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

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.

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

I had at least four fathers. My biological father, my stepfather, my paternal grandfather, and the father of my best friend in high school. Only the last of these is still alive. One thing which each of them had in common was a facility with explanations about the world around us and how things work. Instead of facility, I thought to use the word alacrity, but my Pop pop could be grumpy when I asked him the meaning or spelling of a word. “There’s a very big dictionary on the book shelf at the end of the hall Scotty.” Yes, I knew that. It was the one that each of my siblings, cousins and myself would take turns sitting on at the dining room table during holidays growing up. “But you’re right here Pop pop, and you explain it so well.” That would usually get a look up from his Travis McGee novel and over the rims of his glasses, then an answer. Yes!

Because my dad had the first shift in this province of fathers, his patient explanations overshadow all others. Why is the sky blue? What makes wind? Are cats smarter than dogs? Why do dogs eat cat poop? (seriously, that made me doubt that dogs are smarter than cats) Do girls ever fart? Do all fish have teeth? (the movie Piranha had come out) How does Santa get down the Chimney? If God created the world, who created God? How does a lightbulb work? Why do you use a radar detector? That’s just for starters. Clearly he had his work cut out for him.

I marveled that he knew so much about so many things. As an adult, I remember my dad and think that it would be fair to say he was a Renaissance man. He played tennis and volleyball, and took up martial arts before his death. He built a passive solar house, restored a Model A Ford coupe with a rumble seat, had a beautiful garden, and was a decent cook by his third marriage. He was a successful salesman, an introvert who taught himself to be socially engaging, and was well-respected by his colleagues. He knew things, things that mattered. He had the answers to my questions, and on the rare occasion that he didn’t, he didn’t fake it.

Recent Past

One of my favorite novelists is Barbara Kingsolver. The last book I read by her was Demon Copperhead which is a story of life and love in the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. A line early in the novel has stuck with me as I have struggled to master this novel medical realm of Covid. “If you care, you’ll learn one thing from another. Anybody knows a sheepdog from a beagle, or a Whopper from a Big Mac.”

In the emergency setting, knowing one thing from another can make a big difference in the how the day goes for the patient in your care. Was that Morphine (MS04) or Mag Sulfate (MgS04) which caused you to stop breathing? Before I hang your blood, are you Bill Jones (DOB 6/24/59) or Bill Jones (DOB 6/23/59)? Did that telemetry monitor just show you brushing your teeth, or did you enter a potentially fatal dysrhythmia of ventricular fibrillation? You know, things that matter.

I have a decent understanding of how drugs work, at what doses, through what mechanisms of action, and with what side effects. It helped to spend nearly a decade on the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee at Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca. But I still relied heavily upon the expertise of my pharmacy colleagues while working in the Emergency Department (ED). When I started work in the trauma center at Upstate, this reliance grew, both because there were expert clinical pharmacists stationed in the ED itself, and because they actively participated in bedside care. During care of a trauma patient, it was Rob or Greg who was right behind me at the bedside, mixing drugs, passing syringes, reminding the team when the next dose of Epinephrine was due. They mixed the drips which made intubation work, hearts keep beating, blood pressure supply vital organs.

In this complex environment, I outsourced some of my learning. When the Covid vaccines were being rolled out, it was our pharmacist Greg to whom I turned. He had spent twelve hours watching expert testimony about the vaccines. I remember in the med room he assured me that the technology was at least a decade old, that they were safe, and he had done his homework in order to answer questions from colleagues like me. That was enough for me, because this was the guy who had my back when the chips were down, every damn time.

Present

I don’t outsource many of my questions anymore. Since I received two bad batch shots in January of 2021, I do my homework. In fact, I’ve read more studies in the last three years than the previous thirty. At this point, my study and clinical practice have propelled me into the position of trying to teach you.

The longer we are in practice at the Leading Edge Clinic, the more I encounter patients who still have almost both feet still in the land of conventional medicine. They still trust their PCP, their Cardiologist, their Gastroenterologist. The people who advised them to get the shots. They have been through the ringer, and haven’t been getting any answers. They are talking to me because their friend, family, neighbor, co-worker referred them. All they know is that they were told I might be able to help them.

This is a weak position from which to question the guidance of the trusted medical professionals in their lives. One way in which I approach this is by offering a framework. I suggest that when they next speak with their practitioner, they ask them this: “Sir/madam, can you please help me understand what is spikopathy, the pathologies it causes in long-haul and vaccine injury, and what you know about how to evaluate and treat those injuries?” I suggest that when that doctor/NP/PA gives them a blank stare, they remember it. You figure that into your calculations about whether their evaluation, testing, diagnosis and treatment is based upon reality.

The same practitioners may also tell you “We just don’t know much about long-haul and vaccine injury, and it will be years before we understand it and can effectively treat it.” My response is that today, not tomorrow or years from now, there is a graduate level course in long-haul and vaccine injury available at no cost. It is the eighty-two (and growing) part series by Dr Syed Mobeen, known as Dr Been. It is the Long Story Short series from the FLCCC Alliance. Any layperson or practitioner who watches and learns from that series will acquire knowledge that currently evades 99.9% of the practitioners in the United States, if not the world.

Along those lines, a patient recently told me that we need to share a list of medications that people experiencing spikopathy shouldn’t take. She was right. This is a start. In upcoming Substacks I will cover proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs), statins, and polyethylene glycol (PEG). In this Substack I’ll start with aluminum-containing over-the-counter and prescription medications. Examples are Maalox, Mylanta, Pepto-Bismol, Carafate or Sucralfate.

What are these products supposed to do? Aluminum hydroxide (Maalox, Mylanta) is a basic inorganic salt that acts by neutralizing hydrochloric acid in gastric secretions. Aluminum hydroxide is slowly solubilized in the stomach and reacts with hydrochloric acid to form aluminum chloride and water. It also inhibits the action of pepsin by increasing the pH and via adsorption. Bismuth subsalicylate (Pepto-Bismol) consists of trivalent bismuth and salicylate suspended in a mixture of magnesium aluminium silicate clay. The medicine forms a protective coating over the lower part of your esophagus, and partly coats your stomach. This helps protect them from stomach acid. It also has weak antacid properties that may help reduce too much stomach acid.

Sucralfate/Carafate works by forming a barrier or coating over a gastric ulcer. This protects the ulcer from the acid of the stomach, allowing it to heal. More technically, it dissociates in the acid environment of the stomach to its anionic form, which binds to the ulcer base. This creates a protective barrier to pepsin and bile and inhibits the diffusion of gastric acid. Sucralfate also stimulates the gastric secretion of bicarbonate and prostaglandins.

Why use aluminum in these antacids? One word, flocculation. If your house is connected to a municipal sewage system, when you flush the toilet the waste flows to your local sewage treatment plant. It is common practice in the United States to add aluminum powder to the raw sewage in order to make the solid waste settle out of the solution, so that it can be collected and removed. How does that work? Aluminum is what chemists call a cation. It has a +3 charge. The organic waste from your poo has a negative charge. Aluminum binds to the organic waste and this joint venture becomes sludgy. Ergo, flocculation. What happens when you ingest medications which have aluminum? Flocculation, in your blood. Sludging, in…your…blood.

It is not rare that during my first visit with a patient who has post-acute sequelae of Covid (PASC) or vaccine injury they will have one of these medications on their list. Or, as we progress through the visit, it comes out that they take one of these medications, Carafate being the worst. That is the moment when I try to explain to them that we have a bit of work to do just to get to the starting line of healing.

When I assert to you that 100% of the population has microclotting, regardless of vaccination status, the import of what I shared about aluminum gathers weight. For now, I’ll direct your questions about microclotting to Dr Jordan Vaughn’s presentation on Microclotting at the FLCCC Alliance in May 2023. We have lost the controls in this dystopian medical experiment, and we have all been contaminated by spike. On a scale of 0-4, the best we have seen when testing blood for our patients is a 1.5. This was only one patient, and after months of anticoagulation therapy. Dr Vaughn, who I consider the United States national expert on microclotting, after testing thousands of patients, would assert that the best score we see in the general population is microclotting at a level of 1 out of 4.

Some of you are old enough to remember the white stick which your dad or grandad had in the medicine cabinet and would use to stop bleeding from a cut suffered while shaving. I’m old enough that I still have one of these. Safety razors have mostly made this a thing of the past, but that white stick was a styptic pencil. Anhydrous aluminium sulfate is the main ingredient and acts as a vasoconstrictor in order to disable blood flow. The stick is applied directly to the bleeding site and it stings. The high ionic strength promotes flocculation of the blood, and the astringent chemical causes local vasoconstriction. It has 56% aluminum.

If you doubt that the little bit of aluminum in these medications is enough to cause trouble, I’ll give you a couple of examples. One of my unvaccinated patients is a band teacher who was relatively stable. Then he went on a trip to Disney with his students. He took along his travel kit, in which he had a travel deodorant with aluminum, and travel hair gel, with aluminum. During the trip he drank soda out of aluminum cans. After the trip his health deteriorated dramatically. When we had the next visit, he reported symptoms reflective of microclotting: severe headache, vision changes, arm and leg muscle pain, joint pain, GI upset. Shedding was contributing to these changes. When he returned to his non-aluminum deodorant at home, and stopped using his aluminum containing hair gel, he saw improvement in his symptoms.

Another patient is a radiologist who had symptoms reflective of microclotting, with cognitive issues, headache, myalgia and joint pain. With the simple intervention of eliminating his habit of drinking seltzer out of aluminum cans, he achieved a remarkable reduction of his symptoms. Just avoiding this tiny amount of aluminum had enough impact that this trained medical professional could clearly identify the benefit.

Sucralfate/Carafate contains 21% aluminum by weight. A typical regimen of 1 g 4 times/day contains 828 mg of elemental aluminum. I used to love Carafate, and would introduce patients to it by saying it was an old-fashioned drug which was very effective at helping heal peptic ulcer disease or esophagitis. Ironically, the underlying autoimmune dysregulation, antibody response, mast-cell activation, and microclotting from spikopathy can easily lead to heartburn and gastrointestinal dysregulation. Along comes a general practitioner or gastroenterologist and they prescribe Carafate. The result is a catastrophic escalation of microclotting, as each dose of aluminum provokes more and more and more flocculation or sludging in the patient’s blood.

What are your alternatives to these 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. For the unfortunate with bleeding ulcers, get a juicer, and drink raw cabbage juice. There were two excellent studies from the late 1940s and 1950s which demonstrated this intervention to be a safe and quick way to completely heal ulcer craters. See references here and here.

One thing from another. If you care, you’ll learn.

P.S. This last week I appeared on the Shaun Newman Podcast episode #554. The content of his show has taken a giant turn from focusing on sports to discussing current events in Alberta and Canada. We had a fun and informative visit together. After this podcast was released on Friday December 22, 2023, bad actors hacked Shaun’s website and diverted web traffic to a bogus site in Indonesia. They stole his domain and registered it under GoDaddy. We understand from expert cyber security consultants that the cost of such a job for a talented hacker would be $20-40,000. Somebody, some organization, or some government (Canada?) doesn’t want Shaun broadcasting. My translation is that in the content of our discussion, we are over the target. Don’t let Them win. Please give a listen, and share with others.

History

1973 was a big year for me. I turned four, my family moved to a new home in another state, and I learned about yellow jackets and rats.

There was a woodpile in our backyard. Curious boy that I was, I noticed that insects were flying in and out of it, thin creatures with yellow and black bodies. I could see that there was one opening in particular where they landed, entered, re-emerged and flew off again. I later learned that these were yellow jackets. In a way which would play out over and over again in my life, until I got wise and recognized my own folly, I picked up a stick and poked it in the hole, then ran off. The buzz it stirred up was very exciting. So exciting in fact, that I did it again. It was the third time that went sideways. I didn’t just poke the stick in the hole, I gave it a few good wiggles and wags.

Boy howdy! A storm of angry insects came swarming out of their nest in search of a target. In my screaming, flailing dash between the woodpile and the enclosed porch of our house, I was stung twenty six times. It took my mom and dad a puzzled minute to figure out what all the hooting and hollering was about in our backyard. They rushed me inside and grabbed rolled up newspapers to wack away at the angry ones which had followed us into the breezeway. To this day, I’m not sure if either of them was stung, although I’m sure that I’ll hear from my mother after this post. Later on as I lay dozing in a hospital room with dim lights, it was beyond doubt that my mom and dad were on my side in that moment of crisis. In spite of the fact that I had seriously blundered and brought down a world of hurt upon all of us.

Around the same time, I also learned about rats. We had a beautiful collie named Dutchess. Protective lassie she was, and one day while I was outside playing in the backyard, she cornered a rat on the patio. As I approached, I could see her lunging and biting at a dark furry animal with a long tail. Dutchess wounded the rat, and my dad finished it off with a shovel, but for her troubles, Dutchess suffered a nice bite to the snout. I rode in the backseat with her as we took her to the vet, smearing blood from her nose all over the window. Such excitement!

Since that time, I have never again bothered a yellow jacket that didn’t bother me first. Knock on wood, I haven’t had to tussle with any rats either. But indeed, I learned that the smallest of beings were not to be trifled with, as each has its own dignity and defenses.

Recent past

Shifts worked at SUNY Upstate between the start of the pandemic in March 2020 and my departure in August 2021 have become a blur in my memory. The gestalt is fear of dying while providing care amidst organized chaos. It is hard to think when you are scared. I’m grateful that I was a seasoned Emergency nurse going into the pandemic. Ditto being in my late forties with some living under my belt. Still, I think that we were all scared, and it came out in different ways.

At the time I was the union steward in our Emergency Department (ED), and an elected representative to the Executive Board of the Public Employee Federation or PEF. It had been a decade since there was a functioning steward in the ED. Although our team was filled with independent thinkers and sturdy characters, it wasn’t operating as an empowered and organized group vis-a-vis our own rights and safety.

I believe it was Machiavelli who formulated the maxim “Never let a good crisis go to waste”, but I’ll credit modern human resource management with taking this to new heights. As the uncertainty of global viral illness swirled around us, Upstate did one thing it does well, and often. It disappeared several workers faster than an Argentinian dictatorship. One in particular was a dear Nursing Assistant or HCT who was the old grey mare being put out to pasture. Another was an Assistant VP of our sister union, CSEA.

Can I just say that working a twelve hour shift in a busy Level 1 Trauma Center is not an easy feat? And that it is harder when you aren’t sure if you’re going to die after you help intubate that thirty year old who just rolled in with EMS? Even harder when stalwart co-workers disappear and you’re not supposed to talk about it? Even harder when you have a family to support and bills to pay, and who doesn’t? Harder still when you’re the union steward trying to inspire co-workers to stand up for each other?

It was a gift of the universe that in 2018 I met Ellen David Friedman, a force of nature who has been a union organizer for nearly fifty years, and who just happened to have relocated from Vermont to my home town of Ithaca. One of the many things she taught me was to lean into my fear and act, but more importantly, to not act alone. This may be a lesson which many of us need to learn over and over. We look to others, individual leaders, to help us out of the mess we are in, instead of looking to each other. This takes immeasurable patience, and focus, as we hold back our bright ideas. We fight our urge to save people, and listen to each other to determine the steps which we can take as a group. We then shoulder the risk, and the fear, together.

Present

Before we ever met, Dr Pierre Kory introduced me to a concept which helped me survive the beginning of the pandemic in a busy ED. It was the four Ds: density, duration, draft and dimension. This is a risk assessment perspective that will help diminish your fear and empower you to negotiate a Covidian world.

Density: how many people are in the space?

Duration: for how long?

Draft: with what degree and quality of air circulation?

Dimension: in what size space?

These concepts take on greater significance when we expand our concern beyond simply being infected by Covid, and consider the dynamics of shedding.

What is shedding? From a 2015 FDA Guidance document: “The release of viral or bacterial gene therapy products from the patient by any or all of the following routes: feces (feces); secretions (urine, saliva, nasopharyngeal fluids, etc.); or through the skin (pustules, lesions, sores).” The products (i.e. spike protein) are known to be shed via either the synthetic lipid covered nanoparticles or via enclosure within endogenous nanoparticle sized “exosomes” from a vaccinated/boosted person, to another, regardless of their vaccination status. Our impression is that aerosolized particles conveyed via exhalation and inhalation are the primary route of transmission.  Dr Kory’s Substack series on the topic provides insight into the scientific basis of shedding as an observed adverse effect of the mRNA vaccines.

Many of us have been acting on the principles of the four Ds since the start of the pandemic. Grocery shopping early, going to the car lane at the bank, meeting outside with friends. Employing the words, the Ds, and gauging the risk can make it more tangible. It can also form the basis of negotiating our interaction with others.

Sharing a car ride with another person is a very intimate exposure. There may only be two people in the vehicle, but the space is very small. If it the outside temperature is hot, or cold, the ventilation in the car may be set to recirculate the same air. The longer the ride, the more the exposure.

In a recent visit my patient had a relapse in brain fog and cognitive impairment, to such a degree that the part-time work to which he had just returned was proving very difficult. What we identified as the likely cause was secondary shedding. In the last week his mother had spent several hours in a car with her sister-in-law, who had just been boosted. Two people, two hours, recirculating air, small space.

Car rides have been an instigating event for many of my patients over the last two years. Whether it was a daily commute (an hour each way with someone who was several times boosted), or sightseeing with visiting family (hot weather, recirculating AC), or brief rides with a child’s boosted boyfriend sitting behind the patient/driver. It makes sense to have the skinny on who is sharing your ride.

What about being outside? Evaluated through the rubric of the four Ds, this is a very, very low risk scenario. Two people outside is a non-issue. As long as you like. A breeze and movement are your friends. The sky is literally the limit. Introducing a crowd of people shoulder-to-shoulder, under a tarp or overhead structure which inhibits air flow, begins to change the dynamics. But still, this is a lower risk scenario.

How about restaurants? It depends. What time of day? Late lunch hour is going to draw fewer people than noon, or dinner at six. Is it a cozy little bistro where you can smell whether or not your neighbor applied enough deodorant, or an updated restaurant with multiple air exchanges per hour? My wife and I ventured a meal at our favorite restaurant months ago, in which we were at a two-top elbows away from couples on either side. High density, long duration (French, three hours from start to finish), good ventilation, high ceilings and modest size. But there can always be a wild card. We struck up a long conversation with the couple next to us. At the very end we learned that each of them had both shots and every booster available. We were talking and laughing in close proximity for well over an hour. The headaches, body aches, and fatigue to follow that night and the next day were not mysterious.

Airports and airplanes are at two different ends of the four Ds spectrum. Airport lounges and lines can be densely packed, we can wait for hours, but the movement of people, good air circulation and vast dimensions tend to limit the risks. Airplanes are much more confined spaces, in which we sit rubbing elbows, again for hours, with recirculating air.

Gyms have their own peculiar dynamics. Skip the crowd. Workouts are often an hour from start to finish. A space with an open floor plan and high ceilings quite literally gives you some breathing room. Then there is mat work such as yoga and stretching in smaller spaces, where the density of aerosolized particles accumulates in the lowest inches and feet of the room. It is not uncommon for the exhaled breath from other people exercising to linger in the air for up to 2 1/2 hours, and concentrate near the floor.

Through detailed discussion with one patient, we determined that not only were his post-acute sequelae of Covid (PASC) exacerbations related to days he went to the gym and did mat work, but also his daughter’s increased symptoms (secondary shedding). It’s worth rethinking the timing and format of your routine. For the geeks in the room, this 2022 study on aerosol dispersion in a ventilated room will give you reason to pause.

Here come the Holidays and the attendant travel and convivial gatherings which give so much meaning to our lives. Use the four Ds to help you think about harm reduction. How many people to invite, how long to visit, how to improve the air flow, and how big a space is feasible? If you can’t open windows or turn up the ventilation, consider a HEPA filter in place. We use an Oransi in the waiting area of our clinic space. You may be able to fear less, and think more.

One thing I have come to appreciate through my work in the clinical arena of spikopathy is that I am not alone in fighting the spike protein. Our practice the Leading Edge Clinic is not alone. In learning how to protect against and repair harms of the virus and Covid shots, we continue to build connections with our patients, other practitioners and researchers. We are learning from each other. Stay safe out there, meaning, look out for yourself and each other in practical ways. Remember that you are not alone.

P.S. Any recommendation I make for products such as Oransi HEPA filters are free from financial interest on my part.

P.P.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’m looking forward to connecting with you there. You can learn more about the conference here: flccc.net/conference (http://flccc.net/conference)

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#HealthcareRevolution #FLCCCConference #F

LCCC2024 #FLCCC #FLCCCAlliance

History

Situated between an older brother and younger sister, I’m the middle child of parents who planned. How else would we be August, September, October babies? I don’t remember being happy, or sad, or resentful when my little sister was born, but I wasn’t exactly welcoming.

When my sister was barely a year old, and I was four, we lived in a suburb of Philadelphia. In our house there was a lovely stone fireplace. One day when our parents were out of sight, I threw an enormous stuffed bear in her way and she tripped, falling forward and smacking her face on the sharp edge of the hearth. Screaming, tears and a gusher of blood commenced. Years later as a trauma nurse, I would still marvel at just how much blood could emerge from the tiniest facial laceration. Our face and scalp are quintessentially vascular tissue.

My dad scooped up my sister, and pulled me along. I don’t remember how we got there, but we arrived in the pediatrician’s office in short order. Can you imagine? A pediatrician who could and would suture? As an inauguration to my little manhood, I was witness to the spectacle of my sister being sewn up. Dad held her firmly as a needle with black thread was passed in and out of her nose through her nostrils, then in and out of her nose on the outside. More tears, blood and screaming. The worst part was that in my four year old mind, it was my fault.

More than a decade ago, after a holiday debacle when we each had too much Chateau Neuf de Pape and a drunken row ensued, something shifted in our adult relationship. By the way, I don’t recommend this as a consistent way to improve communication with your siblings, but in this isolated instance, it was just the ticket. Some dam broke, and we began to have regular meaningful phone conversations. This lasted for years.

Along the trajectory of our years of conversations, I tried to make amends to my sister for perceived transgressions, for which I continued to carry a sense of wrongdoing. She didn’t really bite, either because they didn’t have the same weight for her, or because she would rather just not go there.

The pandemic soured our relationship. I’m presenting my perspective of course, but my sense is that my stance against further COVID vaccinations, and articulation that despite being a lifelong Democrat, I would actually consider voting for Trump irritated her. It probably doesn’t help that a cursory search of the internet would inform her that I’m practice partners with the devil himself, rather than the humble, courageous patriot, fine human and skilled clinician I know him to be. The last time we spoke was when I traveled to Orlando, FL in October 2022 for the inaugural FLCCC Alliance conference on spikopathy. I flew down early to have dinner with her and my mother. She had just been boosted, went out with co-workers for a social hour, and came down with acute COVID. Ahem.

Fifty years later, I’m still trying to forgive myself for tripping up my little sister. I feel kindness and compassion for the little rug rat that I was, and you would think that I’ve paid my debts by now, but, not quite yet.

Recent Past

In my previous post I related the initial flip flop at SUNY Upstate re: whether to mask or not to mask. Upstate next vacillated on when, why, and how to wear surgical masks versus N-95s. Pre-pandemic, we didn’t wear N-95s that much. If you did, it was most often because you had a patient who had active Tuberculosis or a suspicion for the same. If you worked in an urban environment, with immigrants from developing countries, and with prisoners, this would happen more often. You never wore the mask for that long. It was understood that the mask was good for less than thirty minutes. You would gown and mask to go into a negative pressure room. These rooms are designed to have enough ventilation to the outside, so that when the door to the room opens, air can only go into it, not out. There was typically an anteroom before the patient room itself, where you would don and doff your gown, mask and gloves. It was understood that an N-95 was a single use piece of equipment. You would not, under any circumstances, reuse an N-95. Period.

There was an annual ritual around being “fitted” for the correct N-95. It was a big deal. You had to have it done by the deadline or you would be on your manager’s naughty list, maybe even be taken off the schedule until you checked that box. If you grew a beard, shaved a beard, lost some weight, gained some weight, you would definitely need a thorough evaluation. The process took a half hour at Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca where I worked for fifteen years. Upstate was a little speedier, but the idea was the same. Turn your head this way, turn it that, bend over, grimace, do jumping jacks, repeat this ridiculous paragraph about leprechauns and a pot of gold at the end of rainbow. Some linguist had deduced just the right number of consonants and vowels to test the effectiveness of your mask at preventing aerosolized particles from making their way to your respiratory tract. You get the picture. Tedium ad nauseum.

The whole point of fitting was to have an effectively tight seal of your N-95. Common sense would tell you that taking such a mask on and off multiple times during a shift will compromise this fit. In the blink of an eye, Upstate was telling us that not only could we wear N-95s for an entire twelve hour shift, but even that we could set them aside and they could be cleaned, sanitized, and sterilized. God bless their hearts, National Nurses United put out a fact sheet on this topic by the end of March 2020. But per management, what was drilled into our heads for decades was no longer valid. Upstate started collecting our N-95s at the end of the shift. We were supposed to put our initials and employee number on them, and they would be returned to us after sterilization. The plan was to reuse them two more times.

I complied once, barely. When I received my first sterilized mask back, it had red lipstick on it. For the record, I’ve got no beef with guys who wear lipstick, but I’m not one of them. Frankly, if I was going to wear lipstick, I think I’d be more of a pink frosty kind of guy. Anyway, I don’t wear lipstick. From that point on, sure, I’d put my mask in the bins. After I took a paper hole puncher and gave it a few good plugs, or yanked out the strap. And no, no name or employee ID number, but I wanted them to get the message that not everybody was buying into their scheme. I wasn’t alone.

Present

I’m a Quaker. Quakers try harder to be good people than about anybody within throwing distance. They are by and large, progressive liberals, who are intentionally, determinedly, incessantly boosted. These are my people. The mind bender is that I don’t agree with them at all on this point. Because I have been treating and healing long-haul and vax injured patients for almost two years, and I am vaccine injured myself, I know different.

In fact, the people who I didn’t think were my people, the Trump-voting, evangelical, gun-toting, politically incorrect, not careful and not-trying-so-hard-to-be-good people, are feeling a lot more like…my people. They are the Americans who didn’t jump in line to get the shots, who didn’t trust the government, had some thoughts of their own, and in many ways have paid a huge price for their intransigence over the last nearly four years.

In our Quaker meeting, one manner in which we get to know each other is through Quaker Eights. The idea is to get together with a small group of Quakers at least eight times over the course of a year. Mostly this would be through potlucks, but it could be through any activity we choose.

Given what I know and continue to learn about shedding, I was uncertain whether or not, I could attend an upcoming Quaker Eight potluck without suffering adverse consequences. What I did, and what I would suggest that you do too, is take a leap. I emailed our Quaker Eight group about my predicament. In brief, I told them that I’m vaccine injured, with ongoing health challenges, and concerned about shedding. I explained what shedding was, and asked them to share their booster status.

I understood that this would be completely novel information for them, given their confidence in The Narrative. What I was trying to suss out was whether anyone had been boosted in the last two weeks because that seems to be a particularly potent period of shedding. The responses came back quickly, respectfully, simply stating the time since their last booster. I expected this, but it still felt like a gut punch when I understood that all of them had received the latest booster. None in the last two weeks. Game on. Using prophylaxis which included supplements and Rx meds on FLCCC protocols, drinking green tea, using eye drops and nasal spray, I attended our potluck in the company of boosted Quakers.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), Green Tea, and EGCG

Within our practice the Leading Edge Clinic is my beloved colleague, Dr. Anthony Fazio. We met in 2005 when we helped start the Ithaca Free Clinic, where he still volunteers. This was the first free clinic in the United States to integrate allopathic Western medicine and complementary or alternative medicine. Boy did we wrestle with those labels!

Anthony is an acupuncturist and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) herbalist who has been in practice for more than 30 years. Starting with a scientific paper which considered Ayurvedic herbs, and measured their capacity to destroy spike, Anthony developed eye drops, and a nasal spray, which we think provide some protection against shedding. My wife and I were test subjects for early versions of the solutions. He is still making it in micro batches, but approximately 40 of our patients are using it, and reports from the field are positive. We provide the set to our patients at cost, but you can contact Dr. fazio at Peaceful Spirit Acupuncture if you want to order it. Cost is $100 per set including shipping.

I’m distinguishing the TCM anti-spike eye drops and nasal spray from options we have to block the virus alone. For example, diluted povidone iodine, commercially available Xlear, or Enovid, heck, even neti pot rinses with half a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of baking soda are all helpful in preventing us from getting sick from the COVID virus. Enovid shows some effect against both the virus and spike from shedding per my patients’ reports. The TCM combo is not only antiviral, but specifically targeting spike protein conveyed via exosomes in aerosolized particles from another person’s exhalation.

From 2021-2023, there were multiple studies demonstrating that EGCG or epigallocatechin gallate in green tea helps block spike entry into cells. Aside from therapies listed in FLCCC Alliance protocols to inhibit spike, such as nasal rinses, NAC, quercetin, etc. green tea is my go to, along with the TCM eye drops and nasal spray to prevent shedding.

The Epoch Times had an excellent article about the differences among green teas and their EGCG content. A simple rule is that Japanese Sencha and Matcha have the highest content. My favorite source is Rishi Tea out of Milwaukee, WI, one of the largest importers of organic loose green tea in the United States. Of course, you can buy EGCG as a capsule or in a combination anti-spike formula, but as with all things herbal, when you isolate a single component, you are certain to lose many additional compounds. These compounds synergistically improve the effect of the target molecule, and limit any potential side effects. Besides, green tea is yummy.

The potluck went well. I didn’t note any increase in my vax injury symptoms afterwards, and future labs will tell whether I’m holding steady in the face of shedding during social exposure. As we head into the holidays, whether you have PASC, vax injury, no concerns or this is all new to you, thinking about and negotiating shedding will serve your health and well being. I’ll plan to discuss this further in upcoming posts.

P.S. I don’t have a financial interest in products or brands recommended such as Rishi Tea, Xlear, Enovid, etc.