Q&A #25 with Dr. Rhonda Patrick (7/10/2021)

Welcome to another episode of our Crowdcast series. Sorry for the little technical blip. This is number 25, and I'm going to have to reopen my document because I had to restart everything. For those of you that have been around for a while, you kind of know how this works. For those of you who have not, I will briefly try to explain how this works. So typically, I— everyone, you know, submits questions to the Crowdcast site, and I then choose the questions based on both the top voted questions as well as questions that I've maybe seen before or had, you know, multiple people ask me about. or questions that I'm frankly just really interested in answering.

So today's Q&A series is going to focus quite a bit on some recent questions that I've gotten about COVID-19 vaccines and other potential therapeutics such as ivermectin that people are interested in sort of knowing my perspective. Again, I apologize, I'm multitasking here. I'm trying to open my my document up because I had to close down everything. Here it is. Okay. So before I get into everything, I just want to say that this— everything, you know, that I talk about in these Crowdcasts, and in particular this one, is my opinion from, you know, my analysis of the scientific literature, and it is in no way medical advice. So if you need to seek out medical treatment, please seek it out from a qualified medical professional. I do not have a medical license. I am not an MD.

I have a PhD and I'm a scientist and I am not capable of giving medical advice. So please, if you need medical treatment, seek it out from an actual medical professional. Also, I want to mention that many times I will not get to all the questions, and so I have them archived. And, and oftentimes what I'll do is the next Q&A— these happen monthly— I will then go into a question that I didn't answer from last time. For example, this, this Crowdcast Q&A, we should have quite a few questions that were left over from, from last month. I also like to answer questions live in the chat, so I will look here at the chat and I will see, um, you know, people's questions. So let's get started.

So the first question I'm going to go into was submitted by Farid, sorry if I said your name wrong, but the question was about ivermectin. And Farid says, hi, ivermectin has been getting more press lately and it seems like a hugely compelling COVID prophylaxis and treatment. Can you comment on this at all? So I spent quite a bit of time looking into the ivermectin published scientific literature as well as some of the preprints that are available, which are not— have not undergone peer review and they have not been published yet, but they're available on a site which a lot of scientists are now putting their preprints on now.

And I will say, um, that For most people that don't know what ivermectin is, it's a, it's a, a drug that's been used to treat intestinal parasites in humans and in animals. Um, it's pretty cheap and the side effects and the adverse effects are pretty well known. It's generally very, very safe for most people. But again, just like with any type of treatment, when you give it to a large enough population, there are going to be adverse effects and there are going to be deaths. And that is also the case with ivermectin, even though for most people it is a very, very safe treatment. So, um, it's, it's not a zero-risk thing like, like most treatments.

So I want to talk first about a study that has been cited very popularly by, um, people on the internet, by podcasters, and a variety of folks that are extremely enthusiastic about ivermectin. So I want to talk about this study in, in a lot of detail, but before we jump into the nitty-gritty, there are about 3 major flaws of this study. It's a meta-analysis of multiple, multiple different studies, and I would say one of the major criticisms out of 3 that I have is is that 6 out of 19 of the studies used in their meta-analysis were actually not even peer-reviewed at the time of publication. Some of those have now been peer-reviewed, and I've looked at that data. My team and I have both looked at that data.

The other big criticism I have is that the authors of this meta-analysis really seem to cherry-pick studies that were positive, and they left out a lot of studies that were— had negative data. And which brings me to my third criticism. The reason I think the cherry-picking occurred is because the authors of this meta-analysis have a conflict of interest. They are affiliated with a group called the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development. And so that could give them a bias. They're part of this pro-ivermectin group, and they failed to state this in their publication, which I imagine could get them in trouble.

Every author of a scientific paper is, you know, you have to report any type of potential conflict of interest, and if you don't, I'm not exactly sure what the ramifications of that are, but there might be some. So with that said, I will say, let's kind of talk about the actual meta-analysis in detail. 7 of the studies of the 19 studies were randomized controlled trials, and they showed that ivermectin could lead to a faster viral clearance. In other words, people that had COVID-19 cleared the SARS-CoV-2 virus quicker than people that received— didn't receive that treatment. There was another open-label study, which means there was no placebo, which showed no effect of ivermectin. There were 3 randomized controlled trials out of the 19 that showed that compared ivermectin to a placebo.

And they found that ivermectin trended towards having a positive effect, but that was not statistically significant, which could mean a variety of things. Namely, it could just mean the sample size was too small. There was another randomized controlled trial, one showing an improved mortality rate. 3 large studies compared ivermectin to hydroxychloroquine, which was a standard of care treatment for some hospitals. And they showed that ivermectin showed similar efficacy as hydroxychloroquine. Of course, ivermectin has a much safer profile. It's, you know, fewer adverse side effects than hydroxychloroquine. And There was a large study that compared ivermectin prophylactically with standard of care treatment to hydroxychloroquine prophylactically with standard of care treatment.

And what I mean by that is people— this was actually a very large study in healthcare workers, that there was about 600 people in this study, and there were 2 groups, either they got ivermectin plus a lot of stuff. So ivermectin plus azithromycin, which is an antibiotic, vitamin C, zinc, lactoferrin, acetylcysteine, and also prophylactic anticoagulants. So it's kind of like the kitchen sink. So they were given either all of those things plus ivermectin or all of those things plus hydroxychloroquine. And ivermectin outperformed hydroxychloroquine prophylactically. It, it reduced the infection rate from 10% to 2%. So that suggests that ivermectin, along with antibiotics and anticoagulants and some vitamins and minerals, seems to be effective at preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Whether or not ivermectin without all of those things can prophylactically prevent COVID-19 is still to be determined. But I will say that, you know, that one study there that was very large does seem promising that at least along with these other treatments that it can seem— it seems to be able to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection better than hydroxychloroquine plus all those treatments. There were also 6 unpublished non-peer-reviewed studies included in that analysis, which I didn't dive into great detail, but were showing positive effects. So, um, I would say, you know, in, in general, it seems as though there might be some promise that ivermectin could help treat COVID-19, particularly if given early in the disease course. That seems to be something that, that study showed.

There were little beneficial effects of ivermectin in people that were already in the ICU, and so again, it's one of those things where finding the dose, finding the timing when you can give ivermectin is critical in determining whether or not it is going to be an effective treatment. A few days after that meta-analysis, which made a lot of press because there were, um, you know, podcasters and people in the media talking about it, another study came out that showed there is no effect of ivermectin on reducing all-cause mortality, on length of hospital stay, on viral clearance in mostly patients, COVID-19 patients with mostly mild disease.

So this was a meta-analysis that included mostly randomized controlled trials that either compared ivermectin to either a placebo or standard of care treatment. And if you, if you look closely actually at the, at the individual studies used in this new meta-analysis that again is kind of counter to the other one that came out, this one's saying there's no effect. We do see that there was a trend towards ivermectin reducing all-cause mortality. However, that was not statistically significant. And, um, there's actually a very large confidence interval on the statistical data which could imply that the data is kind of all over the place. In other words, some studies showing a positive effect, some studies showing a negative effect.

And, um, and so again, it's one of those things where identifying the right dose and when, how early in the disease course ivermectin's given, um, how severe COVID-19 is, is important. The other thing to consider is that the sample size was also small when looking at an endpoint such as mortality, which doesn't occur often. COVID-19 mortality, it's not like, you know, that happens all the time. So when you have an endpoint where, you know, the chance of death is in less than 5% of the population that has a disease, then it's going to be extremely difficult to pick up any changes in that without huge sample— a huge sample size.

Um, in my— it's my impression, in my opinion, looking at the ivermectin data, that it is promising that ivermectin may help treat COVID-19, particularly if given early in the disease course. Also, um, It certainly seems promising that it may help clear viral infection earlier. We need more data to definitively make that statement. There are really just too few studies at this point. It would be really great if this were the case because there are many countries that do not have access to vaccines where ivermectin may play a huge role in helping keep COVID-19 and this pandemic under control in countries, for example, like Africa, where vaccines are just not readily available.

In no way is there any data to suggest that ivermectin is comparable to a COVID-19 vaccine in terms of protecting against COVID-19. That would be completely unscientific and a very sensational statement to make. So, um, that, that in no way— there's, there's no evidence that ivermectin at all would be or could be compared to the efficacy, efficacy of what the COVID-19 vaccines have, have been shown to protect against COVID-19. Um, so in summary, it is my opinion that ivermectin shows promise in, um, having a favorable effect on COVID-19 treatment, perhaps even prophylactically, although that data is very unclear because ivermectin was given with many different other treatments.

And so, um, until we have more data on that, it's, it's, it would be unscientific to make a statement that ivermectin can prevent COVID-19. I think that would be, um, a very sensational thing to say and unscientific. Uh, I do, I do think that there is promise, but we do need more data. And again, that is my opinion. And again, there may be many anecdotal stories of you know people being helped by ivermectin, but I would say you know. I don't have access to all these anecdotal stories. I'm not a physician on the front lines treating COVID-19. I am just telling you my opinion based on the published scientific literature. So, you know, that is, that is one sort of piece of the story.

And again, I do think there is huge promise, and particularly for countries that don't have, you know, don't have access to vaccines. And again, I will say that ivermectin has a very, very safe profile. However, you know, you can find studies, you know, where elderly people that have scabies, for example, there's an increased risk of death with ivermectin treatment after 6 months. Or, you know, 15 million people that were given ivermectin in the Republic of the Congo over the course of 10 or 12 years, you know, out of 15 million people, you'll have around 600 adverse events. You know, some of those are deaths, other are neurological problems and other problems. So it's not that there's not any adverse effects at all. It is a very, very safe pharmaceutical drug for most of the population.

But when you start to give anything to a large, large part of the population, eventually you're gonna start to see rare things come up. And so there are people that will have adverse effects to ivermectin, but most people will not. So I'm just looking at some of the questions in the chat to see, um, what people are saying. I guess a lot of people are hoping that I'm going to make a sensationalistic viewpoint. I'm not going to do that. I'm, I'm only going to tell you my opinion based on the actual science. That is published. And again, at this point, I think that it's promising, but it's— there's not enough data to say something definitively. So let's talk about another question that I've gotten a lot, and this is— this question was submitted by quite a few people.

And the question is, can you address why people are saying the spike protein from mRNA vaccines are cytotoxic? And for those of you that don't understand what the word cytotoxic means, it just means a cell dies. So, so cell death, when a cell dies in the scientific literature, it's often referred to as cytotoxicity or being cytotoxic because it is causing cell death. So I'm going to address this question. And to be honest, I'm quite unclear why people who should have a better understanding of this science are claiming why— claiming that mRNA vaccines are cytotoxic. There's actually, first of all, there's no evidence showing that the spike protein encoded for by the mRNA vaccine is cytotoxic.

But even more importantly, the nucleotide sequence that encodes for the spike protein in the mRNA vaccine has been altered so that 2 amino acids, both proline residues, have been changed so that the— and this occurs in the binding region of the spike protein— so that the spike protein cannot bind to the ACE2 receptor. It is not the same spike protein found in the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This is a very common thing that's done in vaccines. They're often altered in such a way to keep the 3-dimensional structure of the, you know, in this case, the spike protein conformation, but, or the viral protein conformation, in a 3-dimensional structure that keeps it in what's called the pre-binding state.

So it cannot— oftentimes proteins will change their 3-dimensional structure when they're binding to a receptor to get, you know, to exert their physiological effects, to get inside the cell, et cetera. So the spike protein that is encoded for by the mRNA vaccine, again, is different than the spike protein found in the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In fact, some of the first publications in Science and Nature were addressing a fear that scientists had because the spike protein was different, that the antibody response against it would be different because it was not the same spike protein. That was then later shown to be disproven. In other words, people were making antibodies against the spike protein and that was causing a neutralizing effect against the actual SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

But I think this is a really important piece of data and information that most people, for one, are not aware of. And it is important because you can't compare apples to oranges. you have to compare apples to apples or oranges to oranges. So when you're saying the spike protein is cytotoxic because the spike protein from SARS-CoV-2 has been shown to do that, that's not entirely accurate. But let's talk about the actual data because it gets even more compelling. So the cytotoxic effects from the spike protein found in SARS-CoV-2 The majority of the data, not all, but majority is referring to what is called an in vitro study.

In other words, a recombinant spike protein is made and it's dumped on cells in a Petri dish, which is of course very physiologically irrelevant levels because there's all sorts of metabolic processes and regulations that go on inside a human body. But when you dump the spike protein on cells in culture, that it can cause cell death. And it has been shown to be cytotoxic in vitro. However, when the spike protein that contains mutations in it so that it cannot bind to the ACE2 receptor, when that spike protein is dumped on cells in culture, it is not cytotoxic. And the reason it's not cytotoxic is because the cytotoxic damage that occurs happens through the binding of the ACE2 receptor.

And the reason that is, is because when the spike protein binds, when the spike protein from SARS-CoV-2 virus binds to the ACE2 receptor, it downregulates it. And that means, what that means is it decreases its levels. That has huge effects in terms of cell physiology because the ACE2 receptor is very important for regulating the renin-angiotensin system and fluid homeostasis and blood pressure. And all sorts of problems happen when ACE2 levels go down, which is what happens when the spike protein from SARS-CoV-2 binds to the ACE2 receptor. Again, the spike protein encoded for by the mRNA vaccine does not bind to the ACE2 receptor. And the cytotoxicity toxicity studies in vitro, and it's not just one, it's many, they've shown it to happen through binding ACE2 receptor. Very important.

There has been another study that actually was an in vivo study, more of an in vivo study, which means that this happened in a whole organism. In this case, they were hamsters, And what the study did was inject the SARS-CoV-2, the spike protein from SARS-CoV-2 virus, and they put it inside another viral vector backbone, and they injected it into the trachea of hamsters at extremely high levels, of course. And what happened was that spike protein from the SARS-CoV-2 virus bound the ACE2 receptor and it caused endothelial damage. And this has also been shown in a cell model of endothelial cells that sort of replicate the blood-brain barrier.

The spike protein's pretty bad, to be honest, from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, especially when it's in large quantities that you would find from someone that would actually have an infection from SARS-CoV-2. Again, when ACE2 receptor, when the mRNA, sorry, when the SARS-CoV-2 virus or the spike protein from the SARS-CoV-2 virus is mutated in such a way that it does not bind the ACE2 receptor, these things do not happen. So I personally am not sure if people with the scientific background are not reading the data or not understanding or haven't read all the data.

Something clearly is missing in the story because, you know, I think people with a scientific background that can interpret data and should be reading all the studies should be able to come to the conclusion that, oh, this is a different spike protein. So I'm not entirely clear if there are perverse incentives at play. I mean, it's very sensational to make a claim like that, and you can gain a huge following and get a lot of attention from, from making such a claim. I'm not sure exactly what, what the deal is. But again, you just can't compare apples to oranges, and you can't make a statement that the mRNA, the spike protein from the mRNA vaccine is cytotoxic when, one, it's not the same spike protein, and two, there's zero evidence showing that. So, you know, I'm sort of baffled by that.

And so that is sort of my, breakdown of the cytotoxicity claims. I would say, as I've mentioned in other Crowdcasts, that the mRNA vaccine, of course— let me just scroll up here. So the mRNA vaccine is made of lipid nanoparticles that contain the mRNA sequence that makes for this different type of spike protein which is unable to bind to the ACE2 receptor. The mRNA sequence only encodes for that altered spike protein, and these particles are injected into muscle, deltoid tissue, the deltoid muscle, and those nanoparticles are then taken up into the muscle. The muscle cells then transcribe the mRNA to produce the altered spike protein, which is then shown on the surface of muscle cells. It stays in the muscle cell. We're going to talk about this in more detail in the next question.

And the immune system then reacts to that altered spike protein, and you make, you know, antibodies, and you have memory T cells. The mRNA itself does not enter the nucleus. It cannot interact with your chromatin or your DNA. The mRNA is degraded in less than a week. And the antibodies, the spike protein, the altered spike protein that's made also has a very short half-life. But the antibodies and the memory T cells that are made last a long time. So far, we're, we're actually finding evidence that it may last, you know, a very long time. So I'm going to just look at some of the chat questions. Kevin says that was an excellent ivermectin analysis and very thoughtful. Thank you, Kevin.

Again, I do think that there is a lot of promise for it, and I just refuse to make it a sensational statement until there's actual data that allows me to. But I am very excited about it, like I said, particularly for third world countries. We are going to go talk— we are going to talk about the vaccine adverse effect— adverse effects reporting site and all this as well later on. Because people are asking about that. And seeing if there is just any more. Again, people are talking about having experts on saying something is toxic. I mean, that doesn't mean anything without data, you know.

And, and I don't think any experts that have been on any podcast— I've ever even heard them actually explain the fact that the mRNA vaccine, the spike protein encoded for it, has been altered and can't bind to the ACE2 receptor. That is so important. I can't emphasize how important that is because all the cytotoxic effects come down to the binding of the ACE2 receptor. Like, it's, it's, it's kind of amazing. And to be honest, you know, people making these vaccines, like, they're, they're definitely not dumb. And this has been thought of. And again, it's a very, very common thing to do with vaccines. You alter the sequence so that it's actually not the same. So let's talk a little bit more about the altered spike protein from the mRNA vaccine staying in the shoulder.

Some people have been concerned because there have been some data floating around that people have interpreted to suggest otherwise. And so Linda and others ask, Does the spike protein made by the mRNA vaccine in— or made by the mRNA vaccine stay in the shoulder? According to this data, it does not. There's a claim that the spike proteins enter the bloodstream and accumulate in the bone marrow and the ovaries and other organs. Can you please address this? So this document that Linda and others were referring to, I think there's been links to on the Crowdcast in the comments section and also in the questions section. Was a Pfizer document.

And it was data from Pfizer that showed when you inject mice that were— they were looking at the effects of radiolabeling these nanoparticles that are mixed with the mRNA vaccines and sort of finding, following them, you know, in the mouse in vivo. seeing where they end up. And so this is very, very important before we talk about any of the data. The dose of the mRNA injection used in this Pfizer document was 300 to 1,000 times higher than what's given to humans, what's given to us in our mRNA vaccine shots. 300 to 1,000 times higher. Just Remember, we've often talked about translating animal data into a human equivalent dose. And, you know, what happens if you give nicotinamide riboside in a dose that's 100 or 300 times higher to animals?

You know, can you make a claim that that happens in humans? And of course, no, you cannot. You have to do a human equivalent dose. So it is extremely important to keep things like this in mind. When looking at, you know, a spike protein dumped on cells in culture or, you know, something injected into animals, like how relevant is that to, you know, physiologically relevant is that to humans? It's a very important question. So let's talk about this study. Again, that would be comparing apples to oranges when you take, you know, something and inject it 1,000 times higher concentration and say that's definitely again the same thing that's happening in humans.

you just, you can't compare apples to oranges, and that's like one of the first things you learn in graduate school when you're, when you're a scientist, you know, and getting a PhD in the biological sciences. In addition, again, the mRNA vaccine encodes for a different spike protein that does not bind to the ACE2 receptor. Please keep that in the back of your mind, like, at all times. That's very important. So the lipid nanoparticles that were injected at 300 to 1,000 times higher concentration into the muscle of rodents, were found in very, very low concentrations in the spleen and the ovaries, and extremely, extremely low concentrations in other organs. This basically was less than 1% 24 hours after the injection.

And so again, it's, it's comparing apples to oranges for many reasons, because one, you're not getting the same spike protein. 2, you're injecting 300 to 1,000 times more of it into a little rodent. And, um, and 3, the concentration of it in these, which, and actually we're gonna get into something even more important in a minute. The concentration was so minute, it was like insignificant. And if you're talking about the concentration of actual SARS-CoV-2 spike protein from an actual SARS-CoV-2 infection, it's like a million times higher. I mean, it's like, it would be insane that anyone's even concerned about that versus actually being infected with the spike protein from the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

But, but this is very important what we're going to get into right now, because it explains why you see little pieces of radiolabeled nanoparticles in other organs. So this is how the immune system works. Anytime something foreign enters the body, Either through a skin prick, so that could be a vaccine, it could be a thorn poke. I just got stung by a yellow jacket yesterday, so it could be many, many different things. So what happens is you have dendritic immune cells that live in your tissue, and they eat and digest the foreign pathogen. those dendritic cells take pieces of that foreign thing. In this case, it would be the nanoparticles, which were labeled, radiolabeled, that theoretically had mRNA vaccine in it.

It's not a 1-to-1 ratio, so it's unclear how many of the nanoparticles actually have mRNA vaccine in them. But let's just assume theoretically that it was a 1-to-1 ratio. So the dendritic cells take those little pieces of the radiolabeled nanoparticles that they have eaten up and digested into little pieces. In other words, no longer a full-length whatever it was, it's now chopped up into many different pieces. And they basically bring it to nearby lymph nodes where it presents the fragments of that whatever it was, X, Y, or Z, in this case, the radiolabeled nanoparticles with mRNA vaccine in it, fragments of them, meaning chopped up. It takes it, to the lymph nodes where it presents it to these fragments, to your helper T cells and B cells.

And then the B cells will form antibodies, unique antibodies. They're called plasma cells. And a small fraction of them will be turned into antibody-producing— sorry, a small fraction will turn into memory B cells. And then, you know, those memory B cells then wait for that foreign pathogen, you know, exposure to happen again. And basically they can produce antibodies and blah, blah, blah. This physiology of the immune system and how it works is— the knowledge of it is extremely important because in this case, with the nanoparticle that has the altered, you know, mRNA with a— that could make a spike protein, it doesn't last in the body. It's degraded and chopped up into many pieces by the immune cells.

And that'll show up in, you know, other— that can show up, a very small amount of it can show up in some tissues. And then it's recycled through phagocytosis for other metabolic processes. That is why the scientists at Pfizer and everyone else were not alarmed by this data, which again, the amounts of it that showed up were so little, and it's the fragments of them as a consequence of how the immune system works. I think, I don't think people, you know, this document gets out and, you know, it's kind of like this emotional response. Because people don't understand the data. And then that emotional response spreads like wildfire. So, you know, it's really important to understand that. Right now, we know that 60 to 67% of the adult population in the United States is fully vaccinated.

So that's over half of the population in our country, in the United States, not even including, you know, not even talking about other countries that are a high vaccination rate like Israel or the UK. But just in the US alone, over half of the adults are fully vaccinated, and it's a lot of people, you know, so it's obviously not killing everyone. But with that said, people do have adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccines, including the mRNA vaccines. But you also have to realize that people have adverse reactions to many other treatments as well. And so when you start to get enough people getting, you know, a treatment, you'll start to know of the rarest of rare things.

You know, I would say that, you know, after so many millions, hundreds of millions of people have gotten it, that's what our vaccine adverse event reporting site is for because You know, people are reporting adverse things that happen after getting the vaccine, and then scientists have to take that data and analyze it. And it's really important to not just look at the vaccine adverse effects reporting sites data without an analysis, because all you're seeing is one side of a really big picture. It's like epidemiology at its absolute worst. So scientists then take that data and they say, okay, this many people has reported this adverse effect from the vaccine. How many people have also gotten the vaccine but did not report this effect?

How many people get this effect but never got the vaccine? You have to compare all these groups, and then you have to adjust the data for age, gender, ethnic background. All these things play a role. And this is why we know of the adverse effects. For example, myocarditis in adolescents is now— it's absolutely linked to the vaccines. And we know that because of the, you know, the vaccine adverse reporting effects site and the analysis that's done after that data is submitted, looking at and comparing all the groups. It's clear that myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart tissue, and it's It's very common in children and particularly in children and some adolescents after viral infection.

It can happen either from a virus directly infecting the heart, which is less common, but more commonly it's a side effect of a sort of hyperactive immune system causing a lot of inflammation and damage, which then indirectly affects the heart. It's been treatable. in most cases within a week or less. And so, you know, I think that it also is important to realize that COVID-19 itself has been absolutely linked to causing myocarditis in children and adolescents, in adults, and particularly in athletes. So that is also something to consider. But there are adverse effects that happen from the vaccines. Some people You know, may die from it. But you have to realize that people die of adverse reactions to like foods we eat every day, like peanuts.

You know, it's, it's, it's a really big world out there, and there are going to be people that have an adverse reaction to a treatment when you give that treatment to enough people. Again, I got stung by a yellow jacket yesterday, hurt like hell. I've got a huge welt the size of a golf ball on my leg. You know, I'm fine though. And, but some people go into anaphylaxis. Some people die from bee stings. It's rare, but it happens. So, you know, it's not that the mRNA vaccine or any COVID-19 vaccine is cytotoxic to everyone. It's that some people have adverse reactions to it.

And it just, it happens because their physiology and their immune system makeup and their genetic risks and whatever's going on in their body, but we can't outlaw peanuts because some people, like, there's a lot of people that have very adverse reaction to peanuts, and people die from it, but you can't make the statement that peanuts are toxic for everyone, because, and other foods too, shellfish, you know how many people die from shellfish allergy? So again, it's not that because adverse effects are happening that all the vaccines are dangerous. Over half of the United States has it, you know, like that's a lot of people. Um, again, it's a big, big world and, um, negative stuff's gonna happen. So, um, but that doesn't mean that they're toxic for everyone.

Andrew's asking, what's the mechanism, mechanism of action that the mRNA vaccine or even COVID-19, again, can cause myocarditis. It's activation of the immune system. And children's immune system and adolescents, they have a much more robust immune system. And in some cases, the hyperactivation of it, the collateral damage that occurs from the immune system becoming so active is inflammation. And again, children are very prone to— myocarditis from viral infections because of the activation of the immune system. So, um, again, uh, so far that's what we really think that is happening with the myocarditis. And for me, um, it was a personal decision that I made.

I decided, looking at the data for COVID-19, um, in addition to personally knowing people, many healthy people that exercise, take supplements, are younger than 30, and ended up with some— in some cases, one of someone I know had a severe long-haul COVID, and this was a fellow who's you know, who was running, you know, 5K, 10K races and winning them, just very athletic, you know, taking vitamins and drinking smoothies. I mean, doing everything I do. And it was frankly quite shocking and scary to see him get— he got this parasympathetic activation tachycardia and his heart would race so fast he couldn't even walk to his mailbox for months. I mean, it was like 4 months.

This was a guy who would go to the gym, you know, 5 days a week and go running all the time, and he couldn't even like walk. He was— he couldn't work. He was out. I mean, it was like really horrible. Um, and he, he finally kicked it, but it took quite a while. I also knew another girl who, um, she was an adolescent and she had severe gut issues and also had myocarditis from COVID-19, and she had some severe inflammation of the heart that lasted a while, and she got several treatments of intravenous vitamin C, and she was seeing a functional medicine practitioner. And but the long-haul COVID is a well-known thing. I mean, when you have enough people that get a virus, you're going to start to know about the long-term effects. You're going to start to know about them.

And pretty much, you know, I think it's common knowledge now that COVID-19 can cause severe and even just mild— I know some people that had COVID that had a disrupted sense of taste for like 4 months. Several people that I know had that, and that also kind of freaks me out. But, you know, we know a lot about these long-haul COVID effects. With over half the US population fully vaccinated, we would know about long-term effects from vaccines. Most of the adverse effects from vaccines happen within 2 months, historically speaking. And with this vaccine, most of them really are occurring within weeks of, most of the time, the second dose of the mRNA vaccines. So, and most of any long-term effects with vaccines are mostly immune-related, and the most common being autoimmune disease.

But, you know, again, with half our population now of our adult population now vaccinated, like we would know of these things. Like that's huge, huge dataset. And for me, again, what I was trying to get at is it was a personal decision. I was reading, looking at the literature and seeing this, that COVID-19 was potentially leading to brain atrophy. I mean, this was like pretty compelling data that was done from the UK Biobank data where right before the pandemic, bunch of MRIs had been done on, you know, tens of thousands of people. And then the pandemic hit.

And then literally shortly after, they basically called all these people back in for MRIs and found that the people that had COVID-19 had brain atrophy and like particularly in gray matter region, gray matter in certain brain regions involved, particularly in olfactory and gustatory. So like their smell and taste, and also regions in memory. And it really looked a lot like what you see in terms of someone undergoing dementia or Alzheimer's disease. And the people that did not get COVID-19 didn't have that atrophy happening. And this data was adjusted. So they took the same amount of time in between MRIs and looked at these people and said, look, these people had the same amount of time in between their MRIs. They either had COVID-19 or they didn't.

And the ones that had COVID-19 are now experiencing brain atrophy months later. I mean, that's abnormal. You don't experience brain atrophy that quickly. So, um, I basically made a personal decision that I did not want to get COVID-19. And so, um, after, you know, kind of sitting back and waiting till, you know, many people were vaccinated, and because I know that after the, you know, adverse effects are sort of analyzed by scientists including scientists at the CDC, then we start to know about some of the rare things that don't show up in a clinical study. After that had happened, I felt very safe. And knowing again that the spike protein itself from SARS-CoV-2 was causing damage, I was quite concerned. And I knew the mRNA vaccine had been altered.

I knew that it wasn't getting into other tissues. And if anything was, it was like a minute amount. And, you know, probably just a fragment of something that had already been digested and undergone phagocytosis. So I made a personal decision to get it because I did not want, you know, tens of thousands of spike protein particles in my organs. And I certainly don't want to give it to my son. So again, I'm basically looking at the data and it seems as though by and large it is very safe. Again, people will have adverse reactions. And they do. And, you know, the myocarditis is a real thing. It's something to consider. You know, parents that are adults, that have adolescents, you know, you need to weigh the risks and the benefits and say, well, what happens if they get COVID-19?

Are they also going to be at risk for myocarditis? Or, you know, looking at all that and balancing the risks to the benefits are important. But I do think that if you even look at The data for the adolescents that are, that are, that could potentially get myocarditis, even that data, it's still very rare. It's more common in 18 to 24-year-old males. So like if you look at some of that data, you'd see, you know, out of 4.3 million 18 to 24-year-old males who got the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine, 2 doses of it, this has only showed up after 2 doses. then you have around 219 observed myocarditis cases versus about 8 cases in that population, generally speaking, that don't get the vaccine.

So 220, about, cases out of 4.3 million, it's still, it's still not like that common, but it is absolutely happening at a frequency where you can link it to the vaccine itself. And again, that's something that I think a parent should weigh the risks and the benefits, and knowing that COVID-19 itself can not only lead to myocarditis but also other, you know, potential negative effects and long-term effects as well, it's kind of one of those things that a parent needs to consider. Marianne saying, but the vaccines don't prevent that you get COVID-19. There are, I mean, there are people that will be fully vaccinated that will still get infected with SARS-CoV-2. Those events do happen. It's not 100% efficacious, but by and large, it's absolutely clear that they do work.

And it's one of the reasons why in places where I live, like California, it's like, I feel so safe. Like, it's like almost nonexistent because the vaccination rate's so high. So again, you know, just because, you know, some, you know, you know, the reality is, is if you don't have the vaccine, you will get COVID-19 if you're exposed to it. If you have the vaccine, the chances that you will get COVID-19 after being exposed to SARS-CoV-2 are so small that you're most likely not going to. And also, by the way, the, the fact that, you know, the CDC, FDA, everyone's come out and said yes, myocarditis is associated with the mRNA vaccines in adolescents, particularly in boys. I think it should give people some peace of mind that these aren't people that are hiding all this data.

Like, why would they hide all this other data but then come out with this and say, no, vaccines are associated with this, they are linked? You know, like, these are people that are really trying to analyze the data and figure out, like, they don't want everyone dying. They don't want everyone, you know, having an adverse effect. Um, you know, so I think that's also something to consider that, you know, this vaccine adverse reporting events thing is very important for finding, um, when adverse effects happen, but you have to analyze all the data. Otherwise it's like epidemiology at its worst where you basically, let's say you, you tell someone, okay, if you eat meat and then you come down with cancer, report it to this site. If you're a meat eater and you get cancer, report it to this site.

Do you know how many millions of people would report that they got cancer because they eat meat? Because most people eat meat. But, you know, you have to look at all the other people that eat meat that don't get cancer. And you have to look at all the people that don't eat meat that get cancer. And you have to look at all the people that don't eat meat that don't get cancer. Like, you know, and then you have to— and then on top of that, you have to control for confounding factors. What about all the other things like they're eating sugar or they're exercising or they're smoking? other, you know, so just looking at the adverse events reported by, by the vaccine adverse effects reporting site is like looking at the tiniest little tiniest piece of data.

And most of you following, you know, most of you that are here know about the problems of epidemiology and observational data. That's like the worst of the worst of like, like epidemiology looks like a randomized controlled trial compared to just looking at what you see with this vaccine adverse reporting. it. You know, like, it's really important to realize that is like the littlest piece of the data, and, and that if every published study only did that, I mean, we'd be terrified to leave our house because everything would be, you know, give us an adverse effect. Okay, so I think I'm pretty much done covering the vaccines and and ivermectin. And again, I hope that you're not disappointed that I'm not super sensational, and I'm really just trying to analyze the data in a very unbiased way.

And, you know, for me it's important because I obviously wanted to make a decision whether or not I need, you know, wanted to get the vaccine. And so I decided that, you know, the data was Safe that most people were not going to have an adverse, you know, reaction. And I had never had an adverse reaction to vaccines before, so I wasn't particularly concerned. Um, people are asking me, like Julian, about addressing vaccine— vaccines during pregnancy. You know, I haven't looked at that data, and to be honest, I don't know how many pregnant women in the United States have been vaccinated. It's a little more of a touchy subject, so I can't personally speak to that. I can tell you that if I were pregnant, I would not want to get COVID-19, but I would also probably not get vaccinated.

But I don't— I would be able to have the luxury of staying home and not having to go to work where I'm potentially being exposed to the virus. The, you know, during— I think pregnancy is a time when it can go either way because it's the immune having a severe immune reaction in general, it has been linked to adverse effects in pregnant women, and certainly a variety of non-human animal studies have shown that as well. But I could never, without having looked at any of this, the data in detail, I couldn't make a statement. I would just tell you that I'm of the very cautious type that I probably, I certainly wouldn't want to get COVID-19 because that absolutely would cause a severe immune reaction.

In fact, mothers who have had the flu or fevers during pregnancy are, I can't remember the number fold, but they are at a higher risk of having a child, particularly a boy, with autism than mothers that did not have a fever during their pregnancy. So, um, you know, again, I'm, I'm a very cautious person and I would never tell anyone to not get the vaccine because that could put them at risk of actually getting SARS-CoV-2, which could be potentially much, much worse. But, um, you know, again, I am, I am, um, I personally am the kind of person that would probably just, uh, be a hermit and stay away from being exposed to the virus during my pregnancy. And people are asking about breastfeeding during the— breastfeeding while getting vaccinated.

I answered this question in a previous Crowdcast, and at the time I answered it, I was talking about a preprint. That study has now been published. It was a small study out of UCSF that looked at nursing mothers that had received, I believe it was Pfizer, it might have been Moderna, it was one of the mRNA vaccines. And their breast milk, of course, was analyzed, you know, daily throughout the day, and there were— there was absolutely zero evidence that any of the mRNA vaccine ended up in the breast milk at all. So what's likely happening, again, because the mRNA vaccine's staying in the muscle, but antibodies produced are probably being transmitted through breast milk to the infant, which is a good thing.

And so I know many of you know that I personally, when I was pregnant, again, I did not want any vaccines. I know it's very common for pregnant women to be recommended to get the Tdap vaccine against the pertussis. And I basically, held off on that. I decided that I was going to wait until postpartum to get the vaccine because I didn't want to take any risk of having a pretty strong immune response to the vaccine. And so everyone that was going to be in contact with my son, I made them get the vaccine. And then I got mine like 1 day postpartum and transferred, you know, antibodies to my, to my son, which are short-lived. Like, that doesn't last. It's not the same as actually getting vaccine.

But that was— so basically, the moral of the story is, so far the data suggests that breastfeeding while undergoing or while getting the mRNA vaccine is safe. There's no mRNA vaccine that has been detected in breast milk in the limited data that we have, again. So it's one of those things, well, it's like, well, what if we got, you know, 1,000 women and then did it, or 10,000, maybe we'd see more, but, you know, the chances are probably maybe not. Donna's asking about the totality of adverse data of ivermectin compared to COVID vaccines. There's not been a head-to-head comparison, so I really can't make that comparison. I will say that ivermectin in no way protects against COVID-19 like an mRNA vaccine. Like, that's incomparable. Um, like, there's no doubt.

I mean, there's many, many studies out there that are negative on ivermectin, and I think that's because you have to have a certain time window you give it in a dose, and then you have to figure out all the little nuances. Um, if it were like a vaccine, you'd see, you know, 95% efficacy like around the clock, and that's just not what you see with ivermectin. That doesn't mean it's not a treatment. I think it— I mean, to be honest, without saying something sensational, I do think it has a lot of promise. Um, I do think that we will see with more data, probably it will come out to be, um, something that is, that is effective. I wouldn't at all ever say that it would be as effective as a, as a vaccine. There's absolutely, you know, that would not— could not say something like that.

Um, Holly's asking about being, uh, safe to get vaccinated if you have a family of autoimmune disorders. My grandmother had lupus, which is an autoimmune disorder, and I've never had an adverse reaction to vaccines. I've never had any sort of autoimmune problems. So I think that's a personal decision you have to make. You have to really, you know, knowing your family history and maybe perhaps talk about it with your physician. But I will, I will say I have not seen, again, with over half the population of the United States vaccinated, fully vaccinated, I think we, we would know if, you know, people were coming down with lupus. I mean, that would happen within 2 months. Like, that sort of thing doesn't happen years later after a vaccine. It's very, it's a very, very short time span.

So, so far, it doesn't seem like it's a really big issue for most people. But with that said, you know, looking at your genetic profile may help. And that's something that you could, you could look at with a genetic counselor. Alongside your physician to sort of see if you do have a high genetic risk. But again, COVID-19 itself is associated with autoimmune disorders. And in fact, a lot of the long-haul COVID is thought to be linked to autoimmune disorders. So, you know, do you wanna— are you more likely to get the autoimmune disorder if you're genetically predisposed from COVID-19 when you're getting you know, tens of thousands of millions of, you know, viral particles, or are you more likely to get it from a tiny little dose of the vaccine? I don't know.

I would say probably more likely from COVID-19, but there's no way to know for sure. And again, it's a very personal decision that you have to make. We're spending a lot more time on the vaccines. I'm sorry, we're going to have a lot of other questions next time. I see people asking about which vaccine is best, and, you know, to be honest, I just don't— personally, I looked at the data and it was my opinion that I preferred to get an mRNA vaccine. But that doesn't mean that the Johnson Johnson vaccine isn't, isn't, isn't good to get. I'm not as huge of a fan of adenoviral vectors. I do think there's some, you know, data that made me a little more concerned about potential immune responses with coagulation.

But again, you know, I haven't really done a real deep dive comparison enough to feel comfortable to make any sort of statement, to be honest. And I certainly haven't looked into any of the vaccines that are given in other countries that are not available in the United States. So I just can't speak to any of that data. And that isn't to say that I won't ever look into it, like the Novavax, for example. You know, maybe, maybe if people submit some questions, then my team and I can sort of deep dive in on that. And I don't feel comfortable making, you know, any statements until I really feel like I've looked at the data in depth enough. And so, so it may take a while for that as well, to be honest. Also, thank you everyone for your kind comments.

It's, it's very difficult talking about a subject that's it's so polarized. And I think a lot of people have opinions on this because it's affected our entire world. And, you know, honestly, it's, it's so easy to have an emotional response. It's very scary. And I understand it, you know, 100%. And I think, you know, for someone that's still scared to get a vaccine, I still, I understand that. But I don't think spreading misinformation would be an answer to make your— I think some people are having an emotional response and they're trying to justify it, that it's rational. And so they end up spreading information, misinformation. And that bothers me, but it doesn't bother me that people are scared to get the vaccine.

I was, you know, hesitant and I was standing back and waiting until we got some real-world data where the numbers were large enough that I knew we would know about the rarest of rarest effects, which we pretty much do. So anyways, thank you. It is, it is certainly challenging to talk about these things. So there was another question I will get to next time because I really wanna do a deep dive. The question was from Frank, and it was about omega-3 and heart health, particularly DHA and EPA ratios. So we are going to cover that next Q&A because I just, for whatever reason, that wasn't at the top of the list and I just didn't have time to do a deep, deep dive.

I could answer that question sort of off the cuff, which sometimes I'll do, but it's a topic that's important enough that I think it deserves a more sort of deeper dive and certainly a recent, you know, looking at like the most recent studies as well. So the next big question that people were very interested in had to do with egg consumption, and whether or not egg consumption is a contributing factor of heart disease. So this question was submitted by Ellen, and she says there's a lot of conflicting data regarding how many eggs or egg yolks are considered safe, and wants to know sort of my opinion after looking at the evidence. So I would say that, you know, generally speaking, egg intake has not been associated with cardiovascular disease risk.

If we look at stroke, there's a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies reporting that, you know, high egg consumption, that would be like more than 7 eggs a week, was actually associated with a significantly lower risk of stroke. Compared to low intake, so less than one egg per week. Coronary heart disease. So so basically, there's some evidence that says there's no association between you know egg intake and coronary heart disease. In however, when you look at individuals with type two diabetes, then two out of the three studies reported an association. And again, this comes down to what I was talking about earlier with the vaccine adverse effects reporting site.

Like, you'll see a correlation between 2 things, but until you start to analyze all the data and then look at the subpopulations, okay, well, how many of those people had type 2 diabetes that had this adverse effect? So how many, you know, how many people that ate eggs had coronary heart disease? Well, oh, it's only the people that, you know, or sorry, not how many people, how many total people. And then you start to see that some people, but then you look you dive deeper, and you're like, oh, the people that do have it, have an increased association, also happen to have type 2 diabetes. So it does, for whatever reason, seem as though some people with type 2 diabetes that eat a lot of eggs may have an increased risk of coronary heart disease.

A meta-analysis of 17 intervention trials, so this is not an association study, this is, in most cases, cause and effect, It's better if there's like a placebo, but it's really hard to do when you're doing something like eggs. So intervention trials, 17 of them, found an increase in total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol compared to the control group. Dietary cholesterol ranged anywhere, I mean, so basically there's an increase, you know, between 3 to 7 sort of units Compared compared to people that don't eat any eggs, and I would say that we know now that dietary cholesterol, so eating an egg, eggs have high cholesterol.

Eating an egg doesn't like eating cholesterol itself doesn't actually affect your cholesterol levels to a significant degree like eating something like saturated fat would, and so you know. I think I think that that's now been disproven, and for the most part, people now know that dietary cholesterol, eating it, something that has high cholesterol in it, the food itself isn't going to necessarily raise your cholesterol or be negative, have an adverse effect on your cholesterol itself. So I think the data really does show for the most part eggs are not going to be are going to increase the risk of heart disease, with the exception of the special population of people with type two diabetes.

For whatever reason, there may be some kind of weird thing going on we don't understand, but you know type two diabetes to some degree is reversible with exercise and dietary treatment and management. And so, you know cutting out the pancakes with syrup would be a start, right? I mean, you know, so maybe maybe eating the eggs with the pancakes and syrup is not good. I could see that, but I I don't think that the eggs itself eggs themselves are bad, and in fact the egg yolk. Is a very good source of dietary choline, which is extremely important for brain development, and there's now been not only observational studies, but there's been intervention studies in pregnant women showing that dietary choline raises the IQ of children, and the converse is true, deficiency lowers the IQ, and so it's really important for brain development, and it's one of the reasons why I was eating eggs every single day during her pregnancy.

Okay, I don't have that much time left. I do wanna do some rapid-fire questions. I typically do these towards the last part of the Q&A because they're fun to do and usually it's, you know, something I can answer relatively quickly. Kylie asks, someone told me I should be cycling zinc instead of taking it every day. Do you have any information that you can share on this? So I don't think that anyone taking a normal RDA dose of zinc, something around, I forgot exactly, like 25 milligrams a day or something, should be worried about having to cycle it at all, obviously, because that's the required amount, daily amount. But people that are taking therapeutic doses.

Oftentimes, like, there are, you know, there are studies that have shown doses in the range of 80 milligrams a day can help lower the severity and duration of some viral infections, including the common cold. Um, but, you know, the problem is, is that taking high doses like that every day, 80 milligrams, um, can lead to copper deficiency. And so, um, For that, you know, one reason, I certainly wouldn't, you know, if, if you knew you were exposed to, to a virus or, um, you know, you had just started to come down with the onset of symptoms, personally what I do is I do take 80 milligrams of zinc and, um, often I take the, the sublingual zinc and, um, and, uh, I only do that for like, you know, 5 days at most.

And most of the time I do it less than that because my, my symptoms resolve pretty quickly. But I would never take 80 milligrams every single day because that could lead to copper insufficiency and potentially deficiency. So please take a look at our topic page on our website, foundmyfitness.com. Click on the topics tab up in the toolbar, should be on the top right-hand side, and a topics page will show up and you'll see zinc. It's one of the popular topics. If you click that page, it's like a 20-page article that we put together, very comprehensive on zinc, and it has all that information on, um, potential adverse effects with, you know, high-dose zinc supplementation. All right, some of the other rapid-fire questions.

Ed and Twilia ask about hypercalcemia, uh, one of the main— being one of the main consequences of vitamin D toxicity, and they're asking about vitamin K2 and whether or not vitamin K2 would, would prevent that. And so, um, let me just start by saying, you know, you can see studies that have been a year long that have analyzed patients that have taken 10,000 IUs of vitamin D a day and have not had hypercalcemia. So it, it can be something that occurs, but it is not common, and The dose of vitamin D that you would have to take and the duration for how many years you would have to do it is still sort of unknown, but it has, um, you know, there have been rare, you know, case reports and things like that showing that it can happen.

And the reason for that, I think, just knowing the mechanism, is because vitamin D increases the absorption of dietary calcium, which is really good. Um, it's like 40% or something. So you're actually absorbing more of that calcium from your food. Uh, and so, and so you don't have to like worry as much about calcium supplementation. And I think probably actually most of the cases of hypercalcemia, um, now that I recall, might actually occur in the presence of supplementation of both calcium and vitamin D, um, extremely high dose vitamin D for a long time. But, um, so it does increase the absorption of calcium and it increases the absorption of phosphorus. which is, um, you know, an essential element that we need as well.

So calcium can form a precipitate in the, the arteries, blood vessels. It can, it can form it quite easily, particularly in the presence of phosphorus, which I just mentioned also is, um, the absorption of it from foods increased with vitamin D. Um, Where vitamin K2 comes into the story is that vitamin K2 is able to activate certain proteins like the matrix Gla protein that transports calcium, so it binds up the calcium after it's activated by vitamin K2 and it takes it to other tissues like bones where you need it, takes it to muscle, um, you know, pretty much all your organs need calcium. Calcium is a signaling molecule that activates a variety of cell pathways important for everything from neurotransmitter synthesis to, you know, our heart beating, just everything, uh, muscle function.

So, so that is, um, one reason why vitamin K2 is important. But interestingly, vitamin K1 has also been shown to do the same thing. Now vitamin K1 is found in dark leafy greens where, um, it's much easier to get vitamin K1 dietary source of it here, at least in the United States, um, versus vitamin K2, which is, you know, higher in foods like that are fermented. So, so the highest food would be something like fermented soybeans, natto from Japan. Some fermented cheeses have, um, modest amounts as well. But vitamin K1, when you have enough of it, in other words, you, you exceed, um, what the daily requirement is, vitamin K1 usually goes to the liver and it activates proteins involved in coagulation, blood clotting.

Once your body has determined that there's enough activation of your coagulation proteins that has occurred because you're getting ample amounts of vitamin K1, vitamin K1 no longer immediately goes to the liver. It actually stays in the bloodstream and does the same thing as vitamin K2. It activates matrix Gla and those proteins that are involved in calcium homeostasis and moving calcium to other tissues. So the moral of the story here is that, um, you know, it's possible also just to get adequate levels of vitamin K1 in addition, um, to, you know, having vitamin K2.

And because vitamin K1 has a tissue-specific specificity, um, in terms of going to the liver first, you know, that's, that's largely why it doesn't activate those proteins like matrix Gla as robustly, because it's most of the time going to the liver, but it can do the same thing. I personally take a vitamin K2 supplement as assurance, you know, insurance. What do you do or take specifically to look after your skin and your hair aside from a nutrient-dense diet, good sleep, and exercise? Okay, those are the main things I would say. Is that I try to get exercise, I try to get good sleep, stay hydrated, and a very nutrient-dense diet. Those are the main things that have really been shown to affect, you know, the health of your skin and hair.

In addition to that, I also take my vitamins, my multivitamin, I take fish oil. You know, my multivitamin has things like pantothenic acid and biotin and You know, pava and all these things, and then I take as well. But my skincare, I do use sunscreen when I go out in the sun. That really does help prevent the UVA and UVB damage that can, you know, accelerate the skin aging process and collagen breakdown and elasticity breakdown and all that yada yada yada stuff. The stuff that I use on my skin is called Cellbone. C-E-L-L-B-O-N-E. And I really like their skincare products. I have no affiliation with them.

And the product I use on my skin for like a serum, which is like my cream that I use because I have pretty sensitive skin, is— it's actually a neutralizer that isn't necessarily meant to be used as a serum, but I use it as a serum. In other words, I put it on my face And my face is like, totally looks like shiny, you know, for like 15 minutes or so before it soaks in. But it has, you know, it has sodium lactate, it has hyaluronic acid, a little bit of willow bark, and it has, you know, some, just some really great ingredients. And I'm telling you, it is like the best thing ever for your skin. It really is amazing. So it's like my favorite thing. Mm-hmm. Jesse, um, oh, sorry, Mako is asking, if a person wanted to track their own blood glucose levels, how would you suggest they get started?

What testing tool did you use before this, the continuous glucose monitor, also known as a CGM, and when and how to use it? So, um, you guys, if you haven't checked out my interview with Dr. Michael Snyder, we do talk about continuous glucose monitors there and So that's, that would be a good episode to listen to. Um, before I had a continuous glucose monitor, many of you guys know I use a Dexcom G6, which is not necessarily available through, um, consumer sites just yet. But, um, before I used that, I used a Precision Xtra finger prick, finger prick. Um, and that was pretty good for, for doing a lot of testing as well. You can get a continuous glucose monitor or CGM from some services like Nutrisense or January AI, which is Michael Snyder's company.

They will, for somewhere around $200 a month, send you a Freestyle Libre CGM, and that is something that you can— I personally like to wear my CGM on a fatty part of my abdominal region because Most people suggest to put it on your arm, the back of your arm. I find that I'm doing way too much with my arms and being a mother, it's just like, I just, there's too much variation that I notice, so I like it on my abdominal area, but you know, other people might like to choose to put it on their arm. So that would be a start, basically, you know, Nutrisense or January AI for the CGMs, and again, I don't have any affiliation with those companies, Mark is asking about cold water immersion and wants to know where I got my cold water tub from and what the brand is.

And so I personally have The Plunge. It's a cold water tub called— made by a group called The Plunge. And I am not affiliated with them, but they did offer me a discount on my plunge, which was nice. They wanted me to get to give it to me and I said no. So I do really like that cold plunge. It's really great. It circulates the cold water. Once in a while we add some hydrogen peroxide, diluted hydrogen peroxide to that. But my husband uses it every single day. He keeps it at 49 degrees Fahrenheit and he uses it every single day for mood-enhancing purposes. But anyways, that's the cold plunge I use. Holly's asking about the name of the serum I've used. It's literally called Neutralizer.

It's called Neutralizer, and if you read the instructions, It's, they market it to put on after you do like a peel, like a glycolytic or lactic acid peel, and you put it on and then you take it off. I do not do that. It is my serum. It's just the neutralizer. Cellbone is the company. And I've been using it now since like 2011. And if they ever like go out of business, I'm gonna have to like reverse engineer it or something. But anyways, It's like the best thing ever. You would not believe, and it's like $9 for a pretty large quantity. I am amazed at some of the prices for some of these face cream products that people just jack up the price so much. So this is super economical. It's the best thing I've ever found. It's like the best ever. Someone just linked it into the, in the chat, so.

Again, I don't use it like they say, it's my serum, I use it twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. Okay, another rapid-fire question. Melissa Bailey asks, hi Rhonda, what are your thoughts on a keto before dinner kind of diet? Would eating a very low-carb diet in the morning extend the benefits of the overnight 12-hour fasts, particularly in regards to ketone production. I haven't heard research discuss this of any kind or discuss this at all. So I think it's a super interesting concept to think about. I think that eating an actual classical ketogenic diet, not just a low-carb diet, something that is high fat, low protein, low carb. A lot of times low carb diets will not be low protein, and if it's not low protein, it can kick you out of ketosis.

Um, so I do think if you eat a real bona fide, like let's say your breakfast is 2 avocados, like that's a lot of fat and very little protein, little carb. Um, I think there, that could extend the benefits pertaining to beta-hydroxybutyrate production, which is a ketone body that has shown to have beneficial effects in and of itself. Um, it's, it's a signaling molecule that has been shown to like improve mitochondrial function, lower reactive oxygen species, which can damage a variety of things inside the cell, including your DNA. So I do think that, that doing that would, um, extend the, the ketosis part in terms of like ketone body production. I don't think that you're going to extend the autophagy and repair and rejuvenation aspect of a fast, which does require no food.

So thanks for pointing it out because I do think it's an interesting concept for a lot of people that are kind of wanting to extend the ketosis part of their fast. And to be honest, I've got a killer 2.5-hour podcast coming out soon with Dr. Mark Mattson, who is the fasting, like, expert. I mean, he is the guy who pretty much— his lab was the start of the 5:2 intermittent fasting, you know, concept. And he is like a wealth of knowledge, and we covered so much ground. So I'm super excited. You guys are really gonna like like this podcast coming out soon. Okay, let me get another rapid-fire question in here. Ben was asking about my latest and greatest pregnancy protocol for a healthy baby.

I would suggest, you know, if you're interested in my opinions, maybe, and you're interested in what I did during my pregnancy, or, you know, things that I've kind of kept up with since since having my son. I have a pregnancy mashup episode available on The Aliquot, which is our members-only podcast. And I think it might be episode 1. If it's not 1, it's like either 1 or 2. But it's like over an hour, maybe an hour and a half long episode that has been basically— we've cut out a variety of these Q&As like I'm doing today where I've pregnancy topics and put them all together in one. I really think that covers a lot of ground with respect to my personal take on, you know, what, what I did and did not do during pregnancy and why I chose to do or not do those things.

Steve McDonald asks about ADHD medications being used as focus drugs by people without ADHD symptoms. To gain a mental edge on short-term tasks, that they're pretty prevalent with high achievers in post-secondary institutions like colleges, et cetera, and universities. So Steve wants to know my take on it. So, you know, things like Adderall, these drugs are, they're amphetamine derivatives, and obviously the most common and well-known is Adderall, which acts similar to amphetamine, but it's less potent and it lasts longer. Learning dependence, you know, obviously instead of learning a healthy study habit, you know, students do become dependent on using these drugs to kind of maintain their academic performance, which is super dangerous. In terms of the drug itself, tolerance happens.

So your body, you know, does start to grow tolerance against these drugs. And basically what that means is that, you know, the next time you use it, a higher dose will be required to get the same effect. And so oftentimes people will actually switch from Adderall to like stronger stimulants, um, once the, once the tolerance builds. And, um, there's also a withdrawal syndrome where people, you know, feel tired and depressed and they have difficulty concentration. So, um, you know, obviously it's not a good thing to do.

And there are, uh, long-term, you know, high-dose, long-term side effects with high-dose Amphetamines, of course, you know, there's, you know, health, permanent health conditions, heart failure and schizophrenia and things like that happen, a variety of other health conditions as well. But even with something like abusing Adderall, there's, you know, very long-term effects as well. I'm trying to go a little bit over time because of the technical blip at the beginning of this. Crowdcast. Another rapid-fire question was from David. David asks, as someone without health insurance, I'm unable to seek a doctor or physician, but I want to be able to track my health.

I realize this kind of situation calls for a preventative approach, So what kind of resources other than wearables would you recommend? So obviously I cannot give medical advice and definitely seek out medical advice from a physician. Personally, I like to take a preventative approach and avoid having to see a physician as much as possible if I can. And, you know, a couple of ways that I like to do that is I like to use a CGM. Um, and, um, but that's kind of expensive. So, uh, using, getting a, investing like $100 and getting a Precision Xtra, you can do a finger prick test and you can do it, you know, you can measure your fasting blood glucose every morning. Uh, you can measure your postprandial blood glucose levels.

Um, I would, I would do, I would, you know, 10 minutes after a meal, 20 minutes after a meal, 30 minutes after a meal. So you want to do it a few times. Um, the other thing I really like is the Wellness FX Performance Package. And, um, it's, it's, it's not cheap, but it's certainly cheaper. It's like $1,000. Um, but it's certainly cheaper than paying, you know, $500 a month for health insurance. So, um, they do a very comprehensive blood panel, all the lipids, you know, small dense LDL. They do a variety of inflammatory biomarkers. You can look it up online. It's the performance package. They measure the omega-3 fatty acids. They measure a variety of hormones. It's just very comprehensive.

And, you know, for someone that really can't afford health insurance, which, boy, that sounds awful because accidents do happen and that would be quite scary. But anyways, you know, doing that twice a year or at the very least once a year would be a start. All right, those are the majority of the rapid-fire questions. I'm just looking at the chat here. Terry asked, does the CGM measure your glucose all day long or just the times you trigger it to report your levels? It measures your, your, your glucose levels all day long. pretty much like every couple of minutes. And most of the CGMs, they'll connect to your smartphones, and then so you can just see your data in, you know, in real time. And so what I do is my Dexcom app connects to my smartphone and it also connects to my Apple Watch.

So I'll set— you can set an alert like, okay, if my postprandial blood glucose goes above 120, which is what I set mine to, Then it'll it'll buzz me or it'll make a noise if my phone is not on silent, and and so like I'll know if I'm eating something and I'm having a pretty elevated glucose response. I'll I'll immediately immediately. It's really great, and it again it's like I've learned so many things, and to be honest, the most recent thing that I learned that was super interesting, and I really I'm going to dive into this before.

Making a statement because maybe there's something weird going on, but alcohol, if I drink alcohol like a beer, just a beer, and it doesn't have to be like a high percentage of alcohol, and then I eat something that otherwise would set off my glucose response, like a piece of cake, it blunts my glucose response dramatically, and I'm not sure, I've done it like, I've done it at least, 7 or 8 times and I've tested it and I tested it and tested and tested it. So, um, I'm not, you know, a devil's advocate would say, oh, your CGM is just malfunctioning or something from the alcohol, but I don't think that's the case. So, um, I'm not sure. I'm, I'm, I'm, it's to be determined. I'm super interested in it and I'm sure it would go viral if I made a video on it, but I'm not willing to go there yet.

So I've definitely learned some really interesting things from my CGM. So I mentioned I do have a Dexcom G6. That particular brand of CGMs, which is a little bit higher caliber than the Freestyle Libre, will eventually be available to consumers from the company levels, who I'm not affiliated with, although they have reached out to me several times, they currently are in a beta testing version. So when they do become available, people will be able to use their physician network to get a prescription for the Dexcom G6, and it will likely be more expensive than what the Freestyle Libre is. I mentioned most of these companies are about $200 a month, and So that'll likely be a little more than that because it is a more expensive, you know, product.

But to be honest, you know, you can learn a lot of data. Like, I've been wearing mine for several years now, and I mostly am addicted to it. But I think that people on a budget could, you know, use a CGM for a few months, like a couple of months even in some cases, if you really go hard on your experimentation. And learn a lot from it and not just have not have to wear it all the time. Basically, like I know, for example, I'm not going to eat grapes and I'm not going to eat white rice because I mean it'll send my blood glucose levels through the roof like an insane amount. Like more than like you know if I were to eat like just two meals, just a little bit of rice, white rice or grapes really does that to me. So um.

you know, you definitely learn a lot from, from, from, from the data that you don't have to necessarily wear it for years and years. And Terry, Terry's asking, so I personally— Terry's asking, why do you have to put the CGM on your arm and why can't you put on your stomach? I personally, it has to be on a fatty part of the tissue, like a fatty part of your body. It needs fatty tissue. I put it like right below my my pants line and it's in my, like a fatty part of my abdominal region. I really like it there. I do it on the left side because when I carry my son, I always carry him on the right side.

And I've not had any disturbances or weird, you know, like with my arm I will bump things, you know, like stuff like that will send the mod, like the level, like data will just go all over the place. So personally, I, uh, I like it on my abdominal region, a fatty part. So, you know, honestly, you kind of just have to, to, to go with what works best for you. And, um, all like Freestyle Libre will recommend putting it on your arm. I don't even think they mentioned the abdominal region, but, um, that's where I've worn mine for years and years. By the way, um, with my whole beer and carbs thing, like, it's not— this isn't something— I don't like drink beer all the time.

It was like my husband usually like every year he gets me this like cake that's like a flourless cake and the, the, the frosting is made with stevia and he gets it from this company, but you have to like reach out to them ahead of time to get it and he didn't do that and so he just like went to the local bakery and got like a cake. It wasn't super sweet, but, um, but he got the cake. And, and so I was like, I got a slice of it and, you know, we had had a barbecue and pool party and stuff. And so I had had a beer and, um, I was waiting for my blood glucose to go off and I was like, it wasn't even good. It wasn't even going up to a level that a meal would take it to. Like if I were to go out to a restaurant and eat it, you know. And I was very confused.

So of course the next day I drank a beer and tested it again and it did it again. And I was like, well, dang, I'm going to have to drink a beer and try this again because I at least need an N of 3. And it worked again. And then of course at that point I was like, okay, I got to start testing other like refined sugar things. And, or even I noticed if I add champagne to an orange juice, we have, we have a couple of orange trees, and so if I'll make fresh-squeezed orange juice and I drink that, like, my blood glucose levels will go through the roof, but if I add champagne to that, totally blunts the response. So anyways, I don't know what's going on there, and, you know, it could, it very well could just be, oh, my Dexcom's malfunctioning with alcohol, right?

Simple as that, or something could be going on there, don't know. So, all right everyone, we could go on and on. This is fun. I really enjoy doing these Crowdcasts every single month. And next, there were a lot of really great questions this month that I didn't get a chance to get to because I did such a deep dive on COVID-19 related topics. So I will be circling back to these questions because I've even already answered them. So next month I'm going to start off with some of the questions that I did not address this time around. And you guys are awesome. So thank you so much for the support. Thank you so much for all the great questions. I every single month learn something new from, you know, doing some research on the questions, and that really keeps it exciting for me.

For those of you that want a replay of this episode or any of the episodes, please make sure you have downloaded the private podcast feed, also known as the Aliquot, which you can do on your members dashboard if you go to foundmyfitness.com. Dashboard, you should be able to find that. And if you haven't already, you're missing out. I release an aliquot almost every week. Typically the aliquots are clips from our longer interview series where I give a little more added information on top of the, on top of the clip. And then also we, we release our Q&As there, like replays of this if you want to listen to it. You can also wait for the email we will send out where we give a link to the replay. We will post it onto YouTube.

Please, please do not take these Crowdcast videos and repost them, particularly this one that's covering the vaccines. I did have someone do that for a previous Crowdcast Q&A where I talked about vaccines, and, you know, oftentimes I'll say things off the cuff. And, um, it's not meant to be a public defense against or for something. And so, uh, it's really something that I just sort of feel comfortable talking about with my members. And so I asked them to take it down and thankfully they did. Um, they had posted it to some like Facebook group where all these people were, you know, saying all this stuff that was really unscientific.

But, um, I do think I will probably send out an email to my newsletter list and perhaps even do a video covering some of the COVID-19 material that we discussed today because I think it's important enough. But let me do that. Don't, don't do it for me. Thank you. And one last thing for those of you that want a little more of a deep dive. Some of you here today I see are part of my Google Hangout crew. We, we meet the first Sunday of every month. This month it's been delayed a week because of the holiday weekend, but we dive a little bit deeper like this. But, um, it's a discussion, it's a Google Hangout, so I get to see you, you get to see me, and we, we go back and forth and have discussions about things.

And then I'm— we're going to have a pretty interesting discussion tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to that as well. Um, if you want to look into becoming that sort of member, you can look into that. On the, the how to becoming a member benefit page on foundmyfitness.com. Thank you so much everyone, and the replay should be available I would say next week. So typically we like to do a timeline where we, you know, document the time points so people can skip to sections they want instead of having to listen to an hour and a half, you know, long episode, or 2-hour episode in this case, almost 2 hours.

So Within this week we'll be sending that out and it'll, it'll also be on the Aliquot also within a week so you guys can re-listen to your favorite parts or parts that you missed or people that aren't here can listen to it as well. So thank you, thank you, thank you for everyone, thank you for all your support, all your understanding, and thank you for letting me talk about topics that are very, you know, very hot topics and very— people have a lot of opinions on. And, um, thank you for being understanding and not too judgmental on me for that. I appreciate it. Talk to you guys next month.