitannins that help ramp up phase two. So you’re in you’re in balance between phase one and phase two. Plus, ellagitannins help protect you from radiation and viruses. And they’re great antioxidants.† [00:20:34]
[00:20:35] So there’s good reasons to eat berries. Berries also, of course, have other great things in them. They have phytochemicals that help protect the brain, the eyes, the heart, breast skin. I mean, they’re just good source of nutrition, nutrients as supplements for phase two. NAC, I mention that before, NAC, especially in conjunction with other amino acids, like, like glutamine helps create glutathione, and glutathione is needed to remove chemicals from the body. It’s, um, it has a whole bunch of major pathways for breaking down and removing chemicals. But an NAC itself also attaches to heavy metals like lead, can damage your intelligence, and lead can lead to super high blood pressure and cause other problems and destroy your nervous system. Arsenic can lead to different cancers like lung cancer and liver cancer. Mercury can trigger a heart attack and blocks your energy pathways with your thyroid. So you want to get rid of those heavy metals, NAC attaches to them and removes them. That’s why it’s not a bad idea for most people to take some NAC. We’ve done, I’ve done several podcast episodes on NAC in of itself because it’s it’s so multifunctional for the human body. It does so many things for the human body.† [00:21:54]
[00:21:54] Protein, you need all those amino acids to attach to. So protein supplement like whey protein, gives you all these amino acids that attach to chemicals, and turn them off, a multivitamin. And for sulfur, there’s the NAC that can give you some sulfur, but MSM is a good natural source of sulfur you can get as a supplement methylsulfonylmethane, people know that because it’s been shown to help with headaches and it’s been shown to help with joint pain. But it’s really good to supply sulfur for the liver and kidneys to get rid of toxins. I really explained about the glucuronidase, you can actually get glucuronic acid as a supplement. Now phase three is simple. It’s fiber, water, bitter vegetables, fruits and probiotics. It’s to help you defecate and urinate. Fiber, well, first of all, fiber will will soak up excess sugars and oils and stuff and grease in your intestines. But you need fiber to make a stool. Water, without water, you’re constipated. But also water gives you the material to urinate. Bitter vegetables, because bitter vegetables trigger peristalsis, muscular activity in the intestines that helps you poop, but also helps you digest your food fruits for the polyphenols and probiotics. Probiotics are great for regularity, so there, phase three, fiber, water, bitter vegetables. What’s an example of a bitter vegetable? Broccoli rabe, escarole, chicory root, things of this nature. We’ve largely removed these from the American diet. They really have to be put back in there, fruits and a good probiotic, and then you’re able to do phase three, which is rinse these things out of the body.† [00:23:50]
[00:23:51] I want to thank you for listening today. You can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or go to invitehealth.com/podcast, and if you could subscribe and leave us a review, that would be helpful, you can also find InVite on, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at InViteⓇ Health. Once again, thanks for listening. Hope to see you next time on another episode of InViteⓇ Health podcast and this is Jerry Hickey, signing off.† [00:23:51][0.0]
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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph.
*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*
Jerry Hickey, Ph.: [00:00:40] There are plenty of hazards that threaten our lung function, the health of our lungs: Inhaling dusts of all sorts; pollution, both indoor and outdoor. Now, indoor pollution can include smoke from wood burning and coal burning stoves and smoking, of course. Infections, even aging, affects our lung function. So many things can harm the tissues of our lungs, I’ll go into the anatomy of our lungs in a minute, and this can contribute to lung diseases, among them pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma. Many studies are pointing to the benefits of resveratrol for lung function. So hi, my name is Jerry Hickey. I’m a nutritional pharmacist. Welcome to my episode, Resveratrol and Lung Health. You can listen to all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or just go to invitehealth.com/podcast. Also, you can listen to us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @invitehealth.† [00:01:50]
[00:01:51] So what exactly is resveratrol? It’s found in plants, it protects plants. For instance, red grapes under a lot of stress… So there’s a red grape growing in a part of Spain where it’s very dry and it’s very hot. The plant releases resveratrol to protect the grapes. And in fact, in red wine, you could get a tiny bit of resveratrol, maybe a milligram in a good red wine, but it dissipates very quickly. Once you open a red wine, the resveratrol evaporates in about a day, and even if you cork it really well, it only lasts about five days. And when you purchase a resveratrol supplement do not get a liquid, do not get a powder, because both light and oxygen cause resveratrol to decay. So you want to get resveratrol protected with something in the capsule. For instance, we use chlorophyll, the green stuff from vegetables and plants, to shield resveratrol from light and we use these capsules with a really tight weave that keep oxygen away from resveratrol. And if you could find a resveratrol supplement, by the way, with some other natural ingredients that are found in the same plants as resveratrol, science has proven that the resveratrol will be more beneficial. They amplify the benefits of resveratrol, namely, quercetin. Quercetin is found in good foods like garlic and onions and green tea and broccoli and spinach. And grape seed extract, any polyphenol similar to grape seed extract, which is an oligomeric proanthocyanidins, an OPC. So if you could find an OPC and quercetin in with your resveratrol and if it’s protected from light and oxygen, it’ll last longer. It’ll work better.† [00:03:41]
GETTING THE MAXIMUM OUT OF RESVERATROL – INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 479. Listen Now>>
[00:03:43] Now, there’s a bunch of proven benefits for resveratrol. I’ll go into that at the end of the program, but it really has an impact on the lungs. In fact, there’s some evidence that it protects the lungs from viruses, which is really important during the time of COVID-19. Resveratrol has alkylamines in it. Certain plants have alkylamines, like green tea, turmeric, you know, the curcumin in turmeric, and resveratrol, and these signal the immune system to fight viruses. But resveratrol is also an anti-inflammatory antioxidant in the lungs, and it also triggers genes that protect the lungs and improve the health of the lungs. For the lungs, resveratrol helps reduce inflammation, helps protect the tissues of the lungs, works as a powerful antioxidant to reduce damage by free radicals. Free radicals are found in things like smoke, but that’s just part of daily life. When you eat food and create energy, you create free radicals. So you need to shield the lungs from this as you grow older. It’s been shown to reduce fibrosis in the lungs. Fibrosis is a buildup of kind of scar connective tissue that can stiffen the lungs with age. Like I said, it can help inhibit viruses.† [00:04:50]
[00:04:52] So let’s talk about the lungs. Your respiratory system, of course, you nose and your mouth are part of your respiratory system and you inhale. And then there’s this sort of curve at the end of the nasal pharynx. So you breathe in and the air has to start to go down to the lungs. So first it goes through the trachea, which is your windpipe. It’s a pipe from your, the back of your throat down to your lungs and that branches off to a left and a right bronchi. They connect the trachea to the lungs. So there’s two lungs, you need two bronchi. And the lungs are spongy tissue that exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen. And in the lungs, there’s these little sacs, they’re tiny air sacs called alveoli. We have millions and millions of them and they exchange the carbon dioxide for the oxygen. That’s where it takes place.† [00:05:46]
[00:05:48] So some of the common conditions that affect the lungs, there’s pneumonia. Now, there’s different types of pneumonia. If you got liquid in your lungs, that’s droplet pneumonia. But most pneumonias are caused by inflammation related to bacterial infections and viral infections, like viral pneumonia is fairly common. And what happens, you get cytokines, immune messengers, and fluids affecting the lining of the lungs and this reduces the surface area of the lungs that’s working, so it makes it harder to breathe. And of course, it could get dangerous. And then there’s bronchitis. I didn’t mention the bronchioles before when I was talking about the lung anatomy, but at the end of your bronchi, remember, there’s the windpipe, the trachea that splits into bronchi. And at the end of the bronchi, there’s these little branches that are called bronchioles. And in bronchitis, the bronchioles become inflamed and you get lots of mucus and it can really affect your breathing. Then there’s asthma. Asthma. Did I say asthma? Asthma. And once again, it’s the bronchioles. The bronchioles are narrowed and they spasm and this greatly reduces the airflow. And it’s a very scary, very, very dangerous situation. We’ve done some podcast episodes on nutrients that can aid, nutrients that can aid breathing in asthma. And if you have asthma, I would recommend listening to those. Of course, asthma is a very serious, dangerous situation and I’m sure it’s quite scary. You should always have, if you have asthma, a new inhaler, rescue inhaler, in case you have an attack with a good expiration date on it. Because you never know. Then there’s emphysema. I mentioned inside the lungs there’s these tiny sacs called alveoli, and in emphysema, something’s causing them to break down and they squash down on one another and makes it terribly hard to breathe. And of course, there’s COVID-19. COVID-19 can trigger acute respiratory distress syndrome, where the lining of the lungs filled with fluid, making it terribly hard to breathe and that’s when it’s really, truly dangerous. Vitamin D can help offset that. We’ve done several podcast episodes on Vitamin D lowering the risk of acute respiratory distress syndrome. There’s plenty of research on that at this point.† [00:08:02]
[00:08:04] Aging. Oh, aging affects your lungs. Lung, lung capacity declines with age, and resveratrol can help make up for all these situations, by the way. It’s not the total answer. It’s part of the equation. It’s part of the answer. It’s helpful. I wouldn’t just depend on resveratrol, but resveratrol is very good for the lungs. I’ll go into some other nutrients that are good for the lungs at the end of the episode. So aging affects lung capacity. A bunch of things happen. The diaphragm muscle, there’s no muscles in the lungs. You have a muscle called the diaphragm that helps you breathe. It pushes your lungs up and helps you breathe, helps you exhale, and then the lungs drop and you inhale again. The diaphragm weakens, nerves weaken, the tissues in the lungs weaken. It’s all not good. So I take resveratrol every day to actually counter a lot of things that go wrong with aging in the brain, believe it or not, in the back of the eyes, in the heart and in the lungs. But it’s also good for your bones. We’ll go into it. Exercise is always good for your breathing capacity, maintaining a good body weight. If you’re overweight, it makes it harder to breathe. Avoiding smoking. Obviously, smoking is terrible for the lungs. Try to avoid pollution if it’s possible. Both indoor and outdoor pollution are terrible for the lungs. And I would take resveratrol. I would definitely add some resveratrol about 200 milligrams a day because that’s the dosage that’s great for the brain and memory also.† [00:09:34]
[00:09:35] So the Department of Infectious Diseases, the University of Rome, Sapienza, they do a lot of great research. They’re coming out with research all the time. They said resveratrol is a promising antiviral agent. Well, that’s true. I mean, plants release resveratrol to help protect them from infections as well as help protect them from stress, environmental stress. So resveratrol has some antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal activities. So they said that the University of Rome and Sapienza resveratrol has activities that can affect viruses that are bad for the lungs, like SARS-CoV-2, you know, the COVID-19 infection, influenza, the flu, respiratory syncytial virus. It can help prevent lung damage. I mean, it really is terribly, terribly important. So the University of Rome at Sapienza, they published a study in the journal Antiviral Research from the Department of Infectious Diseases. The rhinovirus. It often triggers asthma attacks and it creates attacks on people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. And there’s no, there’s no immunization against the rhinovirus. That’s a common cold virus. Well, resveratrol inhibits many viruses, including the rhinovirus and to a degree, coronaviruses. It weakens them. But in human rhinoviruses, resveratrol seems to have a pretty powerful activity. It reduces the inflammation triggered by the common cold virus. So that’s not a bad thing. I mean, it’s not the answer, but it’s helpful.† [00:11:15]
[00:11:18] So the University of Catania is also in Italy. I’ve read many studies from the University of Catania, just like I’ve read many studies from the University of Rome in Sapienza. Very good quality studies, non-biased, very, very legitimate studies. And the doctors reviewed the research pertaining to resveratrol, lung health and lung disease, including chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases like emphysema, asthma, lung fibrosis. Lung fibrosis is scar tissue build up in the lungs and it’s terrible and it can happen to anybody as we age. And they said resveratrol has benefits as a therapeutic agent. So we’re not just talking about prevention here, we’re talking about treatment. And that’s because it’s a great anti-inflammatory in the lungs.† [00:12:01]
[00:12:05] Now patients with asthma and patients with respiratory tract problems, they have cells called eosinophils that are extremely active in a bad way, which attack the lungs and cause inflammation and all kinds of symptoms and damage. So these are researchers from China. It’s the Department of Respiratory Medicine, Xinjiang Medical University in China, and they’re looking at eosinophils from asthmatic patients. Eosinophils are dominant immune cells, white blood cells that are strongly involved with the symptoms you suffer with an allergy. So you find them in your nose and in your throat and by your lungs or by your skin and by your eyes. And but they’re also involved with asthma attacks and the symptoms of an asthma attack and danger of an asthma attack. So they express the eosinophils from patients with asthma and they treated it with resveratrol and other things. And resveratrol is preventing the eosinophils from multiplying. That’s really important because that’s what happens in like an asthma attack or an allergy. The number of eosinophils proliferate, grow in number. And that’s dangerous because they keep on whipping up all the turmoil in your lungs and your respiratory tract. So the resveratrol effectively suppressed the proliferation of these eosinophils for these asthmatic patients. And the longer the exposure of the cells and the greater the exposure of the cells, the better the resveratrol worked.† [00:13:34]
[00:13:35] So let’s go to people now. Evidence inside people, not just in a test tube. This is the journal Allergy and Asthma Proceedings. And once again, it’s Italian researchers. It’s the University of Verona, their pediatric department, and it’s almost 50 kids with moderate to severe asthma. And all of these kids had attacks bad enough that they were admitted to the hospital. It’s Misurina Hospital up in the Italian Alps. They were given corticosteroids. These are the inhalers that block the inflammation, but they gradually were able to reduce the dosage of the corticosteroid inhaler. Corticosteroids are commonly used to treat asthma because they’re such powerful anti-inflammatory agents. Now, a group of these children also received a nutraceutical, a combination of herbs and nutrients: curcumin, which is from the turmeric plant, you know, the curry plant; zinc, which is great for the lungs; selenium, which is great for the lungs; Vitamin D, which is magnificent for the lungs; but of course, resveratrol was the key component in there. And when they gave these children these these pills, the inflammation in their lungs was greatly reduced. So, for instance, you would measure that inflammation by an exhalation. And they found that the products of inflammation in the exhaled air was greatly reduced in the children on the supplements. So the combination strongly reduced lung inflammation. It’s pretty common to combine nutrients that affect similar pathways. For instance, you’d want to combine fish oils with other nutrients for brain health, like B-vitamins and Vitamin C or Vitamin E, they’re all important for the brain. So there are certain combinations that work well together, so they hit on a combination that was pretty darn good.† [00:15:34]
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[00:15:37] Okay, so this is the European Respiratory Journal. It’s University Medical Center Groningen. Groningen would be in the Netherlands. And they’re looking at how come… Does red wine and white wine really support lung function? There’s been some evidence that red and white wines support lung function, but I wouldn’t go down that route because they’re clearly not healthy for your liver or your intestines. The wine, any alcohol tends to kill off your good bacteria, so it’s not the best way to treat something. But inside the red wine is resveratrol. So the doctors gave these people resveratrol or placebo. Now, this is a pretty big study, it’s 3224 people of all different ages, 3224 people. And they found that the resveratrol improved forced expiratory volume. That’s the amount of air you can quickly exhale after taking your deepest breath. And it also improved forced vital capacity. That’s the amount of air you expel after taking your deepest breath. Oh, that one’s not timed. So, resveratrol improved breathing. These people were able to inhale better and exhale more air, a stronger exhalation. I mean, this is just the opposite of what happens with aging. So just to go back and explain a little better, the forced expiratory volume is measured with time. It’s you know, you take your biggest gulp of air and you exhale, but you have to do it within like a second, where the first vital capacity, it’s just how much can you exhale after a deep breath? But they both improved with resveratrol. That’s what we’re looking for.† [00:17:30]
[00:17:32] Now, there’s a lot of evidence that resveratrol lowers the risk of lung cancer. So that’s important if you’re exposed to a lot of pollution, that’s important if you’re exposed to secondhand smoke. So this is University of California at Merced. It’s a team of researchers from California. And they’re looking into, is there truly evidence that resveratrol helps prevent lung cancer? So they said before tumors grow in the lungs, there’s a buildup of toxic free radicals. Free, free radicals are generated in abundance. And they found that, yes, resveratrol is an antioxidant that quenches free radicals, but it does something else. They found out that the resveratrol protected caspases in the lungs. So what’s a caspase? Because this was not something they expected. This was an unexpected finding in the study. Caspases are cellular executioners, and one of the things they execute are cancer cells. So what they found is things like cigarette smoke and pollution, etc. destroyed the caspases and then the caspases can’t control the growth of evil, bad, dangerous cells like cancer cells. And if they gave people resveratrol that you swallow, it protected the caspases in the lining of the lungs. That helps get rid of bad cells and it keeps the lungs healthy. Every time a smoker takes a puff from a cigarette, millions of these bronchial cells in the lungs become inflamed. And this causes white blood cells to flood into the region. These white blood cells, they do not have the ability to discriminate between a damaged lung cell and a healthy cell. So the caspases help prevent the damage by the white blood cells by breaking down the damaged lung cells. This reduces the level of the immune response, therefore protecting the lung tissue. So it’s all a bit complex. The problem is that smoking also destroys the caspases. See? So when you smoke, you’re inflaming the lungs, you’re causing white blood cells to rush in there. The white blood cells will destroy the good cells and the bad cells. But the smoking destroys the caspases, so you can’t protect the lungs. So when you take resveratrol, the resveratrol protects the caspases, it prevents the inflammation of the lungs, it gets rid of damaged cells. It’s all really good. So the University of California team in the Journal of Biochemistry and Cellular Biology said resveratrol protects the caspases from cigarette smoke and other things that could be inhaled and this in turn protects the lung. So there really is some evidence that resveratrol protects the lungs. Like I said, it’s not the total answer. It’s part of the equation for the answer, for the correct answer.† [00:20:31]
[00:20:31] Now what? And 200 milligrams a day is sufficient. When they did studies on brain health… Let me give you some other benefits of resveratrol and then I’ll tell you some other supplements that are good for the lungs. When they did studies on elderly people and resveratrol, 200 milligrams was like a perfect dosage. It improves circulation to the aging brain, circulation to the brain declines with age and their memory improved. So I said, why not make 200 milligrams? But they also found that resveratrol improves bone strength like even an elderly women, postmenopausal women. It helps prevent a hip fracture. Resveratrol is good for heart and circulatory health and people with elevated blood sugar, resveratrol helps normalize blood sugar. It’s part of the benefit you can give. It’s part of things you can give to benefit people with pre-diabetes or diabetes. It doesn’t affect blood sugar and people with normal blood sugar levels. It only seems to help people with elevated blood sugar levels. So that’s a good thing. So there’s other benefits for resveratrol: memory, bone strength, heart health and circulation, improving blood sugar. There are other benefits too. Now, so I take 200 milligrams a day. It’s good for my aging lungs. It’s good for my brain and my memory. It’s good for my heart, it’s good for my pancreas. I didn’t even discuss that. It’s good for my kidneys and my liver, so, and it’s good for my bones.† [00:21:48]
[00:21:49] Other supplements that are good for the lungs: NAC. NAC is a stabilized version of the amino acid cysteine and cysteine’s unstable, so when you add an acetyl group to the cysteine, it becomes N-acetyl-cysteine, it’s stable and it creates a master antioxidant all over the body, including in the lungs that shield the lungs from damage. So NAC’s great for the lungs. People come in and see me with bronchiectasis and chronic bronchitis and emphysema and asthma. I always put them on NAC. Once again, it’s part of the answer. Black seed. Black cumin seed. Black cumin seed is used in those flatbreads in the Middle East and Northern Africa and because it protects the bread and keeps it fresh. Black seed, black cumin seed has many benefits, but it’s great for the lungs. It’s great. It’s helpful for asthma. It’s helpful for allergies. Vitamin C and Vitamin E. There’s a surface liquid in the lungs. And this surface liquid has to be loaded with glutathione, Vitamin C and Vitamin E to protect the lungs. So getting some Vitamin C and Vitamin E every day, you don’t need a lot of Vitamin E, helps protect your lungs.† [00:23:00]
[00:23:02] I want to thank you for listening to this edition of the InViteⓇ Health Podcast. You can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or go to invitehealth.com/podcast. You can also listen to us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. I want to thank you for listening to this episode and this is Jerry Hickey signing off.† [00:23:02]
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