03/24/2020
Hello everyone,
We want to first thank you for your patience with us during this unfortunate time. We have been wanting to send you this message, but wanted to make sure we had a good understanding in order to relay you proper information. Our hearts and prayers are with everyone being impacted in every way - physically, mentally and emotionally. We hope this message can serve to offer some support.
First off, right now our top priority is to do our part in not adding to community spread of the viral outbreak. Please follow CDC guidelines. As an office we are only able to do consultations over the phone until further notice. If you would like to speak to us for support in any way, as well as for prescription initiation and refill, we are happy to schedule a phone consultation. Please call our office and leave a message if we are unable to pick up.
We are taking as much precaution as we can in order to keep our clinic a safe place - surfaces and door handles of every room are sanitized before and after every patient, our HealthPro IQAir is on high volume throughout the day, and we are only allowing one patient in the IV room at a time while keeping the back door open as much as possible. We are also asking all of our patients to please wear your own mask and gloves or the ones we provide at all times while in our office, and practice social distancing as best as possible in our office.
If you have any symptoms of illness, please do not come in to our office. Let us speak to you over the phone for home care guidance.
What we are still hearing from patients is that many are not understanding that this virus can be spread for up to two weeks before someone actually shows symptoms. It is of utmost important to follow social distancing, and during needed errands you do your very best to protect your respiratory tract and not share space with others until the threat of this outbreak calms down. This is most important for not spreading this to our population at most risk of complications. You can have and spread this virus to others even if you feel perfectly healthy.
It is also of utmost important to practice what we call viral 'pre-conditioning'. There are things you can do to support your immune system in decreasing potential viral symptoms and even preventing them from ever happening. Viruses are not actual living things, but envelopes of genetic material. We can take action to protect us, and the following list will be dedicated to giving you information to support yourself and your family. All of the following is a compilation of the most important recommendations by leaders in our field:
The Basics
Our immune system need the basic fundamentals of health in order to thrive and keep you healthy. A simple list of things you should do your best in accomplishing every day for yourself include:
- Sleep at the very least 7 hours per night (do your best our parents with small children:)
- Hydrate yourself with spring or purified water, 2-4 quarts depending on your size and activity level
- Consume a high nutrient, anti-inflammatory, low-allergen diet as best as possible. Avoiding processed sugar is so important for your immune system, and practicing at least a 12-14 hour fast between dinner and breakfast seems to be a great idea for immune health. Chew your food well, and attempt to eat in ways to enhance digestion and absorption. Consume fermented foods if possible to support healthy and diverse intestinal flora.
- Do your best to still get healthy movement, fresh air, practice deep breathing throughout the day, and cultivate love and happiness with whatever your situation in order to care for your nervous system
- Proper hygiene and isolation is extremely important. Washing your hands with soap for twenty seconds is the accepted amount, and we recommend making sure to get the soap into all areas of your hands including your fingertips and nails. Heat also seems to denature the viral envelope at 135F for 15 minutes. If you have a home sauna it may be a good idea to sit inside for 15 minutes after returning from necessary outside activity, or at least taking a hot soapy shower.
Foundational Nutrients and herbs for the next few months :
We recommend taking the following consistently, and the products mentioned can be found be searching the Product Catalog when logging in to your Fullscript account (https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/puretyclinic). We know a lot of these nutrients are on heavy backorder, so we tried to list a couple of products which seem to be in stock. We prefer to have a short phone consult with our established patients to make sure you are taking the right doses for yourself and your family. The following lists contain general recommendations - everyone varies with the dose and nutrient/herb best for them given their condition;
- Vitamin C in 3-4 doses to increasing bowel tolerance per day. Vitamin C modulates the immune system and has great anti-viral properties. We mostly recommend vitamin C from food, the foods highest in vitamin C we know of are Acerola Cherry and Camu Camu Berry. You can order the organic powders of these fruits from Amazon.com, and they have seen to be in stock at local health food stores as well. 1 serving of each of those powders provides ~800mg of whole food vitamin C which is fantastic.
NAC – N-Acetyl Cysteine is a mucolytic to help keep our lungs clear, and also supports the production of glutathione which is our master antioxidant and important liver detoxifier. Glutathione also has anti-viral activity.
Zinc - Eating food before and after taking zinc is important or else zinc will stick to your stomach lining and cause nausea. Zinc helps slow viral replication, and so it is so important to boost your stores right now. When you are dealing with a viral infection, your zinc can become very depleted. We recommend Trace Minerals Complex by Seeking Health one capsules twice per day which will provide you the proper dose of zinc, selenium, and other important minerals.
Selenium - provides helpful anti-viral protection
Vitamin A - as a retinoid NOT a carotenoid is the type for immune strength. Small doses are very safe and helpful, and even more may be taken depending on the individual. If you experience any viral symptoms, highly increasing your vitamin A intake for a few days can be very helpful but please speak to us before doing so. In pregnancy you can not take more than 10,000 IU per day. We recommend using Vitamin A Mulsion by Professional Formulas.
Vitamin D3 - also around 10,000 IU per day is important right now depending on the person, ideally taking it with K2. Vitamin D helps to increase Defensin proteins in the upper respiratory tract, protecting you from viral latching. We like K Force by Ortho Molecular or D3 10,000 + K2 by Metagenics among many others.
Herbs - Certain herbs are immune stimulating, which can be very helpful, or may be aggravating for some if they have an auto-immune condition. Elderberry (Sambucus) is generally safe and supportive of the immune system as well as Astragalus. Echinacea is also immune stimulating. Oregano oil is a great option for anti-microbial support. Right now there is a lot of discussion going around that herbs may over stimulate our immune system and lead to the viral cytokine storm. We don’t agree that this is possible, but if you are concerned then just focus on the vitamins and minerals.
Zinc Ionophores
Zinc has strong anti-viral activity, but it is difficult to get into our cells. Zinc ionophores help to bring zinc into our cells. There are some natural zinc ionophores, some we recommend you take, and others we prefer to speak with you before you take:
- Molybdenum
- Quercetin
- Cinchona bark - this is the plant which Hydroxychloroquine is derived from, the medication for which our government has high hopes of using against Covid19. We are very encouraged by this positive small French trial using hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin - https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Hydroxychloroquine_final_DOI_IJAA.pdf.
Preventive IV Treatments
There are very encouraging results from China using high dose vitamin C infusions for hospitalized patients with Covid19. An excellent webinar explaining these ideas can be viewed here - https://www.consultdranderson.com/
Oxidative therapies also have strong empirical evidence of efficacy. IV ozone has strong anti-viral properties and helps greatly in pre-conditioning the immune system. Our friend Dr Rowen just published this article (https://clinmedjournals.org/articles/jide/journal-of-infectious-diseases-and-epidemiology-jide-6-113.php?jid=jide) explaining why ozone may be a remedy for Corona Virus. Re**al insufflation of ozone if available is also a great idea.
Lastly, MSC stem cells were used in a small trial in China in hospitalized patients with very positive results, as well as MSC stem cell exosomes were just used on a hospitalized patient in a New Jersey hospital and it seems this patient is improving. These are exciting and interesting treatments.
At home added care
A home treatment we believe can be life-saving is nebulized hydrogen peroxide. We recommend you have a nebulizer at home as a preventative, especially now since it is so difficult to receive actual medical care while experiencing symptoms unless you need to be hospitalized. A 100ml saline bag with an added 5 cc of compounded 3% hydrogen peroxide has been traditionally prepared. Many have nebulized 3 cc 4-6 times per day to greatly help knock out the flu very quickly as it helps to damage virally damaged lung cells while our healthy cells are not bothered. Obviously this should be prepared and done under medical supervision. Another supportive option is to purchase the Quinton Hypertonic Seawater which can be consumed by mouth and nebulized as a traditional anti-microbial support.
Final note of positivity:
We have heard from a colleague that one elderly resident of the hard-hit nursing home in Kirkland survived the outbreak with little to no symptoms. One difference in this particular resident was that he was taking immune supportive herbs and nutrients from his grandchild, a naturopathic student. This shows just how important simply implementing the Foundational nutrients and herbs we listen above, let alone anything else may be able to make a huge difference in how your system can respond to this virus. We are hopeful of this.
We are dedicated to supporting you through this outbreak in any way we safely may be able to. Our hearts are with you and your family and may we get through this as swiftly as possible,
Dr Dena and Jonathan Birch
