It is Time to get back to Health

So I have been getting the same question from a lot of our patients when the come into the office…  What is your opinion on all this?  That is a loaded question that can take hours of discussion so I will try to sum it up in some very important points from a Holistic Health Care perspective not a Disease care Medical view point.

The first fact your need to realize is that this virus has been around in the US and the world longer than we have been lead to think.  According to an article in the NY times “Hidden Outbreaks Spread Through U.S. Cities far Earlier Than Americans Knew, Estimates Say” by Benedict Carey and James Glanz  “By the time NY City confirmed its first on March 1st 2020, thousands were already silently infected through the city.”  According to Northwestern University who created a model of how the disease spread so fast, they estimated that instead of 23 cases that were confirmed on March 1st in five major cities, there were more like 28,000 cases in those cities.   “Unseen carriers of the disease, many of them with mild symptoms or none at all”  Here is  my point.  The common cold is a virus.  In an example, if there are 10 people in a room and one person has a cold and sneezes or coughs, only 1 or 2 other people may come down with a cold of those two one may be very mild and the other may be worse and the rest could express no symptoms at all but still have been in contact with the virus.  We have only been testing the one person who has the protocol of all the symptoms of the virus, and only if they have a fever.   What about the other 10 people?  Fortunately with the common cold (Influenza) it has been around for a long time so our bodies have antibodies and if you are healthy its not a big deal.  I feel if we could have massive antibody testing instead of just testing for the virus, we would find that there are millions who are already immune to the COVID-19 virus.  . This is not the first time we have had pandemics with viruses some similar to the Covid-19 and it will not be the last.  Therefore the death rate of those who have been in contact with the virus as way less than what the media is telling us because they are only using confirmed cases who are the people already expressing symptoms to be tested.  But if you take into consideration all those who may have already been exposed with no symptoms, it all seems much less scary!
Initially, all the data we had was based on hypothesis.  The Corona virus has been around since the 70’s however this is a mutation that seems to be more easily spread.  Now that we have been doing testing and seeing what the death rate is the real data is much less than what was originally predicted.  According to Dr. Erickson a California doctor and immunologist and microbiologist, he gives the new facts on COVID 19 and states that it is similar in death rate to the flu.  The flu even with a vaccine causes anywhere from 37,000 to 60,000 deaths per year.  Yet we do not have a country shutting down over it  We do not have blatant inconsideration of our constitutional rights and we do not have loss of jobs because of it.  He extrapolates based on the current data and is showing that there are millions of cases and a small amount of deaths ranging from .01% to .005% of the population.  25% of population has it with no symptoms.  96% who have tested positive will recover with no complications.  Of the 4% left who had complications 90% of them had co-morbidity (meaning they had other very serious diseases). You can check out his video on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr5aZlpPzqU
So why are we quarantining healthy people when for thousands of years the world has only quarantined the sick? What about all the collateral damage it is creating?  This is the first time in all pandemics for thousands of years that we are making everyone suffer for a few who are sick.  Why is the world reacting in this way?  For that I do not have an answer.  However I do understand how the immune system works.  We need germs, we need bacteria and we need viruses to survive.  Babies build their antibodies by putting things in their mouth.   A handshake is important to share germs so the immune system will recognize the germ if it becomes a threat.  If we continue to isolate and not go outside and not interact with other humans, our immune system will begin to shut down and produce less antibodies because it sees no threat.  We can not go on living in a plastic bubble as it will only complicate things more.  I do not think that staying home and self isolation is the answer unless you have tested positive.  We actually need herd immunity.  This is where 70-90% of the population has the antibodies to create immunity to a bacteria or virus.  The only way to create herd immunity is expose 70-90% of the population to the threat not isolate them from the threat.
As many of you may have heard its an overactive immune system causing the complications to the virus.  This is also know as the cytokine storm…  There are basically four path choices to destroy a virus.  The best is:   (TH1) produces “killer T Cells to destroy the cells infected with the virus and thus killing the virus itself.  (TH2)  very important because it produces antibodies from B lymphocytes (a white blood cell) to sweep up the free viruses in the body who have not yet attached to a cell and destroy them.  Sounds like an efficient and perfect system to get rid of a virus.  The problem comes ins when when the virus targets cytokines that changes how the immune system reacts targeting other pathways that are much less efficient (such as TH 17) and more destructive to the body.  It has shown that treating with immuno-suppressants and  NSAIDS like Advil, Motrin, Allieve, Tylenol etc.  suppress the immune system and in some studies may even further push the wrong immune system to react, (Don Bellgrau PHD Immunology, Lynn Toohey PHD nutrition, Cytokine Storm -An over-active immune response or the unfortunate result of the wrong immune pathyway?”)  I often tell many patients when they say the are taking NSAIDs for pain to be careful there are sooo many other effects it has on your body your digestion and immune system that can cause other complications. There are many foods and herbs that can help balance the immune system and will help the proper immune response.  You can ask me next time you are in the office.
The third biggest point that I want to make is that almost all pandemics have originally started in animals and have been transferred to humans by the consumption of meat. Remember the bird flu (chicken) the swine flu (pork) and now the Corona Virus (bats).  Now I am not one who tells people not to eat meat.   However, I am in discord as to how we raise and slaughter 90% of the meat that is produced in our country with Factory farms.  The drive to produce millions of pounds of meat for our carnivorous appetites in the US and to drive down costs has lead to us producing factory farms. What was one of the first items to go out in the grocery stores? (CHICKEN) Thousands of cows, chickens and pigs packed into very small spaces having to literally stand in their own feces and urine with no space to move, breathing highly toxic ammonia filled air and fed unhealthy corn and other by products along with high doses of antibiotics (FDA says 70 to 80% of all antibiotics produced are given to live stock) because they are all sick. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 85% of the worlds feces is produced by domesticated animals for our consumption however there are no sanitation or septic systems to process this waste contaminating our earth and waters.  We are preaching social distancing for humans however these animals do not have a chance to be six feet apart as sometimes they only have inches to move.  The antibiotics they are fed help to limit bacterial infections however many bacteria’s are now antibiotic resistant and they do nothing for viral infections.  Thus the spread of viruses in the meats we eat.  Yes cooking will kill the virus however handling the raw meat before hand can spread it all over the counter onto the fridge handle onto utensil etc.  We are now seeing major meat companies such as Smithfield, Tyson, Hatfield, etc closing their doors to their plants due to COVID 19 outbreatks.   We as Americans need to get back to a primarily 80 to 90% plant based diet and not rely on meat so heavily.  You will get plenty of Amino Acids from plants (the building blocks for protein) along with many other nutrients, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.  Animal protein has to be broken down to Amino Acids in order to be used in the body anyway. 
DO NOT PANIC!  Remember FEAR DRIVES STRESS! It is even more important for you to take care of you health now, reduce your stress.  I am still taking appointments for lifestyle and nutritional counseling on face time.  Many are taking advantage of the extra time I have now to learn more about what they can do to help themselves.  
 These are a few of my thoughts on all this and some of the many solutions that we need to start to make to have a new normal.  We can not keep going at the stress level and keep disregarding our health and what we are doing to our earth.  We need to take back our health and be responsible for the body we were given with proper chiropractic care, nutrition, exercise, meditation, breathing, decrease stress and get proper sleep.  I am here to help guide and coach you to be the best and healthiest you!!!!
Thank you for your time in reading my thoughts and I hope they may bring some peace and clarity to you…
Dr. Eric

Chiropractor Hamilton NJ