(This article was originally published on May 9, 2020, and readers will be probably shocked and amazed at how much everything written here has been confirmed to be true.)
Those of us who lived through and survived the 60s remember the “outside agitator” theory well. The media and our parents explained the protests that were happening throughout the United States at that time did not really mean that there was anything wrong with the War in Vietnam nor anything wrong with our society, but the real problem was the “outside agitators” who were stirring up things in universities and in urban areas.
This pandemic is a bit like this outside agitator theory.
We are all innocent victims of this mean and vicious virus, this outside agitator.
And so, the media reports daily on all of the worst-case scenarios that are taking place all over the world to innocent victims…and that anyone could become a victim.
It is true that anyone can become a victim of an infection…but only relatively few people get seriously ill, a smaller number get complications, and a yet even smaller number of people die. That’s a problem in and of itself, but we have to stop the lie, the misinformation, and the fear-mongering that anyone can die from this disease. In fact, a new article in the New York Times highlighted the fact that 88% of the hospitalized patients in New York have not only had one major chronic disease prior to admission, but the “nearly all of them” had two.
Even though this pandemic is the result of an infection, the media and its various medical experts only talk about the VIRUS and about various drugs that can combat the virus. And yet, anyone with a smidgen of knowledge of infectious disease knows that there are two elements in any infection: the infective agent (the virus, in this case) and the person’s immune and defense system.
Right now, most of us have streptococcus bacteria in our throat, pneumococcal bacteria in our bronchials, and a diverse assortment of bacteria, viruses, fungal, and yeasts throughout bodies. If we actually knew about which microbes were pervading our bodies at any given moment, many of us would be in shock. And yet, our immune and defense system keeps these microbes from proliferating.
Therefore, when we think about any infective agent, it is easy to assume the worst and to dwell in a type of paralytic fear, that is, until we think about that magnificent, that truly amazing doctor in each and every one of us called our immune system.
So, during the past several months, each of us have read and watched the media tell story after story after story about reasons you should be afraid, in fact, why you should feel very afraid. And yet…
How many of you have seen and heard media reports on different ways that people can strengthen their immune and defense system??? Alright then, I see no one raising their hands. We all have to agree that the media and their “medical experts” have systematically and purposefully avoided that vital part of the infectious disease equation.
Even though China has shown incredibly good results in stopping the pandemic, only one big media source, CNN, reported once on how the Chinese stopped people from dying from Covid-19 so effectively by using conventional medical treatment along with Traditional Chinese Medicine (primarily herbal treatments to strengthen a sick person’s immune and defense system). Sadly and strangely, this CNN report expressed significant amounts of skepticism of these treatments despite the widely acknowledged truth that the death and complication rate in China has dramatically diminished.
And for the record, evidence to date shows that 67% (!) of MDs in hospitals in China recommended Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Although Wuhan and other major cities in China are as densely populated as New York, the Chinese have effectively diminished their infective rate and have almost eliminated the rate of complications from this viral infection. Could their Traditional Chinese Medicine be a factor here? Is there any other reasonable explanation?
Strategies for a Healthier Immune and Defense System
Now…how does one get a healthier immune and defense system? This short article will not delve deeply into this important question, but here are some simple places to start:
— good nutrition is essential, and vitamins C, and D and minerals such as zinc are good place to start, so says Harvard’s School of Public Health; other sources have provided another list of clinical verified benefits to immune system’s efforts to defend against viral infection from specific nutrients and foods, including vitamin A, vitamin D, zinc, selenium, copper, garlic, fish, cranberry, broccoli sprouts, and probiotics.
— medicinal mushrooms can potentially augment various immune and pulmonary functions, so says the National Cancer Institute.
— a wide variety of botanical medicines are known to have powerful antiviral effects.
— various fermented and cultured foods, including miso, sauerkraut, pickles, kimchi, kombucha, and yogurt, improve our inner microbiome and help the body resist various types of infection.
— homeopathic medicine became famous in the 19th and early 20th century due to its impressive successes in treating typhoid, cholera, scarlet fever, yellow fever, and influenza epidemics, and today, the Cuban government and the Indian government are taking proactive steps in recommending specific homeopathic medicines to prevent Covid-19 infection. The Indian government had good enough results when they announced this program at the end of January, 2020, one state in India announced another treatment for 4.5 million people at the end of April, 2020 (prior to the development of a vaccine, it is important to explore various safe, potentially effective, and cheap alternative ways we can prevent this disease in addition to hand-washing and social distancing).
As valuable as wearing masks are in today’s pandemic, there’s a certain catch-22 problem in wearing a device to prevent respiratory infection that slightly impedes respiration. Here’s where people can and should breath without face masks whenever safely possible. I am often shocked to see people wearing face masks when they are driving alone in their car.
Likewise, getting outside to breathe fresh air and get vitamin D from the sun is also invaluable. One can (and should) find opportunities to do this, though some people may live and work in areas where this may not be possible.
There is now a significant amount of evidence to show that people who are over-weight and obese are much more likely to experience complications from this viral infection (83% of people in a French ICU were over-weight). If such people ever need extra motivation to lose weight, today’s pandemic is THAT motivating factor.
When exploring ways to strengthen one’s immune and defense system, it is imperative to investigate the ways we may be destroying it. Modern physiology teaches us that fever is an important and even vital defense of the body to defend against viral infection. During a fevered state, the body releases interferon, an antiviral chemical, as well as other important cytokines that help our bodies fight viral infection. Even America’s leading advocate for vaccines, Paul Offit, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania, insists that people respect the body’s invaluable defenses against viruses through fevers.
Offit and others therefore strongly discourage the use of fever-suppressing drugs, such as aspirin, ibuprofen, and acetaminophen. These drugs are prescribed in a cavalier fashion by medical doctors, promoted by the media, and used frequently without regard to their consequences by the general public. One would have thought that we would have learned from the flu pandemic of 1918, where the American Medical Association encouraged people with the flu to take 25 aspirin tablets per day (!).
Sadly, doctors in 1918, like today, have little respect for the inherent “wisdom of the body” and tend to aggressively treat fevers as though they are something “wrong” with the body’s defenses. A recent 100-year review of the “lessons learned” from the 1918 pandemic that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine ignored how American doctors’ advice killed millions of people (in total, around 50 million people died worldwide at that time). A recent article in the Smithsonian magazine claimed that this 1918 virus “was not fundamentally different from those that caused epidemics in other years.”
What was unique about the 1918 pandemic was that it affected people of all ages, not just the elderly or infants, but middle-aged people as well. And what was further unique was that a primary symptom of their disease was lung hemorrhaging. Hmmm, what drug is known to lead to various types of hemorrhaging? Well, aspirin!! The fact that people were coughing so much from this flu infection led to very predictable bleeding in the lungs.
For the record, homeopathic physicians in the US and throughout the world found that their patients were not dying from the 1918 flu. According to the New York Times, New York City was known to have some of the lowest incidences of death from the flu, which was the result of the fact that the Health Commissioner of New York at that time was Royal Copeland, MD, a highly respected homeopathic physician, who later became a New York Senator, and who later wrote and sponsored legislation that empowered the FDA to regulate drugs (so that future incidences of drug-induced deaths would be minimized).
Most recently, there are growing numbers of Covid-19 patients with blood-clotting disorders. The fact that ibuprofen (Advil) and naproxen (Aleve) as well as various painkillers are commonly prescribed and self-administered for fever and for various pain syndromes experienced by Covid-19 patients and are also known to cause blood-clotting symptoms may or may not be just a coincidence.
If using fever suppressing drugs aren’t bad enough, many doctors today are using various steroidal drugs, even though this is against the recommendations of the World Health Organization. During viral infections, people should not be taking drugs that are specifically known to suppress the immune system.
Taking a Proactive Role in Your Own Health
It is easy to be overwhelmed with fear in the present atmosphere of this pandemic. To assume that we all can be a “victim” of this virus is simply not true. Although anyone of us can get exposed and infected with it, only a very small percentage of people get ill.
People can do a variety of health-promoting actions. It is the intention of this article to encourage people to think about and discuss what works for them in this regard. It is time that we demand that the media talk about this subject in greater frequency rather than simply reporting on the various bad news stories of the day.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s most famous saying was, “We don’t have anything to fear but fear itself.” And sadly, we are engulfing ourselves in fear. Thinking as victims and playing as victims augments this fear, when, in fact, we all can do something for ourselves, for our families, and for our communities by taking more proactive roles in our personal health.
Dana Ullman, MPH, CCH, graduated from UC Berkeley School of Public Health (1978) and was interviewed by UC Berkeley’s alumni magazine here. He has written 10 books on homeopathic medicine, two of which contain a Foreword by the Physician to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (who is a MD and a homeopathic doctor). Dana Ullman has served on advisory boards or in teaching capacities of complementary and alternative medicine institutes at Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Arizona.
Dana Ullman, MPH, CCH, is America's leading spokesperson for homeopathy and is the founder of www.homeopathic.com. This website is an important resource for accessing homeopathic books, medicines, medicine kit, software, and ecourses.
Dana Ullman, MPH, CCH, is the author of 10 books, including his bestseller, Everybody's Guide to Homeopathic Medicines. His most recent book is, The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy. Dana’s eCourse on Learning to Use a Homeopathic Medicine Kit is a great way to make homeopathy practical in your personal and family life.
Dana Ullman, MPH, CCH, has also written chapters on homeopathy for four medical textbooks, including two published by Oxford University Press.
Dana lives, practices, and writes from Berkeley, California. He sees his patients via Zoom.