Peter Lederman in Second Bout With COVID-19

Peter,
Glad you are improving.  I am an integrative MD who is aware of conventional wisdom as well as nutritional/natural modes of healing.  Ignored by the big money medical system is the foremost role of vitamin D in suppressing inflammation and the severe cytokine storm of serious covid illness.  Vitamin D 25 hydroxy blood levels should be maintained over 50 ng/ml for a protective benefit.  Most of my patients and I require 5000 IU (125 mcg) of vitamin D3 daily to maintain these levels.  If they have not been taking any vitamins, their levels are usually way below 20, posing greatly increased risks for any infection and many cancers.  In urgent situations, I advise 20,000 IU daily for 1 week, then maintenance of 5000 IU daily.  Vitamin D3 is very cheap, from any vitamin store, OTC from pharmacies.  At Costco, a bottle of Nature's Bounty 400 doses of 5000 IU is only about $16 retail, often on sale for $12.  For over a year supply, dirt cheap.

I am now 68.  In late March 2020 I had a mild covid illness, probably due to my healthy diet, slender body (6 feet, 160 lbs), and excellent vitamin D levels for the past 20 years.  Ten months after my mild covid illness, I still had the natural covid antibodies.  

lewm,
Dr. John Cannell founded the Vitamin D Council to bring awareness of D's benefits for numerous conditions.  Unfortunately for covid, the public has been demoralized into thinking that nothing can be done except take vaccines, steroids, anticoagulants.  The reference norms of D25OH at 30-100 ng/ml miss the concept of what is optimal/therapeutic, which is 50-80.  When I was sick last year, I also used Ester C 1000 mg every 2 hrs while awake, NAC (N acetyl cysteine) 600 mg 3x/day to increase glutathione levels.  I made slow progress, but when I got Quicksilver Scientific's liposomal vit C and glutathione which are almost as good as intravenous forms, I made much more rapid improvement.  My patients and I who have done this KNOW that it works, unlike assertions of flawed "controlled" studies in journals, such as the recent JAMA article.  I suggest opening a professional account with Quicksilver, which will also give access to webinars by the brilliant chief scientist, Christopher Shade, PhD.

There is a long history of high dose intravenous vit C for many infectious illnesses.  Thankfully, Northshore University Hospital in NY started IV vitamin C 1.5 gm every 6 hours early last year for covid.  The Vitamin C book by Thomas Levy, MD, JD is useful.

Surviving covid is the first hurdle.  Preventing long term sequelae is best accomplished with a holistic, nutritional approach that complements usual medical therapy.  I know the medical/dental practice, Whole Body Medicine in Fairfield, Conn which is near Peter.  I had my mercury dental fillings removed in 2004 by the founder, Dr. Mark Breiner.  His son, Dr. Adam Breiner is a holistic D.O.  Dr. David Brady in the practice is a renowned nutritionist.

mijostyn,
 
As an MD, I totally agree with your paragraph,  "In my experience as a primary care provider the worst reactions to the vaccines are occurring in people who have already had the disease. I have already had over 300 cases in my practice so I think this opinion is a little better than anecdotal. I suggest that low risk individuals who have had the disease do not get vaccinated. The drive to get as many people vaccinated as possible is highly suspect. Trusting the pharmaceutical industry for advice in this regard is quite frankly, dangerous."

It is also possible that Peter experienced the phenomenon called "antibody dependent enhancement," aka "pathogenic priming," which is a parallel explanation of your 1st sentence.  This occurs when a neutralizing antibody to an incoming virus may instead act as a binding antibody.  The neutralizing antibody is desirable, but the binding antibody actually makes the virus more able to infect cells.  There is a good review of this on mercola.com on 4/19/21.  There are 196 references on this--many full texts.  It is speculative whether animal trials documenting this for vaccines in the prior SARS covid 1 and MERS will be applicable to the present covid 2 virus and variants.

glupson,

Yes, "do not put all your eggs in one basket."  The conventional pharmaceutical approach is to design magic bullets that target a particular receptor, which is equivalent to all the eggs in 1 basket.  Vitamin D is the most important nutraceutical, but other dietary and lifestyle habits also contribute to better health outcomes.

I don't want to convert this thread into extended medical discussions when the purpose is to wish Peter well and help in his recovery.  With audio, there is no single magic bullet to audio bliss.  Still, I rate the speaker as most important, closely followed by the cartridge in a compatible arm and turntable, playing a great recording.  The chain of audio components is analogous to an integrative medical approach of nutritional optimization plus drugs when necessary.

lewm,
Thanks for your input.  In brief, let me know what you think after reading mercola.com and those 196 references included in the 4/19/21 analysis.  There are many articles on mercola.com on related subjects.  ADE was demonstrated in ferrets after 100% deaths upon exposure to the SARS cov1 wild virus after a candidate cov1 vaccine.  Human use of the vaccine was not approved at that time.

To be honest and humble, there is not one physician or scientist who understands enough about this cov2 virus/variants/vaccines.  There is a lot to learn, most importantly after time has passed.  As an aside, I knew the renowned endocrinologist from Tufts, Dr. Andre Guay who was one of my mentors about the benefits of testosterone treatment.  There was a flawed VA study in 2013 reported in JAMA that claimed harm from testo treatment.  This was at odds with many prior studies and nearly 100 years of experience documenting benefits of treatment.  Andre went to the FDA to try to get them to remove the black box warning about testo.  He was so upset about the lack of understanding of the science from so-called "experts" at the FDA.  The truth is that INAPPROPRIATE dosing of testo is harmful in the long run, but widespread use of supposedly safe OTC drugs like ibuprofen has killed many people quickly from GI bleeding.  A few months later, I read an article co-authored by Andre, with a footnote stating that he had died.  When I saw him a few months before that, he seemed healthy and enjoying his family life at the age of 73.  I believe that he was so distraught at the failure of the medical establishment to be open minded, that this contributed to his death.

Many studies are artificial and flawed, which is why long term experience and study by clinicians is most important for any medical intervention.  These vaccines have only been granted emergency authorization, and full approval after much more experience won't be for a while.  Even so, I have seen many drugs withdrawn long after approval when subtle long term effects have been seen that could not have been known when approvals were granted.

Mijostyn?