Data Shows How to Protect Against Coronavirus and We Address Conspiracy Theories

I’m not, nor have I been, concerned with contracting COVID-19. Pathogens infect people who are vulnerable. The concept of random/chance infections doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. If a pathogen does kill everyone and anyone regardless of how healthy the host is the pathogen would burn out its host supply. Evolutionarily speaking this isn’t something that makes sense.

The medical science community is just now discovering how gut health is synonymous with overall health. Of course, they’re trying to figure out what drugs can be made from the revelations and not how one can take their health into their own hands because the truth is not profitable. The truth is the only way to sustain proper gut health is to continually eat a wide variety of raw vegetables and herbs while avoiding toxic foods and chemicals that imbalance the microbiome.

Studies are showing a number of factors that play a role in the severity of COVID-19 symptoms. Some of these we have control of and some of these we don’t. Let’s start with those we have no control over.

Age

Viruses like influenza are more likely to injure and kill both the young and the older population, given their more vulnerable immune systems. But COVID-19 is a little different.

Children under the age of 18 are far less likely to have symptoms of infection, and they are also less likely to need hospitalization, and kids are less likely to die of COVID-19.

People over the age of 75, on the other hand, are far more susceptible to the worst COVID-19 has to offer. Below is a chart with data provided by New York City Health as of May 13, 2020.

AGE	Number of Deaths	Share of deaths
0 – 17 years old	9	0.06%
18 – 44 years old	601	3.90%
45 – 64 years old	3,413	22.40%
65 – 74 years old	3,788	24.90%
75+ years old	7,419	48.70%
TOTAL	15,230	100%

Age of coronavirus deaths via World Meters

The data we have is very limited so far but China and other countries, and other states within the U.S. show numbers for 75+ between 20% and 35%.

As you probably heard in the news, coronavirus has been hitting nursing homes hard.

Sex

Men are much more likely to suffer symptoms from coronavirus than women. Data provided by New York City Health as of April 1st states that 61.8% of fatalities are men. Other studies of other regions show similar percentages. Researchers are trying to figure out why. Men face higher risk of complications with other respiratory illnesses as well, as the flu also affects men disproportionately.

The evidence in current studies points towards men having weaker immune systems than women, especially when it comes to common viral respiratory infections. Men are more susceptible to them, symptoms are worse, they last longer, and men are more likely to be hospitalized and die from the flu.

Sue is a clinical assistant professor in family medicine at Memorial University of Newfoundland

A study published in Frontiers in Public Health reported that men and women were equally likely to contract the novel coronavirus.

So why are men more likely to die? Theories range from how testosterone affects the body to the fact that men are often less likely to take care of themselves. As usual, it’s likely a confluence of issues.

Blood Type

A study found that people with blood type A were 50% more likely to experience severe COVID-19 symptoms than people with other blood types. On the flip side, those with blood type O were 50% less likely to face severe symptoms of COVID-19.

Race

CDC statistics show that 33% of people who’ve been hospitalized with COVID-19 are African American. Some local communities that report data have found similar patterns.

Black people make up only 13% of the U.S. population but they make up more than 30% of COVID deaths, according to research from Johns Hopkins University.

The disproportionate death rate may be significantly explained by the fact that there’s a higher prevalence of obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes among African Americans compared with Caucasians. But there’s more to it than that.

Black workers are also more likely to have employment that does not allow them to work from home, and they are less likely to have the safety nets that allow them to take time off. There’s a likely possibility that the African American community is more likely to be exposed to the virus. Detroit was hit particularly hard by the pandemic, but the daily cases and the death rate in Michigan have been on the decline for some time, indicating that the virus may have run its course. Perhaps Detroit inadvertently followed Sweden’s model.

While doctors warn against taking high doses of vitamin D The NHS says wants people to consider taking 10 micrograms of vitamin D3 a day throughout the pandemic – particularly if they spend most of their time inside.

Besides blood type, most of the data above indicates that health plays a big role in determining the outcome of someone who is infected by CVOID-19. The data below proves it.

Underline Medical Conditions and Immunocompromised

Of people who were sick enough to be hospitalized with coronavirus, 89% had at least one chronic condition. About half of those patients had high blood pressure and obesity, about a third of the patients had diabetes, and another third had cardiovascular disease.

People with obesity tend to be more likely to develop heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other health issues.

Besides staying fit, what else can one do to protect themselves from COVID-19? Vitamin D, Glutathione, and most importantly, gut health play an enormously important role in determining one’s ability to fight off COVID-19.

Vitamin D

Some studies have indicated that vitamin D deficiency is linked to poorer outcomes with coronavirus. There are not any studies showing the vitamin D supplementation can help one overcome the virus, and other underlying risk factors, such as heart disease and diabetes make it hard to draw conclusions because people with these conditions are often low in vitamin D.

Glutathione

COVID-19 deaths are attributed to something called a “cytokine storm”, a physiological reaction in which our immune system causes an excessive release of cytokines, a pro-inflammatory signaling molecule. The only treatments modern medicine knows to do for this symptom are oxygen therapy and assisted ventilation.

A new study has evaluated the effects of dose oral and IV glutathione in the treatment of two patients with COVID-19 pneumonia.

Oral and IV glutathione, glutathione precursors (N-acetyl-cysteine) and alpha lipoic acid may represent a novel treatment approach for blocking NF-κB and addressing “cytokine storm syndrome” and respiratory distress in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia.

Science Direct – Respiratory Medicine Case Reports

To be clear, that’s only two cases that were studied in that paper. There are other papers that support the hypothesis, but there is nothing yet conclusive.

Dr. Richard Horowitz, a board-certified internist with a private integrative medicine practice is considered to be one of thes top Lyme disease doctors. He has built a practice around combining classical and complementary treatments for Lyme diseases.

“It is a miracle and it’s not,” says Horowitz of glutathione, which he has used on thousands of patients in his medical practice over the past 30 years. “It’s already in the literature—there are published articles on glutathione showing that it has anti-viral activity against herpes viruses, HIV, and hepatitis. The problem is, all of the COVID research is happening through pharmaceutical companies. No one is looking at natural approaches. You hear a little about how low vitamin D might put you at risk, so it’s coming out in dribs and drabs.” And just like with vitamin D, you can be deficient in glutathione—especially if you’ve been exposed to a lot of environmental toxins (which is everyone). Older people are also more likely to be depleted of the compound.

Two Potential Treatments for COVID-19 Unfold in the Hudson Valley

Gut Health

In the first case of novel coronavirus reported in the U.S., the patient reported two days of nausea and vomiting along with diarrhea in addition to respiratory symptoms. In some small studies, researchers have linked patients with gastrointestinal issues to poorer coronavirus outcomes. Poor gut health seems to equate to severe disease symptoms including higher fevers and a greater risk of liver injury.

The suggestion is that the gastrointestinal symptoms are caused by the virus invading the ACE2-containing cells that are found throughout the bowel. This, together with the presence of the virus in the stool, suggests the gastrointestinal tract as another possible route of infection and transmission.

The Conversation – Worried about coronavirus? Pay attention to your gut

But it’s not just that the virus attacks the gut. Science is on the verge of discovering that our gut microbiome supplies our entire body with its microbiome. And what they don’t yet know, but is nevertheless true, is that a body with a healthy, diverse, and plentiful microbiome is a much less hospitable host for foreign invaders.

The health of our gut bacteria plays a crucial role in how our immune system reacts to every disease, including coronavirus. Diet is crucial to developing and maintaining healthy gut flora. The wider variety of raw vegetables and herbs one consumes, the more diverse one’s gut bacteria will be. And diversity is key to a healthy microbiome.

This article, How To Heal Your Gut, goes into detail about how to develop a healthy gut microbiome and is the basis for ridding the body of and being less susceptible to nearly every disease.

From our sister company, Green Lifestyle Market, here are our top four supplement picks for anyone concerned with COVID-19:

But don’t skip the aforementioned gut health article! Diet is far more important than supplements, and if finances are tight, put your money towards healthy food before you purchase supplements.

And now that you have some facts to arm yourself against COVID-19, let’s talk analysis some of the so-called “fake news” that’s going around regarding coronavirus.

Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Germs are real, and they can kill you. But cellular health is what separates the vulnerable from the robust immune systems. Your gut is the engine that powers your body. While this should seem obvious to anyone who has even a rudimentary understanding of biology, it’s still considered conspiracy theory to suggest that getting ill with a virus is anything more than bad luck, even though the science continually supports our position. Speaking of conspiracy theories, let’s debunk a few.

Coronavirus Doesn’t Exist

Enough people have been sick and enough people have died that this conspiracy should be put to rest. On social media, there are lots of posts asking, “Do you know anyone who has actually gotten coronavirus?” Yes, I do. And when I comment as such I am often accused of being in on the conspiracy, or they say the people I know died of something else falsely attributed to COVID-19 (which does have some truth to it, considering that healthy people do not die from this disease). The problem with the biggest conspiracies, like flat-earth, is that people just don’t keep secrets well enough. If coronavirus were a hoax, there would be massive amounts of people sounding the alarm.

It’s 5G

There are many people claiming that people who think they are suffering from COVID-19 are actually being killed by 5G wireless. The timing is close but not close enough to make this conspiracy work. It is possible that 5G infrastructure could exacerbate symptoms, but that’s also true for glyphosate, refined sugar, fluoride, and other toxins we ingest daily. There aren’t yet any studies on the effects of 5G because the cellular companies don’t want them, but some studies that indicate 4G is associated with problems for our health. And if the studies’ conclusions are true, 5G is likely to be worse. But there are also a lot of studies that indicate cellular frequencies don’t directly harm our health. What we do know for sure is that radiation from towers and our cellphones, and Wi-Fi, is harming birds and bees along with other animals and insects. This is reason enough to be concerned with our own health regarding EMFs. Whether it’s direct effects or indirect (environmental degradation), EMFs aren’t good for us.

The Coronavirus is a Bioweapon

You may have heard that Bill Gates had coronavirus created In a lab to implement the New World Order and install human trackers on all of us.

Bill Gates is a dangerous man with many foolish ideas. But he’s not powerful enough to pull this off and I don’t think he’s “evil”. He seems to be a perfect example of how true this quote is:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!

Upton Sinclair or curmudgeon H. L. Mencken

But the engineering of viruses is happening, and we’d be foolish to completely rule out the idea that a government or company would accidentally or purposefully release such a virus. The vast majority of scientists don’t believe COVID-19 was engineered accidentally or on purpose, but viruses are being genetically modified. There are some scientists who do believe COVID-19 was manufactured, and governments, as well as corporations, have been known to lie to us every chance they get.

This is a Made Up Virus to Get Trump Out of Office

The virus isn’t made up, but it’s pretty clear the left is leveraging the pandemic to help get Trump out of office. For evidence, there is plenty of blatant hypocrisy to chose from. If things were reversed, the Democrats would be all about restarting the economy while republicans would be sheltering in place and screaming about how Dems are trying to kill us all.

Conclusion

I stated that healthy people aren’t dying from coronavirus. With some online searching, it is easy to find plenty of media claiming this is not true. Stories such as one about a very physically fit man who almost died of coronavirus and one about a child in California who died are used as “A devastating reminder that COVID-19 infects people of all ages.” But it’s important to note that these cases are extremely rare, and one should also understand that strength and physical fitness are not synonymous with good health. Many men who can run marathons in their 20s and 30s develop autoimmune diseases in their 40s. Children who died, as rare as this is, were not in good health either.

If the CDC had our best interests in mind, they would have at least said something about the importance of eating right during a pandemic instead of trying to frighten us into sheltering in place.

How Long Can Germs Survive on Surfaces?

More specifically, how long do bacteria and viruses live on surfaces at home under normal interior temperatures? It’s complicated. Some microbes could survive on household surfaces like telephones, door handles, countertops, and stair railings for centuries if left undisturbed. But most don’t.

Humid homes are better hosts to most infectious microbes. Bacteria and viruses cannot live on surfaces with a humidity of less than 10 percent.

Bacteria called mesophiles, such as the tuberculosis-causing Mycobacterium tuberculosis, survive best at room temperature and are likely to thrive longer than cold-loving psychrophiles or heat-loving thermophiles. According to Tierno, at room temperature and normal humidity, Escherichia coli (E. coli), a bacteria found in ground beef that causes food poisoning, can live for a few hours to a day. The calicivirus, the culprit of the stomach flu, lives for days or weeks, while HIV dies nearly instantly upon exposure to sunlight. Other microbes form exoskeleton-like spores as a defense mechanism, like the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, which is responsible for toxic shock syndrome, food poisoning, and wound infections. In this way, they can withstand temperature and humidity extremes. Tierno says this bacterial spore can survive for weeks on dry clothing using sloughed skin cells for food. The Bacillus anthracis, the anthrax bacteria, can also form spores and survive tens to hundreds of years.

Popular Science

Speaking of spores, some types of mold can grow on almost any surface in the home. Mold grows best when there is a lot of moisture, but there is no way to rid your home of all molds. Even if you could, mold spores are practically indestructible, though lower humidity will help keep spores from growing into mold.

Related: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections

Experts recommend home humidity be less than 60, but we recommend below 40 for a home that’s already moldy and potentially causing or exacerbating illness.

Candida albicans as the most important nosocomial fungal pathogen can survive up to 4 months on surfaces. Persistence of other yeasts, such as Torulopsis glabrata, was described to be similar (5 months) or shorter (Candida parapsilosis, 14 days).

NCBI

How Long Does Coronavirus Survive on Surfaces?

Researchers are only beginning to understand how SARS-CoV-2 (the cause of COVID-19) survives on surfaces. Lab results don’t guarantee similar real-world results, but recent research shows the virus’s survival depends on what it lands on and the humidity in the room or on the surface. The live virus is said to be able to survive on various common surfaces from three hours to seven days.

Glass – 5 days
Wood – 4 days
Plastic & stainless-steel – 3 days
Cardboard – 24 hours
Copper surfaces – 4 hours

Paper and cardboard are very porous. The virus doesn’t like surfaces like that. It likes smooth, even things.

Frank Esper, MD – Cleveland Clinic

Related: Coronavirus – Your Guide to the CoVID-19 Pandemic

Spreading the virus from products or packaging that are shipped over a period of days or weeks at ambient temperatures is likely to be low risk.

The CDC

There’s no research yet showing if the virus can survive on cloth textiles (like clothing or rags).

How Long Do Other Viruses Last on Surfaces?

Most viruses from the respiratory tract, such as corona, coxsackie, influenza, SARS or rhino virus, can persist on surfaces for a few days. Viruses from the gastrointestinal tract, such as astrovirus, HAV, polio- or rota virus, persist for approximately 2 months. Blood-borne viruses, such as HBV or HIV, can persist for more than one week. Herpes viruses, such as CMV or HSV type 1 and 2, have been shown to persist from only a few hours up to 7 days.

NCBI

HIV is said to live outside of the body for only a few seconds, but under certain conditions may last for up to a week – though surface-contraction infection is very nearly impossible. Hepatitis C can survive on surfaces without a host for up to 3 weeks at room temperature on common household surfaces. Hepatitis A can survive on surfaces for months.

Norovirus can live on hard or soft surfaces for about two weeks. In still water, it can live for months and maybe even years. Influenza (flu) viruses can survive on the skin for many hours, and on hard surfaces they are able to infect another person for up to 48 hours.

Viruses that cause the common cold include some of the previously known coronaviruses, rhinoviruses, RSV, and parainfluenza. Each of these viruses has many iterations of the virus, so life-longevity on surfaces varies. RSV lasts for a few hours on hard surfaces and up to 30 minutes on the skin. Parainfluenza lives on surfaces for up to 10 hours. Rhinoviruses can survive for 3 hours on skin and hard surfaces. Other coronaviruses are known to last a few hours on most surfaces, which is likely similar to the current, novel coronavirus.

How Long Do Bacteria Last on Surfaces?

Just like there are many types of coronaviruses, flu viruses, rhinoviruses, etc. there are also many types of staph, E. coli, salmonella, etc. Generally, viruses are more likely to survive longer on solid surfaces than on fabrics. But some bacteria seem to prefer fabric.

Most gram-positive bacteria, such as Enterococcus spp. (including VRE), Staphylococcus aureus(including MRSA), or Streptococcus pyogenes, survive for months on dry surfaces. Many gram-negative species, such as Acinetobacter spp., Escherichia coli, Klebsiella spp., Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Serratia marcescens, or Shigella spp., can also survive for months. A few others, such as Bordetella pertussis, Haemophilus influenzae, Proteus vulgaris, or Vibrio cholerae, however, only persist for days. Mycobacteria, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and spore-forming bacteria, including Clostridium difficile, can also survive for months on surfaces.

NCBI

On that note, if you own a microwave, we don’t recommend using it except to nuke your sponges. Saturate the sponge with water and heat on high for one to two minutes.

Related: How to Cure Lyme Disease, and Virtually Any Other Bacterial Infection, Naturally

Staph typically survives on surfaces for “24 hours or more,” and studies have shown it can survive on some objects like towels and razors for weeks, and Staphylococcus aureus can survive for months on dry surfaces with very low humidity.

Most salmonella lives on dry hard surfaces for up to four hours depending on its species, but a 2003 study found that Salmonella enteritidis can survive for four days and still infect.

E.coli, often found in ground beef, can live for a few hours to a day on kitchen surfaces.

Listeria infections are responsible for the highest hospitalization rates (91%) amongst known food-borne pathogens. Listeria can last for months on many surfaces, can proliferate inside your refrigerator, and has a very slow incubation period lasting days, weeks, or even months, which can make it difficult to know that contamination has occurred.

Botulism is a disease caused by Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium that produces botulinum toxins under low-oxygen and low-acid conditions. Botulinum toxins are one of the most lethal substances known. Spores produced by the bacteria Clostridium botulinum are heat-resistant and exist widely in the environment. In the absence of oxygen, they germinate, grow, and then excrete toxins. Botulinum toxins are ingested through improperly processed food in which the bacteria or the spores survive, then grow and produce the toxins. But the good news is that botulism is rare, botulinum spores will not proliferate, and the bacterium will not survive on household surfaces. Homemade canned and fermented foods are a common source of foodborne botulism.

Bacillus cereus is one of the most common causes of food poisoning, though fortunately, it is not typically life-threatening. Bacillus cereus readily forms biofilms on a variety of surfaces, including plastic, soil, glass wool, and stainless steel, thus can last indefinitely.

Germs Aren’t Bad Guys

Microbes, of course, are everywhere. Each square centimeter of skin alone harbors about 100,000 bacteria. The human body contains trillions of microorganisms. Trillions upon trillions of viruses rain from the sky every day. A 2002 report in the Southern Medical Journal found pathogens, including staphylococcus, on 94% of paper money tested. Money is said to possibly carry more germs than a household toilet.

And yet, we don’t get a staph infection 94% of the time we touch money. Why?

Related: Make Your Immune System Bulletproof with These Natural Remedies

Understanding Health – How To Have A Strong Immune System

A lot has to happen in order for us to contract an infection. For viruses, bacteria, amebas, fungi, parasites, and other pathogens, the environment needs to be conducive to proliferation, and the pathogen needs to be of sufficient quantity to infect. The likelihood of infection under the most infection-likely conditions is also contingent upon the number of microbes that are able to make it into the body. Statistically, one microbe is very unlikely to cause infection and then disease, whereas thousands of the same pathogen contaminating a person is more likely to infect and eventually cause disease.

There is no healthy way to avoid pathogens. For instance, you’re not going to catch Lyme disease from your kitchen counter. You might contract it from ticks and other insects, but getting out in nature is crucial for good health. Also, our antimicrobial lifestyles are leading to superbugs and more fungal-based auto-immune diseases (nearly all autoimmune disease is fungal based or exasperated by fungal infection).

To make things even more complicated, many of the bacteria in our bodies that are part of our healthy microbiome can become pathogenic under the right (or wrong) circumstances. E. coli is a perfect example. We all have this bacterium in our gut, but without a healthy gut colony, E. coli can take over and cause infections in the gut and urinary tract. Candida is another one that just about everyone has in their gut. The spores and small amounts of yeast do not cause infection and are a necessary part of our body’s microbial, but without enough of a variety of bacteria to keep fungi in check, Candida becomes a pathogenic fungus that causes or exacerbates many illnesses.

Related: How To Heal Your Gut

Pathogens inflict damage to us by secreting toxic waste byproducts throughout their lifecycle and death that inhibit normal, healthy cellular functions. A healthy microbiome has thousands of different kinds of bacteria (and other microbes) that can absorb and use these waste byproducts. Basically, to put it in the least scientific terms possible, one bacteria’s poop is another bacteria’s food source. Also, a body full of healthy bacteria leaves little room for infection. The more bacteria you have, both in variety and numbers, the less susceptible a host you are to pathogenic infection.

What doctors and most scientists still fail to understand is this: cells are made up of fats, starches, and sugars. Weak, decaying, and dead cells feed microorganisms. Pathogens, as they feed, produce toxic waste that causes more cellular damage, creating a feedback loop that feeds the infection. Beneficial microbes also feed off of our dead and decaying cells the same way, but their existence, due to their diversity, does not damage the surrounding human cells and does not allow room for pathogenic activity. To be clear, the difference between a bacterial infection and healthy bacteria doing their job is usually all about the variety.

In order to be healthy, perhaps it is even more important to understand that our gut bacteria resides not just in our gut, but all over our bodies. Our microbiome is everywhere, on our skin and in our hearts, and in our brains. Our gut, when healthy, is a microbiome-producing machine that supplies our entire body with beneficial bacteria. Unhealthy guts deliver pathogens into the body (and undigested foods and other toxins) while a healthy gut provides healthy bacteria to the entire body, bacteria that defend against pathogenic activity.

Now picture yourself as not so healthy. Maybe you smoke. Maybe you drink soda. Maybe both. Your throat feels rough. Your sinuses feel overly-sensitive. You can imagine that these rough surfaces are more likely to “catch” a few pathogens. On your tonsils and in your sinus cavities, where a healthy person has lots of diverse, healthy microbes to keep pathogens from proliferating, an unhealthy body instead has weak, poorly functioning cells that are ready to feed an incoming infection.

This is why we recommend healing the gut first and foremost for virtually any illness. Even a knee injury needs a healthy gut in order to properly heal as quickly and as well as possible. A nagging injury that never seems to heal almost always contains infectious activity. In other words, that nagging elbow pain you have may be from an old injury, from your back being out of alignment, from arthritis, or from something else, but infection will set in sooner or later as cellular degradation accelerates if your gut isn’t well enough to defend your whole body.

New Study Shows Gut Bacteria May Alter the Aging Process

A recent study done by an international research team led by Nanyang Technological University in Singapore finds that microorganisms in the gut may alter the aging process. With research like this, the goal is to eventually be leading to food-based treatment to slow it down. Over the last 20 years research has already shown the important role the microbial species are playing in our nutrition, physiology, metabolism, and behavior. The study was conducted using mice. The medical team transplanted gut microbes from 24-month-old mice to germ-free 6-week old mice. After just 8 weeks the young mice showed production of neurogenesis (Neurons in the brain) and increased intestinal growth.

Professor Brian Kennedy, director of the Centre for Healthy aging at the National University of Singapore, who provided an independent view, said, “It is intriguing that the microbiome of an aged animal can promote youthful phenotypes in a young recipient. This suggests that the microbiota with aging have been modified to compensate for the accumulating deficits of the host and leads to the question of whether the microbiome from a young animal would have greater or less effects on a young host. The findings move forward our understanding of the relationship between the microbiome and its host during aging and set the stage for the development of microbiome-related interventions to promote healthy longevity.”

Bacteria in the gut may alter aging process

Related: How To Heal Your Gut

The increased neurogenesis was caused by an enrichment of gut microbes that produce a specific short-chain fatty acid (Butyrate). Butyrate is produced through microbial fermentation of dietary fibers in the lower intestinal tract and stimulates the productivity of a pro-longevity hormone called FGF2, which contributes to regulating the body’s metabolism, While we age butyrate is decreased. It was found that microbes collected from old mice had the ability to support neural growth in younger mice. These results can lead to conducting research into rather or now Butyrate might be able to help repair and rebuild in case of stroke and spinal damage.

Anxiety Could Be Treated in the Gut, Says Observational Study

A recent observational study published in the journal General Psychiatry found that regulating the gut microbiome had positive effects on people with anxiety. In a review of 21 different studies that included controlled anxiety tests, 11 studies showed that regulating the intestinal microbiome produced positive results. The researchers conclude:

We find that more than half of the studies included showed it was positive to treat anxiety symptoms by regulation of intestinal microbiota. There are two kinds of interventions (probiotic and non-probiotic interventions) to regulate intestinal microbiota, and it should be highlighted that the non-probiotic interventions were more effective than the probiotic interventions. More studies are needed to clarify this conclusion since we still cannot run meta-analysis so far.”

Related: How To Heal Your Gut

Managing the Gut

After looking at 21 studies and the 1,503 people those studies consisted of, researchers found that regulating intestinal flora was a beneficial action 52 percent of the time. But what did their interventions look like and can that be applied in real life?

The interventions in the study were mostly divided into two different categories, probiotic and non-probiotic. The non-probiotic options consisted of regulating diet, like choosing a low FODMAP diet or using prebiotics like fructooligosaccharides or trans-galactooligosaccharides. Of the 11 studies that showed the positive effects of microbiome regulation on anxiety, 5 used probiotics and 6 relied on non-probiotic options, including diet.

Related: Sugar Leads to Depression – World’s First Trial Proves Gut and Brain are Linked (Protocol Included)

Mood and the Gut

Diet has a powerful effect on our microbiome, and that microbiome in turn greatly affects mood. Many of the hormones responsible for regulating our attitudes are produced in the intestinal tract, like serotonin. There is direct communication between our gut and our brain chemicals, and an unbalanced, unhealthy gut will correlate with mood shifts and fluctuations.

Non-probiotic interventions were the most effective method of anxiety treatment which includes the use of prebiotics. Prebiotics stimulate the growth of beneficial bacteria like Lactobacillus and bifidobacteria. These bacteria can be found in probiotics, but prebiotics work because they feed the bacteria and create an atmosphere where it can thrive. Because they are a type of fiber, prebiotics are also easy and inexpensive to obtain. Many foods are an excellent source of them, from raw vegetables and fruits (especially dandelion greens, onions, garlic, bananas, apples, and asparagus) to pulses like chickpeas, lentils, and kidney beans.

Related: Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones

A Holistic View

The gut has been called the “second brain” by many scientists and using that connections to treat mental disorders like anxiety is (pardon me…) a no-brainer. One of the benefits of the increased availability and advancements of research in the way we work is how it allows us to see how truly holistic our body is. Everything is connected, and that process starts in the gut. A healthy, thriving gut goes a long way in improving the health of the other systems in our body.

Sources:

Common and Unexpected Causes of Candida Overgrowth

There are more microbial cells than human cells in our bodies. Collectively the microbes are called the microbiome. Many different kinds of bacterial and non-bacterial organisms make up this microbiome. We breathe in and swallow some of them, but most are produced in our gut based on the foods we eat. Most of these microbes are in our gut, but they also reside almost everywhere else in the body. Our gut supplies our body with these microbes. In other words, even a healthy gut leaks. Beneficial microbes crowd out pathogens and help keep infections from setting in all over the body. A gut teeming with pathogenic activity supplies the body with pathogens. It’s imperative that the gut houses a diverse, healthy microbiome for the body’s immune system to function properly.

Candida resides in a healthy human gut, in the yeast form. A healthy gut colony will keep this yeast in check. In an unhealthy gut, yeast is allowed to flourish. It converts into its fungal form, grows filamentous, burrows into the gut lining, and then deposits yeast spores into the bloodstream. This also causes the gut to become “leaky”, which is to say it’s much more porous than it is supposed to be, and consequently, undigested proteins and pathogens leak into the bloodstream. This causes an immune response. If we didn’t live in such an antibacterial world with such an incredible abundance of sugars, candida would not thrive like this, but it is a tremendously versatile and opportunistic pathogen when left unchecked.

If candida is allowed to take over the gut and form its own biofilm, it becomes incredibly difficult to kill. The spores produced are nearly impossible to kill. For more on this, check Why is Candida So Hard To Kill. It’s freaky what these microbes can do!

Inflammation

An abundance of candida in the body is known to cause chronic inflammation, but what’s less common knowledge is the feedback loop this creates.

Pathogens feed off of sugars, starches, and fats (lipids). Our cells are made up of sugars, starches, and fats. Some pathogens prefer one over the other. For instance, Lyme bacteria want starches, and candida loves sugars.

Pathogens flourish in a damaged body and the presence of these pathogens causes more inflammation. When cells die, they also trigger an inflammatory response. Chronic inflammation also causes more cellular damage, leading to more cellular die-off. A chronically inflamed body is a damaged body with a lot of damaged and decaying cells that are feeding pathogens creating a positive feedback loop.

Related: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections

Alcohol

Alcohol kills beneficial bacteria in the gut. It can kill fungi too, but candida spores are virtually indestructible and its biofilm can protect the microbe from alcohol as well. In other words, you’re disrupting your beneficial bacteria which allows candida to flourish. Alcohol can also raise your blood sugar which can feed candida and other pathogens through the body.

Alcohol also damages cells.

Antibiotics

Antibiotics kill bacteria, leaving fungal infections to flourish. Some antibiotics also kill fungi including candida, but nothing adequately kills fungal spores. And even if something did, they’ll be back faster than a healthy bacterial ecosystem could develop to curtail the candida and other pathogens.

Vaccines

Research has shown us that some vaccines will disrupt the gut’s microbiota. In addition to that, one’s gut microbiota affects how the host interacts with vaccines. A less healthy bacterial colony in the gut is more likely to lead to an immune response with inflammation throughout the body, which in turn can also, eventually disrupt the gut microbiota. Intestinal injuries caused by the rotavirus vaccine have been added to the government compensation program for adverse events. With the recent findings of how vaccines are more likely to cause damage with an undeveloped gut microbiome, scientists are very interested in how gut bacteria and vaccinations interact. We should see a lot more scientific discoveries about this issue in the near future.

Amalgam Fillings

When dental amalgam fillings are in the mouth, tiny particles break free and mercury vapor is released, inhaled, and swallowed. Incidentally, the mercury release is 50 times higher for those who have mercury fillings capped with gold. For a multitude of reasons, the body can’t get rid of mercury easily.

Mercury suppresses the immune system and creates an environment that is not friendly for beneficial bacteria, but candida doesn’t mind it. In fact, candida and many other fungi love toxic heavy metals and actually thrive with mercury present.

“Mercury fed Candida become more and more virulent and eventually penetrates the intestinal walls and invades the cells. These fungal microorganisms become quite at home in the cell, and can easily be considered a principle characteristic of cancer.” – Dr. Mark Sircus

Antiacids

Many people are under the mistaken impression that all disease needs acidity to thrive. This is not true. It depends on the disease. Candida likes alkalinity. The presence of candida can help to make the body very acidic, but the areas where fungal candida thrives will be less acidic. Antacids raise the PH (less acidic) of the entire digestive tract. This can cause candida to infect the stomach, which is normally far too acidic for it.

All Pharmaceuticals

Virtually all pharmaceuticals, from vaccines to Aspirin, have toxic properties which cause cellular damage that pathogens including candida will feed off of.

Smoking

Sugar is added to tobacco products. We’re not sure if inhaling the smoke from burning sugar can feed Candida or other pathogens, but it wouldn’t be surprising if it does. Regardless, the toxicity of tobacco products causes other problems that promote Candida overgrowth (and other pathogenic activity).

Smoking adds a plethora of toxic heavy metals into the body, and yeast, as mentioned above, likes toxic heavy metals. Smoking and the use of other tobacco products also affect liver function.

Every time you light a cigarette, nicotine triggers the liver to dump a large amount of glycogen into the blood stream. The blood sugar level is brought up too high, so the body calls on the pancreas to bring it back down.” – Cynthia Perkins, Holstic Help

Smoking affects the entire body, not just the liver and lungs. Smoking damages cells and causes inflammation and constriction everywhere. It also inflames and constricts the intestinal tract (if you smoke, you may notice the need to have a bowel movement after smoking). Some confuse this with “relaxing the bowels” but the truth is there is less room for digestion and so the stool is evacuated before digestion is complete. Smoking also causes rectal discharge. And smoking constricts and inflames the kidneys as well, which has the opposite effect compared to the intestinal tract. Kidneys process fluid at a slower rate and fluids can become rancid and infectious.

Juicing

Juicing has lots of benefits, but that carrot, beet, apple juice can do more harm than good for some people with an abundance of Candida in their gut. Juicing removes the fiber and other nutrients from the fruits and vegetables, and these nutrients are needed to feed a healthy gut microbiome. What’s left are sugars. If you’re just juicing kale, turmeric, lemons, collards, and garlic, or something like that, feel free to keep on juicing. But if you’re sweetening your juices with sweet fruits or carrots or beets, it doesn’t take much to make candida happy.

Fruit

We’re not saying that fruit is bad, but anyone who is suffering from an over-abundance of candida needs to lay off the fruit (not including lemons, limes, cranberries, granny smith apples, and other non-sweet fruits). Fruit is much sweeter than it used to be. Even on an all-natural, unrefined, raw food diet, we have way more access to sugar than our paleolithic ancestors did. Google wild bananas and check out what watermelon used to look like. Not only was fruit seasonal and harder to come by, but it was also much more fibrous and mealy, and much less “fruity.”

Condiments

Many condiments including salad dressings, mustards, ketchup, and hot sauces have sweeteners in them. Even without sweeteners, they are typically refined and processed with the addition of too many unnecessary ingredients. Read the ingredient labels. Better yet, make your own condiments, and use more herbs and better cooking methods to add flavor to your meals.

Organic Junk Food

Refind and processed foods fed pathogens including candida. Let’s take chips for instance. Chips often have sugar in them, including the organic varieties, but even those sugar-free brown rice and bean chips can still feed candida. Brown rice is ok for most people who aren’t very ill. When digesting brown rice, provided the gut has enough bacterial activity to do the job properly, fiber-loving gut microbes get to eat and proliferate first, before the sugar and starch molecules are exposed. But if you grind brown rice into a flour to make chips or pasta with it, you’re exposing the sugars and starches. The digestive process is altered. This is why it’s better to eat, cook with, and chew your own whole foods. Looking at those same chips as an example, the bean flour used is laden with enzyme inhibitors (unless the corporation making the food soaked and sprouted those beans properly, which is doubtful!) Enzyme inhibitors disrupt healthy gut microbiome, inhibit nutrient assimilation, and damage the digestive system. Similar examples exist for almost every single pre-packaged, processed food item in your organic health-food store.

Conclusion

When you’re chronically ill, forget the store-bought cereal, boxed nut milk, nut butters, chips, “healthy” chocolates, and food bars. To build up healthy bacterial colonies in the gut, you a variety of need whole foods. Nothing helps to grow a healthy microbiome like huge, diverse salads. Check out this article, Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting for a recipe for gut-healing salads and be sure to read How To Heal Your Gut.

Fungal Supplement Stack – Knock Out Yeast, Candida, Mold, Fungus

The first three should be plenty for most people, but for really prominent fungal issues or for impatient people with a bigger budget I’d recommend all of these:

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Antibiotics Delete Gut Diversity

It can take six months to regain a normal microbiome after using antibiotics, and chances are good that not all of the microbes present before the antibiotics were administered will return. Researchers in Copenhagen conducted a small study (12 men) that examined gut diversity after a single course of antibiotics. They used 3 drugs considered antibiotics of last resort: meropenem, gentamicin, and vancomycin. While the gut microbes of the subjects recovered, 9 common species of gut bacteria could no longer be detected in their microbiome. Oluf Pedersen is the lead scientist of the study.

In this case, it is good that we can regenerate our gut microbiota which is important for our general health…The concern, however, relates to the potentially permanent loss of beneficial bacteria after multiple exposures to antibiotics during our lifetime.”

Related: How To Heal Your Gut

Only One

This is what happens after a single course of antibiotics. What happens in the U.S., where outpatient healthcare providers prescribed more than 266 million courses of antibiotics in 2014, a third of which the CDC says are unnecessary? The same year saw an average of 835 antibiotic prescriptions for every 1,000 people. People who suffer from recurrent urinary tract infections (UTI) or chronic respiratory infections are likely given multiple courses of antibiotics in a single year. If it takes six months to mostly recover from a single course of antibiotics, those who take multiple courses are losing their chance to have a healthy, balanced microbiome.

It’s common to see articles comparing the gut bacteria of indigenous tribes with that of your average American. The indigenous microbiome is always more diverse. M. Gloria Dominguez-Bello is a microbiologist at the New York University School of Medicine and one of the authors of a study of the Yanomami tribe, first visited by the modern world in 2009. While Dominguez-Bello mentions diet, she also notes the difference in antibiotic use. The 2009 visit to the Yanomami in the Amazon is the first time the tribe was exposed to antibiotics, which can have a serious effect on gut health. Domingues-Bello says,

Antibiotics kill bacteria in the gut, and sometimes species don’t come back…This is especially true with children, whose microbiomes are in the process of getting assembled. Impacts on the microbiome at a young age can have long-lasting consequences.”

Recommended: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections

More and Different and Better

Is it possible to replenish your gut bacteria after a course of antibiotics? The answer is both yes and no. You can bring your microbes back, but they will no longer be the same. Each time the microbiome is mowed down and resurrected, diversity and the immune system’s ability to adapt are reduced. Combine that news with the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and you should want to be as far away from antibiotics as well. It pays to take a look at the other likely reason for indigenous peoples microbiome diversity: diet.

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Probiotic Bacteria Could the Solution to Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has released a new study that confirms the awesome powers of a bacteria commonly found in probiotic supplements: Bacillus. Testing a variety of Bacillus microbes against Staphylococcus aureus, a common cause of antibiotic-resistant infections, scientists found that the beneficial bacteria stopped the S. aureus bacteria from colonizing the gut. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. leads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the NIH division responsible for the study.

Probiotics frequently are recommended as dietary supplements to improve digestive health…This is one of the first studies to describe precisely how they may work to provide health benefits. The possibility that oral Bacillus might be an effective alternative to antibiotic treatment for some conditions is scientifically intriguing and definitely worthy of further exploration.”

Related: How To Heal Your Gut

Drawing Conclusions

This study came in two parts. The first part examined the behavior of S. aureus in healthy subjects and the second used a mouse model to explain bacillus’ influence on the harmful bacteria. In both cases, researchers found that more bacillus equals less S. aureus. In the initial section of the study, scientists found 200 volunteers in rural Thailand. They first tested them for Bacillus, and then tested for S. aureus. Of the 101 subjects who tested positive for Bacillus, none of them tested positive for S. aureus.

The second portion of the experiment was a mouse study, based on the volunteer findings. The guts of the mice were deliberately colonized with S. aureus. These mice were then fed probiotics every two days, which eliminated the S. aureus colonization. Researchers identified fengycins, a lipopeptide (a molecule that’s part peptide and part lipid), as the reason S. aureus was no longer able to colonize. The lipopeptide shuts down the sensing system the potentially harmful bacteria need to proliferate.

How to Use This News

This information makes a fantastic case for probiotics and more specifically bacillus. Even potentially dangerous bacteria like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are susceptible to those supplements. Bacillus is a widespread bacteria, with more than 200 species found in the air and water. More than half of the rural Thai volunteers from the first portion of the study had bacillus in their guts, and the likelihood that they have an every other day probiotic regimen is very low. People can get bacillus from eating raw, vegetable foods.

Related: Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones

If you want a probiotic though, there are a few things to look for. First, the probiotic does you no good if it doesn’t make it past the stomach acid and bile to make it to the intestinal tract. There are a couple of ways around that. The American Nutrition Association found that Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, and Streptococcus are the bacteria most likely to make it past the stomach acid. Another strategy is to find a probiotic with an acid resistant-capsule. That can increase the chances the probiotic will be able to balance the gut and do some good.

Beneath the Surface

We often talk about bacteria in terms of “good” and “bad.” Bacillus, found in most probiotics, is considered a good bacteria. E. coli and S. aureus are considered bad bacteria. Yet E. coli produce vitamin K2 and is a crucial part of a healthy digestive system. Meanwhile, two strains of Bacillus (B. anthracis and B. cereus) cause anthrax and food poisoning, respectively. Scientists have barely discovered what bacteria are capable individually, much less how they work holistically. This study suggests that thinking about how our microbes work together could be a positive, necessary shift…especially with the threat antibiotic-resistant bacteria pose. Antibiotics have been easy and lucrative. But those drugs might not be viable much longer. Are probiotics the best solution?