Dhru Purohit Show - #256: Use This Form of Prevention & Treatment on Viruses Today! With Chris Kresser

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

This episode is brought to you by HigherDOSE. Our bodies come equipped with some pretty amazing defense mechanisms to protect us against a wide range of potential dangers. But, like so many other aspects of dis-ease, modern insults like stress, nutrient deficits, and toxins can reduce our immune strength. This week on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sat down with Chris Kresser to talk about the most critical factors that determine our natural immunity with evidence-based action items you can use to start improving yours right away.  Chris Kresser is a renowned expert, leading clinician, and top educator in the fields of Functional Medicine and ancestral health, and the New York Times bestselling author of The Paleo Cure. Listed among the 100 most influential people in health and fitness by Greatist.com, he was awarded “Best Inspirational Voice” and “Best Health & Wellness Website” by Paleo magazine in 2019. Chris founded the Kresser Institute to provide the next generation of Functional Health practitioners and coaches with the skills and tools they need to turn the tide of chronic disease—and change the future of medicine. In this episode, we dive into:   -The top things that are taxing our immune system (3:22)  -How inflammation wreaks havoc on our immune system (17:05)  -The shortcomings and risks of OTC medications for cold & flu (27:58)  -Vitamin D supplementation and testing (37:58)  -The best food sources of vitamin A and K2 (42:18)  -The powerful benefits of zinc (49:21) -Most people will get Covid-19 and why it’s important to understand this (51:57)  -Why building your immune system is so crucial (1:00:45)  -Early intervention for reducing the severity of a Covid infection (1:04:43) -Three little-known but powerful nutrients that will boost your natural immunity (1:05:43)  Also mentioned in this episode: -How to Boost Your Immunity Naturally Workshop - https://kresser.co/dhru  -Vitamin D Test - https://omegaquant.com/vitamin-d-test/ -Beekeepers Naturals B.Immune Throat Spray - https://beekeepersnaturals.com/products/bimmunethroatspray For more on Chris Kresser, follow him on Instagram @chriskresser, on YouTube @chriskresser, and through his website https://chriskresser.com. This episode is brought to you by HigherDOSE. Sauna use can reduce inflammation, stress, and improve detoxification and energy production down to the cellular level. So when I was introduced to the portable HigherDose Infrared Sauna blanket, I got super excited because it’s actually an affordable way to get all of the benefits of sauna use including increased blood flow, better sleep, a calmer nervous system, and more. Right now, you can get 15% off your own Infrared Sauna Blanket at HigherDOSE.com with my exclusive promo code DHRU15. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

But stress is an immune killer. I would say, you know, as significant or even more significant as diet. Hi, everyone, Drew Prote here. If you want to hear the latest science and research around boosting your immune system naturally, this episode with Chris Cressor, a leading functional medicine expert and clinician, is for you. Stay tuned. This episode is brought to you by higher dose. Regular sauna use is a game changer.

Saunas can reduce inflammation. improved detoxification, support overall stress levels, and increase energy production down to the freaking cellular level. But the thing is, saunas can be expensive. Not everyone has the extra room for them in their home. That's why I'm excited to tell you about the portable, higher dose infrared sauna blanket. It's an affordable way to get all the benefits of sauna use,

including supporting the process of autophagy or cellular cleanup, which kills off our body's old zombie cells that hang around and take up a lot of space and energy. Killing these old zombie cells is key when it comes to longevity and optimal health. That I mentioned that higher dose blankets are also low in EMF and made of premium non-toxic materials that keep you safe and cozy throughout the sauna season. Just another reason why my team and I love them. If you've been hearing about the benefits of regular sauna use,

but you just haven't pulled the trigger, higher dose infrared sauna blanket is designed for you. So jump right in. Right now, you can get 15% off your own infrared sauna blanket at higherdose.com with my exclusive promo code, Drew 15. That's higher, H-I-G-H-H-E-R-D-O-S-C dot com with the code D-H-R-U-15. That's Drew 15, D-H-R-U-15. Welcome to the Drew-Peroid podcast. Each week we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds

in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is Chris Cressor. Chris Cressor is a renowned expert, leading clinician, and top educator in the fields of functional medicine and ancestral health. And we've invited him back on the podcast today to talk about the latest research and science

around boosting and supporting our immune system. A little bit more about Chris before we jump into the episode. He's the author of the New York Times bestseller, the paleo cure. He's also listed as amongst the 100 most influential people in health and fitness by greatest.com. And he was awarded the best inspirational voice and best health and wellness website by Paleo Magazine. Chris is also the creator and CEO of the Adapt Practitioner and Health Coach Training programs. He and his team have trained over 2,000 health professionals around the world in this

unique approach. Chris has an incredible way of breaking down complicated topics and helping people understand what actually works and sometimes what doesn't work. And that's exactly what he's going to do on today's podcast. Chris, welcome back to the podcast. It's a pleasure and honor to have you here again. We're talking all things, how to boost your immune system naturally. Let's jump right in. Chris, what would you say would be a couple of the top things in your opinion. Actually, not even your opinion. The data actually shows that are taxing our immune systems, making our immune system weaker, which means we're more susceptible to a virus, a bug, or anything else that's out there. Give us a couple of things that you think are the biggest factors taxing

our immune system today and making it weaker. Sure. So I'd say eating processed and refined foods, which leads to an inflammatory reaction in the body's systemic inflammatory response. It also disturbs the gut flora. We know that 70 to 80% of our immune system is in our gut. So that's number one, just the standard American diet of highly processed and refined foods. Closely related to that would be nutrient deficiency. We know that the body needs 40 plus micronutrients to function optimally, and the immune system is highly affected when it doesn't have enough of those nutrients.

And a few of those would be vitamin D, vitamin C, vitamin A, and zinc. but there are others which we can get into later. And nutrient deficiency is widespread. A majority of Americans are not getting enough of those nutrients that I just mentioned. And that would be true of most industrialized countries worldwide. Number three, I would say chronic stress. This is the elephant in the room that, you know, I think everybody knows is affecting them. It affects me.

It affects all of us. And it's really hard to deal with. But stress is an immune killer. I would say, you know, as significant or even more significant as diet. They've done lots of studies on this with, like, medical school students studying for midterms or final exams, and they watch their immune system markers tank as they, you know, approach the exam. So managing stress is absolutely critical.

And number four, I would say, is sleep. Sleep is when our immune system recharges. You can think of it like a rechargeable battery. So if you're not getting enough sleep, you're not. recharging your immune system and you're going to be much more susceptible to infections. I think everybody probably listening to this has had that experience firsthand. You've had several nights of not sleeping. You wake up with a cold or a flu or something like that. So sleep is really essential as well. Beautiful. Those are all great. We're going to unpack them all over the course of this next

hour that we have together with you. I want to start at the basics, though. You know, we've done a few episodes on this topic, but it's always worth the refresher because everyone has a different way of explaining it and making it easy to digest for individuals. So what exactly is the immune system? And when you say that a huge majority, you know, 70, 80%, depending, even upwards of higher than that, I've heard sometimes, is in the gut, what does that mean? So what is the immune system?

And if we were able to cut the gut open, would we find it in one specific area? Yeah, in the gut associated lymphoid tissue or galt, GALT is the acronym there. And that's where a lot of the components of the immune of the immune system, the cells that the immune system is comprised of that help us to fight infections, T cells, B cells, natural killer cells. I don't love the army analogies, but they make sense. You know, we basically, when we get exposed to a pathogen, there's a whole

cascade of reactions that takes place where the body first recognizes that there's something there that shouldn't be there. And then there's kind of a memory checking check where it looks, it consults its cellular memory to see if this pathogen has ever been encountered before. And do we already have an immune response that we, you know, produced in the past when we are exposed to this pathogen? And if not, a different arm of the immune system gets kicked in that is a more kind of nonspecific response that is aimed at, um, addressing this pathogen in the first couple of days. And then a more specific immune response comes after that,

where the body learns about that pathogen and then very specifically targets it, rather than that just kind of general, non-specific response. So it's a highly sophisticated response that evolved over millions and millions of years, you know, of both mammal evolution initially and then hominid evolution after that. And it's really an exquisite system. And like immunologists who study it and immunology as a field in general is just so complex. It's so fascinating, so interesting.

And, you know, what's amazing about the immune system is we're surrounded by pathogens all the time and yet, for the most part, we're healthy and well. And that's just a testament to how, effective the immune system can be if it's given the right inputs. A lot of people have this idea that there's this war constantly going on, you know, to use the army analogy, but in a different way. And that war is these pathogens, these bugs, these bacteria, these viruses, and we have to protect ourselves from them because if that one particular virus or if that one particular

bacterial strain gets exposed to us, then it's a battle. that's going on. So we've lived, much like the war on drugs and the war on poverty and a lot of other things, we've had this war on pathogens. And that means that everybody out there is using hand sanitizer and we're nuking our places constantly with chlorox bleach and all sorts of other sprays and other things like that, which sometimes have unintended consequences on our immune system. Help us understand why this idea, you know, you were kind of teasing at it a little bit, bit, help us to understand why this idea might be a little bit misguided, that we are in this world and we are completely vulnerable to these small pathogens that are out there, so we have to

destroy them at all cost. Right. Yeah, it's a great question. And it requires a short dive into history because, you know, at one time, we had no idea what caused infections and people to be ill. You know, there was the idea that it was, it was, you know, humors back in the day or, you know, bad air or bad, you know, just like a kind of primitive understanding of what. Spirits or energy. Exactly. And it wasn't until the late 1800s when Robert Koch published Koch's Postulates, which he was a, a physician, a German physician, and he basically figured out the connection between specific pathogens like bacteria, viruses, et cetera, causing specific diseases. And he came up with these

postulates to try to figure, try to establish whether a particular organism is the cause of a particular disease. And that was a game changer in science. I mean, that really, I mean, it led to the whole era of antibiotics and being able to target, you know, specific pathogens with specific drugs, and it saved, you know, countless millions of lives. So I just want to be clear that we're not criticizing this discovery. I mean, it was absolutely crucial in terms of extending human lifespan and health span. But I think one of the unintended consequences, as you mentioned, of this discovery was maybe a myopic focus on the role of pathogens and not, enough focus on the ecosystem or in particular the health of the ecosystem that the

pathogen is living in, which in our case is our body, right? The human body, the gut microbiome, as I just mentioned, but also just the entire system of the body, our nutrient status, you know, whether we're getting enough sleep, stress, diet, all the things that go into determining how our immune system functions. And so I think over time that the scale has tipped to where we're like really, really focused on the pathogens and not focused enough on the relationship between the host and the pathogen. And I think COVID is a really good example of that because, you know, here's a disease that can

range from being asymptomatic to fatal, right? Like there aren't that many diseases or that many pathogens that we know of that have that incredible range where you have someone who could have it and not even know that they have it and then someone who has it and dies. You don't see that with Ebola. You don't see that with the common cold. You know, you don't see people dying from the common cold, typically, even influenza doesn't have quite the same range. COVID has, you know, most people who have flu have some symptoms. So that is a really good example, I think, of how important the internal terrain or ecosystem is in determining the response to a pathogen.

But we also see the same thing in many other conditions. You know, people will be affected differently. by flu. People are affected differently by parasites. Blastocystis Dismanus is one of the most common parasite infections in the world. I've seen hundreds of patients with it and I've seen a huge range of responses from people being totally debilitated and really not able to function in their lives to people not even knowing that they had it and being completely asymptomatic. So I think going forward, this will be more of a focus is this host. Is this host. pathogen interaction. And we have a lot more technology now to be able to, excuse me, measure

how things are going in the body and make that, you know, make some determinations about what we can do to improve that host function and strengthen our resilience and our ability to fight off pathogens. And the last thing I'll say about that is along the same lines, we need to differentiate between infection and disease. I feel like, again, with COVID, it's been mushed together, but it's possible to have an infection or to be infected by a pathogen but not have disease. These are people who are asymptomatic.

They're infected by SARS-COVID-2, but they don't have COVID-19. So I think that's a critical distinction to make because it helps us to understand. the importance of host health. It's a great distinction. And I think one area that is worth expanding on, you know, you talked about COVID, but also if we think about, you know, we're recording this end of December, it's about to be a new year. January, we're in like the midst of flu season.

There are plenty of people that get exposed to the latest flu virus that might be there in the season, but then they don't manifest. And there are people on the other side. We get emails all the time of individuals writing in and saying, I don't know what it is, but I get sick all the time. Every year, even when it's not flu season, even just when I'm run down a little bit or something's going on in my life, I'm really stressed, I just get the cold. Is that something? And the question usually is like, you know, why is that going on? What's going on with me that I just seem to regularly get sick?

So if we would look at that person, obviously everybody's unique situation is completely, you know, is. unique to them, but there are themes. There are themes that rhyme between person to person. So if we look at somebody who gets sick on a regular basis, what would we see inside of their body that was potentially taking place? Yeah, I think there are a range of possibilities there. One is some of the things that I mentioned at the top of the show, not getting enough sleep, not managing stress, you know, eating an unhealthy diet, not a sufficient amount of nutrients. But you and I, Drew, both have audiences that are probably above average in terms of many of those factors. And some folks might still be doing those things and getting sick. So in those cases,

I think what's more likely is, you know, sources of chronic inflammation. So, someone with an autoimmune disease, for example, that's causing a chronic inflammatory response, or somebody who has recently been exposed to mold in their home, or has an ongoing mold exposure in their home, or maybe someone who has taken a lot of antibiotics over the course of their life, and they're still dealing with a disrupted gut microbiome or CBO or some condition like this, many of these conditions can cause changes to the immune system that make it function less than optimally. And in those cases, even if they're doing some of the other things well, they can still

experience challenges with the immune system. Talk about how inflammation in particular, because it was one of the first things that you mentioned, how does inflammation actually, you know, through what mechanisms take a toll on our immune system. And then with inside of inflammation, for most people that are here that are listening today, if you, if you had to say stress, you know, diet or, you know, some of these environmental exposures that you mentioned earlier, if you just had to rank them in terms of order, just amongst those three, how would you rank them? So yeah, how does inflammation actually wreak havoc on our immune system? What's,

actually going on? Well, you know, inflammation in it is actually a critical part of our immune response. So if you, let's say you get a cut on your hand, the swelling that takes place and the, you know, the pus and the fluid and everything that happens there is part of an inflammatory response. That's not a problem unless that inflammatory response becomes chronic. And, And when the inflammatory response becomes chronic because of something like an autoimmune condition or some of the other factors that I mentioned, it just interferes with the body's ability to mount the acute immune response when it faces a pathogen. So, I mean, there's different mechanisms and it gets really complex, but I think the key

thing to understand or the way to think about it is if your immune function is kind of constantly under duress and depleted because of this chronic systemic inflammatory response, it's not going to function as well when you have to deal with an acute challenge. And in terms of the prioritizing, excuse me, the factors that you mentioned, to some extent I think it depends on the person. But I would say in general, diet has to be at the top of the list and then very closely, you know, maybe tie for first place would be stress. There are entire books that have been written on the stress immune connection. So this is something that's been studied for decades,

and it's something that is very well established. You just don't hear about it a lot because there's no pill for it. There's no supplement for it. It's difficult. You know, it's difficult for people to manage. stress. And yet, I think it's one of the most important steps that we can take if we want to shore up our immune function. Now, having said that, because there's a lot of stress that we can't avoid, it makes doing all of the other factors even more important, just knowing that we're

probably never going to get to 100% with the stress management piece, right? We might get to 80%, we might get to 90%, but it makes everything else that much more important because stress is just always going to be a factor in our lives. Now, you've had a medical practice of your own and you still have patients that are part of your network of people that you treat using the practices and principles of functional medicine and you work, you being a practitioner yourself, but you also work in conjunction with other doctors that are part of your team. Can you think of a case study, you know, that we could talk about to help people understand

a little bit. Before we unpack your story and how you got into the whole concept of natural immunity and helping people improve it, can you think of a case study or a patient story that comes to mind where you help someone who, whether they came in with this issue or not, they were someone who frequently got sick. And then through working on their unique root causes and root issues, you were able to get them to a place where their immune system was much more robust. Sure. Yeah, I think one, one person, person comes to mind that actually I just heard from recently. And I mentioned this earlier that one of the factors that can dysregulate the immune system is exposure to toxins. And in this case,

mold, which is a biotoxin, was the culprit. So this is a person who is living in Humboldt County, northern California, very damp place. And there had, I think, been, some water damage in her home. And, you know, unbeknownst to her, their mold developed. And she had lived in that house for a couple of years and started to develop a lot of respiratory issues. And basically, after, you know, about a year and a half of living in that house, felt like she was sick 24-7, like just almost never didn't feel sick and could not figure out what's

going on. you know, husband was wondering what was happening. Like, you know, it seemed like she would get every cold that came around. But even just as she was seemingly recovering from one cold, she would go on to the next one. And she just felt she was miserable. And at the end of her rope when she came to see me, which I'm sure anyone listening can imagine, I mean, that would be horrible to always feel like you have a cold and never be able to get well. And what was happening there was the,

her body was in a constant fight or flight reaction to the mold toxins. And the mold toxins were impacting the gut microbiota, which again has a significant effect on the immune system. And so through a detox, you know, first of all, we had to get her, in her case, she had to get out of that house while they remediated it and fixed the mold issue. But even after getting out of that house, there was a lot of work that had to be done in terms of detoxification of the mold toxins, supporting the gut microbiota to become healthy again, and then taking steps to kind of tamp down the hyper-reactive immune response. And, you know, about four to five months later, it's not an overnight fix when someone's been exposed to mold for that long. But about four

to five months later, she was able to move back in her house. She was able to move back in her house. She feeling way better, you know, and I just got an email from her a couple days ago saying that she hasn't had a cold. I don't know if they ever were colds per se, but, you know, she she hadn't had any kind of sinus congestion or any of the symptoms that she had had, you know, persistently almost all the time for a year and a half now and was just feeling pretty ecstatic about that. So that's just one example. There's several others like that, but it's a good indication of how important that our internal system is in protecting us from pathogens in the environment.

Thanks for sharing that story. It's very inspiring to see. And the good news is that while mold is definitely on the increase and is becoming a problem globally, for most people who are struggling with weaker immune systems, the good news is that there's a lot that can be done. And most likely for most of them, it's not always going to be, as you shared in your story, it's not necessarily going to be related to mold. There's plenty of low-hanging fruits that are there and that might be contributing and

might be more easily remedied. But I'm glad that you did talk about mold because it is an increasing concern that's on the rise. So, Chris, I want to talk a little about just give us a little bit about your hero's journey in the context of this conversation. How did you get interested in the topic of boosting and helping your patients boost their natural immune system? Well, I was one of those people myself, Drew, who used to get sick all the time. In my case, it was because I had a complex chronic illness after traveling in Southeast Asia for quite a long time. I had several parasite infections and some other stuff happen that I eventually recovered from those acute issues,

but it caused some longer-term immune dysregulation. And so even after I had gotten over the GI stuff, my body was in a kind of hyper-reactive state where I would just, or hyper and hyporeactive. And that can often happen with immune dysregulation, where some parts of the immune system are overactive and some are underactive. And the part of my immune system that was responsible for dealing with colds and flus and those sorts of things was underactive. So that was part of my rebuilding and regaining health was doing a deep dive into, you know, how to support my immune system naturally and help it to regain its full optimal function after those health. challenges. And so that's, you know, I'm a researcher at heart. And so, of course, I read all of the

relevant scientific literature. I talked to many mentors in the field. And I started to really assemble a protocol, which included many of the things that we're going to talk about and we have been talking about, diet, nutrient density, sleep, stress management, supplements, herbs, probiotics, prebiotics, in an effort to gradually rebuild my immune function. And that was a big piece of my recovery and got me back to the point where, you know, I'm not, I'm still not the kind of the person who has not had a cold in 10 years, but my immune system functions really well now and doesn't, you know, I'm able to live a, live, a rich, busy, full, rewarding life and, and, you know, not really deal with many of the types of

immune challenges that we tend to face. So I'm really grateful for that experience. And it also helped me be able to relate to people who are in similar circumstances because I know what that's like firsthand. Let's talk about our interventions right now when it comes to helping people, I'm thinking about the typical pharmaceutical interventions, cough syrups, things to squel and sort of calm and cool the fever down. You know, the standard stuff that people are used to reading and hearing about, let's talk about some of those and how what those are trying to do and how it might be a little bit misguided again in the approach.

So let's talk about standard things. Again, flu season right now. A lot of people have a cough as well, too. Let's talk about cough syrups and then maybe things that people are taking to reduce their fever. Help us understand what is it thinking and how could it be maybe a little bit misguided? Well, the first thing I want to say off the top is in a surprising and I think disturbing number of cases still, to this day, antibiotics are being prescribed for colds and flus. And that just does not make any sense at all because, as we know, and clos and flus are caused by viruses and antibiotics don't have an effect on viruses.

Now, certainly some viral infections can progress and become, you know, like can be complicated, let's say, by a bacterial infection, in which case an antibiotic might have an impact. But generally speaking, colds and flus are not going to be impacted by antibiotics. antibiotics. And yet, there are studies that show that those are still being prescribed in a disturbing number of cases. So that's the very first thing is to really, you know, not a good idea generally to take antibiotics for viral infections. And would you say that, you know, knowing the medical system very well, would you say that most of that is just coming out of habit, doctors are just giving it to patients because they just want to give them something in the hopes

said it'll make them feel better. I think so. And I think also, and that goes on both sides. Sometimes patients expect to be given something, you know, when they go to the doctor and they don't feel good if they leave the office without a prescription. And then, you know, doctors, I think, yeah, it could be just a force of habit. Fortunately, I think that's a downward trend that's happening less and less, but I think it's important to at least mention.

Yeah. The second thing, decongestions, decongestants. So let's say someone has nasal congestion, part of a cold. They go to, you know, Savon or Walgreens or whatever and pick up a decongestant. A lot of these have pseudoephedrine as the main ingredient. And pseudoephedrine stimulates alpha androgenic receptors, which activate the sympathetic nervous system, increase heart rate, and raise blood pressure. that's part of how they have their effect.

But the problem, one of the problems with that, as you can imagine, is that let's say somebody has hypertension, and they take a decongestant that stimulates their nervous system in the way that I just described, where it increases the heart rate and raises blood pressure. That can lead to a hypertensive emergency, where you have, you know, blood pressure rises to a dangerous, level. And we have 75 million Americans with hypertension, and a lot of those don't even know

that they have it. So that's a big problem with decongestants. They've also been found to induce urinary problems, particularly men over 50 years old. They can cause insomnia, nervousness, rapid heart rate, heart attack, heart palpitations because of their impact on the nervous and circulatory system. And then studies have all also shown that taking decongestant nasal sprays for longer than three days can actually cause rebound congestion. So essentially the congestion will get worse after you stop taking the nasal spray. So, you know, one of the biggest issues with all of these OTC over-the-counter treatments is they're just based on symptom management and not actually on addressing, you know, immune function. And I'm not

saying there's anything wrong with reducing symptoms. You can be pretty miserable to have a cold or a flu, but ideally we would do that in a way that doesn't cause other problems, especially potentially significant problems, like a hypertensive crisis. You know, the thing with some of these things like phlegm, mucus, these are our body's trash bags. And the way that it was explained to me by a functional medicine doctor one time is that these are tools that our body uses to discharge of things. Now, as you mentioned, it can be uncomfortable and a lot of it over a period of time and it doesn't seem to get better. We're very thankful that we have some of these different tools and treatments that are out there, but we have to understand that they are not the root source of

what's going on. They're simply a symptom. And if we have them stop too early, we may not get everything out of our body that we need to get out. Have any comments on that? Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I would also extend that to include fevers, right? So we know that having a fever is one of the ways that the body fights off infection. So if we have even a small, every time we have like a small fever, we rush to the drugstore and get Tylenol or something that's going to reduce the fever, we're interfering with that natural process. process. And I think that's another issue with some of these over-the-counter remedies to actually interfere with the body's natural healing process, which is what you were alluding to.

Yeah. I think that's such an important takeaway for folks that are listening today, is that a fever in itself is not a problem. It's actually a sign that things are working inside of the body. Now, there's a lot of layers to that that we can expand on a little later on, but a fever in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. So, you know, when somebody comes to you, you and they say, or if you notice it yourself, you're like, I have a fever and you start freaking out, it's like, okay, the body is actually on the men's. Again, a lot of layers to that conversation, but the body's trying to make amends internally. Yeah, I mean, certainly if the fever gets extremely high, you know, 104 or 105, then that may be a sign that the internal process

has, you know, could potentially become damaging and, you know, and that person, you know, and that person would definitely want to seek medical attention. But fevers of night of 100 degrees, 1001, 102, like you said, that's just a sign that the body is doing what it knows how to do to address these infections. And most pathogens don't like that kind of heat. So the heat is what makes it an in hospitable environment for them. And if you take, you know, Tylenol or something like that to reduce the fever, then you're going to make it easier for the pathogen to stick around. So we talked about some of the common interventions, antibiotics, decongestions, things to reduce your fever that are very typically used by folks to intervene on times when they're feeling sick.

And often when you tell people that these come with their own challenges and they may not be doing the best job to get to the root cause, the next question, naturally comes up, okay, what should I be doing? What can I be looking at? And I actually think this is a really good opportunity. I just want to give a little plug for a workshop that you have coming out very soon, which is all on this topic. If you like this podcast, you want to go deeper. Chris, you know, is a dear friend of mine and his workshops and materials are like masterclass level deep dives into these things. And we have a link to that inside of the show notes. And for anybody that's listening, Chris, maybe you could mention the link. And then, of course, let's jump into the

question and go through some of the top things that people can actually do. Sure. So it's cressor.co slash Drew, D-H-R-U, to learn more about the workshop. And it's a seven-week online program that kind of pretty much walks you step by step through the protocols that I've developed over time for myself and for my patients to supercharge your own natural immune function and protect your self. against infection, which is obviously of growing importance in this COVID era that we're living in today. Yeah, so of course, we want to replace those over-the-counter remedies with other things and the goals for replacing them shouldn't just be alleviation of symptoms, but although that

can definitely be included, it should also be things that will actually help the infection to resolve more quickly and help the body to fight it off. And that's, again, something that the over-the-counter remedies don't do. So, I mean, we can talk about some basics, and then I can share some maybe lesser-known remedies, because I feel like probably a lot of your listeners are aware of things like vitamin C and vitamin D. They might also be aware of zinc or maybe even. and raw honey, which has gotten a lot of attention.

Everything I just mentioned is our good, really solid foundational pieces. Most people are deficient in vitamin D. I know you talk about this a lot, Drew. And so I think taking vitamin D on a regular basis just to prevent getting sick is a crucial factor and trying to maintain a range blood level of four. 40 to 60 is a pretty good target, especially as you're moving into cold and flu season, like the time of the year that we're in now as we're recording this. And if somebody hasn't gotten their vitamin D tested recently, which obviously please do,

you know, that's one of the best ways to know and make sure that you're not over supplementing with vitamin D. You've actually written some great articles about the challenges of this. And often when we hear about that something is a good thing, we have a tendency to, you know, want to overdo it. So maybe you could chat a little bit about that. But again, for somebody who hasn't looked at their vitamin D level, there's plenty of at-home testing companies.

We'll include the link for those in the show notes. Is there a generally regarded as safe dosage that most people could benefit with, knowing that most of the population is severely deficient when it comes to vitamin D3 in their blood? And even if they live in areas in the U.S. or other areas around the world where they typically would get a lot of sun exposure because even in those areas, you know, we're not really spending a lot of time outside. Yeah. I would say three to five thousand IU per day has been shown in studies to be safe for the vast majority of people. So we also know that there are factors which. make it likely that someone will need more than that typical dose. And one of them is overweight or obesity and another is inflammation, which we talked about earlier.

So if you have a chronic inflammatory condition and or you're overweight or obese, you might need to bump that up into the 10,000 IU per day range to get the same blood response of vitamin D. If you do take that high of a dose, I would highly recommend getting tested after three months or something just to make sure that your level is not climbing into, you know, approaching 100, let's say. But for most people, 3 to 5,000 IU per day will be a sweet spot to maintain them in that 40 to 60 range that I mentioned, which is optimal for immune function. Yeah. And I think folks who are over supplementing, just chat for a second if you could, maybe the potential dangers of having too much vitamin D, which again, if you test, you'll know very easily if you've gone beyond that limit.

Yeah. The biggest concern is that vitamin D regulates calcium metabolism and we have too much vitamin D. What happens is calcium starts to get into the soft tissues where you definitely don't want it, like your blood vessels and your kidneys and your heart, rather than the bones. in the teeth and the other and the hard tissues where you do want calcium. So that's the biggest concern with vitamin D toxicity. It's kind of a complex topic because the toxicity range of vitamin D is influenced by other factors like how much vitamin A and K2 you have. So if you're, if you're eating plenty of vitamin A and K2 or taking them as supplements, you'll be able to

tolerate more vitamin D and the toxicity rate threshold actually goes up. but unfortunately a lot of people also don't get enough vitamin A or K2 and then that makes them more susceptible to the impacts of vitamin D toxicity. So I would say, you know, 40 to 60 again is the sweet spot. I wouldn't be too worried about, you know, 70, 75, especially if you're getting enough vitamin A and K2. If you start to get it into the 80s and 90s, then I would, you know, that's, you know, that's definitely a sign you need to back off.

And about vitamin A and K2, if somebody isn't supplementing with those, which obviously that's one of the best ways to get it, they have to be a little bit more mindful about the food sources. What food sources would they be eating? And if you had any kind of comment on cadence of those food sources to make sure that they were getting an adequate amount of vitamin A and K2 in the diet. Yeah, these are can be tricky because a lot of times when you look at food labels and you see vitamin A listed, what's really

that food might contain is beta carotene, which is a precursor to vitamin A. The compound that we're talking about when I say vitamin A, the active form is retinol. And in the body, some beta carotene can be converted into retinol. But that conversion is pretty inefficient. And some people don't do it very well at all. If you've ever seen someone who's like drinking, doing like juice fasting and drinking a lot of carrot juice and their palms turn a little bit orange, that's often what's going on is that's a person who doesn't convert the carotines that you find in like carrots or red peppers or things like that into the active form of vitamin A.

So the foods that contain preformed vitamin A, there aren't a lot of. Organ meats are probably the richest source. So liver, for example, that could be beef liver or cod liver. So it's why cod liver oil is such a great source of vitamin A. Pasture-raised egg yolks. So not, you know, conventional eggs, but eggs that are from chickens that were raised on grass. The reason for that is grass contains those keratines and the chicken converts that into retinol. And then the retinol shows up in the,

pastured egg yolks. So, and then, you know, there are some other animal foods that have smaller amounts of vitamin A, preformed vitamin A. But really organ meats and pastured egg yolks are the best sources. So they're not the most popular foods at this point, right? So one thing you can do is take, there are several companies now that sell liver supplements or organ meat supplements. So it's basically freeze-dried liver from pasture-raised cows in New Zealand typically is the source. And you can just take those on a daily basis. And you get a lot of the same benefits that you would get from eating liver without having to cook or eat liver, which a lot of people are just not willing to do in the United States at this

point and many other parts of the world. vitamin K2 is similar in a way because some vitamin K1, which is found in dark leafy greens, can be converted into K2. But again, that conversion is not very efficient. And so eating foods that already have K2 in them is often the best bet. And one of the top dietary sources for K2, would be hard cheeses. So various kinds of hard cheeses are pretty rich sources. Pasture raised egg yolks have some K2 fermented foods, which of course cheese is one,

but other fermented foods like kfir or sauerkra, or sauerkra, kimchi will have some K2. The highest source is a food called Natto, which is a fermented soy product from Japan. it has a very strong flavor that most people do not enjoy. So I have a hard time getting patients to eat Natto. And the other highest source is goose liver, which again, you know, it's not something you see at the store very often or people are going to eat. So I think hard cheeses and fermented foods are the best dietary sources for most people. And then you can supplement with K2, which is what a lot of my patients do, frankly,

because it's difficult to get enough just through diet, especially if you don't do well with dairy products. So that was the expanded coverage of vitamin D. And we were going through some of the basics that a lot of people have heard. But again, trying to add in a little bit more information so that people can approach those basics in the right way. We just did that with vitamin D. Let's do that now with vitamin C,

which is another nutrient that a lot of people have heard of and have been using, especially in the context, of keeping their immune system strong with everything that's been going on with the coronavirus. Any caveats or interesting anecdotes or anything that you want people to know about the science around vitamin C? Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, focusing specifically on the coronavirus, the research on vitamin C and coronavirus has been kind of disappointing, actually, to the point where I didn't include it.

as one of my, you know, preferred focus nutrients for prevention of COVID-19. There's just not, the research has not been very strong. Now, certainly, I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't work, you know, that we don't need to maintain normal vitamin C levels. We absolutely do. But I will say that the research on vitamin D and its ability to prevent infections in the first place, and then if someone is infected to reduce the disease, severity of the infection, reduce hospitalization, reduce death is far, far stronger than vitamin C.

And I think a lot of people are surprised by that because we hear so much about, you know, the ability of vitamin C to help fight infections. And certainly it does do that. But in the context of COVID and even other viral infections, I would say, you know, maintaining normal vitamin C levels by eating a lot of vitamin C-wretch foods. And red peppers are a great source. Citrus, of course, broccoli and other vegetables have decent amounts of vitamin C. And then maybe during cold and flu season, supplementing with, let's say, 500, 250 or 500 milligrams of vitamin C a day will really help. But not to the same degree, at least according to the research that we have,

as, let's say, vitamin D and zinc in the context of coronavirus. What else do you want to cover on the topic of the basics? Before we get into some things that might be a little bit new for people, even if they're pretty aware of interventions in the world of health. I think zinc is a really important nutrient. You know, it's maybe somewhere in the middle between nutrients that people think about for immune function a lot like vitamin C and then less common ones that we're about to go into. But again, I would say not just for colds and flus and basic immune support,

but there's a lot of research on zinc for COVID-19 protection. And particularly zinc lozenges, which, you know, release the zinc in the back of the throat and the tissues where the virus is most likely to be present. So one of the things that we've learned about zinc is that it inhibits viral replication, and in vitro studies have shown that it does this specifically with SARS-COVID-2 virus. So one of the things I talk about in the workshop is a protocol for early exposure to SARS-COVID-2. So let's say you go out, you know, you're out about for whatever reason,

and you learn that you've been exposed to somebody that has COVID. Zinc is one of the things that I have included in my early exposure protocol, which is designed to help you get a jump on boosting your immune function, so you fight off the virus without even getting infected or coming down with symptoms. And zinc's an important part of that protocol, because like I said, if you can, especially if you can get zinc in the back of the throat where the virus is present and trying to replicate, it will inhibit the replication of the virus and lead to a lower viral load, which makes it easier for your immune system to fight it off. But not all zinc

is created equal for this purpose. So zinc acetate, which is A-C-E-T-A-T-E, is the specific form that you want for this purpose as of zinc. lozenges. So I think that's another good basic thing. I've got a bottle of zinc acetate lozenges that just on, you know, on our shelf. And if I happen to be out and I, and I learned that I was exposed and I'll just suck on a few of those lozenges in a day, just give my immune system that extra support. Beautiful. A great intervention and tool. This might be a good opportunity here to just take a little bit of a brief pause and zoom out. You know, we're recording this literally a couple days before New Year's. And so we're right at the end of 2021, getting ready

to go into 2022. And most of the audience here is listening to this in early January. And right now with a new variant that's out there, a lot of people are worried. There's a lot of fear that's on the news. And one thing that's come out of the understanding around this new variant that many scientists and advocates around COVID-19 have been talking about for a while is that ultimately as this disease goes from pandemic to endemic, or rather this virus goes from pandemic to endemic, it's very likely that most people will eventually get the virus. Can you expand on that and why it's important for us to understand that in the context of this conversation? Absolutely. So, you know, initially when COVID first hit the scene,

back in February, March 2020, nobody knew what was going on. It was just a dramatic and rapid proliferation of the virus, and all of the scientists were trying their best to figure out what the dynamics of it were. Is it, you know, was it something that we could treat? Could we make a vaccine for it? was it, you know, how fast was it going to spread? How serious was it? Who was it serious for? You know,

there were so many unanswered questions. And, you know, here we are 22 months later. We know a lot more. And what, and in addition, the virus has mutated several times during that 22 month period. So if you're familiar with the Greek alphabet, we started with alpha. Then there was beta, we're all the way down to O now for Omicron, and the virus has changed a lot during that time. And as you pointed out, Drew, it's now clear that this is not a virus that we're going to eradicate from the earth, you know, or get close to eradicating like smallpox or polio. This is a virus that will act more like a common cold, like a coronavirus, which also causes the common cold or influenza, which causes the flu.

It's a virus that will likely, you know, we know it's strongly seasonal, just like other coronaviruses that cause the common cold and influenza, which causes the flu. And it's very likely that this SARS-COVID-2 will just become a, you know, one of the many viruses that were exposed to on, you know, on a seasonal basis. And I think you can look at that as good news and bad news. The bad news is it's not going away forever. The good news is that the natural trajectory of a virus like this is to start out being more virulent, which it was back in February, March of 2020, that the fatality

rate was significantly higher than it is now, especially with Omicron, the rate of hospitalization was higher and it was a much more serious disease. Over time, as more and more people in the population gain immunity, what the virus has to do in order to proliferate is to become more contagious and more transmissible and actually somewhat less infectious or are less virulent, severe, because if it becomes more contagious and more severe, it will kill more people and the hosts will die out and it won't be able to spread to as many people. When you have a significant percentage of the population that has either natural immunity or vaccine-induced immunity, that's what you would expect to happen with the

virus, is that it would become more transmissible but less severe. And that's exactly what the early data are showing with the Omicron variant. So, for example, Denmark has been publishing very detailed daily data on hospitalizations and deaths and cases with the Omicron. The Omicron became dominant there earlier than it did in many other places. And their population is more similar to ours than like South Africa, for example, where Omicron came out of. So I think Denmark's an interesting case, and we can look at the UK as well.

But if I'm looking at a great website right now called Our World and Data, which has co-related all of the COVID data from around the world, and what we can see is that as of December 29th, cases are new cases in Denmark, are at the highest level by far throughout the entire pandemic. So let me just give you the exact numbers here.

The previous peak was a little above 500 cases per million. And this was back in like December of 2020. Right now it is over. 2,000 cases per million. So that's fourfold higher in terms of the number of cases. So that fits with what we just talked about, right? It's more transmissible, more infectious. So it's spreading more quickly and that's leading to a greater number of cases. However, if we look at the number of death per million, the prior peak was also just after that peak of cases. So it was like in January of 2021, and that was over six per million.

And now over the last couple weeks, we've been bouncing around at, you know, maybe one to two. So we're seeing this massive increase in cases, but we're not seeing a massive increase in deaths. And in fact, the last time I looked at the numbers for Denmark, there were about 50 people that were hospitalized out of 50,000 cases, that's a hospitalization rate of 0.1%. And the hospitalization rate that was more typical was about 1%. So that's a hospitalization rate that's maybe 10fold lower than, you know, or 10% of what the normal hospitalization rate. If we look at the UK,

It's a very similar story. They had a peak of new cases around closer to 1,000 per day, maybe 800 in around December of 2020. And then they had a peak of deaths above, a little above 18, a few weeks after that. Right now, they are close to 2,000 new cases a day. And their deaths are even lower than Denmark. there at just under two per day. And so what we can see here is that as, you know, somewhat predicted, Omicron is much more transmissible and infectious,

but seems to be much milder than previous variant. So most epidemiologists believe what you said, Drew, that, you know, we're going to, most people will get this, whether they're vaccinated or not, because the Omicron variant appears to evade, be much better at evading vaccine immunity. And, you know, most people are going to get this at some point in the next year or so. But the good news is that for the majority of people, it looks to be a relatively mild illness. And a lot of that, too, is, you know, you and I were texting a little bit out of some of the data that was published on kids'

recently out of the UK and some other places. I think this is worth touching on is that, you know, we've known since the beginning of the pandemic that if you have a poor functioning immune system, which is often directly related to and connected to having some sort of core mobility or being significantly overweight or obese, you are just going to have a much harder time when it comes to fending off this disease that's there. And I wanted for you to get a chance to talk about that a little bit here in the context of why is this all the things that we're recommending around people supporting their immune system, again, whether somebody's vaccinated or not, why is that so crucial

in the context of really as we as a society start to move away from less of cases, just general number of cases knowing that everybody's going to get COVID eventually, right, and really trying to talk about lowering severe hospitalization, especially, of course, death. Because so many people will get it, it's just, you know, mathematical that if you have millions of people who are contracting this virus, then we want to do everything we can to make sure that those infections are as mild as possible, right? And, you know, both on our a personal level, just each individual wanting to reduce the chance that they have a severe infection. And then on a societal level, reducing the number of hospitalizations and making

sure that hospitals can stay functional for not just for COVID cases, but for all the other things that hospitals do. So I think it's a critical conversation to be having because thus far there has been it's been I've been disappointed by how how little focus the importance of supporting our own immune health has received in the mainstream media because we we have research now that I cover in the workshop and we've talked a little bit about that shows that you know maintaining a normal vitamin D level can reduce your risk of infection by you know, 1.7 times. It can reduce your risk of severe infection by about 2.6 fold. It can reduce your risk of death by about 2.4 fold. We know that 63% of hospitalizations for COVID in the U.S.

were driven by metabolic disease. So the flip side of that is that maintaining normal blood sugar and normal weight can pretty dramatically reduce your risk of a severe COVID outcome. We know that there was a great study that looked at physical activity and COVID outcomes. And in that study, people who were completely sedentary were two and a half times more likely to die from COVID than people who were in the most active group. you know, if we had a therapy that could reduce the risk of death, you know, by 2.5 fold, we'd be shouting it from the rooftops. And it turns out that we do, you know, that's physical activity and also maintaining normal vitamin D status.

So especially now that more people are becoming infected, it's even more critical to get this information out there and help people to take basic steps. We're not talking about crazy stuff. basic, relatively simple stuff, pretty affordable interventions in the case of vitamin D and physical activity and zinc and things like this to dramatically reduce the likelihood of a severe outcome. And what we also know from now almost two years of COVID treatment experience, a lot of the frontline physicians who've been treating COVID this whole time have continually emphasize the importance of early intervention. And I would even go a step further and say prevention.

You know, like, that's the earliest intervention is prevention, is taking all these steps before you're even exposed so that when you are exposed, you have a much less chance of it progressing or even getting infected in the first place. And then once you're infected, taking steps early, like at the very first sign of symptoms, or even if you know you've been exposed, taking some of those steps that we're. we talk about in the workshop before you even develop symptoms, we know now from so much research that that is one of the most important things to reducing the severity of the infection and dropping the risk of hospitalization and more severe outcomes like ICU and death.

All right. Let's get to some of the bonus things that you cover inside of the workshop that you're giving our audience here a little sneak peek at. What are some of the bonus things that we could be doing that could make a radical shift when it comes to the quality of our immune system, whether it's COVID, the flu, or anything else that we're running up against. Yeah, so let's talk about three lesser known but really powerful nutrients. And these are readily available. They're safe. They're effective.

And they have multiple beneficial effects. Like you said, Drew, not just for SARS-COVID-2, but also for colds, for flus. in many cases for other immune challenges, they're anti-inflammatory, et cetera. So the first is quercetin. This is a natural compound from the flavonoid family. It's found in smaller amounts in onions, nuts, lots of fruits and veggies like apples, tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce, and green and black tea. And it has a wide range of beneficial properties.

It's anti-inflammatory. We've talked about how important that is. It's anti-proliferative, so it has anti-cancer effects. It's an antioxidant, so it helps reduce oxidative stress. It protects the liver, which can be taxed in a lot of different infections, and it has quite significant antiviral properties. So there have been a few studies on quercetin and different viral infections, including influenza, the coronaviruses that cause common cold, and then more recently, SARS-COVID-2.

And Querceton's been shown to inhibit entry by the virus into cells. It reduces viral replication like zinc does, and it suppresses virus-induced cell death, so it keeps cells healthy. And there have been two randomized control trials that show that Querceton increased viral clearance of SARS-COVID-2, decreased hospitalizations, decrease the length of hospitalization if someone did end up in the hospital and decreased deaths. So quercetin is pretty widely available, but one of the things you need to pay attention to is it's not very bioavailable in its native form, which means it's not well absorbed.

So if you just pick a quercetin off the shelf, like a typical one, you're not going to absorb much of it, or you're going to have to take a whole lot of it to get enough of the active form. So what you want to look for is quercetin phytosome. So that's P-H-Y-T-O-S-O-M-E. These quercetin phytosome preparations have been shown to increase absorption by 20-fold. So that's 20 times greater absorption than a typical quercetin. And both of the randomized controlled trials that I mentioned on the last slide we're actually done with the quercetin phytosome product.

So it's important to note that you can't expect necessarily to get the same benefits without the quercetin phytosome product. So the dosage is 750 milligrams per day for prevention or early exposure. You can often find capsules in like 250 milligram range, so you could take three per day and divided doses. If you're experiencing mild symptoms, I would suggest more like 1,01250 milligrams per day and for more moderate to severe symptoms, 1,500 milligrams per day. And so you can just search.

There are a few different companies and brands that make a quercetin phytosome pretty easy to find these days, but just make sure you get the phytosome version. Great. So the next one is propolis. I love propolis and it's a hive product, right? So this comes from bees. And it's a wax-like substance that honeybees used to seal the beehives together and to protect the colony. And it contains a lot of compounds that have activity against viral against viruses, including Quirston.

Actually, Quirston is a compound that's found in propolis, but also myricotin and khan. phaic acid. Propolis has been shown to have antiviral properties, anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory, antioxidant, and also anti-cancer properties. And it modulates the function of different cells that are involved in the innate and adaptive immune response. And there's also evidence, and this is kind of another bonus for propolis, that it doesn't just work for acute infections. It has beneficial effects in the prevention and treatment of chronic conditions like obesity, diabetes, and cancer. So related to SARS-COVID-2, there's not a ton of research on propolis yet, but there are lots of previous studies showing antiviral activity against influenza, retroviruses. There's one study that

showed that propolis had antiviral effects against coronaviruses in general. And then more recently, there was a randomized control trial in Brazil, which found that propolis reduced the length of hospitalization and improved outcomes in patients that were already hospitalized with COVID-19. And as I mentioned before, we get a lot more benefit if we start these treatments earlier. You know, so if it's showing benefit when people who are already hospitalized, it's even more likely that it's going to provide benefit if you take it earlier in the course of the disease. My favorite. Just to just to chime in, I just got back from a quick trip to Europe.

up with my wife and everywhere, every single pharmacy. And we're talking about like mainstream pharmacies in Paris. We went to Paris. Right front and center, they had an organic, they call it bio, bio, bio, proplus product that every store, even very mainstream pharmacies. Again, I know you said the data was limited, but anecdotally for whatever reason, and I texted a few other friends that were in London and a few other European cities, and they said, yes, for whatever reason, this product propolis has definitely made its way into the zeitgeist, and a lot more people are taking it preventatively, especially with the new variant. Absolutely.

Yeah. And it's another one, especially you can administer it right into your throat, which I'm going to talk about my favorite propolis form in a moment here. And that, you know, just like the zinc lozenges, if you get the propolis right to where it's needed, to where the virus is present, trying to replicate it will be even. more effective. So my favorite product for this is be immune. It's just the letter B and a period after it and then immune and then throat spray. And the company is beekeepers naturals. So I think you're familiar with them, Drew. Great company. They make a lot of products from be that are

sourced from bees and they are very committed to the health of bees and, you know, sourcing these products sustainably and naturally. But it's, It's a spray, and I love it because I can, you can, it's, you know, it's only about this big, really small, smaller in the palm of your hand. You can easily pack it in a bag. Whenever I, you know, travel on a plane or go anywhere, I take it with me and I do a few sprays in the back of my throat. And it's just some, it's become kind of one of those things that I, that I don't leave

home without on trips because it, I find that if I do that, I'm just so much less likely to, uh, come down with any kinds of symptoms. So that's a game changer. It's a great product and a great company. Love with their team is up to and stands for. So awesome recommendation. So the last one is black seed oil. So black seed oil is made from a flowering plant that you can find in Asia and Europe

called Nigella Sativa. And the seeds from this plant, which are sometimes also referred to as black cumin, have been used in traditional medicine for centuries. in Chinese medicine and Ayurveda and other medical systems. But now with modern research, we know that they are anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory, antioxidant, they're anti-parasitic, they protect the liver, and they have anti-cancer and antiviral properties. In the context of viral infections,

black seed stimulates the production of a bunch of different compounds that are really important for our body's ability to fight viruses. and then this is also critical in the case of COVID-19, black seed oil has been shown to reduce the cytokine storm that is characterized or characterizes severe COVID-19. One of the things that happens with viral infections, it's not just the virus itself, but it's our body's reaction to the virus that can become dangerous

and cause a lot of the severe symptoms that are related to COVID-19. and that strong reaction that our immune system can have, part of it is a cytokine storm. It's an excessive inflammatory reaction. And blackseed oil has been shown to actually dampen that cytokine storm. So it's been studied for COVID-19, and there's in vitro, which are lab dish studies several years ago, that showed that Blackseed killed the first SARS virus, which is closely related, of course, in structure to the second one, SARS-COVID-2. There are computer modeling studies that are shown that Blackseed, the compounds in Blackseed

inhibit numerous proteins that SARS-COVID-2 needs to replicate, but there's also direct clinical evidence to support Blackseed's role in COVID-19. So there have been three randomized controlled trials performed, one in Pakistan, one in Iraq, and one in Saudi Arabia. That part of the world seems to be more most interested in blackseed, in part because parasite infections are more common there. And they use these kinds of compounds for parasite infections, so they're more familiar with them. And when you take the results of all three of those trials together, blackseed oil improve the clearance of, of SARS-COVID-2, it reduced the risk of severe infection, it shortened the length of hospital stay, it reduced the risk of death, and it shortened the recovery time.

So you actually have some organizations now, even in the U.S. that are recommending black seed oil as a potential protective remedy for COVID-19. unlike, you know, propolis and quercetin, I tend to recommend those as preventatives, whereas with black seed oil, you can take it as a preventative, but I would generally suggest using it as an intervention once symptoms have started. So you might use quercetin and propolis on a fairly regular basis during cold and flu season, or if you suspect you've been exposed to either cold or flu or COVID. but then with blackseed oil, I would generally recommend starting it once symptoms begin.

And the typical recommended dose is 500 milligrams twice a day. So that would be a thousand milligrams total, 500, let's say in the morning and then once in the evening. And I generally do recommend taking it with food. It's a pretty aromatic compound. and if you take it on an empty stomach, for some people, it can, you know, it can be uncomfortable. You know, Chris, I think this is a good opportunity. Those are all three great recommendations.

I even learned a lot. I had used propolis for a while and I kind of fallen off the bandwagon as, you know, things ebb and flow into our lives. And we have to be reminded, even the ones of us that are, you know, hosting these podcasts. So a lot of great information for me as well here. And a ton of new information in the black seed oil. So thank you for sharing that. I think this is another good opportunity to zoom out. You know, we live in a world that's increasingly wants to look at things through a tribal lens.

And the tribal lens is you're either with us or against us. And people want to know what camp you're in because they want to put it in the context and the lens of this or that. And really, we live in a world of end. And the approach of functional medicine, you're not just a researcher. You're also a practitioner. You see patients. You have a whole team of doctors that you work with. And you've helped patients for years in achieving their best health, as well as supporting

many patients who have been exposed to COVID-19. And I think this is a good opportunity. We've done a few episodes on this in the past. But it's just good to look at it from this, address it from this lens, because I know we're going to get a lot of comments of people coming in and saying, well, what about this? What about that? What about vaccinations? You know, you guys are putting in so much attention and energy into talking about, you know, natural health and, and the boosting our natural immune system. Sometimes that world of it's either vaccines or nothing doesn't take that

into account. And then there's another world that says, well, we should only rely on natural treatments and boosting our immune system. And any other intervention is not really truly getting to the the root cause. So I feel like you have a very balanced approach in the way that you've talked about it with your patients and how you've educated and taught people all throughout the pandemic that's been there. So would you be able to summarize some of your high level thoughts on this as we get towards the end of this episode? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think just from a meta perspective, I've just been so disheartened and disappointed by how polarize the discussion around these topics has become. And I've seen friendships destroyed. I've seen, you know, family members stop talking to one

another. You know, of course, the political polarization is just off the charts. What's, you know, the hostility and vitriol and social media and, you know, people, you know, just basically seeing the other side is almost less than human in the language that's being used. And I just think, that is not only completely against the spirit of what's needed in a pandemic that threatens all of us, it's counterproductive. It's actually obscured our ability to get to the truth and then to be able to disseminate that truth or the facts as we know them to a wide audience because we've entered a kind of reality distortion field is what I refer to as where, you know, each side of of the spectrum will interpret whatever information comes their way through the lens of their

tribe, so to speak. So if it could be good information, if it comes from a source that is perceived to be on the other team, so to speak, or in the other tribe, it will immediately be blocked out of, you know, and not considered. excuse me and that's true of both sides of this you know i i don't think there's a one side that's that's doing that and the other side it's not it's just it's it's it's happening on both sides and and that is really antithetical to the scientific method as we know it which is um in in science you are continue you want to continually be questioning your hypothesis and even if you think

you know what's going on, you want to continually question that and continually poke at it and prod at it and remain open to other possibilities because if you look at the history of science, it's basically the history of most scientists being wrong about most things most of the time. You know, if you go back 100 years, we kind of chuckle or maybe even sneer at what people thought a hundred years ago, right? And those people sneered at what people thought 100 years before them. And yet, today, we somehow think that it's going to be different, that we've got all the answers and people 100 years from now won't be looking back at us and, you know, chuckling or sneering. at what we think is true. So that's, you know, just on a kind of global level,

I'm really disappointed by how this is unfolded during the pandemic. And I really hope that we can learn from this experience and find a way to, you know, especially if we have to face another crisis that is similar in nature in the future, that we find a way to create a process where we can get to more objective truths and facts more quickly and without as much of the politics around it. Maybe that's just me being hopelessly optimistic, but that's one thing that I think we need to learn from this experience. The other thing I would say, just in a more general sense, is my philosophy with

with medicine has always been whatever works and causes the least amount of harm. It's pretty simple, you know, so I will say that oftentimes that will be a natural intervention. Like, you know, if you think of diabetes, for example, what is going to work best and cause the least amount of harm? Well, it's probably eating a healthy diet, maintaining, you know, good physical activity, getting enough sleep, making sure you get enough of the right nutrients, managing your stress, you know, spending time outside, like all the things that we know just prevent, you know, developing high blood sugar and becoming overweight in the first place. Those are going to work the best and they're going to cause the least harm. When you think of something, but that doesn't

mean drugs can never be helpful. So I think of something like SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. In some cases, when we have patients with that condition, even though there are botanical treatments that can be effective, even though some dietary strategies can be helpful, there is a drug called refaxamine that is extremely effective for reducing bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine. It's also quite safe, and it doesn't have the negative impact on the gut flora that a lot of antibiotics have because it's not absorbed systemically. And we find ourselves using that medication fairly regularly in the clinic because it meets that standard of being the most effective and causing the least harm.

So I think we need to think about preventing and addressing infections in the same way. You know, what is it that we can do that will be most effective and will cause the least amount of harm has the least, you know, lowest risk of side effects, and also is the most accessible to us and empowers each person to take charge of their own health, which is, I think, another important part of this where we're not just dependent on our doctors and or whoever our health care professionals might be because most health care is self-care, you know, even if we see a doctor three or four times a year, 99.99% percent. of the rest of our time is just the choices that we make on a daily basis. And that's what

determines our health. We could have the best doctor in the world, but the vast majority of the time we spend and the actions that we take are going to occur outside of that doctor's office. So I think that's really the message here. And it's a great message. And I hope that one thing that comes out of all this attention on the space, and I do see that you see a growing community of folks that are seeking this out is there is a growing group of people who regardless of whatever their political views were or how they might have, you know, voted or what they identified with, they're just wanting more honest discussion. They're wanting more honest discussion amongst people who are qualified.

Sometimes that's having, you know, degrees by their name. And that's sometimes it's, you know, people that have an interesting argument that that might be coming out of a different, you know, area or might not might not have an exact expertise in a topic that's being discussed, but have something very relevant to say. You know, somebody like a, you know, some of the best rocket ship designers are not rocket scientist, as we've seen with Elon Musk. Certainly. Other folks that are out there. And I think we just want a more honest discussion. I think that's why I really love podcast and our ability to be able to do this. I think there's more and more people that are tuning out of the traditional news information and are tuning into other opportunities to have a real conversation. So I want to acknowledge you and appreciate you for coming back on the podcast,

you know, our first conversation that we had on the topic of COVID was a great one, and we brought up a lot of really great topics, and our audience really enjoyed it. And this just built on top of that. So I want to acknowledge you and thank you for being one of those people that is bringing to the world, you know, what they wish they could see more of. I think this is another really good opportunity to just mention the workshop that you have going on. And you've set up a special link again for the listeners here and those that are watching on YouTube. For anybody that wants to dive deeper into this,

like wants to go on a super master's class level workshop that you and your team have put together, we'd love you again mention just how people can sign up and what they can expect from this workshop that's coming out. Sure. Yeah, thanks, Drew. And I always appreciate the chance to come on and speak with you. I feel like it's a great opportunity to have those kind of open. and a non-dogmatic discussions that we really need more of. So, yeah, the link is cressor.co-slash-D-H-R-U. The workshop is going to begin on January 31st, which is a Monday,

and it will go for seven weeks, which is roughly through March. It's 100% online, so people can attend from anywhere in the world. We've done a similar but different workshop on autoimmune disease. We had over a thousand people from all over the world, more than 20 countries, which was really fun and amazing to see. And it's going to take you, as I said, step by step through a protocol that's taken me over a decade to assemble from my own experience, my research, and treating thousands of patients now. you'll learn why natural immunity is particularly important in the day and age that we live in now.

The most important factor is for building natural immunity, which we've covered, some of which we've covered today, the most potent and safe supplements and herbs for building immunity and protecting against infection, specific protocols for preventing and addressing colds, flu, and of course, COVID, and then diet and lifestyle strategies for optimizing immune function. So the content's delivered in weekly video sessions, which you can watch on your own time. We have lots of handouts and worksheets and done for you resources. We give workshop participants access to our supplement dispensary that we use with patients, so really high-quality supplements that we'll be talking about throughout the show,

which I think is, or the workshop, which is important because there's just so many bogus products now on the market and Amazon and stuff. So that's been a popular thing. And then we have a great community. We use a platform called Circle, and it just really makes interacting with other people in the workshop easy. And it's a great way to share your experience and ask questions and just connect with other people who are on a similar. path. So it's been a great format. We've had great feedback on the workshops we've done so far. And I'm really looking forward to getting this information out there because, and the timing feels right, especially with the Omicron variant. So many more people are going to be dealing with COVID.

And I just wanted to get this information out there so that people could give themselves the best possible chance of having the mildest and shortest, experience with it possible. Yeah, and like you said earlier, whether you're talking about COVID or you're just talking about the flu, these are all similar pillars that impact every aspect of our health when it comes to our immune system. Our immune system plays such a big role in so many aspects of our life and also fighting off chronic disease. So this is knowledge and information that you definitely want to absorb and understand. And I would even say, you know, for people who've had infections but feel like they just linger or they feel like they haven't been the same since the

a lot of these tools are the same things that we would do in the clinic to help with that as well. Like it's just, you think of it as like a full tune tune up for the immune system, you know, getting it functioning optimally and then more specific things for specific infections that you might face. That's kind of the way it was designed. So again, it's cressor.co slash drew and I hope to see some folks in the workshop when It starts at the end of January. Chris, thank you for coming on the podcast. For anybody that missed that link, you can find it in the show notes.

And Chris, we'll have to have you back on for another conversation. There's so much more to talk about in this world. So appreciate your copy on the podcast. Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me.