HISTORY

Are there boys who don’t like jokes about poop? I haven’t met them, and I wasn’t one of them. When I was a kid, we had Dr Seuss books, but Everybody Poops by Justine Avery had yet to be written. Honestly, I feel silly using the word poop, but I’m trying to keep this Substack at least PG rated.

Poop was the word my stepfather Em instructed me to use. He landed in my life when I was eleven years old. Em was short for Embury. He was Embury T Jones, Jr, the only son of an engineer and inventor. He was a big man, 6’2”, 260 lbs of muscle, with a voice that carried the entire bass section of the men and boys choir of Christ Church Episcopal Church in Hartford, CT.

Em was a corporate headhunter, and a former computer scientist from when computers occupied entire buildings and used punch cards for programming. He was a Captain in the US Naval Reserve, who bounced a quarter on my bed to test whether I had tucked the corners tightly. He was, well, a Captain. If you didn’t like the way he ran his ship, you could walk the gangplank. He didn’t like swearing. We didn’t agree about what constituted swearing.

By fourth grade I was singing in the St James Episcopal Church boys choir in West Hartford, CT. Thus, Em and I would come to share a love of sacred choral music. The church choir was where I learned to swear, smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, shoplift, and kiss girls. Not necessarily in that order, but all in the same year.

I shouldn’t blame all my vices on the boys choir. Swearing came naturally to me. I’ve always been small, so I made up for it with expletives. My elementary classmates from Cuba and Puerto Rico were more than happy to teach me swear words in Spanish. Enough to get cuffed by Mrs Rodriguez our Spanish teacher.

In prescience of the tumultuous relationship we would have, Em rescued my petulance tuckus years before he became my stepfather. St James choirs joined Christ Church Cathedral choirs for a special performance of …who knows what? I don’t remember the music. What I remember is that when the choirmaster from Em’s church saw me sticking my tongue out at the junior high hotty I had my heart on, he grabbed me by the scruff and tossed me in the stairwell. Ouch! Em came into the stairwell a few minutes later and made sure I was okay. I was just a tad humiliated, but otherwise figured all is fair in love and war.

So, swearing. There are so many words for human excrement. None are quite as definitive and satisfying as s**t. The French have merde. The Brits have shite. Under the house rules of Captain Jones, poop was permissible, crap was not, s**t definitely not. There would be consequences. A battle of wills ensued. Ultimately I walked the plank, and went to live with my Nana and Pop pop in another state. My grandparents thought they were going to enjoy their golden years in peace and instead ended up raising a teenager.

Pop pop was more my speed. A former US Marine who fought in Okinawa. He was a gentleman and had good manners, but he also knew his way around some serious vernacular. Heck, even my Nana would drop a s**t bomb now and again. In his later years Pop pop was bald on top with a horseshoe of hair. He ran a service station for forty-five years, and was happy to be under the hood of a car tinkering. Except that on more than one occasion he would bang his exposed scalp on the propped hood of said car, which would lead directly to a Pop pop classic: GOD…DAMN, goddamn, goddamn!

Pop pop’s objection to profanity was more about timing. Not a big deal to say s**t, but do we have to talk about it at dinner? Well, if you were me you did. Another battle of wills ensued, although better matched, as we were both Marsland men after all. An enlisted man couldn’t exercise too much probity.

RECENT HISTORY

My comfort level with expletives is a perfectly valid reason why I ended up working in the Emergency Department (ED). The floor nurses were really just too proper, and had a bit too much value judgement going on, perpetually. The ED was the realm of hoodlums, prisoners, homeless, drug users, and working folks in medical crisis. Do you think that patients with 10 out of 10 flank pain from kidney stones are focused on keeping their conversation Disney-appropriate? No. By the time I landed in a level 1 trauma center, it was generally a non-stop s**t show. F-bombs were de rigeur.

Fortunately for me and my patients, my familiarity and comfort level with s**t was more than vowel and consonant deep. Ask any nurse what her/his/their hot button body fluid is and you’ll get some interesting conversation going. I worked with a nurse, who shall remain named Chicken Nugget (you know who you are), and she has this super power of turning off her sense of smell when she starts a shift in the ED. She was impervious to s**t.

I’m not so lucky as Chicken Nugget, but my Kryptonite is sputum. One time when I was still sporting a crew cut, I was in an isolation room doing tracheostomy suctioning. The patient coughed a huge, green, sticky sputum clump that skidded across my scalp, slowly settling in for a landing. I could only finish the job I started as the goo slowly sank into my hair. So, sputum, no thanks. But vomit, urine, blood, sweat, tears, and s**t, no problem.

In fact, I’m so relaxed around s**t, that I developed a reputation for being a masterful disimpactor. I just made up that word, but that’s what I was good at. May you never have need of fecal disimpaction, but if the occasion did arise, you for sure want someone who brings plenty of lubrication, a sturdy constitution, a gentle and kind manner, patience, and long fingers. That’s me. When you’re the one experiencing a disimpaction, it’s very intense, but when it’s done well, you are very, very appreciative. No joke, I once had a grateful patient’s wife force a wad of hundred dollar bills down my scrub top after I got him unplugged. It’s a shame that I was a serf of New York State and couldn’t legally accept the tip. This is all to say that s**t happens, the ED is often a s**t storm, and a satisfying s**t is one of the elusive pleasures of a well-lived life. Now let’s talk about how to keep things moving.

PRESENT

As promised in my last Substack, I’m going to cover supplements and medications which are harmful in general, but specifically problematic in patients experiencing post-acute sequelae of Covid (PASC) and Covid vaccine injury. Last week I wrote about aluminum containing medications. This week I’d like to discuss polyethylene glycol or PEG.

Polyethylene glycol (PEG) is a petroleum-derivative compound that is made from ethylene glycol (ethane-1,2-diol), the main ingredient in antifreeze. PEG can be found in a number of other products, including skin creams and personal lubricants, and as a food additive for anti-foaming purposes. PEG may be familiar to you by its brand name MiraLAX. This is pure PEG crystals, sold over-the-counter, and marketed as a laxative. In 2019, the MiraLAX brand generated about 29.7 percent of laxative/stimulant liquid/powder/oil sales in the United States. Sales of laxatives in 2023 topped $1.5 billion annually, and apparently there is a shortage.

How does MiraLAX work? It is classified as an osmotic laxative. This means that it works by drawing water into the colon. The water softens the stool and may naturally stimulate the colon to contract. These actions help ease bowel movements.

If you have been using PEG for years, you are probably wondering what the fuss is about? This is a great example of the difference between the pre- and post- Covidian world. You know the song “The Old Gray Mare”? She ain’t what she used to be. These bodies we are living in are changed, with innumerable pathologies and complications to confound us.

The PEG story goes back to an important decision made by the Covid mRNA vaccine manufacturers. PEG-modification (pegylation) conjugates PEG with the lipid nanoparticles (LNP) in the shots. It coats the surface of the LNPs reducing opsonization, aggregation, and improving mRNA delivery to the target cells. Translated, it helps the LNP glide past our immune system surveillance and through the phospholipid membranes of our cells. This action enables longer circulation of nanoparticles. However, there is now evidence that PEG causes immunogenic responses when conjugated (PEGylated) with other materials such as proteins and nanocarriers. See studies here and here. It has been estimated that up to 25% of people who received a Covid shot have developed antibodies to PEG.

If we have learned anything from the censorship of HCQ, IVM and other repurposed drugs which could effectively treat Covid, we should bear in mind that the scientific literature on occurrence of PEG antibodies is compromised. When you read a study which minimizes this, i.e. concludes that PEGylation in the Covid shots is safe and effective, make sure to also read the conflicts of interest declared.

What happens when a person develops antibodies to PEG? If you are allergic to something, and you ingest a sizable quantity of it on a daily basis, it is going to make you sick. Signs of a new allergy to PEG include pruritus (itching), tingling, flushing, urticaria (raised, red welts on your skin), angioedema (facial swelling), hypotension, and bronchospasm.

Spike protein destabilizes mast cells provoking mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS) in many PASC and vax patients. When mast cells are unstable, they are frequently releasing histamine. Whereas white blood cells have a lifespan of about a week, mast cells last 2-4 years. We’ll be dealing with this dynamic for some time to come. In the context of MCAS, PEG antibodies mean that PEG-containing products have the potential to trigger anaphylaxis or hypersensitivity reactions in some people. In the most extreme of cases, a new PEG allergy has created enormous obstacles to treatment as there are many beauty care products, medications and even foods containing PEG. I have found this to be the case with more than six patients under my care. One patient would experience severe anxiety, tachycardia, flushing, and dizziness from the tiny amount of PEG in a dose of the anti-histamine Pepcid/Famotidine. My experience is that when patients wean off MiraLAX, there is a significant improvement in their global symptom burden.

Products containing Polyethylene Glycol

Medications using Polyethylene Glycol

Foods containing Polyethylene Glycol (See these WHO 2021 food additive details)

• Emulsifiers, stabilizers and sweeteners

• Chewing gum

• Food supplements

• Water-based sports, energy and electrolyte drinks

• Surface treated fresh fruit

What now? Laxatives are habit forming. If you have come to rely upon MiraLAX/PEG to have regular bowel movements, it would be unwise to stop abruptly, even if you are slowly poisoning yourself. If you develop a small bowel obstruction and need emergency surgery, you haven’t gained any ground. A more strategic response is to wean yourself over several weeks and replace the MiraLAX/PEG with safer alternatives. My favorite supplement in this case is OxyPowder, a combination of ozone-oxygenated magnesium and citric acid. I also like to use Garden of Life Prebiotic fiber which you mix with water and drink. Metamucil is readily available in most grocery stores and pharmacies. Prunes are an old standby.

We also need a longer-term plan to get off the laxative train, but keep things moving. Regular bowel movements require three components: hydration, dietary fiber, and mobility. Just like a three-legged stool, if you take away one of those three components, it isn’t stable. Hydration can be the easiest part. More than twenty-five years ago, a college classmate of mine changed my life with some simple advice. It was Mohit Bali, an introverted computer major who was observant if not elegant in his delivery. He told me that every morning when I wake up, I should drink a big mason jar of water right away. He explained that this was a basic teaching of Ayurvedic medicine for more than 3,000 years, and would help me lead a long and healthy life.

What Mohit didn’t share, but which I later learned, is that every human being wakes up dehydrated. Our body spends the time we are asleep engaging in cellular repair, burning fuel, making waste, using up oxygen and water. What we do instead of hydrate upon waking? We drink coffee. Yes, it stimulates our bowels, but the caffeine is a diuretic, which makes us pee and dehydrates us further, so that we start the day deeper in the hole. If you must drink coffee, then have at it, but drink a 32 oz of water first thing and you’ll thank yourself for it. The water will also stimulate you to have a marvelous BM.

Mobility is the next challenge, especially if we have the fatigue and post-exertional malaise of PASC and vaccine injury. Simply put, moving your body stimulates gastrointestinal motility. Move your body less, and waste will take longer to pass through you, permitting more of the moisture to be reabsorbed by your intestinal walls, creating bigger and drier stool.

Obtaining dietary fiber is as easy or hard as you choose to make it. You can use the options I mentioned above, but food is best. There are two kinds of fiber: soluble and insoluble. Soluble fiber gives stools bulk. Foods that are good sources of soluble fiber include apples, bananas, barley, oats, and beans. Insoluble fiber helps speed up the transit of food in the digestive tract and helps prevent constipation. Good sources of insoluble fiber include whole grains, most vegetables, wheat bran, and legumes. Foods that have fiber contain both soluble and insoluble fibers.

Diametrically opposed to fibrous foods are processed foods. White rice, white flour, refined pasta, and sugar have the effect of gumming up the works. Minimizing these aspects of your diet, and maximizing whole foods will produce long-term health benefits and more regular BMs.

Water, movement and fiber. Drink water early and often. Happy trails to you.

P.S. I have no financial interest in the products which I recommend, such as OxyPowder, Garden of Life Prebiotic Powder, or Metamucil.

HISTORY

In fourth grade I became a paper boy for the New Britain Herald. It ws an afternoon paper, second fiddle to it’s morning counterpart The Hartford Courant. It was my first job, and it taught me a lot about living. I had responsibility, collected money from my customers, and paid my bills. Whether there was a raging thunderstorm, winter blizzard, or rubber-melting summer day, I had to get out there and deliver those papers. My territory was sizable. There were big hills, and ferocious dogs that wanted a piece of me. I started off with a single speed green bike, and after a couple of years and some good Christmas tips, traded up for a red Ross ten-speed.

Over time I developed friendships with many of my customers. They were mostly grey and white-haired suburbanites. There was the politcal campaign manager whose yard signs changed with the election cycle. Helen was the caregiver for a grumpy, wheelchair-bound policeman injured on the job. Her blue budgie parakeet was named Little Baby Bird. She would invite me in to play cards and eat her homemade carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. There was the couple who had a farmette in the country and would share some of their vegetables to me. I would eat their fresh green peppers like apples. There were two confirmed bachelorettes who shared their home with a big grey cat.

Then there was a customer who told me he was a bionic man. He was a capital C Character. As he pulled up his pants leg to show me his shiny metal hardware, he explained that he had been a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army. His leg had been blown off by a Viet Cong booby trap, and they gave him a bionic replacement.

The Six Million Dollar Man was a popular TV show at the time, and a favorite of mine. Lee Majors played a character who was The Bionic Man with superhuman strength, speed and intelligence. The introductory soundtrack and the sound effects of him lifting heavy objects in slow-motion are etched in my memory.

The Colonel, as I came to think of him, liked to smoke cigars. These were thick long cigars like the Winston Churchill in my history book had smoked. My Pop pop smoked cigars too, so I enjoyed the smell, and I liked playing solider, so I didn’t mind hanging out on his front steps as The Colonel told me stories of his exploits. He told me exactly how many North Korean and Vietnamese soldiers he had killed in combat. It was a chilling number, something like thirty two and forty one. I was a boy that liked watching war movies, but The Colonel’s statement was disturbing and challenged the romantic illusions I had about soldiering.

Writing this Substack got me thinking about the many, many permutations of the word character. My favorite use of the word is to describe what Webster’s Dictionary defines as a person who is peculiar or eccentric. I enjoy the company of such people, and aspire to be a capital C Character myself. There is another definition which I also appreciate, closer to the Greek origin of the word character; kharassein, which means to inscribe. Inscribe: to write a brief message on a photo or book when giving it as a gift. When I remember The Colonel, and all of the Characters who have touched my life, I think that they have inscribed the gift of their peculiar worldview on the pages of my life, and for this I give thanks.

Back to the story! One hot summer day as I rode up to The Colonel’s house to deliver his paper, there he was on his stoop sipping from a can of Foster’s Lager. For the uninitiated, Foster’s Lager is an Australian beer which comes in an enormous can. Google tells me it is 25 oz. I recognized the can from some war movie I had seen on TV. I would bet it was “The Odd Angry Shot” about Australian soldiers fighting in Vietnam. I said “Oh Foster’s Lager, I know that beer.” Natural-as-can be, like I was one of his old Army buddies, he said, “Well, let me go get you one.”

Here I was, a fifth grader who looked more like a third grader, who didn’t weigh eighty pounds dripping wet, and had only sneaked a sip of beer from the rare can of Miller High Life my dad would drink while watching a football game. The Colonel comes back out with a nice big, cold can of Foster’s Lager. And a huge cigar. He handed me both and proceeded to explain that this wasn’t just any cigar, but a Cuban cigar. “They’re illegal you know? Damn buur-row-crats don’t like Commie Castro, so they try to keep me from smoking ‘em, but I’ve got connections.” With the remainder of my paperboy duties on standby, I popped the can open, and he lit me up.

I’ll say, the first few puffs were pleasant. The first few sips of the beer were tasty too. If I could have stopped there, it would have all been an interesting wrinkle to my day. Not wanting to appear ungrateful for this bionic hero’s generosity and comradeship, I kept at both the cigar and the beer. By the time he relieved me of both, I felt seasick, but hadn’t left shore. Somehow I finished delivering the rest of my papers, and arrived safely home. To my surprise, my mom told me that we were going out for pizza, which normally have sent me over the moon with delight, but didn’t sound so good at the time. I thought for sure that I would get busted for smelling like beer and cigar smoke, but the only comment I received was, “Hmmm, you look a little green Scotty.”

RECENT HISTORY

If you know anything about the miliary, you know that the non-commissioned officers run the show. In the Army, Air Force and Marines it’s the Sergeants. In the Navy and Coast Guard it’s the Chief Petty Officers. In the Emergency Department, it’s the Charge Nurses. In my nursing career, there have been Charge Nurses who loom larger than life. They have enough chutzpah to fill a stadium. Susan Rainbow was one, a traveler when we first met, and years later my manager at Upstate. Don’t let her last name fool you. Yes, a hippie at heart, but tough as steel and more self-possessed than an NFL quarterback getting blitzed in the last minute of play. Paul Czarnecki and Joseph Zelynak were two others from Upstate. Paul made his own musket balls, created trucks with a blow-torch, and fought fires in his off-hours. Joseph was a soft-spoken maestro conductor of the ED symphony, if you can imagine making music out of chaos. Philip Glass perhaps? Then there was Kathy Fox.

Kathy and I didn’t part on great terms. I was one of two nurses who led an attempt to unionize our smallish community hospital. She was at the top of the pay scale, pulling down six figures between her wage and crazy overtime hours. She wanted nothing to do with a union.

She was a terrible gossip. It’s fair to say she was vindictive, because she once mentioned running her ex-husband’s credit cards to the limit to try and drive him into bankrupty. She was a big-boned woman, with a bit of a waddle, I assume because of aches and pain from arthritic joints. That can happen after forty three years of lifting and moving patients. I judged her for taking the patient parking spot closest to the ED, but I shouldn’t have.

Kathy had a husky, nasally voice, and a wicked laugh. Her IV skills were beyond reproach. I would say that she could throw an eighteen gauge in a dehydrated, obese, diabetic patient from across the room. Somehow, miraculously, she kept her heart from turning to stone. With all the tragedy, drama, blood, sweat and tears she witnessed over decades, she still cared. She could still be empathetic and diplomatic. She was also a cat lover, which gets her bonus points in my estimation.

After last weeks Substack, Chicken Nugget wrote me to report that Kathy died recently in a car crash. I’ve been thinking about her since. When I went to Quaker Meeting on Sunday, I spoke up during joys and concerns. I told the Meeting that anyone there who had lived in our county for more than a decade, whether they had gone to the ED themselves, or a family member had, were touched by the life of Kathy Fox. She was the Chief Petty Officer, who kept that ship afloat and in fighting shape. She was a capital C Character, and with her death, this earth has lost one of its better angels.

MORE HISTORY, MOVING INTO THE PRESENT

In 2014 I graduated from the Family Nurse Practitioner program at SUNY Upstate Medical University. I was still working part-time in the ED at Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca, NY. A local internal medicine physician named Muhammad Wattoo hired me as the second practitioner in his primary care office. Wattoo, as he is called, is a doctor’s doctor. Literally. We had more doctors as patients than about any other practice in town, except maybe Ann and John Costello, two more doctor’s doctors.

I can’t say enough good things about the three of them. Ann was kind enough to let me do two of my clinical rotations in her office, and John gave me the best lesson ever on the proper technique to take a blood pressure. Mind you he was talking to me many years into my nursing career, and yes, I did learn something from his fifteen minute teaching moment. For his part, I still hear Mohammad’s voice in the back of my mind sometimes when I’m seeing a patient or working out a clinical problem.

In the olden days, and I’ll tell you this is starting to feel like I’m grandpa spinning a yarn about an event in the time of Lincoln, but it was actually just a decade ago…. In the olden days, the Costellos would host a journal club. They invited Wattoo, Adam Law (a British ex-pat guru of diabetes in our community), and little old me, to their home. They would pick a topic, about twenty relevant medical journal articles, and maybe even a book. We would read ahead of time, and after office hours, convene at their home around a table with hummus, crackers, nuts, fruit, tea, and an earnest desire to learn.

It was on such an occasion that the scales fell from my eyes on the topic of statins and cholesterol. Adam or John had put forth a book called Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine, written by Dr John Abramson in 2008. Harbinger of the pandemic to come, the synopsis read: “Commercial distortion pervades the information that doctors rely upon to guide the prevention and treatment of common health problems, from heart disease to stroke, osteoporosis, diabetes, and osteoarthritis. The good news, as Dr. Abramson explains, is that the real scientific evidence shows that many of the things that you can do to protect and preserve your own health are far more effective than what the drug companies’ top-selling products can do for you—which is why the drug companies work so hard to keep this information under wraps.”

Dr Abramson lays out how the American medical obsession with cholesterol originated with Big Pharma. It was a planned epidemic, with drugs ready to solve it. Sound familiar? It’s still running strong today, despite the fact that the Framingham Diet Study put to rest the connection between saturated animal fats, cholesterol and heart disease beween 1948 and the 1960s in Boston, MA. “No association between percent of calories from fat and serum cholesterol level was shown; nor between ratio of plant fat to animal fat intake and serum cholesterol level.” AND, “There is, in short, no suggestion of any relation between diet and the subsequent development of CHD [coronary heart disease] in the study group.”  Why don’t we know this? Because these conclusions were not incorporated into the final report of the original investigators of the Framingham Heart Study. Never you mind those inconvenient details. Nor the fact that insurance compensation to medical practices is directly connected to their rigorous adherence to cholesterol management guidelines formulated by Big Pharma and rubber stamped by organizations such as the American Heart Association.

This was all obscene and disturbing before 2019, but then along came Covid and the spike protein, which has wreaked such havoc on our bodies that medical preoccupation with lowering blood lipids using statins has taken on much deadlier proportions. Here is a statement of observation for you. As a clinician who has treated several thousand patients for acute covid, post-acute sequelae of Covid (PASC) and Covid vaccine injury, I don’t think that I can help a patient fully recover if she/he/they is taking a statin. Period.

Let me step back from what is simply my expert opinion, as that is technically the lowest level of evidence. The Epoch Times, which has been almost consistently spot-on in its reporting of all things Covid (except the poorly written and researched article advocating exercise as the solution for PASC and vax injury, Lord help us), recently printed an article by Vance Voetberg about statins. The Epoch Times article featured a 2015 review, published in the Journal Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology, which suggests that statins actively contribute to heart disease and heart failure by killing mitochondrial function, creating accumulated mitochondrial DNA damage, causing Vitamin K deficiencies, raising heart calcification, and ultimately driving millions of patients into heart failure. Say what!?! You read correctly. The authors state: “Thus, the epidemic of heart failure and atherosclerosis that plagues the modern world may paradoxically be aggravated by the pervasive use of statin drugs.”

It is my observation that patients who I cannot persuade to leave behind statins inevitably plateau in their recovery, and then start to backslide. Why would that be? Covid is a mitochondrial slaughterhouse, and statins pour gasoline around it and light the fire. Without functional mitochondria, we don’t have ATP and energy, and so we witness the plague of fatigue in the wake of Covid infections and Covid vaccination. Without cholesterol entering our cells, we can’t make progenolone, our own homemade steroids, which we need to dampen the inflammatory fire. Without progenolone, we don’t have the building blocks to make hormones which control many body functions and are necessary for healthy endocrine function.

Alternatively, when we discontinue statins, and initiate therapy with Nattokinase, a soy-derived fermented supplement, what results is a very dependable magic trick. Patients who were not only on statins, but also one, two, and even three medications for their blood pressure are able to stop all four. They end up with picture-perfect blood lipids, an HDL level to make their cardiologist fawn, and rejuvenated blood vessels that are reflected in lower/healthier blood pressures. It happens in the relatively short time span of 2-6 months.

The benefits don’t stop there, because Nattokinase crosses the blood brain barrier and breaks down spike protein. Most importantly, it is part of a multi-pronged strategy in breaking down microclots. Now, not everyone can use Nattokinase, because it is soy-based, and patients with Mast Cell Activation Syndrome may not tolerate its embodied histamine from being a fermented product. Patients need to closely monitor their blood pressure and reduce or discontinue their blood pressure medications under their practitioner’s guidance as they advance Nattokinase dosing. In this way one can avoid low blood pressure, passing out, and falls. The main point here is that statins are unnecessary, dangerous, and vastly inferior to safer over-the-counter alternatives. This was true before the pandemic. Since 2019, it is a matter of health and sickness, life and death, to leave statins behind in the rear-view mirror.

In Memoriam to Kathy Ann Fox, April 3, 1954 – April 13, 2023.

PAST

In 1976 my dad bought a meter maid scooter at the West Hartford, CT town auction. It was a 1969 Vespa with a 150cc engine. The Vespa was made in Italy, and derives its name from the shape of its body which resembles a wasp. The West Hartford Police had spray-painted over the POLICE lettering on the sides and it was a pretty metallic blue. I suspect this was one of those impulse buys which Dad didn’t clear with Mom, kind of like the Model A Ford he stored in some farmer’s barn until my mom saw a receipt for the monthly rent and extracted a new Singer sewing machine in the ensuing disagreement. He would have been about thirty-five years old, with three kids, a wife, steady job and about on time to feel a little restless.

I can reach back to that time and find the elusive feeling that all was right in the world, even if for a brief moment. Rides on the back of the Vespa, holding onto my dad, are some of the sweetest moments of my childhood. It would have been warm and sunny. He felt strong, and smelled good, like soap and aftershave – and dad. For a guy that had never ridden a motorcycle before, he was smooth with his shifting and handling in the curves of the road.

My dad died after New Years in 2000 from metastatic renal cancer. The Vespa we rode together in my childhood came to reside with us in Ithaca, NY. It had 10,000 miles on it, a tempermental clutch, a flywheel ready to seize at any moment, and many more dents and dings at the hands of my stepbrother and his pals. It afforded me many more moments of joy and laughter, as there was a scooter culture in Ithaca with an annual rally, and contingent in the parade during the annual Ithaca Festival. She was even dressed up with a grass skirt for the Hawaiian theme one year.

The day finally came when I passed the Vespa on to someone who would appreciate her, could fix her mechanical woes, and ensure more years of riding. Working in the ED has its hazards, and as time went by I cared for more patients injured, maimed and killed in motorcycle crashes. I lost my enthusiasm and gumption to ride. What I held onto were the moments riding with my dad. What makes me connect this to a Substack on healing the gastrointestinal tract is that it was a time when I felt calm, loved, and settled in my gut. The mind-body brain-gut axis isn’t just an idea. It’s an existential state.

RECENT PAST

My classmates at SUNY Upstate in the MS-FNP program chose very reasonable topics for their Master’s research: antibiotic resistance in the ICU, throughput in the Emergency Department (ED), diabetic education in the outpatient clinic. I don’t set out to be the weirdo, it just happens. My focus was juicing, as in fruits and vegetables, as a transitional tool for better health. When we presented our research my classmates were committing death by Power Point, i.e. reading every word on the slide that you can read faster than them. I lugged in my Breville juicer, two grocery sacks of produce, and made the audience some juice to remember!

There are a lot of studies about juice. It turns out that the NIH has funded many of these due to an interest in the power of phytonutrients. Some of my favorites included sour cherry juice in marathon runners as an alternative to Ibuprofen or NSAIDS, or use of fresh orange juice to reduce incidence of stroke. The standout studies for me were a trio on raw cabbage juice to heal peptic ulcers.

In the world of evidence based medicine, new is sexy, and old is not. There are however some very well done studies if you are willing to go back in time. There was also a change in attitude about the rights of test subjects in the 1970s.

Between 2010, when I began my studies at SUNY Upstate, and 2021, when I left employment in the ED, I had to complete biannual training related to the ethics of experimenting on human subjects, the origins of Instituational Review Boards (IRB), and my role in regulatory compliance. There was a lengthy online program through Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI). If the intention of these trainings was to ensure that the entire clinical staff of our research institutions understood the history of unethical research practices and stood up for the right to informed consent, the pandemic proved it was an epoch fail. Upstate was no better than any place else, pushing patients to receive Remdesivir, providing unequal treatment to the unvaccinated, and mandating the Covid shots for all of its employees. Some day in this Substack I will write about how the first Covid shot which I received, which countless Upstate staff and volunteers also received, was Pfizer batch EK9231. It was a bad batch which injured, disabled and killed more people than any other Pfizer vaccine batch in recorded history.

The history which we were supposed to study and learn from starts with The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. It was conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on a group of nearly 400 African American men with syphilis. Its participants were not informed of the nature of the experiment, nor were they treated, and as a result, up to 100 of them died. The study’s gross ethical violations hit the press in 1972, which led to the 1979 Belmont Report and the establishment of the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) and federal laws and regulations requiring IRBs for the protection of human subjects in studies.

Back to the human labs rats. In 1949, 1952, and 1956 there were three separate studies which evaluated the effectiveness of raw cabbage juice in healing peptic ulcer disease. The 1956 double blind experimental study was conducted on prisoners at San Quentin in California, after obtaining permission from Dr Morton Willcutts, the medical director. The authors commented that “The advantages of using the prison facilities for investigation of this type cannot be overemphasized.” Ahh, the good old days.

Unlike the men of the Tuskegee Experiment, the prisoners of San Quentin who received the experimental treament got better, really quickly in fact. Most had complete healing of the ulcer craters within three weeks. Prisoners who had failed treatment with placebo were later rotated through treatment with cabbage juice and also had complete healing.

Ironically, at the time I was immersed in my study of more than 200 research articles on juicing, I was experiencing a severe bought of esophagitis. My Cardiologist had increased my daily potassium supplementation over time as he chased a serum level above 4.0 mEq/L, reaching a dose of 40mEq twice a day. I hadn’t made the connection that the potassium was injuring me, but my PCP did, and we stopped the potassium. The question was how to heal my esophagus? An NP colleague in the ED suggested a proton-pump inhibitor (PPI) such as Omeprazole, but I already had reason to be wary of them. See below. I settled on two weeks of Zantac, an H2 or acid blocker. Then I bought some cabbage and got down to juicing.

Raw cabbage juice could be described as cruel and unusual punishment, but if you are motivated to heal without drugs that could injure or kill you, it’s a fabulous option. My advice would be the same as Canadian country singer Corb Lund, just substitute cabbage juice for whiskey:

Drink it like you mean it, like the serious people do
If you’re down and broken hearted and you’ve got good reason to
Drink it like you mean it to the bottom of the glass
With resolve and strong intention, drink it right down to the last

Speedy isn’t fast enough to describe my recovery. It took two days flat to be healed. That made quite an impression upon me, and I’ve been more than happy to share this experience and recommend the cabbage juice adventure with many patients since that time.

Here are a couple of pointers. When using fresh vegetable or fruit juice as a transition to a healthier diet, or a tool for healing, only make enough juice for immediate consumption. The phytonutrients break down quickly. Try to use only enough fruit or sweet vegetables like carrots to make the juice palatable to you, as the sugars are calorie laden and can promote inflammation. With cabbage juice in particular, buy a large head as it will be sweeter than a small head. Organic produce can have more than three times the nutrient content of conventional produce and doesn’t have the herbicides and pesticides which could be counterproductive to healing. A quarter of a large cabbage head is usually enough to make about a cup of cabbage juice. It is best to drink it by itself on an empty stomach. If you have to cut it with another veggie or fruit, you can.

PRESENT

Proton-pump inhibitors or PPIs such as Omeprazole (Prilosec), Nexium, Prevacid and Protonix are used to treat gastroinestinal disorders such as heartburn, acid reflux, gastritis, peptic ulcer disease and Barrett’s esophagus. They are among the most commonly prescribed drugs in the world. The US market is currently valued at $2.3 billion and forecast to grow to $4.9 billion within the decade. About 15 million Americans use them annually,

Before the pandemic, I understood that PPIs were problematic. The National Health Service (NHS) of the UK had found that PPIs were the source of increased antibiotic resistant gastrointestinal (GI) infections. This lead to a decrease in their use in the UK. (An aside, which is a rabbit hole I couldn’t bear to go down, is that the NHS withdrew previous guidance re: limiting use of PPIs to prevent harm. Under whose influence?) It was also known that PPIs cause iron deficient anemia, and inhibit absorption of B-12 and calcium, so can contribute to neuropathic symptoms, osteopenia and osteoporosis. More recent evidence suggests contributions to neurodegenerative diseases and dementia. These drugs were never meant to be long-term therapies, but that is exactly what they have become for many patients in the United States.

In China, only the wealthy minority could afford PPIs, and the rest of the population had to settle for H2 blockers like Famotidine or Pepcid. In 2020, there was a Chinese study which spoke to this dynamic. I read it in January of 2022, just as we were launching our telemedicine practice. It concluded that use of PPIs within the previous 30 days was associated with a 90% increased risk of severe clinical outcomes of COVID-19.

With this information in mind, I was alert to the presence of PPIs on the med lists of new patients we were treating for acute Covid, as well as those presenting with post-acute sequelae of Covid (PASC) or vaccine injury. At the time I would tell them that although we didn’t yet know why, use of PPIs was associated with worse outcomes in Covid, and we should try to wean them off that medication. The simplest thing I could say was that millions of years of evolution had lead to every mammal on earth having an acidic stomach, and it was probably unwise to fiddle with this process.

Most patients were willing and able to discontinue their PPIs. One of the Registered Nurses in our practice, Kara Gabrielson, became adept at crafting weaning schedules for patients, so that they could slowly titrate their dose and transition to H2 blockers, then non-prescription approaches. We knew that sudden cessation of PPIs was a terrible idea, because our bodies stop making as much acid when we are on these medications. When we stop them abruptly, there is usually a burst of acid production which can leave a patient in agony from terrible acid reflux and heartburn.

In July of 2022, I was on the floor of our living room doing stretches one morning. It had become my routine to listen to the Wednesday FLCCC Webinar broadcast on Saturdays. During one of these episodes with Dr Paul Marik and Dr Mobeen Syed I learned why PPIs lead to more severe clinical outcomes in Covid. Dr Marik dropped the truth bomb, and I sat straight up, yelling out. My wife thought I’d been hurt and came running in to see what was wrong. I reassured her that I was fine, but just found out that PPIs don’t just decrease the acid in our stomachs, but also in our cells.

A fundamental process by which our bodies take out the garbage and combat pathogens is via the lysozomes in our cells. These are little pockets of acid, which are gathered together, and fused with little sacks that contain deformed proteins or pathogens. If there aren’t enough lysozomes, or they aren’t acidic enough, they can’t do their job. It would be like chewing a piece of meat, but not quite enough, swallowing, and then choking on it.

After this revelation I doubled down on guiding patients to get off PPIs. The pattern became clearer. There was a small number of patients who could not or would not discontinue their PPIs, and they were not progressing in their recovery. They could get to a certain point, but would then plateau, or backslide. The worse case scenario was that they were on both a statin and a PPI, and their PCP, Gastroenterologist, Cardiologist, and other system practitioners were lobbying hard for them to continue these medications. Often they aren’t ready to dedicate the time and energy to learning new behaviors such as chewing longer, avoiding alcohol, and eating at least four hours before bedtime. I’m sympathetic, as I love wine and know enough about it to find a good glass or bottle on a menu in a restaurant, but at this point, it mostly isn’t worth the adverse effects. I’m also sympathetic, because I know how ferociously the system docs defend the use of these harmful medications.

What are your alternatives to PPIs? As mentioned in my Substack on aluminum containing drugs, first and foremost, knowledge. Dr Sherry Rogers recently updated her classic No More Heartburn: The Safe, Effective Way to Prevent and Heal Chronic Gastrointestinal Disorders. Buy it, read it, and act upon it. Take time to chew your food, drink less liquids with your meals, drink less alcohol, eat fewer processed foods, and limit caffeine intake. Try using oral liquid aloe vera, apple cider vinegar, and slippery elm bark to heal your inflamed gut. Eat a healthier diet, and cultivate a more robust microbiome, preferably with cultured foods and liquids rather than proprietary pills and potions promising probiotic nirvana.

Aligning our mind and body along the brain-gut axis is essential to recovery in PASC and vaccine injury. Each day that I work with our team at The Leading Edge Clinic, I’m sensitive to how we are pushing against the limits of a broken healthcare system which peddles harmful medications to patients who are suffering. What buoys my spirit is when patients realize their body’s inherent capacity to heal. Every day we expand our knowledge and capacity to counter spikopathy, reject harmful chemicals and poisons, and harness safer resources to regain function and hope in our lives.

HISTORY

The Young Men’s Christian Association or YMCA was an important part of my upbringing. There were intramural basketball teams, day camps in the summertime, and the Indian Guides. Before today, I never gave too much thought to the history of the Indian Guides, how they reflected cultural appropriation or whether they even still existed. Thank you to writer Adria Carter with the University of Minnesota Libraries who wrote an excellent article titled ‘Playing Indian’: A retrospective on the YMCA’s Indian Guides program. While I was busy treating patients during a pandemic, author Ryan Bean and co-author Paul Hillmer, a professor of American history at Concordia University in St. Paul, published the book “Inappropriation: The Contested Legacy of Y-Indian Guides,” which examines the program’s 77-year history and how it misrepresented American Indians.  With deference to Carter, Bean and Hillmer, I’d like to share what the Indian Guides meant to me as a boy who was decades away from political correctness and the faintest whiff of white guilt.

My dad was Big Wind, and I was Little Wind. We wore vests and headbands with feathers, and went to weekly (?) meetings with other boys and their fathers. I can’t think of another experience in my childhood where boys and their fathers consistently gathered together in this way. Not church, not sports, not Scouts, realms where there was delegation of parenting and leadership to other adults. In the Indian Guides, we all had to show up. That act, in and of itself was unique, and ripe with both the tenderness and awkwardness of being male, toghether. There was no alcohol, there were no fights, and we often engaged in some act of creation, whether it was painting, gluing popsicle sticks together, or physical play.

The best of times were the camping trips. I remember being in the woods where we could run wild, away from our scolding mothers and annoying sisters. I remember the sounds of dozens of fathers snoring in the cold darkenss of the cabin. There wasn’t any drama. My dad was about as relaxed as he could get, and so were a lot of the other fathers. I’m grateful that they made their way through all the discomfort of being around each other in order to spend time with us, their sons. I wouldn’t trade our names or that time with my dad for all the Wampum in the world.

MORE RECENT HISTORY

My first pass at college was attending Susquehanna University (SU) in Selinsgrove, PA. It is a small liberal arts college which began as a Lutheran missionary institute and retained some of those early influences. Things started off well enough. I had a combination of work study, academic scholarships, student loans and Pell grants to pay my way. I was accepted into the SU Honors Program, and was both a Degenstein and Presidential Scholar. Woo hoo!

Dr Susan Bowers taught our Freshman honors English course called Thought. She was a woman with a soft voice, brilliant intellect and steely character. Among the selected works we read in the course was Daughters of Copper Woman by Anne Cameron. The book was out of print at that time, so we had blurry stapled photocopies. It is essentially a feminist collection of Northwest Native American creation stories with female power at their center. That may not raise eyebrows now, but in 1987, at SU, it was subversive.

Susan, that book, and her course changed my life. It was the first time I had a glimpse of the world which was different enough from my own that it was unnerving and thought provoking. I wanted more.

The second year of the Honors Program required that students write a Sophmore Essay. With Susan as my advisor, I chose to write about Native American Women’s Literature. Given that I am a white man who was majoring in business economics that was a stretch. I got started, but I never finished, despite a last ditch trip to visit Susan the summer between my Sophmore and Junior year. I had a case of terminal writer’s block, and as a result I was booted from the Honors Program.

I would never want to let school interfere with getting an education though, and I sure did learn a lot the year I didn’t write my Sophmore Essay. I fell in love with the stories of writer Louise Edrich when I met the fictional families the Kashpaws, Lamartines, and Morrisseys in her novel Love Medicine. Years later I came to appreciate her husband Michael Dorris who wrote about being a single father raising an adopted son with fetal alcohol syndrome in The Broken Cord, and then his first novel Yellow Raft on Blue Water. When he and Louise co-wrote the novel The Crown of Columbus, I was moved to write them a letter of appreciation. I received a handwritten letter from Michael in a reply which I still treasure. He was that exceptional human being who didn’t forget from where he came and reached back to lend a hand to others in much more difficult circumstances. It saddens me that he would later take his own life.

What I was coming to understand over time was that the Indians of the movies were not real. The novel Waterlily by Ella Cara Deloria disabused me of romantic ideas I had of the peacful harmony of early tribal life. The real Indians, the Native Americans, were/are funnier, and messier, and terribly imperfect, just like the rest of us. They are rural, suburban and urban, upstanding, and downtrodden, not a stereotype and certainly not uniform. Literature carried me along until real-life experience and relationships filled in the gaps: salty poetry from Chickasaw poet Linda Hogan, the haunting novel House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday, and the modern novel There, There by Tommy Orange.

God is Red by Vine Deloria sent me into an existential crisis of faith, one which took years to emerge from, out of a climax of disillusionment with Christianity and its myriad contradictions. An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxeanne Dunbar Ortiz lead me to a different understanding of how vastly populated, developed and intentionally managed was the North America which the European settlers encountered.

Near our home of Ithaca, NY, there is the annual Finger Lakes GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance, which for nearly a week draws capital C Characters from all over the world to dance, sing, eat and make all kinds of great music. In the early 2000s we saw the impossibly fit eighty-year old Jones Benally perform a hoop dance with his adult children. He is a Diné medicine man who at the time shared an office in a clinic with a Western educated medical doctor. It was startling to encounter his children later, performing as Blackfire, the Native American punk rock band.

One of my favorite songs by Blackfire is a version of Woody Guthrie‘s Corn Song. Even if you aren’t a fan of what you consider punk rock, it’s worth checking out Blackfire on Spotify. It’s a useful emotional and intellectual exercise to listen to the words and music of people who have thought deeply about resistance and hope, amidst an ongoing genocide.

In 2017 I began correspondence with a Diné man who was incarcerated for two consecutive life sentences in an Arizona prison. I’ve been a letter writer since I was a little boy. For nearly thirty six years I corresponded with my step grandmother Lee Jones, who was a living Buddha. When she died after her hundredth birthday, it left a big hole in my life, and I was looking for a way to fill it. Around that time I read a book called Locked Down, Locked Out by May Schenwar, which among other things, discussed how letters from the outside helped maintain connections and protect prisoners from abuse on the inside. I found Keith’s name and story on the website of a non-profit that faciliates penpals in this way.

While he was alive and we wrote each other, I never knew, and didn’t want to know what Keith had done to be serving two life sentences. I figured it wasn’t anything good. What I did know what that he had grown up poor on the Diné reservation in Arizona, and had become a mule, running drugs for a cartel from Mexico. He was artistic, a curious person, and spiritual. He struggled with mental ilness. I learned from him how the Arizona state prison system contracts with for-profit healthcare providers who withhold necessary medication and treatment to prisoners like him in order to preserve their financial bottom line. I also learned how the system prevented Keith from receiving an eagle feather, which was meaningful to him in his spiritual practice. It’s fair to say that we probably wouldn’t have been hanging together in “the real world”, but we both found a lot to share during the years of our correspondence.

If Keith had made it out of prison and visited us in Ithaca, there would have been a lot to see and do. The names of streets, bodies of water and landmarks reflect who lived here first: Cayuga, Seneca, Taughannock. We walk, eat and sleep on the land of the First Nations people. They didn’t leave of their own accord. Practically speaking, the tribes of North America have a lot to teach us about how to resist and survive in the face of an ongoing attempt at genocide.

PRESENT

Judge Ben Zvenia is a renaissance man. He was an officer in the military, a paramedic, formally trained as a Naturopath, later becoming a lawyer, and is currently a pro-tem tribal judge in several jurisdictions. With fellow naturopath and lawyer, Dr Daniel Royal, they collaborated with elected tribal leaders to establish the First Nation Medical Board (FNMB) in 2018 as an an economic development project of the Crow Nation of Montana.

The FNMB provides a legal framework under treaty law, dating back several hundred years, as well as constitutional, state, and federal case law. Essentially Native American tribes in the United States are sovereign nations. Kind of like the Papacy in Rome. To a greater or lesser degree they have the potential to exercise independence from state and federal agencies. What Ben and Dan set out to do, was create a structure, under which practitioners could practice indigenous medicine, focused on interventions with roots in traditional plant-based treatment. Still, at times patients may need prescriptions for modern pharmaceuticals which have their origins in plants and elements of the earth. For this reason they also use the FNMB framework to close the circle of tribal affiliated entities practicing medicine under sovereign nation status.

It was very intentional to create licensure with titles that are different than those governed by state and federal agencies. Applications can be submitted to become Certified Tribal Practitioners (“CTP”), Certified Tribal Healers (“CTH”), Certified Tribal Technicians (“CTT”), and Traditional Tribal Healers (“TTH”).

We learned about the FNMB from another FLCCC affiliated provider in the summer of 2022. We began conversations with Judge Zvenia and over the next six months obtained licensure for all of our practitioners and nurses, as well as our practice entities, one of which is an LLC under the Crow Nation.

The model is imperfect. Election cycles result in new leaders, and a previous administration’s commitment to the FNMB model is not necessarily carried forward by newly elected officials. When new leaders and their staff question why the tribe is working closely with a bunch of white cowboys, it throws sand in the works and requires fresh negotiation and new agreements.

My partner Dr Pierre Kory and I have both had complaints filed against us with state boards of medicine, not because of harming any patients, but because of political motivations to block our ability to treat patients with safe, proven medication, like Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine. The intentions of the boards are transparent as they reference recommendations from the WHO, CDC, and FDA against using these therapeutics, despite the fact that courts have ruled against the FDA and it’s attempts to tell providers what medications they can prescribe to patients.

Every patient that seeks our care is required to become a public member of the FNMB. The annual cost is $35 for an individual or $50 for a family. Patients are agreeing to receive care within the tribal structure, under our tribal license. In addition to layers of licensing fees, which we pay for providers and our practice entities, we contribute 5% of gross receipts as charitable contributions to the FNMB on a monthly basis.

Organizing our Leading Edge Clinic under the FNMB brings a lifetime of learning to fruition. It is a relation of necessity, but rich in common aspirations and shared resistance to a common threat: government alphabet agencies which seek to destroy the sacred relationship between healers and patients, and undermine our democracy. This is a new chapter in history, when cowboys and Indians are fighting on the same side.

In memoriam, Klee Benally 1975-2023

HISTORY

Straight white teeth are a form of social currency. Alternately, crooked, broken and discolored teeth can directly impact one’s ability to attract a mate, land a job, and secure less unequal treatment in society. Common sense may tell you this is true, but there have also been academic studies which prove the point, such as this one from Ontario, Canada.

My Nana and Pop pop, who were my paternal grandparents, took me into their modest home and raised me from my teenage years into adulthood. Nana had buck teeth, which she often referenced in a self-conscious and self-deprecating manner. Pop pop’s teeth were rather crooked, and both of my grandparents had brown tints to their teeth from years of drinking tea. We lived on their Social Security, and a very small monthly check from my father. I’ve never known two people who were more selfless and loving, good to the bone, and sturdy. I give thanks that I tumbled out of my middle class upbringing to live with family who instilled common sense and working class sensibilities in my fanciful head. To them I give credit for the values which have guided me through the valley of the shadow of death as a “plague doctor” during a pandemic.

Nana and Pop pop had three boys. Doug and Bruce were the youngest and middle brothers respectively, and my dad was the oldest. The story was that Pop pop sold his coin collection to help pay for my dad’s first year at Penn State, and there wasn’t money left for braces. As a result my dad had teeth just as crooked as Pop pop’s. I remember his fast work with a toothpick after eating corn-on-the-cob in the summertime. Although his smile was imperfect, it was big, kind-hearted and freely offered in friendship and humor.

In junior high school I still had a gap between my two front teeth. I wasn’t self-conscious about it until some scornful classmates used it to taunt me, and then I realized that this was a thing. Braces soon followed, which were becoming a badge of middle class status. I didn’t follow through with my retainer, and so I have an overbite, again. At eighteen I injured my left upper front tooth, which was replaced with a crown. At a party a few years later, a UPenn dental student pointed out that the enamel of my crown didn’t match the rest of my teeth. I was so surprised by her lack of social graces that I neglected to tell her to bug off to the moon. But, I was reminded again that in the eyes of many people, crooked, stained, mismatched, missing and imperfect teeth leave you lower on the social ladder.

The funny thing is that the older I get, the more I trust people with “bad” teeth. At least I know that they are rubbing up against the gritty truth of our existence, and they are less likely to pretend they are better. They are often capital C Characters, and that is a step up in my book.

RECENT PAST

During nursing school I was working full-time hours, taking full-time classes, up to my gills in rotating credit card debt to pay for classes, and stressed to the breaking point. It’s a testimony to her Taurus tenacity and Catholic kindness that my beloved wife stuck with me through that time.

At some point during those years I developed weeping lesions on both sides of my face. They were each about the size of a pinky finger, below my ears, along my jawline. They were red and angry, weeping straw colored fluid. Trips to my primary doc and the Dermatologist brought prescriptions for potions, lotions and pills, none of which helped. These sores on my face added an exponential layer of stress upon me as I was going through clinical rotations. Although none were so guache as to mention it outright, I could follow the eyes of patients and medical professionals to my bright red racing strips and see the alarm and questions forming in their minds.

It eventually occurred to me to try a homeopathic remedy called Rhus Toxidendron, which is formulated from Poison Ivy. My brain made the connection betwen the open weeping lesions one would experience with a severe case of Poison Ivy. I had lived and worked on a farm in France years before, back when I thought I wanted to be a farmer. The family on this farm had their own pharmacy of remedies, some of which dated back more than a hundred years, made by their grandparents. Within a week of starting Rhus Tox my lesions were gone. It would become one of hundreds of cases in my career where a simple intervention resolved what dozens of practitioners and therapies couldn’t touch.

PRESENT

About three months ago there was a week in which I had three different patients who developed worsening symptoms because they started taking collagen supplements. It wasn’t something I ever recommended, but I understand why they started taking it. Consider whether you have had this experience: you run into an old friend, or get to visit with a family member who you haven’t seen since later 2019. You are looking at them and thinking, “Man, you look terrible! You’re hair is falling out, your skin is pale, wrinkly and sagging. It’s as if you aged a decade in four years.” Mmm hmm. That’s the spike protein for you. It damages collagen, and appearances go to pot.

Collagen is akin to a three dimensional ladder which provides structure and support to our tissue. Spike damages it so that collagen becomes overbuilt and less flexible. Imagine the difference between a normal ladder with a foot between each rung, and a ladder with only an inch between rungs. The second one is nearly useless. It doesn’t need MORE crosslinks from supplemented collagen, it needs to be trimmed back to functionality. As a result of increased collagen crosslinking, skin loses its elasticity and tone, and blood vessels are not as resilient. This is one reason we see iliac venous compression in some patients; there is a perfect storm of endothelial injury, coagulopathy, and decreased flexibility.

It wasn’t so straight forward to figure out that collagen was hurting my patients. I end up feeling like a forensic clinician in a whodunnit story, looking for a clue that doesn’t emerge until the end of an hour-long visit (yes, we often spend up to an hour with our patients during a visit at The Leading Edge Clinic). We’re almost done and the patient tells me that a Naturopath or Chiropractor or helpful “functional” physician recommended collagen for their hair loss/saggy skin/soft nails. “But I didn’t put it on my supplement list, because it’s not really even a supplement.” Um, no. When we pin down the time they started it and when their symptoms started going south, there is consistently temporal association.

If you have been taking collagen for years, the story is even worse. What has changed in our bodies since late 2019 is that 100% of us now have amyloid fibrin microclotting. On a scale of 0-4, the best you will find, even in an unvaccinated patient, is a 1 out of 4. In most of my post-acute sequealae of COVID (PASC) and vaccine injured patients, the score is usually 3 or higher. Personally, I was a 2.5 out of 4, three months into anticoagulation therapy.

What does collagen have to do with clotting? Simply put, collagen stimulates platelet activaton and aggregation. I was reading a paper about natural ways to treat coagulopathy, and realized from one of it’s citations that the scientists were using collagen to provoke clotting. Check this out. On the bottom right of page 55 of the cited paper it says: “Determination of enzyme source of COX-1 and TXAS In our previous reports (Ok et al., 2012), we reported that the amount of TXA2 (determined as TXB2 ) in intact platelets was 4.0 ± 0.1 ng/108 platelets, and this was markedly increased to 356.1 ± 46.9 ng/108 platelets when platelets were stimulated with collagen (10 mg/ml) (Ok et al., 2012).” The bench scientists knew that if they wanted to provoke platelet aggregation and activation, all they had to do was add collagen to the platelets in solution. Yikes! In a post-Covidian world where everyone is microclotting, we don’t want to do things which provoke more clotting.

In a team meeting of our practice a few weeks ago, I reported that I had not yet seen a patient whose microclotting score didn’t improve over time with our treatments. It was the very next day that this track record changed. Six months after therapy with IVM, Aspirin, Plavix and Eliquis, the patient’s microclotting score remained a 3 out of 4. Scratching my head, I reviewed the chart and right there it was under supplements—collagen.

The last two weeks have seen a flurry of collagen conversations. “I felt the best I have since 2022, then two weeks ago I started to tank.” What did you change? Final answer in the last minute of the visit—collagen. Microclot testing shows one partner has a level of 1 out of 4, and the other is a 3.5 out of four. Both are world travelers with tons of shedding exposure. What’s a difference between the two? The latter has been using collagen as a supplement for years. Take home lesson: don’t use collagen.

The question has been raised about whether this means we should avoid bone broth due to its collagen content. The short answer is that I don’t know. I don’t think it’s enough to be problematic, and bone broth is very helpful with intermittent fasting by providing phosphates to rebuild cells, but I honestly just don’t know.

If supplementing collagen isn’t the answer, then what can you do to repair your collagen? One answer is Flavay. Not the knock-off generic versions of pycnogenol, but the real deal, orignating in France and made under several patents since 1948.

Aside from being a Francophile, I love Flavay for how it benefits patients clinically. It is made from French maritime pine bark. In addition to safely inhibiting platelet adhesion to other platelets and blood vessels (safe, because of no increased risk of bleeding), it also modulates nitric oxide producton, inhibits histamine release inside blood vessels, and renews/restores healthy collagen function by trimming overbuilt crosslinking. That is why you’ll see a lovely bikini-clad French woman running down the beach with her beautiful beau and children in the ads for Flavay. It rejuvenates your skin (and blood vessels). Vive le France!

P.S. I have no financial interest in Flavay or any other products which I mention in my Substack. If I do, you’ll be the second to know.

P.S.S. This week the number of subscribers from Minnesota lept ahead of my home state of New York. Hurray for Minnesota!

P.S.S.S. I am honored to be speaking at the third FLCCC Educational Conference, ‘Healthcare Revolution: Restoring the Doctor-Patient Relationship’, taking place February 2-4, 2024 in Phoenix, AZ! I’ll be speaking with my partner Dr Pierre Kory on shedding and also presenting a case study called Complex Syndrome, Complex Management, COVID Vaccine Injury. Looking forward to connecting with you there! You can learn more about the conference here: flccc.net/conference (http://flccc.net/conference)