Realfoodology - 18: Why We Should Care About Inflammation in 2021 with Dr. Tyna

Episode Date: January 28, 2021

I speak with Dr Tyna Moore, ND, DC about viruses and how they work. We discuss what ace2 receptors are, the connection with them and fat cells, how viruses love fat cells, why we should all work to reduce inflammation in our bodies to become more resilient to viruses, the role immune health plays in all of this, how to build stronger immunity and finally the basic (and interesting) mechanisms behind the new vaccine and her hope that it works! Find Dr. Tyna: https://www.instagram.com/drtyna/https://corewellnesspdx.com/

On today's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. I have had a front row view to this pandemic in a way that I don't think most humans have. I think I'm getting information directly from other human beings across the world at all times, every single day. That's not what the news is getting. That's not what journalists are getting. That's not what politicians are getting. I'm actually getting information, but nobody's pulled me aside to talk to me about it. Hi guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Real Foodology Podcast. It has been a minute. I want to address this. So I obviously took a couple of weeks off from podcasting. It was the holidays. And then just with everything going on in the world right

now, I kind of bit off more than I could chew. I had a lot of work stuff going on and just the mental strain of life right now, you know, has been a little bit hard. So I needed to take a step back for a minute, just really get my, get my strength back and my mental health in order and all that. And now I'm back and ready to record podcasts again. So thanks for bearing with me. Today's episode, I am incredibly excited about this woman, Dr. Tina Moore is someone who I started following almost a year now. So I found her Instagram account around March of last year. She had a video that went viral talking about viruses, not this specific one, but just talking more in generalities and kind of what we know

already about coronaviruses in general, because, you know, we've seen or we have other coronavirus families that have been around for a while. And I started following her then because I was just so taken back by how eloquently spoken she was, how intelligent she was, and how she just gives the straight facts. She really dives into the science. She's been working in the medical field for more than 20 years, and she will talk about that in this episode. So you'll get to hear about her background a little bit. And she really has been throughout this whole process has, has really just been very objective with everything. So I love how she just presents the facts. She also presents all the studies. And she really dives into the research. And this woman really, really knows her stuff. I can also just tell that she really

cares, which I really appreciate. It's something that I can really relate to. I started Real Foodology almost 10 years ago. And it's because I just have this passion for truly helping people. I want to provide information that will empower people to better their health, make it easier. And I know it's just, it's so confusing these days, like going through all the information and trying to figure out what it means really to just be truly healthy and feel good in your body. And this is a real true passion of mine. I just genuinely care about humans and I care about seeing people

healthy and I want people's families to be healthy. I just want our whole human population to thrive and I want to see us live long lives disease-free. So very excited about this episode. Before we get into it, I do want to say I would be lying if I didn't admit that I was a little bit nervous about this coming out. It's not that I don't believe in the information. I very much wholeheartedly believe in it. But this whole last year, I mean, this pandemic, this virus has been very loaded and understandably so, you know, it's very real. People are getting very sick and we just want to get through it, you know? Um, but I do want to make a couple notes so that nothing is, um, misread in between the lines because I have found at least with my

Instagram account that anytime I talk about the immune system or how viruses work or anything of that nature, I have people come at me accusing me of being a part of a specific political party. Or people say that they can't believe that I'm anti-mask or that I'm anti-socially distanced. So I am saying this right now so that there is no misconception. I fully believe in wearing a mask. I wear a mask when I'm in public. I fully believe in social distancing. So none of that is being said here. This is just straight facts and science about the immune system. Because this is a huge component of the conversation that unfortunately is not being talked about enough. And what is true, and we've known this for a very long time,

way before this pandemic, is that ultimately it comes down to your immune system response. So what I really wanted to do with this episode is provide people with information on how to build more resiliency and how to build up your immune system. And this is not to say that there is any sort of cure. This is not to say that there's any sort of guarantee. But that's also with life, you know, we don't have any guarantees in life. We can be doing the best that we possibly can and still, I mean, get hit by a car the next day, you know, and I'm sorry that that sounds morbid. But this is kind of where my mindset is, is that I just believe in doing the best that we possibly can, and making the most out of the time that we live on Earth, while we're here. And for me, it's really important to live a healthy

lifestyle so that I feel good in my body. And so that if I am exposed to any sort of bacteria or virus, I at least have a better fighting chance. Again, doesn't even mean that it's guaranteed. I don't think that this is going to fully make anyone absolutely immune. But I do believe that by doing certain things and striving for a healthier lifestyle in general, it will help your immune system fight off things easier. So we talked more about that in depth, but I really just wanted to make note of that. I also want to say, I feel obligated to say this because of some of the response that I have seen on Instagram. I want to give a trigger warning that we do talk about obesity. In the clinical setting,

we talk about the studies and the health implications of it. I say this with so much love and compassion. This is not at all meant to be shaming anyone. I believe in anyone loving their body in any shape or size where they're at. And I truly mean that we are just getting into the actual health implications of it in this talk. So I just wanted to give that warning up front in case if this is upsetting to anyone, nothing but love and compassion. And with that, let's get to a question and then we're going to get to the episode. This is really exciting. Organifi now has kid stuff. They just released two kid products. One is called Easy Greens and it's a refreshing green apple juice where kids will never know that it's packed with veggies. And the other one is called Protect. It's a

delicious wild berry punch like the Kool-Aid that we used to have as a kid, but without any sugar. This is really exciting. And if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you know that I'm a huge fan of Organifi, and most specifically because every single product that they make is glyphosate residue-free. So you know that you're going to be able to give these powders to your kids and know that they will be able to consume them safely without any glyphosate in it.

So let's break down each one. The Easy Greens is a nourishing and delicious blend of superfoods and veggies that provides essential nutrients, probiotics, and digestive enzymes to bring balance to kids' growing bodies without fillers, additives, or junk. It helps to fill in nutritional gaps, aids in growth and development, supports digestive health, has a rich micronutrient profile, and includes digestive enzymes. This would be a great way to sneak in greens for your little one without them actually knowing that it's healthy for them. And the second one, which is the wild berry punch similar to

Kool-Aid is called Protect. And it is to support your child's daily immune health with food-derived nutrients that work to strengthen their body's first line of defense. I know just through girlfriends of mine that have children that when your kids are going to school, going to daycare, they're coming home sick a lot more often just because they're getting exposed to different kids and different viruses when they're out in the world playing with kids so this would be a great way to help to support your little ones immune health it's organic and it's also made with real whole food ingredients it has a delicious berry taste and slow sugar and it's gentle enough for kids to

take every single day and I really love the ingredients in this one it's orange and acerol cherry which is a powerful source of vitamin c and antioxidants astragalus elderberry and propolis these are all really great for overall immune health if you want to try the products that i talked about today or any of the organifi products go to organifi.com realfoodology and use code real food ology for 20% off. Again, that's organifi. It's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I dot com slash real food ology. Imagine having a metabolic coach in your pocket that you could access at any point, any time in the day, whenever you want. That's what Lumen is. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath. And on the app, it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs and gives you

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of benefits, including easier weight management, improved energy levels, better fitness results, better sleep, and more. Now this is a really cool feature too. It can actually track your cycle as well as the onset of menopause and adjust your recommendations to keep your metabolism healthy through hormonal shifts. So if you want to take the next step in improving your health, go to lumen.me and use real foodology to get $100 off your lumen. That is l-u-m-e-n dot m-e and use real foodology at checkout for $100 off. Thank you so much to lumen for sponsoring this episode. Before I get to the question, I just have a little disclaimer. As always, these answers and this podcast are just for educational and informational purposes only. I am an integrative nutritionist, but I'm not a doctor. And I don't know you personally,

I don't know what's going on in your body. So just know that this information on this podcast is not a sub for individual medical or mental health advice, and it doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship. As always, talk to your doctor first. Today's question comes from Marie and she says, Hi, Courtney, I've been following you forever, really, but just started your podcast. And I just wanted to say, I love it. You are informative, but also speak in a way where it is easy to understand, which brings me to ask the following. I've also been watching Dr. Mark Hyman series on the longevity roadmap, and he mentioned insulin resistance and hormones,

which I am now wondering how, or if you know, if it's possible to get tested for this, I have PCOS and haven't found a good doctor where I live to help me with this issue. Is that something we can get tested for? Or should I just start reading about how to reverse that without knowing if I actually have the problem? I would love to know what you think about this, what you know, if you have time. Okay. I really love this question because yes, something really important to note is that if you have PCOS, there is up to a 70% chance that you do have insulin resistance. Um, for some reason, we don't know, it's kind of like the chicken or the egg. We don't know which comes first, the insulin resistance or the PCOS, but we have found that generally

they come hand in hand. So when one has one, the other one usually follows and vice versa. Um, you get tested, you can get tested for insulin resistance with your doctor. I highly recommend either a functional medicine doctor or an integrative doctor, and you can Google those to find one in your area just because they will be able to read the labs better and also give you, um, lifestyle changes that will really help. But you can also just do this with your general practitioner physician. So you want to do an A1C test. And this essentially measures your average blood sugar level over the past two or three months. So this will give you an indication of whether you're a pre-diabetic or actually have diabetes. And then there's also a fasting blood sugar test and a

glucose tolerance test. So I would highly recommend going to the doctor and definitely getting tested to see if you have this, um, before just, you know, starting to read about how to reverse it, like you asked. So yeah, I definitely recommend going and getting tested. However, I also do believe that, um, there's no better time than to start today, you know, working on different little things that you can maybe possibly change in your lifestyle and your diet. And I don't want to make any sort of assumptions here. So I'm just talking in generalities. Um, this is kind of the protocol when someone is diagnosed with insulin resistance. So generally, they respond well to a low carb diet. So I would start reducing carbohydrates a bit and raising the protein and fat in the diet. I would also cut

out any sort of refined sugar. So that's any kind of like white cane sugar, um, and reduce fruit intake. Don't completely take fruit out. Fruit is not demonized here. Um, but just in general, we want to lower the overall consumption of sugar and exercise is another great one. Exercising on a daily basis appears to be very effective with insulin sensitivity. Cinnamon is another great thing. So if you want to start adding cinnamon to your coffee in the morning, there are studies that suggest that it helps with insulin levels and stay away from refined carbs. So that's any sort of like really high, uh, carbohydrates, like white bread, white flours, anything like that. So go for more like fermented like sourdough bread, and whole grains. Oatmeal is a great thing. Wheat bread, but I

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Yeah, so I found you I cannot believe that it's been almost a year but I found you on Instagram because of a post that you did a video where you talked about how viruses worked. And I loved how candidly you talked about it. And that's what really drew me into your account initially, because I just loved how you are very candid. You just give the straight facts and then you let people decide for themselves with the information that you give. And that's, I just respect you so much for that. And that's really why I wanted you to come on today so we can just talk about it. Thank you. I didn't realize I was being candid. I'm so used to teaching. And so I just was trying to lay it out there in the most simplistic way I could and then it went viral. So it went gangbusters. I got a lot of new followers really fast. I know that was amazing and I want to talk about that video but before anything else why don't you give everyone your background

just so they know kind of what you know where you come from and what you've done the last 20 years of your career. Sure so I am a naturopathic physician and I'm a chiropractor. I was mentored up by a very well-known naturopathic physician by the name of Rick Marinelli. He passed away actually this past week in 2013. So that was the anniversary a long time ago. It's shocking how long he's been gone, but I worked with him for over 20 years. Prior to that, I had worked in research, in hospitals, in clinical settings. I've been in medicine pretty much my whole life. I was a really sick kid before that. And so I was in and out of clinics and in and out of medical facilities my whole life as well. So I know medicine. I feel like I've been, you know, not only a patient, but as a somehow working in

the facility or in the vicinity of it. I had a practice for over 10 years and specifically in regenerative orthopedic medicine. And so prolotherapy, PRP, stem cells long before it was a cool thing to do. My mentor was doing nutritional IVs long before the word biohacking was decades before that word was ever invented. We were, I was working with him in a clinic doing all of those things. And so I, I've watched medicine shift and change. I've watched health shift and change, and it's been really interesting to see what it's become, how the information is so readily available out there in the world. And so around 2015, I decided I should jump into the online space and start building a platform that

way. I very, and we can talk about this later, but I always knew this was coming, the situation that we're in. And so I knew I needed to get out of my brick and mortar because I knew those would go by the wayside at some point. And so I started in on the online space at that point, I dabbled, I wasn't as big on, you know, Instagram was not my thing. But I built a pretty healthy platform elsewhere, and have just slowly transitioned out of practice for various reasons, a big one being that I just was done with it. Like, I just didn't want to take care of people anymore. And I think that's fair. Having been in hospital or medical settings my whole life, I thought, I wonder what life is like outside of a clinic. So I transitioned out of that. And here, you know, here I am today, really interesting. I feel like I was very specifically perched for this situation. Like

when that video went viral, it could not have come at a better time because I actually have the bandwidth to spend the time on Instagram now and to try to build that out and help people. And it's grown and grown and grown. And it's been awesome because I'm just, I am fiercely loyal to the truth. I don't know how else to say it. And I can't be any other way. And so I show up every day because I just can't believe that common sense has not prevailed in this situation. And it's been mind blowing to me. I thought at some point, you know, I was throwing up information, realizing, you know, I'm very, I've always been a scientist. So I'm really good at being objective. And when you do, you know, my whole world in my practice, it was a very successful practice. It was a busy one and it was all around pain. And so you get really good at being objective. You have to be because people in pain are a very

unique bunch of people. And so, or chronic illness, you know what I mean? It's all kind of one big bag. And so I thought the way that I spoke so candidly would be received, but which it was received pretty well, but man, have I, I feel like I'm going to war every day on there. It's, it's been crazy. So I'm just trying to hold the line on the truth because I feel like if I keep saying it, the other lions will wake up and the truth will prevail. That's all I can also, all I can hope for. So, God, I hope so. And I can relate to this so much because I feel the same way. Um, I just have found that oftentimes speaking the truth, people don't want to hear it. And that's when people fight you on it and we, you know, you get

attacked, but there's always going to be those people. And then there's always going to be the people that are going to be receptive. You know, we have to remember humans are resistant to change. And when we tell them things that they may not want to hear that requires some sort of change, whether that be diet or even just change in thinking there, a lot of people are really resistant to that. They are. And it's amazing to me how people assign emotion to facts. Yeah. But I can also, you know, I always, I'm a, I'm an answer seeker. I always want the answers. And my mom told me when I was little, she said, I used to sit in the back seat of the car at like five years old and ask her some really complicated question and she would not have the answer. My parents are intelligent but not very well educated.

And I would answer it myself. I'd say, well, if this is this and that is that, then this must be that. And I'd put it together logically and she was like, this kid, what am I going to do with this kid? And I remember in eighth grade trying to get them to help me with my homework. And both of my parents just saying, you know, we're out, like you far surpassed us at this point. We don't know what to do with you because I was in all these advanced placement classes. And it's not because I'm some gifted, I mean, maybe I have a gift, but I truly just want information. You know, I remember learning how to use the card catalog as a young person in the library and feeling like the whole world had just opened up to me. So I'm an information seeker. And I feel like when I put information

out, people would just take it as that. But no, people have had to, and I can, we're in a really, really crazy time. I understand this is the weirdest point of my life easily, but you would think that the, like the subject, the reason I love science is because it's objective and yet the subjective is being applied to everything right now and people are throwing their emotions into it fiercely which I understand human nature but I I'm so glad that I doubled down on science as a young person I'm so grateful that I chose that path because I feel like none of this is confusing to me right right? Like we have the info. Yeah, we do. And I want to get into some of that info because I think it's so important. So let's first talk about that video that I was talking about that went viral. So you, like I

said, you spoke really candidly about the virus. You said at some point, everyone's going to be exposed. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure. So viruses are, if you imagine the size of a virus, it's like a tiny little speck compared to a Mack truck, if the Mack truck was a bacterium. So that's how tiny, like infinitely tiny these, these entities are. They're not alive. They're not, they're not, they're not alive. They're not alive. They're not a prokaryote. They're not cellular creatures. They are something and they invade our own cells and use our own cells as machinery to reproduce themselves and manufacture themselves. And they use our lipid bilayer of our cell wall as theirs. So that's why they sneak attack. That's why they evade the first line of the immune system so well.

We know coronaviruses. We have four that are in circulation. We've known that. They cause the common cold. We have symbiotically adapted with them. The common cold doesn't usually kill people, although it can. It depends on the person. And we know that coronaviruses are aerosolized. And so I immediately knew this would be, I mean, it's like we're treating it like it's some kind of alien force when actually it's just the same as the other coronaviruses.

So, of course, it's aerosolized, which means it will linger in the air. It'll go through air ducts. And I don't know why this didn't come out in the beginning. Everyone's like hellbent on droplets. Well, it's just spread by droplets and those droplets somehow spew out of your mouth and fall and that's it. And I'm like, no, dude, this stuff is aerosolized. Like what part of this, why is no one saying this? If you just look up coronavirus 101, like in your Google search, you'll get books, you'll get textbooks that pull up and teach you about coronaviruses. And so this one behaves like the rest of them in that regard. And the minute you put a wall up to try to detour them, whether it's mechanical like a mask or

social distancing or whatever, they mutate and recombine. So they get around. They're like little sluts. I don't know how else to say it. They get around. I want to do a post like viruses gone wild, you know, like girls gone wild, but I know I'll get a whole rash of heat for that, but it's, they just get around and they do what they need to do. The thing is, is they don't want to kill their hosts. They need their hosts to replicate. And so they don't, unfortunately they are burning through some of their hosts and we can get into why, But viruses don't get very far if they can't move around and be spread and shared by someone who doesn't appear sick. Would you go up to and

get in the face of somebody who appeared visibly ill? No, you would avoid them, right? And when people don't feel good, they self-isolate. So do mammals. So do all animals. Like coming from a zoology background, I understand that when viruses hit a herd of animals, you quarantine the visibly sick ones and you let the virus rip through the rest of the herd and you hope for the best. And you may or may not lose another one, but usually you just deal with the sick ones or they perish and you make it, you know, the rest make it through and build up some kind of immunity. So that's where we're at. Like this virus will get where it needs to get. It will always be here. It's endemic. It'll be here forever. Flu viruses tend

to get kinder and gentler as they see more immune systems and they get processed by more human immune systems. Coronaviruses do as well, but not as quickly. So this one's going to stay virulent. It's highly infectious and it's virulent to the susceptible, which is a particular group of people. I want to note something really fast for everyone listening, because I've been seeing this happen a lot on Instagram. You had mentioned masks and social distancing for anyone listening. We are not saying don't wear a mask and we're not saying don't social distance. I've found that the second we talk about any of this kind of stuff, people immediately try to read between the lines and say things we didn't say. In my opinion, we should do everything, but it should be a multifaceted approach. I don't think it should just be masks and just

be social distancing. We need to be talking about these other really important factors, like for example, the immune system. And I saw you say something the other day on your Instagram that really hit me hard. And I also want to talk about this. You said viruses don't kill people. Immune systems do. That's really interesting. And it goes back to really, ultimately, it comes down to your immune system and the way that your immune system responds to the virus. And why are we not talking about this more? It's infuriating. It is infuriating. And I don't know. I mean, we can talk about all the reasons why we're not hearing all the things we should be hearing. But, and I thought for sure when the study started

getting pumped out on, well, let me just back up. Most naturopathic doctors who've been in practice for any amount of time, if they're honest with themselves, will realize most of us who are treating chronic patients are treating post-viral syndromes. And so we are intimately aware of how to treat viruses. I have known how to treat viruses effectively for decades. I've suffered from post-viral syndrome myself, and that's what brought me to naturopathic medicine. So we know that high levels of vitamin D and adequate vitamin C and adequate zinc levels for various reasons, be they anti-viral, they have multi-mechanistic effects on the body, whether they are directly antiviral, whether they're pro-immune supportive, whether they're immune modulating.

There's other, I mean, there's a whole laundry list if you look at all these separate nutrients. But generally speaking, nutrient depleted people have worse outcomes, of course, because their immune systems just simply can't mount the response. But honestly, we have literature to show that with the flu, at least, and I've posted this on Instagram multiple times, malnourished people who have poor nutritional status, actually, remember when I said when a virus goes through the body, it should come out kinder and gentler? Yes. Well, in malnourished and obese bodies, it often comes out more virulent. It actually becomes more virulent to their thin counterparts. They carry more virus, so they have higher viral titers.

They spew more virus in their aerosol, and they do so for up to 42% longer, at least when it comes to the flu. And this virus is not, I'm not, and again, disclosure. First off, I'm not anyone's doctor, so I'm not giving any medical advice to anyone. Secondly, this is just information that I am not saying this virus is like the flu. And I'm not making that, you know, when people say, well, it's just like, it's just like a bad flu, get over it. I'm not saying that, but it's actually a single-stranded RNA, you know, lipid layer virus, just like the flu. So it's similar in construct to the flu and it's aerosolized just like the flu. So there's a lot of similarities. So when I say that, I'm just comparing viral physiology. Yeah. So we have that piece that I thought for sure, I mean, imagine if they had subsidized

those very inexpensive supplements for everybody in the US, what different outcomes we would have. And that is shameful in my opinion. But secondly, why did nobody mention the elephant in the room, which was obesity is a huge driving factor, which we can get into, but it was like, they didn't want to upset anyone. I'm not sure. And I don't say this in any way fat shaming. It's just like, I can break down the physiology of how and why obesity is significant, at least with the flu. We have, we had all that literature sitting there and folks like Mike Mutzel and myself were trying to come out and say, Hey guys, this is probably going to be the same for this. And then boom, all the literature started coming out on this virus and obesity and outcomes. And I'm hearing it on the front lines. I keep saying

I have like a front row view to the front line workers. So I've got frontline workers from all over the world contacting me, constantly telling me what's going on. And from day one, it was like obesity and diabetes leading to kidney disease. Then they end up on, within that time frame, they end up on ventilators, boom, they're done. That's what I kept hearing early on. And I'm like, it's obesity and diabetes, you guys. Like this is, I don't think there's that many people in the world who are sitting where I'm sitting. Like I was thinking about this last night

talking to my fiance. I have had a front row view to this pandemic in a way that I don't think most humans have. I think I'm getting information directly from other human beings across the world at all times, every single day. That's not what the news is getting. That's not what journalists are getting. That's not what politicians are getting. Like I'm actually getting information, but nobody's pulled me aside to talk to me about it. You know, they just keep coming down on me. And I'm like,

first off, we know how viral physiology works and immunology in a basic sense. I understand that. I understand nutraceuticals. I understand pharmacology. I understand all of these things. I'm not saying I'm the expert. And I understand vaccines enough to understand how this all fits together. And yet we've got people making decisions who only understand maybe one piece or two pieces of that.

They're not looking at the whole picture. Yeah. And we're just assuming, yes, masks and social distancing will slow the roll, but all we're doing is, and I say this with absolute compassion because it's not easy to say, the same people will die that would have died prior. We're simply slowing it down. We're just slowing down the viral spreading. Viruses will burn themselves out when they burn through their substrate. We just happen to have a lot of viable substrate in the United States and in some other countries. And that's inherently the root problem, in my opinion. And we won't see the slow of this until that substrate has been used up or until

they actually start admitting that there are effective therapeutics available or if the vaccine actually works as promised. And disclosure, and then I'll shut up, I am not pro nor anti-vax. I'm pro informed consent and we do not have enough information right now for me to help anybody make a decision on that.

Yeah, I feel the same. Well, as you were saying that, all I kept thinking was, you know, we had an opportunity the last year to really have a mass, like, why didn't we say in mainstream media, like, Hey, let's clean up our diets, get sunlight every day. So you get vitamin D. We're going to distribute vitamin C and zinc, which is, I mean, so cheap, what, like 30 cents a serving, like it's not, or a pill. It's just like, cause you know, hearing you talk about that, I'm like, okay, so if everyone's

going to get exposed at some point, it really just comes down to your immune system. That's it, you know? And the more resilient we are, the healthier we are, the better care that we take of our body, um, the better fighting chance we have. And look, here's the thing. I have so many people that come at me on Instagram saying like, you know, how can you say that there's a cure or whatever? I am not at all saying that there's a cure. I'm not even saying it's a guarantee. There's always going to be anomalies. There's always going to be cases where someone just gets hit and there's no explanation for it. But according to the literature, the majority, the way that this really works,

the majority of people that are getting affected and hit the hardest are the ones that are unhealthy and obese and have diabetes. Yes, and the physiology is there. We understand why if we break it down mechanistically, why those people are getting hit harder. But think of it this way, what I keep telling people on Instagram, especially with like this whole argument about asymptomatic spread, I'll just say this really quick for your audience. Asymptomatic spread is a thing, but it's not the only thing. And so people are wanting to treat it like it's black

and white, like it's either non-existent, which is if it is real, then they think that I'm saying that justifies the massive lockdowns and all that, which I'm not saying. But think about this. How many times have you been hanging out with friends? You guys are all hanging out. Maybe you've been on and off airplanes. You're run down. You're stressed out. You've had a lot going on. Maybe you haven't been eating that well. Maybe you've been drinking too much, whatever it is. And you're hanging out with some friends at a party. And then you get a phone call from one of your friends the next day or two days later, and they say, you know what, I've got a fever. I just wanted to let you know I'm not feeling well. I think the flu's coming on. And you're like, oh shit, I'm so sorry to hear that. And then boom, the next day you're down. That was

asymptomatic spread. That's exactly how this virus works as well. And so yes, it's real. And yes, it's hitting those. I don't get sick unless I'm run down. Why are we treating this like it's an alien? People who are run down, whose bodies are run down, maybe they've been living the way they've been living their entire life. And how many times do we see, how many times are you getting messages? Well, what about the otherwise healthy people? I'm seeing young and healthy people on the news. Most of those people are obese. If you look at them, if you go through and look at them, they're obese or they have some underlying factor. I've actually talked to nurses.

I had a nurse come at me and say, we just lost a 19-year-old girl. She didn't have any underlying health issues. Come to find out the girl weighed 300 pounds. That's an underlying health issue. This is not fat shaming. This is actual reality. The ACE2 receptor is what the virus binds to. And just to make this really simple for your audience, that receptor needs to

be there for the virus to bind. Guess when ACE2 receptors are upregulated in tissues? When you're inflamed. So poor diet or inadequate nutrition, I should say. You know, inflammatory foods, not exercising, not sleeping, all the things. And then add to that, fat cells have an incredible amount of ACE2 receptors. So you're basically walking into a virus and who knows who the virus came from? Like I said, did it come from someone whose body made it more virulent to you? And so now it's ripping through the family or the household because as it goes through each body, it's changing and shifting. We have mice studies and human studies to show that.

And so you've got a bunch of inflammation and you've got – and fat cells are little inflammatory depots, by the way. They bust out cytokines. A whole lot of inflammation. Dreaded cytokines. Yeah, a lot of – I mean, they're literally an inflammatory depot. They're also an endocrine organ and they house all of your immune cells. So you're, if you're, to some degree, they're like a immune cell depot. So if your immune cells are in there and that's a pro-inflammatory cell state, that adipocyte, those are some pissed off and rogue immune cells that

are not going to handle things correctly. They're going to overreact and underreact when you need them most. And so you've got a person who's basically a walking billboard for viral binding and viral replication. And again, no disrespect, this is physiology. And we're wondering why they're getting hit so hard. The other thing is metabolic flexibility is absolutely critical in fighting this virus off. And so those who are diabetic or who have blood, most people don't realize I ran thousands and thousands and thousands of labs on people, Courtney, and most people were sitting in some kind of pre-diabetic state and had no idea. I would say 99% of the labs I ran on the average American and my people were pretty healthy. I was a cash practice. My people were like going to see the nature path. I'm able to pay with cash. These were not, I mean, you know, and they, most of them were sitting, yeah, for healthy food and, and they were sitting in some

kind of metabolic syndrome. So having that metabolic inflexibility is really detrimental when it comes to this virus or any virus for that matter. And so we're seeing that one-two punch. We're getting people who are malnourished and overfed living in a state of obesity for various reasons, which I fully acknowledge there are socioeconomic issues here. There are race issues. There are so many issues. There is, yes, racism is definitely playing into this. I, we acknowledge you and I have talked about this at length. Like we acknowledge this completely. It doesn't change the fact. Yeah. And we have major compassion for it too. But again, these are facts and it, like you said, it doesn't change the fact that this is what's happening. Yeah. And I just was listening to a physician talking about

impacts on people of color around the world. Interestingly, in Africa, where there is not much obesity, where this is sub-Saharan Africa, where they are living in crowded conditions, not masking, not social distancing, they have a 1% death rate, which is very low. They also have ivermectin on hand. They've got some of the therapeutic drugs that are known throughout the world to be effective for this that we're not talking about in the United States. But, and then she mentioned that in the UK, it wasn't necessarily the black community, but the Middle Eastern community that was, whatever community is living in close quarters with a lot of obesity and diabetes, that's the group that's getting hit hard. So this virus isn't specifically

going after black and Hispanic people. It is going after those who are living in close quarters, who are, who are dealing with obesity and diabetes. That is a racism issue, right? Well, exactly. And I feel like this isn't talked about a lot. Like, yes, we're talking a lot about how, like, for example, the black community is getting hit really hard right now in the U S well, it's also because the majority of the black community that live in the U S live in lower income areas. So they live in food deserts. They don't have access to fresh food. Hi, I accidentally misworded this a bit. I clearly feel so passionately about this subject that sometimes the words don't come out correctly and exactly how I mean them. So I just wanted to pop in and correct myself. Food deserts tend to be

predominantly in lower income neighborhoods and communities. And the residents in these neighborhoods are usually of lower socioeconomic status. But what I was trying to say that I worded horribly is that according to the statistics, there's a higher population of black people and Hispanic people living in these food deserts than there are white people. I didn't mean to say that I think that there's that the majority of black people live in lower socioeconomic status and food deserts. So I just wanted to correct that. And for those listening who don't know what a food desert is, it's defined as an area in the United States with limited access to affordable, nutritious food. So in these areas, with limited access to affordable, nutritious food.

So in these areas, supermarkets tend to be further than a mile radius from the home, and many do not have access to get or don't have access to a car to get to the store, thus making it even harder to get to fresh food. This is an example of food oppression and systemic racism, and we should not allow these areas to exist in this country. It should not be a privilege to have access to something as basic as fresh food, and I feel very passionately about this. Many of them don't have the budget to buy organic food.

And again, I have so much compassion for this. This is a horrible situation that we have, and this is something I've been fighting for a long time on my Instagram and with my work, because this is part of the problem. We have a very unhealthy population in general. And you touched on something you said earlier that I wanted to point out where you said, you know, so many people are saying that even healthy people are getting hit right now. The way that we define health in this country is not correct. We just assume that young means healthy. We also assume just because someone is thin, they're healthy, which is not entirely true. Um, you know, like we do know that, um, people with a certain percentage

of body fat are unhealthy because of what you talked about earlier, earlier, the inflammation, but what's not talked about enough is someone can be essentially thin to the, you know, like physically thin. Um, but if they're eating super unhealthy, um, they're eating a highly inflammatory diet. They can be just as inflamed as someone that has more body fat. Yeah. We should talk about that quickly because it's, it's a crucial point. I do want to say though, really quickly, I have a wonderful, wonderful following in the black community of awesome people who message me all the time. And they're pretty sick of the white community. I'm just going to say this. They're pretty sick of the white community saying how disempowered they are. Yeah. I would be sick of it too.

We're trying to put out information, you and I both, and several others to empower. My entire agenda is to empower people. Knowledge is power. So we give information, which is knowledge, which is helpful. And then people say, well, it's always a white woman who comes at me and says, well, people of color can't afford that. And I'm like, who are you to say like, that is such saviorism. And that is so disrespectful to tell somebody of any age, gender or race that they're disempowered and they can't do anything about it. It's that part has just been biting me all year. It's just like, I had a black woman come last night and she just tore, she was on our side and she just tore

into that narrative. And she said, you send them the screenshot and you tell them a black woman wrote it. I love that. Because not all black people or Mexican, or sorry, Hispanic in this country is generally Mexican. I live in wine country. So we have a large immigrant population here. And I have worked in kitchens and in bars and in restaurants. And not everybody is poor and disempowered. We have to start putting power back into people's hands at whatever level we can get it. So does that mean we give them a lot of information about

free things they can do? It's not all about biohacking and spending money on labs. It starts with walking and water and sunshine and putting down the processed foods and opting for fresh, you know, vegetables and fruits, which I understand food deserts, but I've done the math and I've done the math. And this is really a crude mathematical equation, but I ran these numbers about five different times. If you look at the population in America, that's considered overweight and obese, it's about 80 to 85% of the population in America is overweight and obese. The CDC has come out and said that not just obese but overweight people are at a very high risk for this virus, for poor outcomes. And then you subtract the amount of people who live in food deserts.

And you assume that every – just assuming that every person who lives in a food desert is obese, which they are not, and assuming that everyone who's living in poverty is obese, which they're not. If you subtract that percentage out, it still leaves about 50% of that overweight and obese population who has the means to do something, right? And we can't solve this problem unless we talk about it. Thank you. And every time you and I try to talk about it, we get slaughtered and it's, and it's always a white woman coming at me trying to slaughter me. And I'm like, I am trying to help, but I can't even help if I can't open my mouth. This is my biggest problem. And this is exactly what I was just going to say to you is that anytime I talk about any of these issues, I have a few, at least a couple of people that come at

me and say, how dare you? This is so privileged. It's a privilege to be able to afford this. It's a privilege to be able to, you know, live in a place where you can have access to free food. And I'm like, yes, thank you. That's exactly why I'm talking about it, because we need to change it. This is the whole point. Okay, I have no idea why I said free food there. I was clearly on a passionate rant, but I just wanted to pop in and say I meant fresh food, not free food. And it's as if they're trying to shame me out of talking about it. But this is an issue that I care so deeply about because I believe that it should be a basic human right to have access to fresh, organic food. It just should be a basic right. And if we can't even talk about it because the Karens, sorry, are in my

inbox, like trying to shame me out of talking about it, we're never going to come to a solution. We're never actually going to fix it. And if we can't talk about it, then we're just going to be stuck in the same spot. So these people are not helping them, you know? They're not. They're not. They're keeping, I truly believe that it is racist of them to come at you. And it is keeping people who are in a disempowered situation further disempowered. I've lived in disempowered situations, right? I've been in bankruptcy. I've been broke. I've been abused. I've lived in many disempowered situations. And if somebody had said, oh, that's so sad for you. Let me give you a bunch of handouts and feel sorry for you. The entire time I would have never gotten out of the situation. And so having personally climbed out of a few, and yes, I am a white woman. And with that comes inherent privilege. I understand that. I was raised by supportive parents. And with that comes inherent privilege. I get all of that. But you and I are trying so hard to just put out simple, like we say, go for a walk and we get smeared. Yeah. Because some people say, well, I mean, I get yelled at for the fact

that I live on land now. Whereas, you know, nine months ago, I lived in a high rise apartment building surrounded by like a huge homeless population. Some of them I actually knew pretty well and used to hang out with and talk to. People don't know us. They don't know where we came from. They don't know what we've done in our lives to try to help different groups of people. It doesn't really matter. And I don't mean to keep harping on it. But the point is, is we, when people say, well, what would you do differently? When I criticize the West Coast governors for the way they've handled lockdowns, what would you do differently? And I'm like, I can't even say because nobody will even let me have a conversation. I'm literally not even able to get the words out of my mouth

before an entire group of vultures comes down upon me, including several in my own profession. So it's just a very interesting conundrum when, yes, we all have to admit who we are, where we come from, and that there's privilege there. I fully get it. But I also really want to help. I really want to help.

And we have helped. Exactly. And I just want to continue to help, you know, and I mean, that's, this is why I wanted to bring you on this podcast. I'm so happy that we're talking about all this because ultimately at the end of the day, I just want to empower people to take care of their health, you know, and just take it in their own hands that we don't realize that there are so many things that we can do. And like you said earlier, most of them are free. I call them free medicine.

Like you said, go for a walk, go get 20 minutes of direct sunlight every day for vitamin D. Make sure you get quality sleep, avoid processed foods. You know, like there's simple little things here that you can do that will dramatically change your health and will cost you little to nothing. Yes. And it's hard as someone who was a single mom in bankruptcy going through, you know, two medical programs, like trying to build her practice. Like, I get it. I've been there where you're so bone tired when you get home after a 12 hour day

that you, you know, you, you pop in a frozen pizza and you, or you order something and you, you know, you get your kid fed and washed and in bed, and then you fall on your face in bed. And you're like, you wake up on the couch half the time. Cause you didn't even have the energy to get to bed. I understand all of that. And I know it's much worse off for many, even more so. I at least had some support from friends and family, but I get it all. We are all in a different situation, but the information is still the information and the facts are still the facts. And we have to be able to get that information out without being called healthist and elitist and racist and privileged and all these other things. It's just like,

damn, I'm just trying to, I get that we, not everyone has the time to go for a nice sunny walk every day, but everybody has five minute intervals where they can move or pop outside. It's just a matter of choice, right? And those are hard choices sometimes. I've been there, I've been skinny and sick. And this virus would have easily taken me out had it come through when I was in that place. Chronically ill, chronic pneumonia every winter. Like, I've been there.

And I made a concerted effort to crawl out of that pit of hell and get my health together. And I've gotten messages from so many people of so many different socioeconomic backgrounds and so many different races and so many different religions saying, thank you, Tina. I just got through COVID. My family got through COVID. We're fine. And we are fine because I wasn't scared because of your account. I quit being afraid.

And I started learning and I started researching and I empowered myself. And we're all taking the supplements and they're cheap. We get them at Rite Aid or wherever. It's not like Whole Foods, Fancy Schmancy. We're just talking over the counter, GNC, whatever, Walgreens, whatever. Like you said, pennies on the dollar and everybody got through it and we're all okay.

And thank you. And I'm like, right on. Like, this isn't about privilege. This is just about, and the fricking government should have stepped up and the governors should have stepped up and everybody should have stepped up on a global level. And we should have had some kind of consensus about how to handle this. We can go all the way up to the World Health Organization. Like I don't understand why this was handled the way it was,

but here we are. I know, here we are. Well, so we've kind of already touched on this, but I want to actually, um, dive into it a little bit for people listening. So we've said that there's certain measures that people can take that will, um, at least help them become more resilient. Again, I'm not saying that there is a cure, um, life will happen as it happens, you know, but at least this will help our immune systems become more resilient. Can we talk about some of those? So like vitamin D. None of this is treatment prevention or cure. It's just, and this is all in the literature, which we now have, we have the data to show this. So yeah, there are studies.

Yep. I actually highlighted them all in my webinar for my membership group last month, and I broke them all down. So like, here's the studies, right? We're just going through the studies. Vitamin D is a big one. Vitamin D is a hormone. It's not actually a vitamin. It's a hormone. It's synthesized from the cholesterol on your skin when the sun hits your skin. Obviously, people with darker skin are going to have a harder time producing vitamin D because their skin is darker. They have more melanin. So right there, that's part of this problem that we're seeing, right? Low vitamin D levels in the Black and Hispanic community and anyone with darker skin tone.

And people are just not going outside and getting vitamin D. You can take vitamin D orally, and I will say it's not something you want to mess around with at too high a doses by yourself. You definitely want to get your levels checked with your physician, and it's cheap. And if you guys listening, if you're doctors, from what I'm understanding, most insurances won't cover vitamin D testing anymore, which I think is atrocious. Wow. But you can go through a company called Direct Labs, and you can order your own vitamin D levels.

And they should be around 50 to 80. Like that's the level that people should shoot for at the minimum. And then to work with somebody to get those levels up. And there are different types of people to work with. There's nutritional therapists, there's health coaches, there are people, it doesn't have to be an expensive functional medicine doctor, a dietician, whatever you can access. The next one is vitamin C, which is super cheap. And for a lot of reasons, in my head, as a regenerative orthopedic medicine specialist, vitamin C and zinc go hand in hand.

They are inherently collagen producers. They help you make good, healthy collagen. And so let's just think, I mean, yes, there's antiviral properties and zinc helps viruses not replicate as well. There's all kinds of different mechanisms we could talk about. But in my head, I just, yes, there's antiviral properties and zinc helps viruses not replicate as well. There's all kinds of different mechanisms we could talk about. But in my head, I just think collagen, like we need healthy collagen. Your whole body is made up of collagen.

It's just one big bag of collagen, basically. And so we need healthy collagen to withstand the inflammatory impact of the virus. The virus is also a bit of a, from what I've seen and heard, it's a wasting virus, meaning I always look at viruses like, do they make people puff up or do they make them waste? This one tends to make people waste pretty, most viruses do that are virulent, make you waste pretty quickly. And so people are losing a lot of weight very quickly. And so I'm a big fan of putting muscle on the body, like whatever you can do to strength train and keep your musculoskeletal system healthy. and then the vitamin

c and zinc in my head is just part of that collagen synthesis and that and that whole family so that's the way my head wraps around it just making that more resilient of a terrain to if i'm gonna get hit at least i got some reserves right exactly um and then muscle also secretes so fat cells secrete cytokines and everybody's worried about the dreaded cytokine storm, which does happen with, like I said, the immune system kills you, your own immune system overreacts and under reacts at the same time and doesn't orchestrate correctly. And that's what is causing people really terrible outcomes. Um, and when it really over inflates and kind of goes out of control, that's when you get the cytokine storm and a lot

of inflammation and systems shutting down and it's a nightmare. So, and tissues literally melt. I mean, that first video I did that went viral, I said that people got so mad at me, but like, that's literally what happens. The collagen starts to break down. And so keep your collagen healthy. Does that mean supplementing collagen will help with that as well? Or does that not play a role really? You know, I can't say for sure, but I would say always that having good, healthy, and how can you tell if your collagen levels are adequate? How are your fingernails? Like my fingernails, I used to be able to bend them backwards and peel them off. And my hair used to break off and fall out all the time. My skin was sallow. Every time I like

brushed up against something, I would get a cut or a scrape or a bruise. That tells me that my nutritional status overall was really low. So eating collagen, I'm a big fan of animal protein. I know that I used to be vegetarian. I know that some people listening are, and that's okay. But just making sure you have adequate protein intake and making sure you balance your, you know, your amino acids correctly. So you're getting that protein combining or food combining to get your essential protein, making sure you're getting a variety of minerals and nutrients in your food. So eating a nutrient dense diet. So really, you know, I find it so funny when I was in practice, I would, I help people lose a lot of weight. And I never loved saying weight loss as like a marketing term, but I'm really good at it, and

I kind of just implemented it on a massive scale on Instagram, because I can't talk about prevention, treatment, or cure. Doctors, especially in Oregon, were muzzled, but what I can talk about is the studies, and they didn't have them out early on, so I couldn't mention any of those nutrients, even though we knew with other viruses they worked, but now we can say that with this virus. And I also can say that we essentially, we're just a pretty frail, we're just kind of frail. Like the country as a whole is frail and this virus is kicking frail people's asses. That's it.

Like I've been doing a lot of research on actual frailty syndrome and COVID and it's of course syncing up. But if there's a frailty, meaning your nutrient status is low, because most people eat junk food, right? It's not highly nutritious. Yeah. So they're not getting what they need there. They're not moving their bodies. They're not getting sleep. Having your sleep disrupted or your circadian rhythm off causes a tremendous amount of immunosuppression and inflammatory cascades happening in your body at all times. Being stressed out and arguing with your partner can actually cause a ton of immunosuppression

and inflammation. So like it's kind of a vicious cycle. So it's multifactorial. And I can understand how that would feel really overwhelming to somebody who's in the thick of it. And that's probably why those people get triggered and yell at us because they're sort of in the mess and it's a very dark, daunting place to be. But just slowly, you know, I crawled myself out slowly but surely implementing one strategy at a time. Going to bed religiously at 930 at night and getting up at the same time every day.

Getting sunlight on your eyes first thing in the morning and then some in the later afternoon. Making sure that you're drinking, getting enough water, don't get dehydrated. Viruses like to penetrate dried out mucus membranes. So hydration, like there's a simple, and who cares if it's filtered at this point, just drink the damn water. And who cares if the food's organic at this point, just eat the vegetables. Stop buying the stuff in boxes and just buy more vegetables. Yep. Yes. Like put the cereal away.

Put the mucus making, you know, inflammatory foods. We know. We know what doesn't make us feel good if we pay attention. The problem is when you have too many foods that your body doesn't like going at once, you can't tell. But when you start to, as you know, and you've probably helped clients with this, as you start to unwind that, people like my fiance, he's suddenly like, huh, you know, such and such a food doesn't make me feel very good. I never knew that. I'm like, Hey, yeah, but that's the process, right? We all have to go through that process. And you and I both were like sickly, puffy, junk foodie kids, you know, I should put a link. I don't even know if I want to say this out loud, but I will. Anyways, I should probably put a link in the show notes to, um, photos of me from when I was in

college because I was there too. And this is such an important thing to note is that we've all been there at some point, you know, and it doesn't happen overnight either. Um, I was eating Taco Bell at midnight every night. I was binge drinking. I mean, I literally looked inflamed. I looked red and I looked puffy. And it's because I wasn't getting adequate sleep. I was eating pretty much all processed food in the cafeteria. And then I was eating Taco Bell. I was binge drinking.

I wasn't exercising. And there was just so much going on there. And I didn't change that overnight. Like, I look back on it now and I didn't change that overnight. Like I look back on it now and I'm like, wow, that was a journey. You know, like you said, there was little things that I just started slowly implementing. So like take one, just tackle one thing at a time and then just go from there. And the thing is, is that once you start and once you start seeing the changes really, um, like how you feel better in your body, it will only push

you further and it will only just continue to help you feel better. And you're just going to want to continue to get healthier because it feels good. And that's, this is what I tell people all the time. The point of this whole journey is to feel good. You know, we hopefully want to be on this planet for a long time. And, you know, you want to feel like rested and like you're healthy and not just like you're kind of like, you know, limping through the day. You want to feel really healthy and good in your body. And that's the whole prerogative. Yes. I agree. You know? Yeah. And I, it's funny. I only, until I closed my practice completely and got my time back. And I am saying this from a place of privilege because I did, I built my little tiny empire and

I am in a place financially where I can pick my hours and do my day the way, however I want to. I earned that. I worked really hard for really, I mean, for 25 years, I grinded. I mean, just grinded to the point where I would almost drop dead at least once a year. Like to where my mom was like, if you keep this up, you're going to die. Or begging me to go to the hospital with some horrible case of pneumonia or some horrible case of like food poisoning. I mean, anything that came through, I was that girl. I mean, any, even since a kid, I was a kid, anything that came through. I was that girl. I mean, even since I was a kid. Anything that came through, I was the girl who got sick with it. So I totally get this. I almost died when I was 19 of cytomegalovirus, which is like a virus that everybody gets and everybody clears.

It's not a big deal. It's in the herpes family along with like Epstein-Barr and the other herpes viruses. And it attacks the brain. I was 19. I was super anorexic. And I lived off of beer and cigarettes. That was all I consumed was beer and cigarettes. And I got this horrible virus. And I went into the student health center at the university and the doctor was a female. Thank God she was looking hard. She of course ran mono, like Epstein-Barr mono. That came back clear. And

she's like, but you have cytomegalovirus titers through the roof I've never seen this and this was in the early 90s like 1992 93 and she said the only people who have titers is higher HIV positive patients and this was back when HIV tests took a while to get back like six weeks sometimes like it was not a fun so I remember you know sitting there in a panic and all the while I was actually having a complete mental breakdown because it attacks the brain and it causes psychosis. And so I, it was a terrible time. And I suffered with that for a long time until I met my mentor, who's a naturopathic physician. And he told me about it and he's like, you're not crazy. You just had a terrible virus. And then fast forward to medical school when I'm doing two

programs concurrently, I have a little tiny toddler and I'm stressed out of my mind. And I had just come back from drinking way too much in Mexico and eating a bunch of crap because I still wasn't healthy. And I got hit with the H1N1 and I almost died. I got meningitis. It was crazy. I got pneumonia and meningitis and I refused to go to the hospital. So I quarantined in my house for two weeks and it was, I had to keep my daughter out. It was crazy. I didn't come back. That one took years to come back from too. So I totally get it. I'm just, I trust my immune system now because I'm finally at a place where I was able to rebuild it. But man, that took a long time. So I understand how it's daunting for people to be like, well, what am I supposed to do? It's not like we, and that's the other argument I hear.

What are we supposed to do? You know, our country, only 12% of our country is metabolically sound and only about 20% is not obese. And we should talk about skinny fat, but there's my dog. Hi, Sansa. So they, then people want to argue and say, well, we don't have time to get everybody the weight loss or the metabolic flux. We don't have time to fix the right. You hear that a lot. I hear it a lot, too. But it's like, well, when the F are we going to start? Well, and this is what a lot of people aren't talking about. For a lot of people, it only give me two weeks and I will change your lab work. It really doesn't take as long as we think for some people. Yes, there are some people who are really metabolic,

metabolically sick, but especially younger generation, like my age, I mean, give me two weeks. We change up your diet, put some supplements in and like, you know, implement good sleep. And I mean, I can guarantee change the lab numbers. Yep. I think if people just started sleeping. Yeah, that too. If they just so what I Oh, I forgot to say. So what I tell people told people on Instagram was walk, cut sugar, and sleep. That's it. That's all I said. I was like, just eat any real food, like wherever you can just try to eat the most real food you can. Even if you're putting a sauce on some chicken and some vegetables, at least that's more real than some highly packaged nonsense, right? It's not

like fruit loops or whatever. And people started messaging me in the summer, just a few months in, and they were like, I've lost 30 pounds. And by now I was playing around with the math, like thousands of pounds have been lost cumulatively just from me telling people to walk, put the sugar away. And you want to know how messed up this society is. Early on when my, after my video went viral and I got a bunch of followers, I posted that the, that I have a post, it's a little sugar cube that looks like, say like a devil. It's a cute little cartoon. And I said sugar, and I always have said this to my patients, that sugar is Satan. And I listed the reasons why.

And I got destroyed, Courtney, destroyed. I lost like 1,000 followers in 24 hours. And I got so much venom come at me over sugar. And every time I posted about sugar since then, it's just this crazy, massive attack. And to the point where I won't talk about it anymore. I won't even talk about honey. I won't talk about fruit. I won't talk about anything because I get attacked so hard. And it's been shocking to me, the level of addiction. I mean, sugar is a drug. And it's a crazy strong drug. Yeah. I mean,

there, there's studies to correlate it there. There's a very famous study, um, with mice and they put a thing of cocaine water and I think of sugar water in their cage. All of the mice just kept going back for the sugar water. They were more addicted to the sugar water than the cocaine. I mean, it's insane. And we have brand, um And we have brain scans to prove it too. They show them side by side with someone's brain like on something super addictive and then on sugar, they show up pretty much parallel. It's wild. It's wild. And most drugs light up a particular region of the brain and sugar kind of blasts the whole brain. It's a highly addictive drug. And every time I posted about it, it's

almost like, okay, hold on, put on your seatbelt because this is going to be a bumpy few days. And it's shocking to me. So we have a, my fiance and I have a joke, but what about honey? So whenever anyone starts in about something, one of us will be like, but what about honey? Because they will defend whatever it is, sweet, whatever sweet thing it is that they want, they will defend it to the death. Fruits. I had fruititarians come at me so hard and I was like, yo, you can do whatever you want. I'm just telling you, I have not, I'm the one looking at people's labs.

So I don't care if somebody's otherwise healthy, show me their lab work and I will tell you whether or not I agree. Yes. Right. And no judgment because my labs have looked terrible too, but it's, that's crazy. It's just been a really interesting social experiment on here. But I want to say something about skinny fat because I don't want to waste too much time. Just real quick, people who are metabolically unsound or whose labs look like a pre-diabetic. So normally we would equate that

with someone who's got some excess weight and who is, you know, an inflamed state. Those who are thin and are metabolically unsound have significantly higher death rates from all-cause mortality. So their chances of, because they have no reserves. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. They're just a bag of bone and fat and inflammation. And the best way to describe it is, you know, it's like I would see these women in practice who were in their 50s and 60s, and they'd say, well, I still fit in the jeans. I fit in, in high school. And

I'm like, yeah, but if I were to take a cross section of your thigh, it would be osteoporotic bone and fat and skin. There would be no muscle there. So these are under muscled people. And when you carry excess weight around on you, you tend to have more muscle on you because you have to carry the load. So there is some muscularity to that, and that's protective. And so I think that they're hyper-inflamed generally, and these are people that I would see with a lot of chronic pain. More often, the chronic pain people were the severely obese or the very thin, and they were just wasted little ladies with chronic pain all over their bodies.

And your fat depots, like my little tummy that I hate, that's my little estrogen depot. So our fat actually helps us with our hormones. And to some degree, we need a little layer of protection on there. And this obsession that we had prior when I was growing up with thinness has really led to a lot of skinny fat or thin on the outside, fat on the inside is is the other TOFI is the other term. And they're just basically medically unsound, thin people. And they have, I mean, their chances with the virus are pretty bad too. So we're not pointing at anyone. No. And this is, I was going to say, this is a really important component of the conversation is because, um, when I start talking about this, I get a lot of people say that I'm fat shaming or whatever. And I'm like, this has literally nothing to do with a person's body shape or size. And look, I just want to say I have compassion for where anyone is on their journey. This is not to shame anyone.

This is just to empower. And the problem is, is that we have become in the society so obsessed with just looking at someone's body and immediately saying, Oh, they're healthy. This person's healthy. I'm sorry. You cannot look at anyone's body and determine whether or not they're healthy. We can, there are certain markers we can look for, but ultimately what's going to determine what's actually going on in their body metabolically is the lab work. It's the only way we can really truly determine whether a person's healthy or not. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can, you can guesstimate. We can say that being underweight is, and for anyone listening and also for you, Courtney, just look up like mortality and low BMI, just throw that into Google and look that up. Cause you'll find it. You'll find what I'm

talking about. That is a very precarious place to be for people. I remember being there and a doctor telling me, one good flu is going to come through and take you out. Like, you'll be gone. And that's when I got hit with that cytomegalovirus, which almost took me out. And then the second place we don't want to be is overly fat. And I mean, adipocytes are secret adipokines.

And adipokines, just look up adipokines for everyone listening who doesn't want to believe me. They're very pro-inflammatory generally. It's very rare that somebody will be carrying a little bit of weight. It's actually protective. Too much weight can be very pro-inflammatory and put you at risk for not only a lot of chronic health diseases, but obviously

having poor outcomes with some kind of infectious process like this virus. So we want to make sure to, I just want to emphasize both groups can be in a very pro-inflammatory state and inflammation is what's taking people down. So it's really finding that sweet spot where you're able to, and just, I always tell people like, whether they're very, very thin, or they have weight that they'd like to lose. I just say, how do you, how do your joints feel? Cause like that was my realm, right? Like my jam was joints. And it's pretty clear, even in the 20, people in their twenties will start to exhibit joint pain when they're either overtly thin or overtly have too much adipose tissue on them and they'll complain of joint pain. And so if your joints are hurting, that to me is a clear, or you're getting a lot of headaches or whatever, like that's a clear sign that something

in your physiology should probably shift. Yeah, that's really important. So there's one more question I want to ask you about, and this is kind of a loaded one, so we don't have to go too deep into it. But, um, so I've heard you talk about this before that the vaccine is only it responds to your immune system. So in a sense, you need to have a healthy immune system in order to even have it work. Is that correct? That would be helpful. Yes. We have seen in study after study after study for years that the group of people who don't respond to the class now this

is a new biologic agent i wouldn't even call it i mean they're dubbing it a vaccine but it's it is truly an experimental biologic agent because it's the way it works is and i'll explain that one sec um but traditional vaccines have not worked on the elderly and obese very well and frail so and that's because of their immune system, right? And sorry, I interrupted you. Yeah. Their immune systems are wonky, if you will. Like I said, they're hyperinflated in some areas and they're completely crashed out in other areas. And there's two arms of your immune system and they need to talk to each other. And that link gets broken in the most simplistic sense when we're in a frail, deconditioned, malnourished, elderly, and or obese state.

So we've seen that with the flu shot, right? That's why the elderly folks get the quadrivalent. They get the strong. They actually have a special vaccine for geriatric patients because they don't respond to the normal vaccine as well. They have to get the super duper one. So this vaccine is actually designed just in a nutshell, it injects mRNA, mRNA codes for the proteins to make the actual spike of the virus. So our bodies are manufacturing the spike protein that's on the virus that binds to

the ACE2 receptor. And then our body sees that spike protein as foreign and builds antibodies against it. There's a lot of things that can go wonky there, but we won't have to get into that. The implications for autoimmune disease down the line is what has got me concerned mostly, but it is kind of a brilliant concept if it works. Like I dig it. I think that it's really simple. It's clean. I think, you know, there's no adjuvants in there. There's no mercury or any of this other stuff that can make people's immune systems overreact. It's a clean, clean little setup. But yeah, I mean, if your body isn't in nutritionally and just overall vitality wise sound enough to build a good antibody response, it could suck. And I am a little worried about people whose bodies are in an overly active state.

We have a lot of autoimmune disease in this country. And so some of those people are having kind of a rough go after the first or second shot and feeling very unwell. And that's where you're hearing people say they felt sick for a few days. Those people aren't actually getting the virus. They are having an immune response, which is what's supposed to happen. But it can vary greatly from like nothing to overblown to anaphylaxis. And so that's where we're seeing kind of the, you know, the spectrum there of,

of reactions. That's so interesting. I feel like anytime, um, the word vaccine comes out of my mouth, I just have to say this. I'm in no, no shape or form anti-vaccine, anti-vaccine. Um, I just don't like that. We can't ask any questions. My whole thing is I just want to have all the information. I just want to be able to ask questions and talk about it. And I really want to understand the mechanisms and some of what you just said, I'd never even heard. So that's really interesting. And it makes me really hopeful. It also reminds me once again, that the most important thing is that we get our health in order, you get our immune systems, you know, in good shape that way that if you do decide to get the vaccine, you're going to be in better shape and you're going to have a better response to it. Yeah. Yes. And maybe a kinder, gentler

response to it. Yeah. Hopefully too. That's, that's always the goal, right? I want this vaccine to work. I really do. But I, and I, I am neither again, pro nor anti. A lot of people come at me and think I'm anti, and then others yell at me and call me pro. I'm like, no, I'm pro informed consent. We don't have the data yet. We do not have the long term data at this point. And when this was recorded in late January of 2021, we do not have the data to show that this vaccine will infer any long term immunity, nor do we know if it will slow spread. So in essence, the whole point of a vaccine is to create herd immunity,

which is ultimately where enough of the people have immunity to the virus that the virus sort of dies back and dies down. And we end up protecting the ones who aren't vaccinated or who are more, who would succumb to this. But we don't have that data yet. So we won't have that data for a long time. So that's a misnomer. I just want to share that for people who are out there saying, well,

it's for the greater good. I wish that were true. We don't have that data yet. Yeah. I mean, that's, that is, um, I will admit that is just my one, that's my biggest concern is that we just nothing in science, no study, nothing will ever replace time, you know, and we will only know in time. Well, it was ordered, it was ordered and sitting in pharmacies ready to go before it was ever even FDA approved. I mean, this, this whole thing has been, wow, has really happened at warp speed, which on some levels is just a miraculous feat of science. And I think it's rad. And on other levels, it's like, well, it still leaves a lot to question. And there should be no reason why asking good quality probing questions should automatically get you called an anti-vaxxer. I'm so glad. Did we hit everything? Yeah. I mean, I was just going to ask you if there was anything else that we didn't

touch on that you wanted to, because I went through all my questions. Yeah. I want to say, and I'm not saying this to scare anyone. I'm saying this to hopefully empower people. There will never be a COVID zero time again. We're never going to go back to a time when this isn't here and it will continue to morph and change and mutate. And it will continue to work its way around vaccines and masks and social distancing. And it will always find a way to, it needs to find its next host so it can continue to transmute itself. So work wherever you can, start wherever you can to your audience, like whatever steps you can take of what we mentioned. I have a free book you can start wherever you can to your audience, like whatever steps you can take of what we mentioned, I have a free book you can download at drtina.com. And it's called pain free

and strong, but it's really like a resiliency manual. And it just talks about all the things we covered as far as like, how to eat is simple. It's very simple. It's a quick read, I think a teenager could understand it, an elderly person could understand it. And it's just make yourself more resilient so that you can withstand whatever storm comes, because I think this is just a glimmer of what could happen. You know, this virus has a recovery rate of 99.99% for most people. So it's actually not, well, quite deadly to some, and we have seen a lot of losses, and I'm not discounting that. It's not the worst thing we could see. It's not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be in the beginning and which is good. And we just really

need to keep our wits about ourselves and continue to always seek knowledge so that you can make yourself and your family more protected and withstand the storm. I love that. Yeah. Well, for everyone listening, tell them where they can find you. Yeah. So drtina.com is a good place to start. That will be an actual functional website very soon. But for right now, my book is there. You can get it for free. Like I said, a quick read and I encourage people to check it out. And pretty much Instagram at drtina, D-R-T-Y-N-A. And that's where I'm most active. I can only handle one platform right now. I feel you. There's too much going on. I want to start with some YouTube education. I'm really going to dive into education and just teach people basic sciences. And so anyone who wants

to follow along for that, and as they've, they've just gotten an hour of me. So this is how I am. I'm blunt, but I am a heart. I am. I am heartfelt and I truly love humanity. And I'm just trying to help everybody as much as I can right now. Cause we are in precarious times. Yeah. Yeah. I love that so much. Thank you so much for coming on. Yeah. This is such a treat. I'm so happy to see you. You'll have to come on my new podcast when I get that wrong. I would love that. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. This is a resident media production produced by Drake Peterson and mixed by Chris McCone. The song is by Georgie. As always,

please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really helps me in this show a lot. See you next week. សូវាប់បានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបា Thank you. you