Roger Seheult, MD of MedCram examines the risks of infection and gives early treatment recommendations for COVID-19. See all Dr. Seheult’s videos at: https://www.medcram.com/
(This video was recorded on January 10th, 2024)
Roger Seheult, MD is the co-founder and lead professor at https://www.medcram.com/
He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Disease, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine and an Associate Professor at the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine.
LINKS / REFERENCES:
Association of COVID-19 Infection with Sociodemographic, Anthropometric and Lifestyle Factors: A Cross-Sectional Study in an Older Adults’ Population Aged over 65 Years Old (Diseases) | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10660554/
Vegetarian and plant-based diets associated with lower incidence of COVID-19 (BMJ) | https://nutrition.bmj.com/content/early/2024/01/02/bmjnph-2023-000629
The Case for Sunlight in COVID 19 Patients: Oxidative Stress (MedCram) | https://youtu.be/2Zzo4SJopcY
Case Study: Sunlight Treatment for Hospitalized COVID Patient – Outcome and Implications (MedCram) | https://youtu.be/eCSe4af9Wmk
Interferon’s Role in SARS-CoV2 Infection and the Role of Hydrotherapy (MedCram) | https://youtu.be/oRkxH56LqCo
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Cr.com hi welcome to another covid-19 update here on megc today we’re going to talk about the effects of different risk factors both that could lead to covid-19 infection and that could be the result so this was a study that looked at associations and I thought it was really
Interesting because it nicely sums up what we’ve been talking about on medc for the last four years now yeah believe it or not it’s actually been 4 years and this study was published in diseases in 2023 just last month in December titled the association of covid-19 infection with socio demographic anthropometric
And lifestyle factors a cross-sectional study in an older patient’s population aged over 65 years old so this was a survey study but I think it was actually pretty interesting because it goes over a lot of things that would not be surprising but it’s interesting to see because we talked about them during the
Pandemic so this was in Greece and they found about 8,121 Community dwelling older adults over the age of 65 and because they either refused to take part in the study or they had severe disease or did not complete the questionnaire or there was missing data from their medical records
That got Whitted down to about 5100 and they basically asked them a bunch of questions and then asked them whether or not they had ever had covid-19 infections so again this is Association and as always Association does not mean causing but actually could be hypothesis driving based on other
Data we tend to think that some of these things actually might cause an increased risk of Co so what they did was they took the raw data and they sorted it by whether or not they had had a covid-19 infection or had not had a covid-19 infection as
It turns out there was actually more people that had not had a covid-19 infection than those that did if we use the cut off of a P value of 0.05 you can see that a number of these things Things become significant here when we’re just looking at the raw data
For instance age is going to sort towards yes on covid-19 infection being male is going to sort to yes on covid-19 infection you can see a number of these in terms of residence living status educational level smoking habits BMI but the key here is to understand that we
Need to look at the multi- regression analysis this is the multivaried analysis assessing whether covid-19 infection May independently be affected by socio demographics anthropometrics and lifestyle factors in this population so you can see here that age in a multivariate analysis was not statistically significant but what was
Was the type of residence so rural versus Urban with Urban having the higher risk about 38% increased higher risk smoking habits sign significantly increased the risk by about 72% so a yes would increase the risk BMI status increased the risk and the waste to hip ratio was also very statistically associated with
Covid-19 infection we could also see that with depression as well as the health related quality of life score interestingly Sleep Quality was also associated with covid-19 infection with worsening Sleep Quality increasing the risk of covid-19 by 68% we also saw that with anxiety stress and lack of exercise
Here with the ipaq score interestingly though this the Mediterranean diet adherence the Mediterranean diet is rich in Whole Foods plant-based Whole Foods and you can see here that there was a very statistically significant association with a low Mediterranean diet score and covid-19 at the very beginning of the pandemic we
Talked about sleep this is in February of 2020 and we talked about the fact that poor quality sleep and getting less than 7 hours of sleep per night would impact our immune system both in the Adaptive arm of our immune system and also in the innate arm of our immune
System not only can sleep affect your chances of getting covid but Co can also affect your sleep and someone who’s been infected with Co will know that very well we’ve also talked about the Mediterranean diet specifically we talked about cic acids and a substance known as New
5gc which is a cic acid that is found in red meat in non-humans so that when humans eat red meat this new 5gc cyc acid is absorbed into the body and actually incorporated into our own cells which causes a cyc acid inflammatory reaction with an increase in antibodies
And there’s been some recent studies that have Associated plant-based diets with a reduction a recent study showed a 40% reduction in covid-19 illness so it’s interesting to me to see over the last four years all of the different issues that we’ve pointed out and their pathophysiological mechanisms in detail
And we’re seeing here at first blush when we’re looking at these patients that have now gotten covid-19 in a population that the very things that we’ve been talking about that are risk factors for covid-19 are showing up here in this associative survey let’s talk about some of the things that
We can do if we come down with covid-19 we haven’t actually addressed this in a long time what are some of the things that you can do based on the information that we know today and this is recorded in 2024 that I believe are pretty helpful and things that I would do
Myself so we’ll go through a quick run here number one is and this is a no particular order but you need to look at P lovid it’s a oral medication that you can take early on and and it’s been shown to reduce the incidence of hospitalization it’s also something that
Can be taken pretty easily as a tablet but some of the downsides are is that it can interact with other medications that you may be on it can also cause a metallic taste in your mouth and there can also be a chance of rebound after you stop take it in terms of your
Symptoms definitely want to talk to your doctor about PA lovid I would consider this especially if you’re older if you have comorbidities and you’re concerned about having to be Hospital ized so that’s pack slov number two sunlight sunlight’s big and we’ve talked about this a lot sunlight has near infrared
Radiation unfortunately most people are getting the flu and Co now in the wintertime when the sun is the lowest but Sun still comes through at that level and you should get outside because you’re not going to get near infrared radiation inside your home because of Windows that block it there’s a number
Of theories why this might work one of the theories is is that it improves oxidative stress in the mitochondria in your cells and that this near infrared light can penetrate deep into your body there are a number of studies that have shown that sunlight improves outcomes and mortality in covid-19 we’ve gone
Over these in the past if you are watching this video and you would like some more information please look at some of our videos like light as medicine and a recent case that we had in the hospital where we actually treated a patient by taking him outside
Into the sun where he got a lot better now of course that’s not evidence that it works the evidence has already been shown and there’s even a study in Brazil where a near infrared jacket that they constructed in a randomized placebo control trial showed statistical significant Improvement and clinical
Significant Improvement in patients with moderate covid-19 so definitely definitely definitely sunlight 20 to 30 minutes a day out into the sun is something that I would definitely recommend doing it’s something that I recommend to friends and family when they get sick number number three is hydrotherapy we’ve talked about this
This is what they did a 100 years ago during the flu pandemic they had one six the mortality rate the current science on this is that they believe hypothermia of the body that is controlled in a 20 to 30 minute period either heating up in a sauna or in a spa or using
Fermentations to heat up the body and we’ve talked about this before so look at our video on hydrotherapy that this increases interferon recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine showed single injection of interferon subcutaneously reduce the hospitalization rates for covid-19 by 50% this is something that you can do
Very early on it’s cheap you don’t have to worry about it getting hoarded you don’t have to worry about a supply chain a prescription it can be done very early on as soon as you feel sick so highly recommend hydrotherapy and sunlight by the way also doesn’t need a supply chain
Either I can’t speak enough about sunlight and hydrotherapy and the effects of these two things and I’ll tell you y specifically as well no supply chain needed no prescription needed in most cases it’s very very safe it’s not going to interact with medications and it’s not dependent on
Variants this is also very useful by the way not just for covid-19 but also for the flu which we’re not talking about at this point we’ll talk about that in a different video but yes very helpful something else that I recommend taking is Knack and we’ve talked about this
Before as well and the specific dose that I recommend is 600 mg orally two times per day and why do I recommend that it’s because it worked for the flu in a paper in 1997 when taken during a winter period of about 6 months it reduced the symptomatology of
The flu there’s also a lot of evidence that we’ve talked about that Knack because of its ability to cut sulfide bonds which is the mechanism used in polymerization of Von willbrand factor and blood clots in the pulmonary vascular circulation could have a benefit and actually there has been some
Studies that have shown that Knack is associated with improved outcomes in covid-19 and so I think the risk is pretty low there is some concern that taking that chronically at high levels for a long period of time could increase cancer risk because it feeds cancer cells they believe although these
Studies were done in animals and in very very high doses I’m recommending this only for a winter season I think this is beneficial to do number five zinc zinc has actually been tested and have been shown with colds to actually be beneficial so I am definitely for zinc
There’s pretty low evidence that this is harmful I would not take too much zinc because it can reduce your copper levels if you take too much of it and so just be aware of that I would avoid going more than 40 mg daily of Elemental zinc
Because if you go much more than that you can get a copper deficiency what about vitamin D right again I said this was a no particular order but a lot of you there are like ah he not talked about vitamin D I take about 5,000 international units daily and I’ve had
That tested to make sure that that is working for me some people also recommend taking vitamin K2 this is not vitamin K which is a vitamin that helps your blood coagulate before taking K2 before taking vitamin D I would definitely check with your physician and make sure you get tested because there
Are certain diseases that can already give you high vitamin D levels for instance sarcoid so you want to make sure that it’s okay to supplement with vitamin D and to make sure that you get your levels checked now we did talk about zinc and a lot of you out there
Will be asking well what about hydroxy chloroquin and what about Ivermectin so let’s put those on the list and IVM I was a big proponent of using hydroxy chloroquin and iorc and very early on in the pandemic when we had no studies when there was a very clear pathophysiological mechanism for how it
Might work by being a zinc Iona for and allowing zinc into the cells and shutting down RNA dependent RNA polymerase which was the virus enzyme and there was some retrospective data that seemed to support that and I was very excited about that because of our update 34 which is still available on
YouTube and you can watch that video in detail about how that works however at the time I did say that to know that it is working we would need to have large randomized Placebo control trials and since then we have had a number of them and there’s been some mixed results I’m
Not clear that hydroxy chloroquin works there may be a lot of associated improvements and those could be due to confounders the only way to really find out whether or not it works and actually causes people to be better is it has to be shown in a randomized placebo controlled trial setting that is
Reproducible that it works same thing for Iver mechon the interesting thing about ior mechon that I would say is that it is a very efficacious anti-parasitic and there seems to be a lot of data that it may work outside of the United States I would just make a
Mention that there are a number of people who have chronic parasitic infections that are not aware of this and when they come down with covid-19 and go to the hospital they are going to get the Cornerstone of inpatient therapy if they are on oxygen and that is steroids so steroids suppress the immune
System for a good reason because that is what you want to do in ards so that they don’t progress down the cytool storm pathway unfortunately the collateral damage is that it also removes the immune system that is suppressing the parasitic infection and so it very well
May be that in people who have chronic parasitic infections the addition of ican may be very beneficial now here in the United States we don’t see as much chronic parasitic infections and so it may be the reason why we’re seeing a difference other people have said that
It may be the dose it may be the timing it may be other medications that need to be used with it I’m here to look at the medications this is my opinion this is what I would be recommending at this point in terms of hydroxychloroquine and
Icin I do not believe that we have enough evidence at this point to say definitively with a randomized control trial that it works I might also say in addition to that though that during the pandemic when hydroxy chloroquin was given emergency use authorization briefly it was nearly impossible to
Actually get that medication because the supply chain was not mature enough to handle that kind of a demand and again this is the reason why I kind of like these areas up here because these things can be used without fear of a supply chain shortage and that’s exactly the
Issue that we had during the pandemic was that we did not have truck drivers we did not have infrastructure we did not have the ability or pharmacists to dispense and so the problem with pharmacological basis of a lot of these things is that they have to be delivered
To your local pharmacy for you to have the benefit of it and in another pandemic that’s not going to be available what I really like about number two and number three here is that those things are not limited in those situations so understanding sunlight hydrotherapy I think are really key and
That’s why I’ve been a proponent of those two interventions since we’re talking about zinc ionophores kettin is also something that I recommend and take I think it’s got very low risk factors and if it works that degree I would definitely recommend cerstin let me expand a little
Bit more about those two areas so for sunlight remember that n infrared radiation can penetrate through clothes and so while I like to get patients in direct sunlight they don’t need to be directly in sunlight if you go outside you can actually get a lot of near infrared radiation off of the Reflection
From trees that’s actually really beneficial icial in terms of hydrotherapy you want to make sure that people can tolerate elevated temperatures because their heart rate will go up so if they suffer from cardiac arrhythmias or issues like that you need to be careful and I would recommend highly that if you are going
To do hydrotherapy on patients where you’re actually getting them to sweat and increase their heart rate that it’s done with somebody there that can render Aid if something happens so for sunlight I’d say 20 to 30 minutes same for hydrotherapy 20 to 30 minutes now what
They do on hydrotherapy is they end it with about 1 minute of cold therapy and usually this is in a foot bath which skin on the bottom of your feet exchanges heat very rapidly that’s why they use a foot bath the hands would work as well this tends to vasil
Constrict and lock in that heat to keep the heat elevated longer to get that response so if you’re watching this for the first time and you’re like where is he getting all this information from look at the videos in our collection specifically hydrotherapy specifically sunlight this goes over the scientific
Information and the data and the trials that we talk about also wanted to remind you to come to our website m.com which has a number of courses and continuing medical education classes and courses that you can take not only for Physicians but also Pas and PS RNs and
Students as well things like EKG interpretation pulmonary review vasopressors ultrasound principles in instrumentation antibiotics review and hematology review even classes on how to interpret complete metabolic panels and also cbc’s come check us out at medcram.com
