We're going into everything you need to know that you didn't know about how to keep your
immune system healthy.
So I'm going to start with questions for them.
And then as I said, when I finish, we'll open up to audience questions, but you'll have
to use the mic for those of you who came in late, because we're recording this on audio.
It will be available that you will be able to hear the audio, and you will be able to
see the slides again on the forum that you'll all be on, and you'll all know how to use
at some point.
I don't know.
Anyway, so we're going to start with Christina Carmen.
All right.
Why is hydration important, and why is dehydration a problem?
So hydration is the building block.
Oh my goodness, guys, they've given me a mic.
This is dangerous.
Hydration is the building block when it comes to your immune system, simply because we are
fluid.
We are filled with fluid.
We need the fluid flow consistently, and that's the key, consistency is not just I'm
going to drink loads of water because I forgot, and then 20 minutes later, you urinate all
of it out, and it all goes, all those minerals, but really key component for lymphatic flow.
Very, very key component for obviously our blood flow, and pushing nutrients throughout
our bodies.
It's a key player in histamine and histamine response, and this is a big thing that we
see obviously when we're looking at any kind of immune picture.
So allergy patients still can't hear me?
Oh dear.
Goodness.
Okay.
Speak louder basically.
Yeah, that's better.
Yes.
Okay.
Oh my goodness, guys.
Okay.
Shout louder.
Take the mic and speak loud.
Okay.
So very, very important when we're looking at an immune picture, or a histamine picture
as well.
So that is the key.
The first one, always, always, always.
In fact, actually, when I went to school, initially, when I first started in this whole
beautiful industry, hydration was the number one thing that we started to talk about and
learn about.
Because even from cellular respiration and cellular health, it's hydration.
That's really, really the key picture here.
So yeah, drink the water, guys.
It's very quick.
You want to add to that?
Yeah.
Quick tip.
You have the mic on.
Okay.
Can I?
Nobody's better like this, right?
Okay.
Whenever hydration means not only taking water, but how having a good sleep quality.
Otherwise, the water doesn't go to the right space.
Whenever I have edema, edema tells me about dehydration.
In my PhD, we detected that more edema was related with more severe dehydration.
And dehydration was directly related to an imbalance between the types of white cells.
That's all I wanted to say.
In our research, I conducted.
Yeah.
No, very much so.
And I'll add to that.
It's not just the water.
It's also the oil balance.
So it's being able to keep the water and hold on to those fluids.
That is a really key one.
So again, this is where the diet component really comes into play.
So how do we hold the water in our bodies?
How do we hold them in our cells?
So they really support this, our beautiful immune response.
I need to try that.
I don't have water here.
Oh, dear.
That's terrible.
I do.
And I'm drinking it out of plastic.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
The best.
The next question is for you, too.
No, no, no.
Don't be silly.
This is what this is about.
Right?
Yes.
It's good.
It was my research.
It was directly showing that.
For all of us.
Yeah.
Okay.
Good.
All right.
Next question is, since it's addressed to you, Christine, again, what types of things
disrupt gut flora balance and why is this important?
Oh, my goodness.
I don't think we have enough time to go through all of this.
So we don't think of the short course, the short course, diet, diet, diet, diet is key.
So what are we, what are we, what are we eating consistently every single day that may be causing
imbalances for us specifically?
Now, I know there's so much information out there on all these fancy diets and what, you
know, it's not one shoe fits all, it's about finding the balance that's the best, the biggest
and most impactful for you when it comes to your, your gut health.
But we look at things like, I think sometimes we overcomplicate our diets and actually what
our bodies and our gut in particular needs is simplicity.
If you can keep it simple, if you can keep it varied, so you're, you're constantly moving,
you know, foods around you're not eating the same things every single day and you're keeping
it consistent.
So always think of that.
What can I, what can I do to keep this simple?
It doesn't have to be fancy, but we shouldn't be feeding our bodies full of processed foods
and sugars and, you know, simplicity guys.
If the ingredient list is enormous, this is not something that's going to be nourishing
our bodies long term.
We really need to be looking at how are we going to encourage, you know, cooking for
ourselves, cooking from scratch, you know, fall in love with this process of, of feeding
yourself, of nourishing yourself the way that we used to, but keep it really simple.
It doesn't have to be fancy, but keep it consistent.
Okay.
On that, I start every morning except right now, I haven't gotten it.
I'm fasting.
But anyway, with the probiotic yogurt, okay, now the question is, can we discuss what prebiotics
and probiotics are and what are sources to get these into our diets?
Okay.
So prebiotics are the precursor to your probiotics.
They're basically your, an agent almost within your food, within the food sources that helps
to feed and colonize the good gut bacteria to grow, which is your probiotics.
Higher.
Louder.
Oh my goodness.
Sorry guys.
I'm such a soft-spoken gal.
So I'll shout louder.
So your prebiotic foods are your bitter foods.
So think of things like your dandelion leaves, your, your arugula.
These are also really good liver cleansing foods as well.
So add those into your diet.
That's part of good gut health, making sure that that liver clearance and that flow, that
toxic burden that we're constantly inundated with is able to clear and, and you're able
to eliminate well.
Look at things like your asparagus, chive, endive.
All of these foods are really beautiful prebiotic foods.
Those are your fibrous foods.
Eat those first, like a veggie starter.
For breakfast?
Oh yeah.
Absolutely.
So your food pairing is really important when it comes to your gut health, making sure
that you're eating and the order of how you eat your food is really important as well.
So veggie starter first, then maybe it's your protein and your healthy fats.
And then if you take complex carbohydrates, hopefully they're complex carbohydrates, then
you take that second.
Because this really shows actually how our body responds to blood sugar as well.
But also it really, it's, it's basically seeding the seeds and sowing, you know, creating a
beautiful environment for your probiotic rich foods.
Now probiotic rich foods are, you know, your kefir, your tempeh, your miso, which is amazing,
amazing.
So guys, good quality miso, if you can tolerate it.
You know, your kombucha, again, store-bought kombucha sometimes can be a bit contentious
just because there's often added sugar, so if you can get your hands on good quality
kombucha or make it yourself, it's so easy to make yourself.
These are beautiful foods to add in, you know, sometimes some cheeses even if you can tolerate
dairy and yogurts and things like that will have good quality, good probiotics in them.
So add those, definitely add them into your diet if you can.
What about greens, that powdered greens stuff that you put in your yogurt, is that okay
or in a drink?
Yeah, I mean, I think...
If you don't want to do a salad and spinach right first thing in the day...
Yeah, I mean, I'm a big fan of greens and green powders in general just because I think
that's a real area where we're depleted in our diets and it's so difficult to kind of
tick all those nutrient boxes.
So it helps a lot to kind of fill in the deficit, shall we say, when it comes to that.
I think there are a lot of green powders on the market, so just be careful with what
you're buying to make sure that there's not any fillers or additives, sometimes there's
hidden sugar alcohols and various other things in there, so just be careful with what you're
buying.
Also, there's a lot of green powders now on the market that have adaptogens added to
them and I'm a big fan of adaptogens as a whole, but I don't think that they should
be eaten or consumed and used all the time.
There's a place and a time to use them.
I'm a herbalist, guys, so you have to be really careful with adaptogens, you do, but they
can be very beneficial.
I just don't think they should be used all the time and sometimes we're giving these
green powders to our kids and it may not be beneficial to them at that stage, okay?
Can I add something on the green powders, actually?
There are a lot that have probiotics in them and you have my life working.
No, but I know it's not working that much.
Can you hear me?
No.
Okay, sorry.
I wanted to say that the green powders are ... Yes, ma'am.
I wanted to say that the green powders are a really good source to get those vitamins
and on our protocols, you can basically knock them all out by using a green powder.
I do those in my shake every day, so I just wanted to add that.
Watch out for those sugar alcohols and also always read your food labels.
We actually did a Twitter space on that and that'll be in the feed later, so y'all can
listen to it and look at that information.
You can hear me, right?
Yes.
Of course.
Voice, that's it.
Anyway, all right, Flavio.
What are the obvious reasons that people get weakened immune systems which makes them
prone to infections and what about not so obvious causes of a weakened immune system?
Okay.
There are very well-known reasons why people experiment frequent infections with very
severe symptoms and they struggle to recover, which are low vitamin D levels.
We have an epidemic of low vitamin D levels and the current recommendations are far from
being adequate from the states and from the medical associations, even the nutrition
associations, they're not recommending appropriate doses.
You should realize there are safe doses such as 50,000 units weekly.
This is a safe dose.
It's not going to make you toxic with high vitamin D and high calcium that we should
be all aware of, so 50,000 units per week is a safe dose, unlike what they say outside,
and lack of sun exposure, but humanizing recommendations.
We know that it's unfeasible for everyone to live in the sun, this weather with sun.
We know that.
Another one, low vitamin C intake.
There are some pitfalls when they say, oh, vitamin C just goes away with your urine.
We are testing serone levels.
We are testing, but we never know about the intracellular vitamin C actions.
These remain for longer.
I'm not saying that it's good.
You can have those time-release vitamin C if you want to feel more comfortable with,
but poor sleep quality.
I mean, having a poor sleep agent like having your cell phone, having Wi-Fi together, so
poor sleep quality really impairs your immune system because the good part of the immune
recovery and repairing systems happen in your deeper states when you sleep.
The long-term use of glucocorticoid.
glucocorticoid is a two-faced therapy.
In the long, in the short-term, it may help your immune system respond.
It has, even if it makes you burn fat, it's funny, but in the long-term, it makes the
exact opposite.
It's not good at all.
Excessive alcohol intake.
There is an adequate, there is a discussion whether, is there any healthy alcohol consumption
I'm not sure.
I don't think so, but if you're taking it, try to take it moderately and not so often.
Okay.
And of course, smoking is something that it's long known to be a leading cause for infections
due to a variety of reasons.
All right.
Alcohol.
Sorry Betsy, I need to add something to that.
That was so good.
Okay.
Vitamin D guys, cofactors, make sure that you're using cofactors as well, okay?
So using magnesium and we're massively deficient in magnesium.
This helps the signaling of your, yeah, and K2.
So use K2, all of these work really beautifully together, they're synergistic.
Just don't take vitamin D and magnesium together because they have an antagonistic action, okay?
So to separate your minerals from your vitamins when you're taking them.
So do you magnesium at night and vitamin D in the morning?
Yeah.
And vitamin D is fat soluble, okay?
So that's a really important component.
It needs to be consumed and eaten with food in order for it to really be absorbed well.
Can't hear.
Oh my goodness.
It's a fat soluble vitamin, so you need to eat it with food 100%, okay?
And lastly, with vitamin C, for it to stay intracellularly, your body needs to be hydrated.
There we come back to hydration.
Always, always hydration.
You're going to be so bored of me by the end when I keep talking about hydration.
Supplements don't work the way that they're supposed to if the body is in a dehydrated
state.
All right, hold on a minute, hold on a minute.
We'll get through this and you'll have plenty of time to ask questions.
Flavio.
Yeah.
What are some well-known and less known immune system boosters?
We need to remember that we're talking about long COVID here, but I don't know if you know
we have long Shin Kongunia, long Zika virus, and long Epstein bar and then you go and go.
These viruses, they disrupt your immune system by themselves, regardless of all their factors.
So uncured or partially cured viral infections are a key factor for a disrupted immune system.
Imbalanced lifestyle.
What do I mean with imbalanced lifestyle?
I mean, we all should have healthy lifestyle exercises, even though I didn't see almost
anyone in the gym today.
Okay, so I know they were walking outside.
It's okay.
Everyone was walking outside.
I'm sorry.
Yes, sure.
It's a Sunday.
So what I want to mean with that, I have a case of a patient.
He wants to be like a robot, the Superman.
So he's got like five percent body fat.
We're exercising two hours per day.
Great professional performance.
He wants us to be the best professionally, socially, financially, sexually, and everything.
He just broke in a so deep way that he's currently hospitalized in a psychiatry hospital.
So what I want to mean is an imbalanced lifestyle is that sometimes too much is not healthy.
We are not here promoting, promoting like to be paranoid with everything all the time
because we cannot.
We are simply humans.
As a result of training or mismatched training and diet, what do I mean with that?
That comes from my own research before, my life didn't start on COVID, it started before.
So in terms of research, we noticed that many people under very, so usually low carbohydrate
diets, low carb diets work pretty well for the majority of people but not for elite athletes
because the intensity they train, they cannot produce enough ATP in the speed they need
it.
So they have this imbalance.
This leads to a weak immune system, so just be careful.
I'm talking to a heterogeneous and broad audience, but I think everyone should know.
Another point is when you have low protein intake, okay?
We have a chronic issue regarding our nutritional, I'm not complaining about nutrition, I'm
all complaining of what they recommend.
They recommend like 10 to 15% of protein intake, even the World Health Organization,
they all want us to be sarcopenic and hypoprotein.
And also, carbohydrates are not bad.
Bad carbohydrates are, okay?
When carbohydrate comes from whole sources, natural, processed, or we should be, it's
always able, willing to understand.
And carbohydrates are should be the last one to be consumed in a meal.
And the excessive also impairs your immune system.
Like unsolved psychosocial issues, what do I want to, what do I mean with that?
Receiving bad news, whenever anyone is in grief for someone else's death, you don't
see this person getting many infections, but whenever a person has an unsolved problem,
the anxiety by itself impairs your immune system more than sadness, okay?
This is interesting.
So metabolic diseases, I don't need to say that those with type 2 diabetes are more prone
to develop infections as a whole, and infections are not as easily cured.
This goes the same for obesity, which I will talk a bit later, and excessive antibiotics.
We have a place where everything we just prescribe antibiotics to cure the bacteria,
but you cure the good and the bad and the good ones.
So this leads to an imbalanced microbiome, which by in turn takes to an unhealthy immune
system as a whole.
Statins, for example, statins for cholesterol.
I don't know if you knew that, statins can be bad for the immune system.
You knew about other issues by this class of drug class, but this is about, this is something
you should know, SIBO, SIFO, LIBO, SIBO is overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine.
SIFO is the overgrowth of fungus, and LIBO is the overgrowth in the large or in the column.
So you have different diseases, which are basically types of dysbiosis, as we could say.
If caffeine take, caffeine, just like many other things, they have a dual effect.
It can be either good or bad to your immune system.
It depends on how much you take, what you take with, and on whom, how you process caffeine.
And hormonal changes, imbalance, hormone-affirming, this gender-affirming therapy, hormone therapy
that you expose a person to the trans-sex massive amount of hormones, which the long-term safety
profile are still yet to be established.
And the misaligned circadian rhythm, so night shifters, for example, they have a very severe
immune-compromised system, and lack of sexual activity or lack of healthy sexual practices.
We must be careful.
The leading cause of oral cancer, oral cancer, and not oral, but upper respiratory tract
cancer is now caused by HPV.
And the reason they have HPV here depends on the type of sexual practices, okay?
And whether you're going to develop HPV or not also depends on your immune response.
The same happens to hepatitis B. Eighty percent of people respond, and here's from hepatitis
B, whereas twenty percent develop chronic disease.
What will predict us from recovering or not?
We never know when you're exposed to any of these infections, so we should be prepared
a hundred percent of the time.
So by getting these habits that Chris has beautifully said to you, and she will tell
you a bit more.
Okay.
It's really important to have your gut checked, like your gut floor, to make sure that you
have good balance, and if it's not, because you can have fungal overgrowth, which is what
he was talking about.
So it's important to check that, maybe check it yearly, maybe more often.
A yearly stool test, guys, is a gut microbiome, or a GI mapping is a really, really good one
to encourage not only for yourselves, but if you have patients and you see patients.
Really, really useful tool, because we know now, and in studies, even one course of antibiotics
can take up to six months for some people to repopulate and rebuild that gut floor.
So it's pretty tremendous.
And you think about, even with our children, how often we're prescribing antibiotics to
them, it changes, changes everything.
So really look at that as how we can really support that gut microbiome.
Okay.
Wait a minute.
Do you want to speak on that?
No.
But also, so ibuprofen, or the use of ibuprofen, the use of Tylenol, all of this excessive use
of this will massively disrupt that gut microbiome.
It also depletes glutathione, and we've talked in length about the use of glutathione and
the necessity of glutathione for so many things for heavy metal detoxification, just from
antioxidant use, all of these things, oxidative stress, really, really important key component.
And we're, I mean, I have teenage boys, his friends, they're eating them like candies.
So not okay.
So we really need to have more conversations around the use of this.
And maybe even a little bit of conversation around the use of like, can we, we can't take
a little bit of pain for every little instance of pain that we, that we have in our lives.
We have to anesthetize that.
And I think this obviously goes a lot deeper on yoga therapist and yoga instructor.
So very much comes with that philosophy of like, can we sit with the uncomfortable a little
bit?
Christina Moros, down at the end.
Okay.
How can people begin to improve things by selecting good supplements?
So we have designed a vitamin guide and we were actually was for sale in our store.
But that has a curated list of brands that we think are really good.
So you can't just, well, you can go to CVS if you want to buy your vitamins, but we would
not recommend that.
It's better to find a source that's like reputable like Thorne Thrin, for instance, is a good
brand.
Yeah.
And Medigenics is a good brand.
And sometimes you can, certain providers use like full script.
And I'm not trying to advertise for brands or whatever, but if you know you're getting
your brands from a good source, like a health food store, you know, those vitamin brands
are more pure and they're better.
You don't want to just go get the ones at CVS because they basically use the most impure
ingredients when they're making those vitamins and supplements.
So if you follow our vitamin guide, you can find suggested brands to use, which Christina
likes, like basically she put her recommendations in the vitamin guide.
Vitamin guide.
And then the, like I was saying earlier, the green powders, like you get a good source
of your vitamins from those, your probiotics, your vitamin D. Oh, and the question, there's
a question about vitamin D and K2.
You can actually buy those combined.
So you don't have to worry about how much do I take?
Just go buy vitamin D with K2 added in and you'll get exactly what you need and the dosages
on the bottle.
Do you have anything to add to that?
In some cases, guys, you can still, even if you have a supplement that has vitamin D,
K2 combined, you can still additionally supplement with vitamin D, particularly in those like
autoimmune cases.
I see a lot of autoimmune patients in clinic.
We will be very aggressive with vitamin D supplementation and I'll just put in a small
amount of K2 because it's enough to kind of balance the action.
So yeah, I hope that helps.
One more question on that for Christina Maros down there or whomever, jump in.
Some people find taking supplements a monumental change in lifestyle and they don't like to
take pills.
What are some simple strategies that people can do to just begin with that first healthy
step?
Does everybody in here, how many of you are taking supplements?
Oh, you are so proud of every single person in this room, but so I have recently met someone
who does not like to swallow pills.
They associate a pill with medicine and I'm like, it's a vitamin.
It's not going to kill you.
But so you can have liquid forms.
You can have powder forms like the greens powders.
I know I keep saying that, but I just really love my greens powders, but you can have like
even the adaptogens come in liquid form so you can make your protein shake because we're
not getting enough protein.
So you can add all that into your shake and consume it.
And another easy little trick and I used to look at my parents like, oh my God, they take
so much medicine.
They take little bit of pill boxes.
Take the time out of your day and just sit down and just line up your little pill boxes
so you have to pop it open and take your vitamins.
But just be careful because some vitamins are light sensitive.
So I would pick out like a box that's like colored so it's darker so it protects from
the light or to store it in a cabinet so it's not affected by light.
Those are my tricks and I use a little bitty, this is my little trick and I have a picture
of this, but it's like this little portable protein shaker and you literally press this
little button and it makes your little protein powder.
You can carry it anyway.
You can use it as a water bottle or whatever, but so I have my protein powder, my greens
powder, my adaptogens all in this little shake and when I break my fast in the morning
or after I go to the gym, I can see my shake and I'm already getting most of my vitamins
for the day, the ones that I take during the day.
So that's my little trick.
As oversupplementation can be as suppressive on your immune system as it can be supportive.
So make sure that you're really being specific with what you're using and why you're using
it and for how long you're using it.
Supplementation generally, and I'm not saying all of them, but generally specific supplements
for specific things shouldn't be used long term.
There's exceptions obviously to the rule here when it comes to maybe a multivitamin, your
omega-3 essential fatty acids because most of us are really deficient in those.
Your vitamin D, these ones, maybe these are something that you're on more long term, but
even then I would cycle it.
I would do like five days on, two days off so that your body is constantly regenerating
and doing its work.
Our bodies know what to do.
They know what to do to heal and to look after ourselves.
We just need to give them the space and that always starts with your diet and your hydration
first before you add in supplementation.
That's really, really, really important.
You can spend so much money on all these fancy, schmancy things, but then eat absolute crap.
You cannot out-supplement a bad diet.
That's number one.
Before it goes off.
You're something I don't know anything about.
So maybe they don't either.
How does chronic stress have an impact on the HPA axis?
What is that?
Well, I think probably Slavia and I will talk a lot about this.
This is our amazing HPA axis, a negative feedback loop.
Basically when we have, this is an important, important aspect of human physiology.
We need this, this fight or flight response.
What happens is our brains are constantly being signaled that there's a stressor.
There's a big brown bear always there.
What's happening is that we're constantly in this fight or flight state.
We're pumping out loads and loads and loads of cortisol and stress hormones, and these
are, our reactors become less sensitive, so they desensitize over time.
Now cortisol is very closely linked to glucose and glucose response.
So when we have a really high amount of cortisol pumping through our blood all the time, glucose
is also being basically signaled to be released from ourselves, now circulating through our
bloodstream.
And then potentially throughout the day we're in this yo-yo cycle of up and down, up and
down as far as our blood sugar regulation is concerned.
So really, really important one when we look at a whole picture, but certainly when we
look at from an immune system response, because that's not what we want.
We want our bodies to be in a beautiful homeostasis state, always in balance.
And that's what our bodies thrive in, and that's what we're always trying to come back
to.
I mean, how amazing are we that we have this system, but then we come in the way and mess
it all up in so many ways.
So we really have to try, and I think moving forward, because the world is so complex,
the stress is not going to go away.
So this concept of reducing your stress is almost a bit rubbish, if I'm honest.
But how are we managing that stress?
What are you doing every single day for you within your remit, within your own practices,
that you can really support this incredible response so that you have immune resiliency?
I want to make some remarks here, great talk.
So I'm going to talk about tests, but in a very simple way.
I think that patients should have access to tests.
Of course, they don't mean to be self-diagnosis, but at least you make them give some directions.
There are two ways for you to understand.
How to measure your cortisol to check whether you're producing too much cortisol along the
time.
The two main ways are 24-hour urinary cortisol or your hair cortisol.
Why?
It shows you the long-term, the chronic.
Whenever you take your serum cortisol, it's just a snapshot.
And when you have the salivary cortisol rhythm, which is great, it doesn't tell whether you're
producing a lot, but tells me about your circadian rhythm.
Another very interesting story for you to know, the adrenals are located upper in their
kidneys.
They are a gland to respond to stress.
Why do I say that?
The adrenal is a two-in-one gland.
There is the cortisol producing, which is the peripheral part, which we call cortical,
the cortex.
And in the middle, there are the part of the gland that produces adrenaline.
So they come from a completely different part of the oembryogenesis during your formation,
when you're imbryan.
They come from completely different cell lines.
And they get together anatomically to respond to acute stress, just as a curiosity for you
guys.
Thank you.
Did you want to advance the slide there?
I did it.
Excuse me.
I'm advancing as needed.
I just was pointing to the adrenal glands.
We're kind of going off the schedule top.
We have until like 8 p.m., right?
Oh, no.
Hold on.
We're good, right?
We really have to cover something very important, though, because we're talking about cortisol
and stress.
We have to address, before we run out of time, stress reduction techniques on how to do this.
And so it's very important that we incorporate things like movement, what you enjoy doing,
whether it's, if you don't have to like yoga, I'm a yoga teacher to you, and we're preferential
to it because we have a daily practice.
We do.
You don't have to.
People need to find something they love doing to reduce stress.
So it could be running or walking or playing a team sport or swimming or surfing or skateboarding.
Whatever you love to do, you need to schedule that time in your day to do that.
And it's like scheduling any appointment.
Just make sure you take that time for yourself to devote to reducing your stress.
And I highly recommend adding mindfulness into your life because it helps you focus
on ways to reduce your stress, like breathing techniques.
There's so many different types of meditation.
And in our feed, when I can load it, I have things you can do to start, like easy vipassana
breathing.
So it's focusing on inhalation, exhalation, it's a form of meditation, tai chi, martial
arts.
There's so many things you can do.
So it's just really important to do that.
And the most important step is devoting that time, sending the intention to do it.
It takes like two weeks to start a new habit.
And if you just do that every day for two weeks, you stop thinking about, oh my gosh,
I got to have reduced stress today.
No, because you've incorporated into your life.
So setting intentions and manifesting what you want, we're all capable of doing that.
So we just wanted to make sure that everyone in this room understands how important it
is to reduce your stress and how important reducing stress impacts your immune system.
And I'm sure you have something to add to that.
I just have to point out the fact that we've got, you know, if you want to have questions
from the audience, and you've given me a list that would go on like for another hour and
a half.
So we want to get as much in here and maybe jump to whatever is right.
The next question I have for Flavio deals with metabolic disease.
How does this have an impact on the immune system?
We go there.
Next slide.
I'm sorry, Bob.
Yes.
Come on.
You're right.
Yeah.
So metabolic disease, as the name says, it's very intuitive.
When you have a disruption in the metabolism of any of glucose, lipids, protein, nucleotides,
or even how you deal with the vitamins.
So for example, the lack of methylation of vitamin B complex is also a metabolic disease
in the end of the day.
So dysfunctional metabolism, the point is how to measure that.
For example, diabetes is not a disease, it's the ends of a disease.
The pathophysiology comes way back.
Just like Alzheimer's, Alzheimer's starts take its before its clinical presentations.
The exact same happens to the vast majority of chronic diseases.
The point is how to detect it earlier preclinically.
It's a challenge, but we do have signs, dysfunctional and imbalanced hormones.
I'm going to present a case that there are two tricky lack of signs you will understand
by this.
Then I need to tell you, we keep talking and talking about obesity, obesity, obesity, obesity.
What's the big bang?
Remember the big bang theory for those who are evolutionists?
The big bang is like big explosion almost five billion years ago.
The increased dysfunctional, a dipocyte, a dipocyte are the fat cells are the big bang.
Once your fat cell starts to increase its volume, it starts producing inflammatory proteins
and reduces the production of even the fat cells can be beneficial to your body in the
right volume.
Once it starts producing inflammatory proteins, all the rest goes.
Then it disrupts your microbiome because it goes through the permeability of your intestine
and it starts to allow the entrance of liposaccharides produced by the bacteria.
Then you start multiple viscous circles.
An increased dysfunctional fat cell is the very first phenomenon to lead to literally
thousands of disastrous dysfunctions.
These, for example, leptin, leptin is a hormone produced by the fat cells and it's meant to
tell to your body, look, we don't need more food, so this is an anorexigenous hormone.
It goes through your hypothalamus and tell, look, stop eating, we have enough energy.
But the point is, with time, our hypothalamus develops resistance to leptin and leptin also
disrupts the immune system.
This is very few people know and antiponectin is basically the only good hormone or good
protein produced by the fat cells and it decreases its production once it gets inflamed.
Not by these, the direct correlation with the immune system.
The fat cells call the macrophagus, the white cells, white blood cells to come inside the
tissue.
So this is all disrupts immune system, okay?
Hello, great hypoxia.
What is that?
The obesity, people living with obesity and I like to say people live with obesity because
I want this to be a temporary state.
It's nothing related to identity, nothing to relate to that.
I just want people to understand that I want this to be temporary.
Obesity is a disease.
Obesophobia is when you just keep blaming the person.
This is different.
It's not the person should have responsibility, but there should be manners to help this person
manage because there are genetic differences and prone to be obese.
Anyways, the low grade hypoxia caused by sufficient ventilation in the long term leads to a very
important impairment of the immune function.
I don't know if you knew that, especially when they were sleeping with sleep apnea, with
sleep desaturation of oxygen desaturation during sleep, and also all the indirect effects.
So we can go throughout the day talking about it.
What about the weak immune system?
Is it making you more prone to viruses and increased your risk for cancer?
Yes.
So then we...
Oh, this...
No, no.
I don't know if it's over there.
Yeah, Chris cut my slides.
Okay.
One thing is, we keep thinking, we keep relating immune system and infection, immune system
and infection.
Goodness, it goes way beyond.
Immune system is related basically to every single disease we develop, okay?
Every single disease, since depression, anxiety, and to basically all types of cancer.
Cancer is an immune impaired, it is resulted from an impairment of immune response.
We need to remember, we develop cancers every single day in our bodies.
Our immune system responds and kills the cancers that appears in our body.
So the lack of immune response is key for you to trigger cancer.
So we need to consider that helping immune system, it's infeasible to try to differentiate
the effects of vitamin D, for example, on infection from those on cancers, for example.
It does not really relate to this.
Immune disorders, which is in its high levels of incidence now, they are also related to
impaired, disrupted, and imbalanced immune response.
Of course, this is the immune system producing antibodies against our own cells.
So it means that it got crazy and started.
This is, of course, related to impaired immune system.
So when you're talking about immune system, forget about getting frequent colds or not.
Frequent colds is a sign of a specific type of weak immune systems.
And there are several types of impairments of immune system goes way beyond it.
And okay, should I?
I want you to talk about the aging issue, I'll tell you all a secret.
I'm going to turn 80 in May.
I intend to be here when I'm turning 90.
And they're going to make it happen.
But Betsy, you have to drink water.
Okay, I don't have any here, but anyway.
Okay.
Oh, you already asked?
Okay.
No, please.
Go ahead.
I said enough.
Okay.
Okay.
I'm going to give a very typical clinical example for you to understand how weak the immune
system can be in the elderly.
When you have urinary infections in the elderly people, they do not present urinary symptoms.
They present confusion, as they present, we call delirium.
This is a very practical example of how it holds.
Do not develop fever as much as the younger.
So these are just very clear examples of how different the immune system of an elder person
is.
What do I mean with that?
The same dramatic differences we see for immune response to infection, there's no reason
why we should not believe that these dramatic changes do not occur for other systems that
are involved with immune system.
And I do believe that the dementia has some things to do with a lack of immune response,
but this is just a theory.
I don't want to overstate my hypothesis here, but there are many, so we call this immune
senescence.
Immune senescence, I would love to give you an Asian class.
We work with senomorphics and senolytics.
What are these two types of molecules?
Senolytics are those just like metal kind that tries to block the aging process.
Senomorphics, they make it, it does not block the aging process, but it makes it healthier.
Like metformin, which is an anti-aging agent, besides being an anti-cancer agent.
And it was supposed to be for free.
And berberine as well, with beperine, yes, we're going to have a huge list.
And then I bring you one reflection, that thankfully the number of supplements that
can be beneficial for us is huge, but how to select them, how many, also the prices,
it's easy for us to keep talking here about supplements.
So what's the cost?
Are you going to treat the elite only, and are you going to have those with fewer resources
to be on their own?
Shouldn't we try to find more affordable manners, right?
So in the neighborhood where I live, it's a good neighborhood, Brazil has huge contrasts,
but we all have, in between the buildings, the condos, we have all fruit trees.
So everything fruit trees, so we get like 15 to 20 types of fruits.
So everyone just pick up the fruits everywhere, so all the fruits.
But it's tropical, it's easier, right?
But what I want to know, tell is, we need to find the next step is how to find global
access to immune improvements.
And my opinion, I don't see any interest from the World Health Organization to improve the
immune system of the society as a whole.
Okay, I have more opinions about it, but my lawyer doesn't allow me to tell.
Okay, the next group of questions deal with stress.
Psychological stress, how that suppresses the immune system.
Christina Carmen, you want to start with that?
I'm always a little scared to talk into the microphone now that it's going to die on me.
Okay, so I think we've probably covered stress quite extensively, but, and I mean, again,
I could probably do a whole talk just on stress, but it is the biggest driver of disease.
It is the number one factor when we look at all of these components that we talked about
today.
And honestly, guys, it is, when I start talking about stress to my patients, it's the biggest
eye roll that I get from everyone because they're like, well, what am I supposed to do
about that?
Well, but it's so important before you do anything else, the supplements won't work.
The your absorption of nutrients will go down.
Your digestion will be impaired if you're in a stress state.
None of those processes will work if you're constantly in this, you know, fight or flight
response.
It is so, so trivial to everything.
We can trace so many diseases now back to our stress and our stress response.
The only point is stress management is extremely challenging and not easy.
And it says there's a difference between true healing and true forgiveness from those that
okay, I will not react, but you keep your stress within your own self.
This can be even warmer than releasing the stress out.
So it's managing the stress is a more complex modality, you know, how you manage the stress
shouldn't exist within us.
And this is something that you should exercise every day.
How much, for example, things that you cannot solve are very solved.
Things like this, okay, stupid sentences that it may be also be careful one source of stress
that we all undergo is our inherent comparison with the perfect world of the social media.
So please try to not be in social media as much as we are currently.
This is a huge source of stress.
People do not publish their average life there, they publish the best of their lives.
So do you compare with a portion of the other's one's lives?
Please stop it, okay.
Remember there is Photoshop and so we start to, for our self-esteem, be careful when you
compare yourself.
Comparisons are inherent to humans.
So just be careful with the practices.
Digital detox sometimes.
One thing that I didn't like that is happening now is that in the airplanes they are providing
Wi-Fi.
Goodness, couldn't we have a few hours of freedom, right?
And now it's not a problem you have Wi-Fi is that people know that there is Wi-Fi in
the airplane.
So they want you to respond.
Also be careful not to be waiting for instant responses 100% of the time as the newest slavery
here.
So forget your phone sometimes, turn it off, turn it on every four to six hours.
If there's an emergency, you're not, if you're the doctor, you're either in the emergency
unit or if someone died, the person died, so you're going to know when you turn it on.
So there's no such one reason for you to, so just typical minimal things that you can
do about it.
I don't need that.
So you have a case study.
Do you want to do that?
Just one second Betsy, I have to add to this.
We have 15 minutes left.
Okay.
We have to full circle the whole stress thing now.
It's really important.
Okay, I'll make it quick.
Stress, so we talked about physiological stress, huge, huge, huge importance, okay?
And looking at that, but also look at other forms of stress.
And one of the biggest ones that we're seeing now is toxins and toxin exposure.
This is enormous when it comes to the stress on our bodies.
And there's so much that obviously is without our control, obviously, you know, there's
environmental toxins that we don't have much control over.
But within our environment, there's a lot that we can do.
The foods that we're eating, obviously there's this clean 15, you know, dirty dozen, look
at those foods, try to see if it's in your remit and your practice to buy those organic
if possible.
We're even seeing organic produce has a lot of cross-contamination, unfortunately.
But look at also your beauty products.
What are you putting on your body?
What are you washing your hair with?
What are you putting on your kids and what are you, you know, your home environment?
What are you sleeping on every day?
What is in contact with you constantly?
We need to look at this because this will cause a stress response in the body as well.
I would like to add something about stress.
You have a beautiful cat.
This is very good.
Right?
Two beautiful cats.
I have a marvelous little doggy.
And if I'm angry at my husband or whatever, you know, or anything else is not going right,
I talk to the dog.
She understands everything.
It's just so wonderful.
Okay, do you want to do your case study or what?
Okay, so this is, so this is a 43 year, this is a case, recent case study.
This is tricky.
This is a tricky case.
You're going to understand that sometimes the lack of symptoms or lack of a certain sign
doesn't mean that the person doesn't have something.
So this is a 43 year old woman, lady, with recurrent lower respiratory tract infections
for two years, pneumonia.
So she had recurrent.
She had to be hospitalized three times with different antibiotic regimens with persistent
symptoms.
Look, so she had three pneumonia.
She was theoretically cured.
She went back home.
However, she persisted with symptoms with low grade fever and diffuse sweating on early
evenings, despite no changes in body weight.
You're going to understand why I'm telling that and what is tricky here.
She has a key take home message here.
She has an intrauterine device called Kailina.
It's a low dose progestin hormone device since 2021.
And she's in amenorrhea.
She does not have any menstrual cycles since then.
So we are not aware of how hormones are.
The physical examination reviewed abnormal pulmonary auscultation and her chest test demonstrated
several abnormalities that were unrelated to the pneumonia episodes she had previously.
Based on the story, what could be the diagnosis?
How do we investigate the underlying issue?
Anyone has any idea of what this could be?
What?
IUD.
IUD?
IUD.
IUD?
IUD.
IUD.
IUD.
IUD.
IUD.
IUD.
IUD.
IUD.
IUD.
IUD.
IUD.
No, could be but no.
It's TB.
Who says TB?
Yeah.
Tuberculosis.
What do you want to bring with that?
What they're saying is not on the mic, so we can't.
Some said that the IUD, which is the Kailina, could be causing these immune imbalas lessons
and these aberrations in the lung.
There are cases of some, but not with this presentation, not with low, great fever.
Fungal infection could be as an opportunistic infection as well.
That was a hypothesis we had, but she tested positive for tuberculosis through a smear
scar and all these new molecular tests.
What are the messages here?
First, we would expect a weight loss with tuberculosis.
Then why do I want you to know about tuberculosis?
I'll be there soon.
It's not good news, though.
Why didn't we see a weight loss that we would expect?
Because she underwent menopause, but she didn't know because she's going to use the
ITUD, and menopause leads to weight gain, from 5% to 10%.
Because you look at the light, you produce energy from the light and it stores as fat.
Just kidding, but it's true.
And it's just funny, but what do I want to say here?
This is an opportunistic infection.
She had five doses of vaccines, and she's got four episodes of COVID that according
to her, she didn't die three times because of the vaccine.
She otherwise she would have died three times because it's not right.
But what I want to tell you is this, immune suppression, we already have a population
who is immune suppressed.
We need to get prepared.
Remember HIV-AIDS does not develop within one to two years, it develops within ten years.
So we may expect a long-term and a progressive suppression of our immune system.
So we must start to pay attention to opportunistic infections in the near future.
And tuberculosis is an opportunistic infection.
The BCG, I have my BCG in my arm, it does not prevent tuberculosis.
This is well described.
I don't know who thought that it, it says that it prevents the severe forms of tuberculosis.
So you thought that COVID was the first vaccine they said to prevent severe manifestations?
No, the BCG also tells you the same thing.
Anyways, no, no, that's it.
That's it, basically.
So my key home message is healthcare providers, laypeople, enthusiasts, start considering
abnormal emerging infections in the future.
Also another key message, because of the suppression of the immune system, just like I said regarding
the elderly, in their elders, that the manifestations change.
We may not experience typical manifestations of the infections any further in the future.
So we may not wait to have, by the book, clinical manifestations.
So we need to be prepared to be more Dr. House in terms of investigation.
We are having immune suppressed population.
That's my key message, which she's undergoing a multi-drug therapy.
We tested the bacteria.
The bacteria was resistant to all drugs for the convenient therapy.
So she's getting the multi-resistant, multi-drug therapy for 18 months.
Before, I don't need it, okay.
We have eight minutes left.
We'd like to get some audience questions while you're coming up to the microphone, which
is right here in the center.
I just want to say, are you going to be able to hang around a little bit?
Yeah.
Good, because you need to run off to the main room, are you?
No, just to be, yeah.
Okay.
We have another session starting here at 9.30.
So we have to end here at quarter after.
I have to cut off the questions.
And then, since these wonderful people are willing to hang around and talk to you, there
is another room, right next door, right over there, where you can just go and chat, nass,
questions, you know, and because this is a great panel, yes?
All right.
So I will tell you that, you know, what's going to be here next at 9.30 is a patient's
guide to finding aligned providers.
How do you find people like this if you live somewhere to hell and gone and they don't
have anybody because they're all in the system?
You want to know?
So we will have a panel in here led by our Dr. Jo Verone, who I saw walk in.
And they're going to be eager to help you with those questions.
If you want to go back to the main ballroom, they're going to be talking out, bring your
own case review.
They'll be talking about facilitated case topics.
And after that, we will, after the morning session, we'll go back for the closing interview
and the entertainment with the defiant in the ballroom.
So that's what's happening this morning.
Let's get some questions.
We have one question here.
Good.
We've been spending a lot of time talking, and it seems like we've done a lot with adults.
But pediatrics, I have specifically a teenager who post COVID is now having recurrent infections,
recurrent fevers, low T cell, B cell.
Is there some specifics we can do for our young people, our teens and our kids?
Whoever wants to?
I'd like to start with the basic.
I may not believe, but I like echinacea together with elderberry, vitamin C, high dose, zinc,
and lesion.
Be careful.
I like arginine, but it can increase herpes.
And I like to start with the basics.
Okay.
Timomodulin.
I don't know if you have it in the U.S., Timomodulin, if it's either the counter or not.
And so I like to start with the basics.
90% of my patients respond pretty well to the basics.
I keep this therapy for one year, and after they're out of this therapy, they remain with
a better immune system.
I would also look at diet.
Of course.
This is a premise.
Diet comes first.
This is something you need to know.
Diet always comes first.
This is, I'm sorry, I presume that.
But a diet comes first is something that is a must for anything.
But a teenager's diet will be absolute pants.
So pants.
She's vegan.
Oh my gosh.
I'm not sure whether this is good.
So that could be a problem.
There's a whole movement, I think, I see a lot of teen girls, guys, okay?
So please just understand where this is coming from.
There's a whole movement into veganism, and it can be very, very, very good for some people.
But you have to do it right, and you have to do it very thoughtfully.
You can't be an Oreo cookie vegan.
Which people can be good for?
You need protein.
You need the enzymes.
There's some really key nutrients that you will not get in a vegan diet.
You need to supplement.
Zinc being one.
Big one.
Okay?
B12.
Huge.
Fatty acids.
A huge, huge, hugely supportive for an immune system.
Look at all of those things.
So definitely some coaching is needed there around the diet, making sure that that's optimized.
Again, there's nothing wrong with veganism in a vegan diet, but it has to be really
thoughtful.
Okay?
Nothing wrong.
Really?
Okay.
It's about balance.
The point is the majority, unfortunately, uses the vegan diet as a virtue of science.
Next question.
I just wanted to add one comment on that idea.
I had a patient like that.
Mushroom extracts are very good for raising the white count.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So medicinal mushrooms like your lion's mane, turkey tail, rice sheet, or my favorite
is actually something called agaricus blazei marrow, and also garlic.
You can get aged garlic extracts.
The white count will go up.
Burpolis.
Yeah.
Astrolagus.
Astrolagus.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful herb.
The purple is as great as well.
Yeah.
Ginger.
So Flavio, I think you left out the most important part of this case.
I'm sorry?
I believe you left out the most important part of this case.
Yes, please.
We have authority.
He's the person who is.
Trust me.
Flavio is one of the world experts on vitamin D, and the oldest treatment for TB is sunshine
and vitamin D.
And the history of vitamin D goes back to massive doses, massive doses of vitamin D that cured
empyema injected into the lung.
We're talking about 500,000, a million units used in the early 30s when we didn't know
how much to use.
But I will bet no way Flavio has a good friend that he left out how much vitamin D you are
giving this patient in addition to her medication.
Okay.
Blow him away, Flavio.
You're making me, okay, don't do this at home, 35,000 units per day.
But the point is, I must be clear.
She went to a specific TB service.
I cannot tell her not to treat with the traditional because this can be considered more practice
in my country.
So okay, I'm not competing with the treatments because I think she wouldn't respond to the
treatment she's undergoing currently as she does understand it.
She, it's interesting because she's one, she's the one of these that with this, using
the 100, the protection for the sun, the factor 100 all the time, 100% since 6 a.m.
She does not expose herself ever to the sun, okay.
But I'm using high doses, but we are following for hypercalcemia, hypercalciuria.
So this is very important.
I do not recommend it to use this dose without a professional following you up.
The challenge is to find a professional that follows you without making a huge scandal
checking your vitamin D, right?
Last question because we're running over time.
Thank you for the question.
That was amazing.
Just for a couple of minutes, we'll do it.
What do you know about colostrum powder?
Does it help with, you know?
I don't know a lot.
Infection.
So colostrum can be really supportive, but some people don't tolerate it well.
So I think I would look, I would look at that.
Colostrum, it can be, it can be really supportive.
So we can look at that as part of sort of an immune picture.
I would also look at things like acromancia.
So you can get this in a probiotic supplementation.
This has been really shown to actually support blood sugar regulation, but also really supportive
as far as immune system.
So might be something to consider.
Good for children too?
You can use it.
I think I would just be careful with the dosing.
I can certainly talk to you and anyone else interested on that.
Just be careful with the dosing and make sure that you're using other probiotics so you're
not, you know, growing other opportunistic bacteria.
What about red yeast rice?
I wouldn't use that in children really.
I would, that's definitely an adult protocol.
I use, I use red yeast rice a lot.
I would just like to share because it could be of good use to other people.
I have high cholesterol and my doctor has been trying to get me on a statin for a while.
Welcome to the club.
Yeah.
But I won't take it.
So one of my other doctors recommended red yeast rice and like my cholesterol is in normal
range now.
And berberine.
Forget about cholesterol levels sometimes.
Forget about that.
Yeah.
Because it doesn't matter.
The familial, so there's one key aspect.
Familiar history of cardiovascular diseases matters three times more than cholesterol
levels.
We are confounding cause and consequence and when you're talking about cholesterol, I'm
not saying that statins does not work.
It may work for those with established cardiovascular disease, but it's not by lowering cholesterol
does not lead to cardiovascular diseases.
It may feed a pre-existing, existing inflammatory, but it does not cause inflammation.
So we are confounding population of studies and based on population of very bad side studies
to keep giving statins to everyone all the time.
And this is not only me.
I'm not being anti-statin person.
I mean, but anyway, but it's, but right for primary prevention is not there is no evidence.
There is evidence against.
Okay.
Regardless of the cholesterol level.
If you have 300 total cholesterol and you don't have either of your parents with, so
if you have parents with obesity, diabetes, everything never had a heart attack and they're
on the seventies, surely you don't have the genetic predisposition for heart conditions.
So you don't need to be that worried.
I don't like, I don't like to ask for, I do not order cholesterol usually.
I order Applebee and LPA first.
So we need to change this completely.
Interesting.
I don't want to do this.
I have to end this.
But what a wonderful session, aren't these fabulous people?
