What Is Lupus? – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 522
Lupus is an autoimmune condition that is closely related to inflammation and low levels of Vitamin D. Learn more about this issue and what you can do to help from Amanda Williams, MD, MPH.
Tag: vitamin D
Turn to Black Seed to Target Snow Mold – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 511
Have you heard of snow mold? This occurs when the snow begins to melt and it may be contributing to issues such as runny nose, cough and itchy eyes.
New Findings on Nutrition and Cancer – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 501
cancer
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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
New Findings on Nutrition and Cancer – InViteⓇ Health Podcast, Episode 501
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.: [00:00:41] Recently, there’s been some very interesting findings in the field of cancer and nutrition, and I’d like to review that quickly for you today. So welcome to my episode, New Findings on Nutrition and Cancer. My name is Jerry Hickey. I’m a nutritional pharmacist. I’m also the Senior Scientific Officer over here at InViteⓇ Health. By the way, you could find all of our episodes on any place you’re listening to your podcasts, but also at invitehealth.com/podcast. Please subscribe and leave us a review. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at @invitehealth. All of the information on today’s episode will be linked up to episode description, so let me review this. It’s very, very interesting stuff.† [00:01:26]
[00:01:29] The first report is on the mineral magnesium and magnesium specifically in its relationship with the immune system and with cancer. That’s from scientists at the University of Cambridge in the UK and the University of Basel in Switzerland. And magnesium… there would be different ways that magnesium would influence the immune system in a positive fashion. First of all, there’s a lot of data that cancer patients who have sufficient Vitamin D levels, they survive cancer much better. And you need magnesium to activate Vitamin D, so that’s very interesting and very important. In fact, there’s receptor sites on many immune cells for Vitamin D and these immune cells can activate Vitamin D. And then Vitamin D affects a whole bunch of genes that help govern the immune system. So Vitamin D is important for fighting infections, but it’s also important for fighting cancer. Plus, Vitamin D reduces inflammation, and cancer uses inflammation as a springboard to energy so it can grow and spread. So once again, there’s an important interaction between magnesium, which is needed to activate Vitamin D. Secondly, you need magnesium, the mineral magnesium, to release melatonin at night. If you don’t release melatonin at night, or if you release insufficient levels of melatonin, your immune system just doesn’t work well. That’s just not working at the appropriate time. And last of all, in my opinion, magnesium is also needed to stabilize energy. When you eat food and you breathe in oxygen, a lot of that goes towards the Krebs citric acid cycle, where you’re turning sugar into energy. And once you have that energy, it’s a molecule called ATP. It’s a nucleotide called ATP, that’s responsible for almost all your energy. You need to stabilize it by attaching magnesium to it. Otherwise, it’s going to just flare up and be used up before you can even get any benefit out of it. So 90% of your energy is attached to the mineral magnesium. So there’s different ways that magnesium can influence the immune system because if you don’t have enough energy, the immune system is a high energy group of cells, if they don’t have enough energy, they’re not going to do a great job of fighting for you. So the scientists at Cambridge University and University of Basel, they discovered that your killer T cells can only kill cancer cells or fight infections if they’re in the presence of sufficient magnesium. So if there’s not enough magnesium near these T cells, not enough of them are going to be activated. [00:04:24]
[00:04:26] Now, looking at other clinical trials using cancer immunotherapies, they found that lower levels of magnesium in the blood serum led to more rapid growth and spread of the cancer and shortened survival of the patient. Magnesium’s involved in over 600 chemical reactions in the human body. It’s very important for your metabolism, and many of these reactions involve your immune system and immune system functions and immunity.† [00:04:58]
[00:04:59] So what’s a natural killer cell? You have basically two parts of the immune system the innate immune system, which is not educated. It’s just kind of like a blunt force, blunt force trauma against germs and cancer, but it has to be guided. And then there is the acquired immune system, which is educated. It’s like an intelligent part of the immune system and that consists of B cells, which have antibodies, plus antibodies and other places. Antibodies fit an infection specifically. So when you have antibodies against COVID-19, they fight COVID-19, they don’t fight the flu. And when you have antibodies against the flu, they fight the flu. They don’t fight COVID-19. So antibodies are part of the acquired immune system, which is like the intelligent part of the immune system and then natural killer cells, which are really cool cells, they kind of have a little bit of a memory, a short-term memory, and, see, they kind of fill a gap, natural killer cells. The first part of the immune system to attack an infection, and this part doesn’t work very well in adults, is the innate immune system with neutrophils. They’re also called polymorphonuclear leukocytes. We kind of don’t have great functioning neutrophils when you’re older, but they kind of handle the infection for, let’s make believe three days. You know, it’s hard to say exactly, but three days, then they start to peter out. They get fatigued. The natural killer cells bridge the gap between when they’re starting to not function as well and when you have enough time to make antibodies, antibodies specific for the infection, which can take a week, 10 days.† [00:06:31]
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[00:06:33] So the the acquired immune system’s really important and then there’s the T cells. The T cells shred infections, the T cells shred cancer tumors, cancerous tumors and cancerous cells if they know where it is. So many of the new or very advanced therapies for cancer take a sample of your cancer. See, every cancer has different mutations that are a signature for that specific cancer. So if you had 100 men in a room with prostate cancer, every one of those cancers would have different mutations. So they train… They take out your T cells and they train them to look at the mutations in your particular cancer. And then they load you up with those T cells and those T cells can recognize the cancer, hunt it down and kill it. But it turns out these killer T cells require, they require the presence of magnesium for them to really work. So if you’re lacking magnesium, even though you have these killer T cells, they don’t have the energy to do their job. So this is really important data.† [00:07:44]
[00:07:45] Now here’s a second study. It’s in the journal Cancer. It’s the University of Buffalo, the University of Buffalo School of Public Health and the University of Buffalo School of Pharmaceutical Sciences. And they found that 68% of cancer survivors report that they use nutritional supplements. Now, that’s really important data because they found that the cancer survivors that use nutritional supplements, they survive better, they survive the cancer better, they live longer and they live cancer-free longer, apparently. But they also had lower rates for hospitalizations, and they also had a better quality of life. So what’s a better quality of life? You know, having the energy to go outside and be active, having the energy to be social, having good brain function, that sort of thing. Quality of life, what makes your life worth living. That was a 10-year period that they watched these cancer survivors. And they found that the supplements basically cost about a dollar a day, but here’s what they found. Because the supplements kept people out of the hospital, it was a lot less expensive to use the supplements than not use the supplements because one trip to the hospital cost more than the supplements. So the people on the supplements had a lower rate of hospitalization and they survived better and they had a better life, better quality of life.† [00:09:09]
[00:09:10] So there are nutrients that we know work very well in cancer patients to begin with, but also in cancer survivors. One of them is Vitamin D. The Vitamin D helps reduce inflammation. Cancer feeds off inflammation to get the energy to grow and spread and the wherewithal to grow and spread. But Vitamin D is also needed for activating and guiding specific immune cells, so people who have sufficient Vitamin D over the course of their cancer treatment tend to do better, but they also survive better. They’ve seen this with a number of different cancers, including breast cancer, certain leukemias, prostate cancer. I believe colon cancer, but I’d have to double check that one. And you want your Vitamin D level, ideally between like 45 and 65. Like 55 is a beautiful, beautiful level of Vitamin D in your blood.† [00:10:01]
[00:10:02] Another supplement that there’s a good amount of research that is helping cancer patients is a good probiotic. Look for strains such as Lactobacillus plantarum, Lactobacillus ramnosis, bifidobacterium animalis subspecies lactis. These are really important for immune system function. So there’s a number of studies now that are showing that cancer treatment works better in the presence of these healthy bacteria and survival seems to be better also.† [00:10:29]
[00:10:31] Other supplements that may be helpful: magnesium that needs more work, but it certainly seems to be something. If your, if your killer cells, you, your killer T cells, require magnesium to function, that makes it very important for treating cancer. And then some people melatonin, because melatonin is needed for a properly-functioning immune system. So if you’re not sleeping at night, you can have a doctor check the level of melatonin metabolites in your urine the next morning. And if it’s low, you probably need melatonin, that should help the body fight cancer. There’s a lot of evidence building, there’s a good archive of it actually, that people who lack melatonin have a higher risk of a whole bunch of cancers.† [00:11:13]
[00:11:15] Beyond that, certain foods like green tea. But here’s a caveat. Don’t put milk in green tea. There’s some evidence it doesn’t work as well with milk. Put some lemon in there. Put some kind of citrus in there. The citrus ingredients shield the delicate polyphenols in green tea from your digestive enzymes in your stomach acids and you absorb more of them and they’re intact, so you’ll get a better return for your health if you do that with your green tea. But green tea in many ways helps fight cancer, so people who survive cancer come see me, I say, “Well, listen, you have to do green tea.” I also tell them to eat a lot of berries, dark berries and apples, and maybe even some high quality cocoa, even some red grapes. Or take some resveratrol because the anthocyanins and the flavan-3-ols are very healthy for their brain and their heart and their immune system, survival in general. I told them, have cabbage vegetables about five times a week. Cabbage vegetables could be bok choy, broccoli rabe, kale, collard greens. I don’t normally tell them Brussels sprouts because that can have a lot of heavy metals in it. So I don’t normally tell them Brussels sprouts, but broccoli itself, cabbage because there’s a whole bunch of things in cabbage vegetables that the good bacteria in your intestines convert into cancer-fighting nutrients like there’s isothiocyanates that convert to sulforaphane. There’s glucuronic acid. There’s indole-3-carbinol, which converts to diindolylmethane. All these are cancer fighters. However, there’s a caveat with cabbage vegetables, too. If you eat them raw, they can block your thyroid function. They can decrease your thyroid function, which is not good for the immune system. But if you cook them, you get rid of the things that affect the thyroid, they’re called goitrogens. But even cooked, I wouldn’t have them more than five days a week. So cabbage vegetables five days a week help in the fight against cancer and viruses, not a bad thing. A multivitamin is always helpful.† [00:13:22]
[00:13:23] So thanks for listening to my episode today. You can find all of our episodes wherever you listen to podcasts or just go to invitehealth.com/podcast. You can also find us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @invitehealth. Please subscribe and leave us a review. I want to thank you for listening, and this is Jerry Hickey signing off. By the way, if you’re going to use supplements during your treatment for cancer, you really have to pass that by your oncologist, the doctor managing your cancer for approval because there’s different forms of cancer treatment, and we would never want to interfere with them, even though that would be not very likely. It’s still important to check this with the doctor.† [00:13:23]
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Chronic Inflammation, Part 2 – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 499
Chronic inflammation can wreak havoc on the body, so what can you do to help? Turn to powerful nutrients such as Vitamin D, resveratrol and more to help with inflammaging.
An Update on Vitamin D and COVID-19 – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 497
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.
Update: Green Tea and the Flu – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 496
flu
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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Update: Green Tea and the Flu – InViteⓇ Health Podcast, Episode 496
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’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]
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[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*