Cutting Through the COVID-19 Hype: Evidence-Based Nutrient and Herbal Treatment of Viral Infections
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Cutting through the COVID-19 hype: Evidence-based nutrient and herbal treatment of viral infections. There is a lot of information going around about what to take to prevent or treat COVID-19. The first thing to understand about any information currently being circulated is that no one knows yet. This is a new virus and there hasn’t been enough time to test it against therapies, conventional or otherwise. That is a huge part of why it has caused so much chaos.
What we can do for now is base our recommendations on the best science of what treatments interfere with similar viral infections. How does COVID-19 harm us? First, it is important to remember that being infected is not a death sentence. Most will experience mild to moderate flu-like symptoms and recover.
But for patients who are severely affected, the majority of whom are over 65 years old (a greater risk factor is being >80) and have at least one pre-existing condition, COVID-19 can cause permanent respiratory injury or even death. And understanding how is important in focusing our preventative and treatment strategies. COVID-19 can stimulate our immune system to mount a severe inflammatory response in susceptible people. Our own immune system’s inflammatory response is what makes us so sick, can lead to permanent damage to the lungs or even death.
This leads us to three main strategies for dealing with COVID-19 infections. While limiting the spread of the infection through social distancing and rigorous sanitation is the first and most important tactic, we must also find better treatments, both to strengthen susceptible populations against infection and better treat those who are already infected.
These three strategies are:
Prevent or stop the virus from replicating in the body either directly or indirectly with antiviral medications, herbs and/or nutrients.
Strengthen and support the part of the immune system that allows us to contain the virus.
Limit inflammation from the immune system stimulated by the virus that leads to permanent damage or even death.
And there is a lot of evidence that we could already have some better solutions.
Support the immune system against infection (Prevention)
The following list of nutrients and herbs has research that demonstrate their ability to do one or several of the tactics listed above: limit the infection or support an adaptive immune system response.
Nutrients
Support immune response to the virus, limit replication and moderate excess inflammation.
The very important thing to remember with these nutrients is that they are not, in and of themselves, antiviral or inflammation protecting. We need to use these nutrients to insure sufficiency. If you already have enough vitamin D, A, zinc and selenium in your body, supplementing with more will not help and may even be dangerous.
Exceptions to this “only to sufficiency” are temporary increased dosing of vitamin A and vitamin C for targeted, limited periods of time.
Vitamin C: Linus Pauling has written loads on this ‘wunderkid’ nutrient. You can take higher amounts of this supplement, up to 1000 mg, 3-5x/day, to ‘bowel tolerance’ (meaning so that it isn’t causing loose stools). A great product to maximize absorbency and limit this effect is QuickSilver’s liposomal vitamin C.
Vitamin A: For vitamin A, the World Health Organization (WHO), recommends bolus dosing this nutrient for children up to age 5 as a key strategy to limit the impact of the measles virus. It plays an important role in human defense against infection.
Do you have enough of these nutrients in your body or could you benefit from supplementation to bolster your immune system? Test, don’t guess. Getting nutrient testing through labs such as Genova’s NutraEval (available at InHealthRVA) or even standard, though rarely ordered, lab work from conventional labs such as LabCorp will help you determine if you need to take these supplements to strengthen your immune system against ubiquitous infections.
Antioxidants
An important distinction to remember is that it isn’t the virus that directly harms you, it is the powerful inflammation the virus stimulates in our bodies that makes you feel so sick and can lead to permanent damage or even death. Oxidative stress is a key stimulant of inflammation (and vice versa, sort of a nasty snowball effect).
In fact, we think that part of the reason people with previous health conditions are so much more likely to have severe or even deadly effects of COVID-19 is that their health conditions already compromise them with too much oxidative stress, leading to even larger inflammation signalling.
Antioxidants are nutrients that are able to neutralize oxidative (free radical) molecules in the body. They also are able to stop inflammation (the ‘cytokine storm’) that viruses stimulate by:
Direct interference with pathways that signal for inflammation
By reducing oxidative stress, another potent signaler for inflammation
Antioxidants that could help limit virus-induced oxidative stress and inflammation include:
The IFM (Institute for Functional Medicine) states that (paraphrased)
...COVID-19 is able to strongly stimulate innate immunity inflammasomes such as NLRP3, leading to damaging and deadly cytokine storms. Supplements quercetin, curcumin, EGCG and resveratrol are potent inhibitors of NLRP2 inflammasome-mediated cytokine production (IL-1beta). They act on multiple pathways, including NFkappaB and MPro upregulation which also is part of cytokine stimulation.
NAC and melatonin are also getting a lot of attention in their possibility of combating severe COVID-19 reactions.
NAC (n-acetyl cysteine) is used successfully to limit the mucus production and damaging oxidative stress in lungs of those with other lung illnesses such as COPD, bronchitis and emphysema.
Melatonin, mostly known for its role in signalling your body that it is time to go to sleep, is also a powerful antioxidant and limits the inflammation in a number of other viruses similar to COVID.
Herbs
Western and Chinese herbology are probably the richest and most likely source for effective solutions to many major infectious diseases and their negative effects on the immune system. Most herbs and herbal formulas lack the comparative double-blind placebo controlled trials on humans that medications have, for a variety of reasons, including their lack of profitability. And a lot of research does not take into account that most herbs are used in formulas and have synergistic and balancing effects for an over all different effect than one would get from any concentrated single herb treatment. But you don’t have to go far in the research to find a plethora of evidence for herbs' potent effects on the immune system and microbes.
Herbs are used with such clinical efficacy because they have multiple effects. Many herbs not only limit viral and bacterial replication or have direct antimicrobial properties, but also modify our immune response to both make it more effective against infection while limiting the damaging and often uncomfortable inflammatory effects infections promote.
Herbs used for treating cold and flu bacteria and viruses are not meant to be taken long term, especially without the careful supervision by a trained practitioner. So do not simply start taking daily high dose amounts of herbs you read have antiviral activity.
A strategy I have some of my patients use is to cycle small, daily doses of an antiviral herb/herbal formula as preventatives during this period of COVID infection, especially if you are amongst the more susceptible populations.
Keep them on hand to use at higher doses at the very first sign of any possible viral infection.
The following herbs have research-proven roles in limiting infection and optimizing the immune response to viral infection:
Others with less research but long traditional history:
Lomatium
Red root (Ceanothus americanus)
Putting It All Together
So what should you be taking?
First, lifestyle factors are the most important protection against poor health and infections. Avoid exposure through social isolation and handwashing. And remember that there is no supplement(s), medication or therapies that can take the place of adequate quality sleep, a nutrient-dense, unprocessed diet (eg: no/low sugar/processed flours and chemicals), exercise and stress management.
Second, there is no one prescription that is right for everyone. This is evident in how the virus can affect some populations so differently than others. Even in the regular flu season, you’ll notice one person is terribly sick and takes weeks to get over being sick while another bounces back in a few days. Due to a myriad of factors which should probably be the topic of another post in the future:
Each of our systems are unique to some extent in their response to and resilience from infection.
More precise recommendations can be made working one-on-one with a trained practitioner, such as us at InHealthRVA.
That being understood, you can print out the following chart that lists preventative and early-stage viral infection treatment recommendations for the general population*:
Always start with a foundation of adequate sleep (8 solid hours/night), a nutrient dense, unprocessed, low/no sugar diet, regular exercise and stress management.
*IMPORTANT: The information offered below is for educational purposes only without any warranty of proven effectiveness.