21/04/2020
Hi everyone, as some of you know, I am Spanish, a practitioner of herbalism and a registered pharmacist. But what everybody knows is how bad things are here in Spain with COVID-19
This is going to be a long post, but I think this can be of interest of many here. Please have patient to read till the end, At the end of this post you will find what I consider interesting conclusions.
I would just like to update you with the news I have, and share a few thoughts with all of you, I mean, you all know how many thoughts and feelings we are experiencing nowadays, we are restlessly in a challenge to understand not just what this virus is about, but also, how we can prevent it and treat it, how we can protect ourselves and others… plus the challenges for many to stay mentally healthy in confinement, fighting against fear of a huge worldwide health and economic crisis…
I have family victims of the virus, thank goodness they are now out of hospital but they have been touching death for some days.
As you have been in confinement for some time as we are, you are all aware of the ways to disinfected your space, your hands, and the protocols to leave and enter your house when you go out to get food. I am not sure how strict confinement is in the UK, but in Spain, unless we go to get food or to the pharmacy we can´t step out, under penalty maximum 600k
In Spain the number of deaths is astronomic, since we have here three times more than official numbers are published, I get information from colleagues (medical doctors that work in hospitals in Madrid), and other unofficial but reliable sources.
Honestly, when I realized that this virus was not the flu, that its genome is able to codify proteins that do serious damage not just to the lungs, I kind of thought of herbalism as a very important medicine for prevention or a medicine to treat just the first phase of Covid-10 AND only after being able to identify the red flags for patients at risk. Not just a matter of knowing who are the subjects at risk, but also, to identify who are the ones that can develop risk of developing nasty complications, guided by the lab markers during the first process of the illness (Since even young people without co-morbidity have gone to the morgue by now)
I mean, I am one of those who think that conventional medicine is only good to be used in VERY acute situations, leaving the rest for Natural medicine, and second phase of Covid-19, to me, is a very acute situation. Plus this virus is unknown to all of us. We don´t want to get there, to that acute situation where 50% of people in intensive care, simply die, and when they are older, 9 of 10 die.. So I really think that paying close attention to prevention and first phase of the illness is fundamental.
As herbalists, we have resources to treat symptoms of influenza, and I guess the most experienced herbalists might manage resources to treat acute respiratory distress syndrome in adults, but again, this is not even a common acute respiratory distress syndrome…
Having said that…after a few days some of these thoughts have reversed! I am just a witness of the new discoveries day by day…
And this is the whole explanation:
Doctors are learning very quickly about what this virus is able to do, and as you might know by now, they realized that the bilateral pneumonia that they have observed daily in all the patients was just a weird one, I mean, a super one, maybe even, not a super one, a New one able to leave lungs like marble.
Conversations between Italian colleagues in contact with Spanish professionals are revealing very interesting information that goes back to good supplementation and herbal intake recommendations, which they seem to be the most effective road to avoid complications.
Doctors concluded in using melatonin, vitamin D and C (IV) as a first and most important way to stop the virus, the importance of starting these supplements from home even without experiencing symptoms.
I explain, for those who did not get this info yet:
This pneumonia is not such as a strict manner of speaking because the virus doesn´t kill pneumocytes only of its kind, what the virus does is using an inflammatory vascular storm with the consequent diffuse thrombosis. The lung is the most damaged but people who dies with coronavirus also dies with ischemic stroke.
The virus activates a disseminated intravascular coagulation (I don´t know the term in English, in Spanish is DIC). Patients get to intensive care with a venous thromboembolism, so, if you ventilate (with machines) a lung where blood is not getting in there, the ventilator becomes useless. In fact, 9 out of 10 people die because or cardiovascular problem, not because of respiratory problem, because it is the thromboembolism what determines the lethality of this virus.
How important this can be… In doctor’s fight to save lives, since they are trying to experiment with medicines and treatments that they can use to stop people from dying, they learn from their trials daily, concluding that they are treating complications as they would do in a common bilateral pneumonia, when the main complication is not such!
Italian doctors have left behind the silly antiviral therapy focusing in anticoagulant and antioxidant therapy started asap from home. The latest the therapy is started, the most difficult will be the resolution. When people get to intensive care most things are useless.
Why thrombus are formed? Because the inflammation (you know, after immune response), induces thrombosis through a complex physiological mechanism, complex but well known. When the inflammatory cascade is initiated, coagulation starts too, they are two linked processes. The most inflammation, the most coagulation.
Taking into account that IL6 has pro-inflammatory effects and anti-inflammatory effects, if doctors are using anti-inflammatory IL-6 inhibitors, by inhibiting totally its action it can trigger pro-inflammation by one of its mediators.. I remind you that these are not my conclusions. These are Italian doctors conclusions that are dealing with the illness since… you know when.
So, in conclusion (under the light of the biochemical chains of reactions occurred in acute situations), they concluded that the virus likes a previous inflammatory state and oxidative state, and, why diabetic people and people with hypertension are risk patients? Apart form the fact that they have an increased number of ACE2 receptors, these patients have also an increased basal state of oxidative stress, depleted vitamin D, inflammation, and more basal activation of M1, NLRP3, NFKB
Scientific Chinese literature warned us from using anti-inflammatories. Conventional medicine is using for this virus anti-inflammatories (mainly specific to IL-6 and so on) plus antibiotics like in influenzas (in this particular case mixed antimalarial and antibiotic therapy: hidroxicloroquine+azythromicin) and a number of hospitalized patients don´t get out. Many deaths including 40 years old people with high fever antecedents during 10-15 days treated inadequately. Inflammation here destroyed everything and prepared the ground for the formation of thrombus because the main problem is not the virus, it is the immune response that destroys the cell in which the virus enters.
Italians doctors involved in this conversation concluded that best way to save lives for the moment, is to look after this illness from home, focusing on developing a strong immune system avoiding hospitalizations and more deaths. If there is no vaccine to be seen in the near future, why not “creating our own vaccine” by strengthening our immune system and providing it with the necessary “mediators” for regulation and modulation of our immune system that goes crazy if it is not wisely supported???
Then, lets talk what can we do FROM HOME:
We have to take into account that each patient is different and two people can have same illness and manifest it in different ways thanks to genetic and epigenetics. I have an uncle that had covid-19, he has X syndrome and he did not even have to go to hospital… funny, eh?
So Italian doctors propose:
-Healthy diet, soft physical exercise cause during the exercise miokinas are produced which they can control oxidative stress and chronic inflammation…
-Avoid “Chronodisruption” meaning, try to receive light during the day to stimulate the formation of melatonin (powerful antioxidant) and it controls alongside vitamin D inflamasoma NLRP3 and NfKB.
-Sunbathing but not just hands and face, but THE WHOLE BODY to get reasonable conversion from pre to pro-hormone..
-1,5grams of Mg sulphate,
-Zn (maximum possible dose). In hospital they are using IV Zn and vitC , so if taken orally use the highest possible dose, and vit C must be liposomal, (high doses special care with patients with increased Oxalates to avoid lithiasis)
-Vitamin D 100000UI/d is used in hospitals, so from Home just do 5000UI/d daily for two weeks, then reduce to 2000 daily, not for long term use.
-Melatonin: Start with 1mg dose, build up every 2-3 night by 0.5mg until 3mg. Tolerance can be observed by the intensity of dreams, if they get too vivid you can reduce dose (Doses proposed by Chanchal Cabrera)
-Have white lights during the day and at night time, decrease light, only use low K bulbs..
Photo by Daria Shevtsova from Pexels
