Expert Summary: 20 Action Steps to Implement Before Considering (or even mentioning) Nutritional Intervention for Infectious Disease Pandemics 

 

DrV, 3 Apr 2020

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Begin by implementing this list of immediately available actions:

1. Disrupt normal life for hundreds of millions of people, 

2. Crash international economies,

3. Put millions of people out of work, knowing that they have no financial reserve and knowing that their health insurance is tied to their work,

4. Put millions of businesses into bankruptcy (especially small businesses, while larger monopolies and conglomerates gain additional hegemony and benefit from tax-funded bailouts), 

5. Accept national and international healthcare policy influence from college dropouts with zero training in anything related to Immunology or Microbiology or Public Health, 

6. Ignore the fact that billionaire drug advocates and politicians are profiting by tens of millions of dollars by promoting a panic-inducing narrative

7. Allow politicians to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars from drug companies to write laws that mandate the medicalization of healthy people for diseases they do not have

8. Use tests that give false-positive results to inflate the numbers to fuel the fear campaigns and to “justify” forced vaccination, 

9. Increase surveillance and face recognition, 

10. Deny routine and preventive healthcare for people in need, 

11. Make behind-the-scenes transfers of trillions of dollars, 

12. Block international travel,

13. Block intranational travel,

14. Block local travel: Force millions of people to live in isolation with penalty of fines and prison if they leave their homes to go for a walk, make a local purchase, or get some fresh air and sunshine,

15. Embed false narratives into news cycles, with recycled images from different hospitals to amplify the panic,

16. Ban books written by experts on the use of evidence-based nutrition in the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases

17. Ensure that medical physicians are completely untrained in Nutrition and even the basics of diet and macronutrient consumption, then sit back and watch as official guidelines promote obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease (J Am Coll Nutr 2008 Apr and Am J Med 2017 Nov)

18. Publish bogus research and fake "editorials" in major headline-making medical journals advocating simplistic paradigms that misrepresent disease pathophysiology and which inflate the illusion of drug efficacy

19. Discourage consideration and skillful use of Nutritional interventions for disease prevention; print nonsensical narratives and meandering opinions in major national publications so that the population has no idea what to think or how to act effectively

20. Publish articles stating "Vitamins and Supplements Are a Waste of Money" (Medscape July 09, 2019) even when we know that the science shows the opposite, especially in the treatment of infectious diseases

 

Suggestions for later consideration:

1. Appreciate that immune suppression and increased vulnerability to infection is a common manifestation of many nutritional deficiencies, especially deficiencies of protein (including protein-energy malnutrition and situational deficiency of sulfur-containing amino acids such as cysteine), vitamin A, vitamin D, zinc, and selenium.

2. Realize that 15% of the global population is deficient in selenium, thereby putting them at risk for infectious diseases. Note that selenium deficiency increases viral mutations thereby converting benign viruses into more aggressive infections. Note that the coupling of immunosuppression with increased viral mutagenesis is a "perfect storm" for viral infection pandemics.

3. Realize that 30% of the global population, including those in industrialized/developed nations, have deficient zinc intake, thereby putting them at increased risk for inflammatory diseases and infectious diseases. Note that the combination of "more inflammation" and "more infections" creates a "perfect storm" for the "cytokine storm" that is a life-threatening consequence of unmitigated viral infections.

4. Realize that 40-80% of the population, especially persons who are elderly, obese, hypertensive, diabetic, and institutionalized, have vitamin D deficiency. See that vitamin D deficiency increases each and every of the four main components of a viral infection by 1) reducing barrier defenses, thereby allowing viruses to more easily enter into and infect cells, 2) increasing viral replication, by mechanisms including disinhibition of nuclear factor kappa-beta, 3) suppressing innate and humoral immune responses, 4) impairing cellular and systemic function and recovery from infectious and inflammatory insults.

 

Alex Kennerly Vasquez DO ND DC (USA), Fellow of the American College of Nutrition (FACN), Overseas Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine: An award-winning clinician-scholar and founding Program Director of the world's first fully-accredited university-based graduate program in Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine, Dr Alex Vasquez is recognized internationally for his high intellectual and academic standards and for his expertise spanning and interconnecting many topics in medicine and nutrition. Dr Vasquez holds three doctoral degrees as a graduate of University of Western States (Doctor of Chiropractic, 1996), Bastyr University (Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine, 1999), and University of North Texas Health Science Center, Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine (Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, 2010). Dr Vasquez has completed hundreds of hours of post-graduate and continuing education (certifications) in subjects including Obstetrics, Pediatrics, Basic and Advanced Disaster Life Support, Nutrition and Functional Medicine; while in the final year of medical school, Dr Vasquez completed a Pre-Doctoral Research Fellowship in Complementary and Alternative Medicine Research hosted by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr Vasquez is the author of many textbooks, including Integrative Orthopedics (2004, 2007 2012), Functional Medicine Rheumatology (Third Edition, 2014), Musculoskeletal Pain: Expanded Clinical Strategies (commissioned and published by Institute for Functional Medicine, 2008), Chiropractic and Naturopathic Mastery of Common Clinical Disorders (2009), Integrative Medicine and Functional Medicine for Chronic Hypertension (2011), Brain Inflammation in Migraine and Fibromyalgia (2016), Mitochondrial Nutrition and Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress in Primary Care, 2nd Edition (2014), Antiviral Strategies and Immune Nutrition (2014), Mastering mTOR (2015), Autism, Dysbiosis, and the Gut-Brain Axis (2017) and the 1200-page Inflammation Mastery 4th Edition (2016) also published as a two-volume set titled Textbook of Clinical Nutrition and Functional Medicine. "DrV" has also written approximately 100 letters and articles for professional magazines and medical journals such as TheLancet.com, British Medical Journal (BMJ: online x3, print x1), Annals of Pharmacotherapy, Nutritional Perspectives (x11), Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics (JMPT), Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Original Internist, Integrative Medicine (x4), Holistic Primary Care, Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine (x2), Journal of the American Osteopathic Association (JAOA), Dynamic Chiropractic (x3), Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, Current Asthma and Allergy Reports, Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice, Nature Reviews Rheumatology, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, and Arthritis & Rheumatism—Official Journal of the American College of Rheumatology. Dr Vasquez lectures internationally to healthcare professionals and has a consulting practice and service for doctors and patients. DrV has served as a consultant, product designer, writer and lecturer for Biotics Research Corporation since 2004. Having served on the Review Boards for Journal of Pain Research, Autoimmune Diseases, PLOS One, Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, Neuropeptides, International Journal of Clinical Medicine, Journal of Inflammation Research, BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine (all PubMed/Medline indexed), Integrated Blood Pressure Control, Journal of Biological Physics and Chemistry, and Journal of Naturopathic Medicine and as the founding Editor of Naturopathy Digest, Dr Vasquez has recently served as Editor (2013-present) of International Journal of Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine and Editor (2018-2019) of Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine.

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