This “deadly” virus can be beaten by…aspirin

Look – I’m sorry to keep ranting on about this, but just three quick points:

1. SARS-Cov-2 is so horrible that you have to be tested to know whether you’ve got it or not. And remember, in this version of 1984, no one is “healthy”, they’re “asymptomatic”.

2. Adding now to its deadly reputation comes news that aspirin – yes, common or garden, over-the-counter aspirin – cuts the death rate by almost 50% in those hospitalised with COVID-19. This is a “landmark” study from University of Maryland School of Medicine, published in Anesthesia and Analgesia just as we went to print.

3. Crunching the “real” stats, such as they are, it seems that average age of death from COVID-19 is 82.4. Average age of death from other causes: 81.5. Something not quite right about what we’re being told (see page 7 for more on the numbers).

What’s the next star nutrient?

First it was vitamin C. Then vitamin D. Then zinc and vitamin A. Now K2 inadequacy is turning out to have a role in COVID-19 (see news, page 5).

In all the nonsense and non-science being spouted by world health authorities and “expert” committees there’s emerged one fact that they ALL agree on. That nutrition is irrelevant, except if it has something to do with obesity.

Despite evidence to the contrary – the kind of evidence around vitamin D that was ignored by Public Health England and the useless Matt Hancock for MONTHS – they have universally agreed that nutritional inadequacies have no impact on immune response. Incredible.

With multiple-source, massive accumulation of evidence that the Great British public could be effectively fortifying their immune systems using supplements, the government says nothing.

And why are COVID-19 patients not being screened for even the most common nutritional deficiencies? Especially the elderly? We know for a fact (ie from actual published data) that vitamin C levels are so low in the general population that scurvy may be making a comeback, and are seriously tanked in patients with severe COVID.

Meanwhile, researchers in Spain have found that supplementing elderly people with daily vitamin C (500 mg), or both vitamin C (500 mg) and vitamin E (200 mg) literally rejuvenated their immune systems.

The implications for COVID-19 are obvious.

More important perhaps is that the study in Experimental Gerontology debunked the idea that “immunosenescence” is an inevitable consequence of ageing. No. It’s due to long-term nutritional inadequacies rampant among the older generation – especially those in care homes. Prof Bruce Ames (92 next month) has eloquently explained how the human organism triages essential nutrients when they are in short supply – trying to preserve the most important survival organs. You can keep going as one of Dr Jeff Bland’s “vertically ill” while non-essential parts of you are allowed to die off. Then along comes something like SARS. Oops.

The good news, as this study shows, is that not only can deficiency/inadequacy be quickly and cheaply restored (three months of 500mg C a day), but that many of the beneficial effects are maintained even when supplementation is stopped (see full story, page 8).

Getting glutathione

One of the most profound studies I’ve come across made it into our antioxidant special this month
(page 48). Check this out: “Supplementing Glycine
and N-acetylcysteine (GlyNAC) in Ageing HIV
Patients Improves Oxidative Stress, Mitochondrial Dysfunction, Inflammation, Endothelial Dysfunction, Insulin Resistance, Genotoxicity, Strength, and Cognition: Results of an Open-Label Clinical Trial”. It’s a must-read.

Glycine + NAC = more Glutathione…and results of supplementation were amazing. According to lead researcher Prof Rajagopal Sekhar, MD, Baylor College of Medicine endocrinologist, his prematurely ageing HIV patients saw their mitochondria “recharged”, along with improvements in oxidative stress, inflammation, endothelial dysfunction and insulin resistance; damage to genes; muscle strength, belly fat and cognition and memory. I’ll have some of that.

We mostly know glycine as vital for connective tissue – not “just” the fascia that wraps muscles and contributes to elastic strength and flexibility, but also skin, joints, eyes, lungs…actually all the things that are supposed to get worse with age. But it’s also a precursor for our master antioxidant. And Prof Bruce Ames may well make the point, when he sees this study, that most of that can be sacrificed in old age – because glycine is also involved in gut health and digestion. Pretty good for a “non-essential” amino acid.

Simon Martin
Editor