President Ronald Reagan said in a speech once that if there was an alien invasion, he envisioned all nations would come together.  Well, the coronavirus is an alien and it’s killing people.

If this is a War on the Coronavirus, something like the Manhattan Project should be in play, not myopic thinking from conventional medicine.  The problem?  One hundred years of conventional medicine and mono therapy (one drug for one disease).  This model has made billions for pharmaceutical companies and it doesn’t work if we want to fight this virus.  We have to treat multiple metabolic systems at the same time. 

This Manhattan Project should consist of the best and brightest from medical fields that never share research with each other, i.e., gastroenterology, virology, psychoneuroimmunology, cardiology, cell biology, immunology, pharmacology, anthropology and experts in the microbiome, hormonal function and mitochondrial function.  You can Google any one of these, add the word “immunity” and sit back and watch.

I’ve been involved with medicine over 40 years and in that time, I’ve been part of visionary teams developing treatment protocols outside the standard of care for specific conditions:  heart disease, diabetes, cancer, brain injuries and performance enhancement.  I’ve traveled to the best research laboratories in the country and developed partnerships with the most innovative physicians of our time.  What I’ve learned is that passionate, educated groups of people can discover some of the most advanced treatments.

As a paramedic in the early 80s and 90s the people who died during flu season almost always had a severe illness already.  Their immune systems were already compromised.  This was very common all over the US.  The paramedic program was new and so was the data we were collecting back then.  The flu can kill if your immune system is shut down by physical, mental and emotional stress that elevate the stress hormone cortisol and tanks your immunity.  Aging is also a big factor because all the effects of the virus are amplified due to multiple organ atrophy.

Conventional medicine has put blinders on the top government officials.  We need to see what all the comorbidities have in common and which metabolic pathways are affected.  We need to find out who the strongest people are and what they have in common.

Obesity, diabetes, heart disease and dementia are all basically one disease with commonalities like elevated insulin, elevated blood glucose, oxidative stress and systemic inflammation.  This is the perfect storm for the virus to take a deep dive at the cellular level and burn like a wild fire through a patient’s metabolism by activating a cytokine storm.

When asked about developing an immune surveillance booster for the coronavirus I took a deep dive into my files for over two weeks with Vicki Iliff, the Director of Research for Scala Precision Health.  We educate physicians every day that we are all biochemically unique and each need a different diet, medication, nutritional and hormonal support.  So, while we dug into coronavirus I asked the question, “What is a sweeping generalization that people across the world can apply to enhance their immune surveillance today?”

I set this path on fire because all the best and brightest in our county can come up with is “wash your hands, practice social distancing and try a few outdated medications.”  We are the United States and we can do better.

Citizen Science to the Rescue

I want to see medical experts and innovative-thinking people to form groups called Citizen Scientists—teams of 5 to 10 people all tasked with drilling down on research areas not covered by the mainstream media.  Each person has about 120 connections and these teams can share research with their connections and have fast-track focus groups to expand their current knowledge exponentially faster than any university-funded research sponsored by a pharmaceutical company.

We also want the people i.e., Citizen Scientists to be able to understand and Google this research, share their ideas, brainstorm with neighbors, friends, and families through social media and become the next innovators.  Together they can learn more than any expert because they are looking at the multifactorial treatments that can all elevate immunity.

This is where the Google search with your Citizen Scientist team can shine a light on new areas not yet considered by the experts in virology.

A list for you to search on the internet that will blow your hair back:

• microbiome and immunity
• mitochondria and immunity
• nutritional deficiencies and immunity
• ketogenic diet and immunity
• hormonal deficiencies and immunity
• elevated blood glucose and immunity
• elevated insulin and immunity

As you start to collect data with these searches, the puzzle pieces start to come together.  You can see and hold the research you print in your hands and wonder why the experts are not talking about it.  You can take this research and build a therapeutic partnership with your physician, learning to work as a team because there is no one physician that has all the answers.

What Do the Numbers Say?

CDC Statistics: Leading Causes of Death for the United States

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

Put this into perspective for a moment.

• Heart disease: 647,457
• Cancer: 599,108
• Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936
• Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 160,201
• Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 146,383
• Alzheimer’s disease: 121,404
• Diabetes: 83,564
• Influenza and pneumonia: 55,672
• Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 50,633
• Intentional self-harm (suicide): 47,173

Note:  According to a study by Johns Hopkins, over 250,000 deaths per year are due to iatrogenic causes (treatment or medical errors), which makes it the third-leading cause of death after heard disease and cancer.  Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-america.html

We have a CHRONIC DISEASE EPIDEMIC in the United States.

The Italian COVID-19 statistics showed that 99% of those who died had at least one preexisting health condition.

To put this data into perspective let’s look at the US statistics for type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and hypertension, which are the top 3 coexisting conditions associated with the vast majority COVID-19 deaths in Italy.

Type 2 Diabetes in the US:  34 million people have type 2 diabetes as of 2018, which is 10% of the US population.  (Source: American Diabetes Association)

Cardiovascular Disease in the US:  18.2 million adults have coronary artery disease, with an average annual cost in 2014-2015 of $219 billion.  (Source: https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm)

Hypertension in the US: Nearly half of adults in the United States (108 million, or 45%) have hypertension defined as a systolic blood pressure ≥ 130 mm Hg or a diastolic blood pressure ≥ 80 mm Hg or are taking medication for hypertension.

High blood pressure was a primary or contributing cause of death in 2017 for more than 472,000 people in the United States. That’s nearly 1,300 deaths each day.

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA HAS A CHRONIC DISEASE EPIDEMIC.

Having a chronic disease creates nutrient deficiencies, severe oxidative stress and gut microbiome imbalances, which cause immune system dysfunction and makes you more susceptible to death.

In order to combat the coronavirus and win, we need to look at the multiple metabolic systems that affect immunity.  Conventional medicine’s “one drug / one vaccine” approach is outdated.  We have too many people already sick with obesity, heart disease, diabetes and dementia.  In order for us to survive this broken medical system, we have to form communities, do our own research, increase our collective knowledge and share our data.  This will shift the paradigm from conventional to personalized medicine.