Good Byte 3: What can we do for optimal health?

What an interesting time. What an interesting, challenging time and what a unique time in human history as we are all feeling it everywhere around the world. In my book, I reference a statement that Professor Marc Cohen made to me on a podcast last year and that is "we are all connected so we are all affected" and if we were in any doubt about that, this crisis pandemic has reminded us of that. But what can we do for optimal health?






What can we do for optimal health?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:03] Hi, Dr Ron Ehrlich here and welcome to Good Byte. What an interesting time. What an interesting, challenging time and what a unique time in, well I guess, human history because globally whether I speak to a friend in the UK, my sister in law in France, whether I speak to anybody in America or anywhere in Australia, we are all feeling it everywhere around the world understands is affected by what’s going on.

In my book, I reference a statement that Professor Marc Cohen made to me on a podcast last year and that is we are all connected so we are all affected and if we were in any doubt about that, this crisis pandemic has reminded us of that. It’s also interesting that for the last 40 years at least we have been constantly encouraged to be good consumers, but we haven’t heard an awful lot about being a good citizen and I think that’s what we’re going to be learning in the coming weeks and months.

And it’s a time I believe for a period of sustained global reflection and it’s already happening. With the amount of time that you have to yourself to just stop and think about what is important in life, is something I think we’re all experiencing.

It’s also interesting that after all the medical breakthroughs, and I have been the recipients of some amazing medical technology in my life and so have members of my family, many of myself included would not be alive if it wasn’t for that. But here we are faced with a global pandemic and what we are told we have the best available to us is to wash our hands and for us to isolate ourselves. And I think that’s good advice. I’m not denying that that’s good advice, but one could almost feel a little disempowered by that.

And I believe there are plenty of things that you can be doing to improve your health and bolster your immune system and improve your chances of A, not getting the infection, and B if you do, do not suffer from it as badly as clearly, you could. And so, I’ve got a short video that I got.

Now, I have the privilege of being the president of the Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine and that college has access to a whole lot of other groups internationally and the International Society of Orthomolecular Medicine produced this wonderful three minutes or so video animation, which I’m going to share with you right now and hang onto it because at the end of it I share with you my own supplement regime that I’m undertaking at the moment because to suggest that that’s all we can do, wash our hands and stay isolated, I’m sorry I don’t buy that.

Improve our health/Immune system

I think we can be doing a whole lot more and in the process improve our health. I think we could come out of this, well, I’m sure we will come out of this if we can overcome the financial pressures that everyone is feeling and I hope we can continue to provide food and shelter for those that need it and jobs for those that have it when this is all over and we all emerge from it a better planet. But here’s this video that I’ll share with you now.

Now, these are those recommendations and this group has been around since 1994 and it’s made up of some amazing clinicians and it’s basically talking about vitamin C, D, and minerals in supporting the coronavirus. So, what can we do? Well, apart from hand-washing and gargling and social distancing? Yes, that’s important. They are all very important. We should be following that advice. There are other things we can do. We can enhance our health, we can minimize our symptoms and we could even avoid the infection.

Now, the idea that all we can do is wash our hands and gargling is not all that empowering and this is about personal empowerment. Good nutrition, keeping your hands clean, keeping your body warm, resting, sleep still the number one thing to be doing to build your immune system, but there is, even more, you can do.

You can be even more proactive and try to build a healthy immune system and vitamin C’s important and there are plenty of research articles out there and have been out there for a very long time to support this idea. Just because people haven’t read the article does not mean the article doesn’t exist. Here’s a study which shows that it reduced symptoms in virus-induced respiratory infections. Significant difference. Three grams of vitamin C a day was used in this study.

Vitamin D is another one and it’s a huge problem. Vitamin D deficiency is a pandemic in itself. Over a billion people are deficient in vitamin D, but it can have a significant impact on viral infections, and hey, isn’t that what we’re facing? And in this particular study, 2010, 1200 international units were given, reduced the prevalence by 42%. don’t underestimate vitamin D, things do not have to come from a prescription pad to be effective. Vitamin D deficiencies make you much more susceptible to a virus and vitamin D deficiency is endemic in our society. You may want to pause and read this study from 2016.

It’s not just vitamin D, vitamin C and zinc are also in combination. Taking independent, isolated supplements is not necessarily the way to go but here is a study showing vitamin C and zinc having a significant improvement on the viral infection. So, here is a regime which is suggested, and I’ll go over this regime at the end of this video, but it’s cheap. Just because something does not come from a prescription pad does not mean it is not effective. And I want to pay tribute to the International Society of Orthomolecular Medicine. This is coming from a group of people that have got considerable experience. So, when you hear that there is no evidence to support this, well, all you should be asking is why haven’t you read the evidence to support it when you consider that we not only cannot make vitamin C, but we also have a deficiency in vitamin D and our soils are deficient in zinc, magnesium, and selenium.

This makes a whole lot of sense. I want to acknowledge the International Society of Orthomolecular Medicine who put this together and also their team of advisors. This isn’t just pulled out of the air. This is what I am currently taking on a daily basis and I’m just sharing with it this with you. You should consult your own integrative medical practitioner, naturopath or nutritionist trained in nutritional medicine, I did. Vitamin C, three grams per day. Ideally, I think liposomal sodium ascorbate is the way to go. Vitamin D, 2000 international units per day. Zinc, 20 milligrams per day. Selenium, I actually take 150 micrograms per day. I had cancer so I’m upped it a bit and magnesium 400 milligrams a day. So, read this note. You should consult a practitioner, I certainly did. I hope this helped you. Thank you so much for joining me.

So, that’s the regime that I use, but I also received this today and I want to share this with you because there are a few tips here that I think are worth reading. I’m just going to read them to you.

Obviously, if you have a running nose, you probably have a common cold and at the risk of stating the obvious, try to avoid catching a common cold because that compromises your immune system and being socially isolated, there’s a very good chance you won’t catch a cold. But the coronavirus pneumonia is a dry cough with no runny nose. So, that’s important. The coronavirus is not heat resistant and it will be killed by temperatures of just 25 or 26 degrees centigrade. So, wash your hands frequently with warm, soapy water as the virus can only live on your skin for about five to 10 minutes.

If it drops on a surface, it will live for at least 12 hours. Some sources suggest up to nine days. So, if you come into contact with any metal surface, wash your hands as soon as you can with, again, soap and water. This includes handrails and door handles. So, I now have some disinfectant in my car and when I’m coming into the house, I have a whole other regime now as well. Here is why. On fabric in here, it can survive for six to 12 hours. Now, normal laundry detergent will kill it. Hanging clothes in the sunlight.

Now, here’s sunlight again, the wonder of sunlight. And we’ve done some great programs on my podcast with Jason Borden Smith and also with Nicole Bilgeman last year on mount mould. And guess what, sunlight. And there are some other podcasts coming up where we talk about circadian rhythms and again, we’re back to sunlight.

So, while we are told about the dangers of the sunlight, I think it’s a little bit overstated. Certainly, be out of the sun in the middle of the day and don’t burn, but get up there in the early morning and get the sun onto you because the sun produces some really important things for our body and gets the mitochondria in our body working optimally, so don’t be afraid of the sun. And it also kills the bacteria of the virus and bacteria for that matter.

Now, drinking warm water is effective for all viruses. Oh, here’s the other thing. Hang clothes in the sunlight and shower when you come back from being out in the streets. So, I am a dentist as many of you know, and I have had to go into the surgery for just emergency treatments. But when I coming back from being out, I now shower and I made sure that I shampoo my hair, clean my hair.

So, it was with soap. I just use a bar of soap, nothing fancy. So, soap and water, showering and change your clothes. We’re also taking our shoes off when we come into the house. Now, this is a whole other story about environmental toxins and I was going for a walk recently in a local beautiful park and there was a sign up telling me about glyphosate. Someone’s visiting, oh dear. Glyphosate. So, that is Roundup and so, we can carry that into our home and we can carry other things into our home as well. So, taking shoes off is important. Drinking warm water is effective for all viruses, so try not to drink liquids with ice.

Hot teas, hot water with lemon frequently is a really important thing. Tea, soup, bone broth. Remember that? Good for the immune system, actually washes the virus down and lets your stomach kill the viruses. So, to keep your mouth moist and to wash viruses and let the stomach’s gastric juices and neutralize before it gets to the lungs.

Now, you should gargle as prevention, particularly if you have a sore throat. A simple antiseptic solution of warm saltwater. Yes, the oldie but the goldie, warm salt water rinses, and mouth rinses. Warm to hot water. We’ve been telling patients to do that after procedures in the mouth forever and it’s still a good one, so that’s a good thing to remember. Don’t smoke. Okay, there it goes, I said it. Eat plenty of fruit and vegetables.

Well, we’ve talked about fruit and vegetables and carb levels and are you sensitive to oxalates, phytates, FODMAPs. Anyway, eat nutrient-dense food. I think that’s an important message. And elevate your, as I said in this video, C, D, zinc, selenium, and magnesium. Now, I get really annoyed with so-called experts that say that’s just expensive urine.

Well, I think of it as expensive blood and I think the blood’s pretty important, so I like to have expensive blood floating around in my body, nourishing my body. And hey, let’s face it, we don’t make vitamin C, so upping that. Liposomal sodium ascorbate, the best form. Vitamin D, a billion people are deficient in vitamin D, so that’s another thing that we need to be upping as well.

Zinc, selenium, and magnesium are all deficient in our soils, so that’s a good thing to supplement and they’re vital. Get adequate rest and sleep. Sleep is your built-in non-negotiable life support system. It’s free and you’ve got so much more time now, sleep and you’ll be amazed at the difference that a consistently good night’s sleep has, and that means seven to nine hours of sleep. For over 90% of us, that seven to nine hours and putting your head on the pillow is not enough. It’s not just quantity, it’s quality.

So, breathing well while you’re asleep. And while we’re on the subject of breathing, it turns out that nitric oxide is a really effective way of disrupting the coronavirus. There’s a great article that’s written in the Journal of Microbiology in 2005 which when SARS was a big thing, that talked about nitric oxide as a way of disrupting the reproductive cycle of coronavirus.

And nitric oxide is produced in the nasal passages only when you breathe through your nose, so this is another reason for nasal breathing. And I’m really proud to say that in our practice we have been championing nasal breathing in the use of micropore tape or if you want to go even more upmarket, Somnofix. I don’t have any shares in the company.

And if you don’t like micropore tape, an international company is now producing Somnofix, which is a one per night use of something to keep your mouth closed so that you can be forced into breathing through your nose. Now, obviously, if you have nasal obstructions, don’t do that but just by putting on a bit of tape for two minutes and testing out whether you can breathe through your nose or even if your nose was blocked that it unblocks as the nitric oxide kicks in can be a profound thing and improve the quality of your sleep.

Ensure you get sunlight. We’ve already talked about that and manage stress levels. Hey, isn’t that what Unstress is all about? Isn’t that what my book is all about? It’s all about balancing out those things that stress and compromise your health on the one hand.

So, it’s a balancing act and there are five stresses. Emotional, environmental, postural, nutritional, and dental. Yes, dental. For my regular listeners, you’ll know why we include that. I actually include it for anybody with a mouth who is interested in their health but has never fully connected the two and there are many connections. So, minimize the stressors that compromise your immune system and build resilience into your immune system. And boy, has there ever been a more important time than now? I don’t think so. And that is involved with the five pillars of health. Sleep, breathe, nourish, move, and think.

Now, with all this time on my hands, we’re going to be running a five-week online course for the five pillars of health and for our patients in my practice, that’s going to be free of charge and for others, hey, it’s not going to be very expensive anyway. And this time, it’s just a nominal fee to cover our costs. So, I hope this has been of some help. Until next time, this is Dr Ron Ehrlich, be well.

 

This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health, and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences, and conclusions.