Undoctored and the Age of Pandemics

It’s late February, 2020 and headlines are filled with warnings of an imminent coronavirus pandemic, especially now that it has reached the U.S., first identified in an individual who had not traveled abroad.

The growing specter of this viral illness has caused Japan to close public schools, South Korea is dealing with an explosion of infections, an Iranian government official was seen sweating on TV that proved to be due to coronavirus infection, U.S. stock market indexes have plunged.

Do we have a solution for the coronavirus pandemic in the Undoctored world?

Let’s first review what Undoctored is and what it is not. Undoctored is NOT developing new treatments for various diseases like coronavirus or coxsackie virus or leiomyosarcoma. It is NOT a source of alternative treatments, solving obscure diagnoses, discovering ways to manage chronic disease or epidemics. Instead, Undoctored addresses the factors that allow disease to emerge in the first place, what I have called the “magic” of the Undoctored approach. Let’s take type 2 diabetes as an example:

• In conventional healthcare, type 2 diabetes is managed by prescribing insulin and other drugs that reduce blood sugar. Other drugs and procedures are prescribed to manage the complications of diabetes such as hypertension, coronary disease, kidney failure, peripheral vascular disease, peripheral neuropathy, and gastroparesis. A type 2 diabetic might be taking 8 drugs for blood sugar and associated phenomena, may have undergone bypass surgery or stent placement into the right iliac artery, might be on a potassium-restricted diet due to failing kidneys, but the disease marches on with increasing potential for diabetic complications. This incurs an average of $10,000 additional healthcare costs per year, cuts an average of 8 years off lifespan. And, of course, the American Diabetes Association advocates a diet low in fat with increased grain and carb content, as this reduces potential for hypoglycemia in people taking diabetes drugs. There is no mention of addressing causes, no effort to identify the factors that drive insulin resistance.
• In the Undoctored approach, we eliminate grains that would have sent blood sugars and blood insulin sky-high; we limit net carbs; we correct common nutritional deficiencies that develop due to modern life such as magnesium (due to drinking filtered water), vitamin D (living indoors, wearing clothes, not including liver in your diet, etc.), omega-3 fatty acids (not including brain or plentiful fish in the diet), iodine (not including thyroid glands in your diet nor sufficient sea-sourced foods), all of which contributes to reversing insulin resistance; we address the massive disruption of bowel flora that has developed in modern people that also amplifies insulin resistance and thereby raises blood sugar; we address the metabolic endotoxemia of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, SIBO, that hugely increases inflammation. Combine these strategies and a powerful synergy also develops, further amplified by weight loss, loss of visceral fat, hormonal normalization. By following these Undoctored practices, most type 2 diabetics become non-diabetic, require no medication to manage diabetes, and enjoy magnificent health in numerous other spheres such as reversal of fatty liver, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, acid reflux, irritable bowel syndrome, reduction or elimination of small LDL particles that cause heart disease, and autoimmune diseases.

But back to viral illnesses such as coronavirus: We therefore would not seek to treat coronavirus or any other virus; we improve your health, including your immune system health, that makes you less susceptible. I can’t say impervious, as there are bound to be some people who are exposed who, for a variety of reasons including genetic susceptibility and prior viral exposures or lack of exposures that generate partial immunity. But I predict that our Undoctored lifestyle provides substantial protection against any virus. This is because:

1. Wheat and grain elimination reduces body-wide inflammation—One of the primary drivers of this is reversal of gliadin-driven intestinal permeability, an effect reflected in reduced blood levels of the zonulin protein. Airway inflammation is  reduced, reflected in many people obtaining relief from asthma, sinus congestion, and repeated sinus infections with wheat/grain elimination, making them less susceptible to airborne pathogens.
2. Vitamin D—We know with confidence that restoration of healthy levels of vitamin D enhances immunity, especially that driven by T-lymphocytes. Lack of vitamin D is a big part of the reason that we have viral illnesses like the flu during winter, but not in summer.
3. Reversal of thymic involution—Lactobacillus reuteri reverses age-related atrophy of the thymus in experimental models. The thymus (sitting just in front of the heart in the anterior mediastinum) is the seat of much of the immune response, especially that involving T-lymphocytes. Starting at age 18, the thymus begins to atrophy such that, by age 70, it is a tiny fragment of its former self, a phenomenon accompanied by increased susceptibility to infections like flu, pneumococcal pneumonia, and sepsis. Even though this phenomenon has not yet been formally corroborated in humans, nearly every other observation made in mice with L. reuteri (or exogenous oxytocin) has held true in humans in formal clinical trials: preservation of bone density, acceleration of healing, increased oxytocin, reduction of appetite, weight loss, etc. It is therefore likely that reversal of thymic involution and thereby restoration of youthful immune potential occurs, also.
4. Reduction of metabolic endotoxemia—Our efforts that include rebuilding a healthy intestinal microbiome that include probiotics, fermented foods, prebiotic fibers, and reversal of SIBO and SIFO reduce the process of metabolic endotoxemia, i.e., the flood of bacterial byproducts (such as bacterial lipopolysaccharide, or LPS) that accompanies SIBO. Reversing/reducing metabolic endotoxemia is a huge advantage in reducing body-wide inflammation and enhancing the immune response.

Should the coronavirus reach your door and no vaccine or other treatment is available, be confident that you have taken steps that boost your immunity substantially and stack the odds in favor of dancing the samba at your 105th birthday.