The pandemic was rough on us “right-wing anti-vaxxers.” (Who knew being consistently right would be so exhausting?) You might have felt alone at times—but you never were.
Meet your tribe.
Yankee Doodle Soup isa collection of essays by a diverse group of writers with one thing in common: something positive to say about the pandemic. (Really! Those were the rules and the collaborators obliged enthusiastically and expertly.)
Contributors range from well-known doctors and scientists to speakers, podcasters, authors, attorneys, and editors. There’s an Emmy Award-winning former news anchor, a bridal gown designer, a whistleblower, a rock band, and one “pissed-off, childless, married woman of a certain age who didn’t do anything meaningful in her life until [Covid].” The essays are warm, witty, wise, wondrous, and exactly what the world is hungry for right now.
The book was conceived and edited by Jenna McCarthy (co-author of The War On Ivermectin, by my practice partner, Dr Pierre Kory). She has written twenty books, given two TED talks, spoken to groups across the country, served as a staff writer and editor at top women’s magazines in New York and LA, ridden in the back of a pickup truck in a lawn chair, filmed a book trailer in the bathtub, and gone scuba diving with sharks (on purpose). If you ask her daughters her greatest accomplishment, they’d probably say “being interviewed by Khloe Kardashian on the Today show.” Despite this, Jenna would say her daughters are her greatest accomplishment. Yankee Doodle Soup is her first anthology. It may or may not be her last.
Submit your tin foil hat photo to info@bellalunapress.com to be featured in the gallery and for a chance to win a free book!
Please consider buying the paperback or e-book using my contributor code MARSLAND. I contributed an essay titled “Where is God?” Go to https://yankeedoodlesoup.com
Books will ship the first week in June. (That’s when ebooks will be available for purchase as well.) Paperbacks will ONLY be sold through the yankeedoodlesoup.com website, proceeds from which will go to hard working writers like me. Use my contributor code, which is my last name, MARSLAND. If you have enjoyed my Substack, Lightning Bug, over the last six months, please support my work by purchasing this book from the website. Ebooks will be available through Amazon and Apple, with ZERO royalties to the writers.
Most summers I spend a week at the shore in Ocean City, New Jersey. My Aunt Sue and Uncle Bruce generously host. From the time that I was a baby — in fact, when I was still in my mother’s womb — my family would go to Ocean City in the summertime. Bruce and Sue had one, and then two, rental properties there as their working investment towards retirement. There was the huge pain-in-the-ass (PITA) factor of driving down to OC and back through weekend traffic to clean them between renters. Once the PITA grew too large, and the market was looking good, they sold both properties.
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Nana and I, after baptism 1970
Spending time with this branch of the Marsland clan in OC has been a touchstone; seeing my aunt, uncle, cousins, nieces and nephews, catching up on the past year and retelling tales of Marsland lore. When my Nana was still alive, she would be there too, turning a lovely shade of brown while I was working on my sunburn the first few days of sunbathing.
Mom and I, 1972
One of the stories my Aunt Sue consistently retells is that of my mom being pregnant at her wedding to Uncle Bruce. My mother wore a bright orange dress with a short hem, showing off her lovely legs. Beneath the dress, her pregnant belly protruded like a little pumpkin. What I like about that story is that I feel included in the Marsland family history, even before consciousness; I was part of the action, and Sue enjoys reminding me of that.
MORE RECENT PAST
Mom, Sharon and I on Mackinac Island, MI
When I was fourteen, before I ran away to live with my paternal grandparents, my mom and I agreed to take a confirmation class together. My stepfather Em had been a member of the congregation and choir at Christ Church Cathedral, an Episcopal church in downtown Hartford, CT. If there was a church to which we belonged, that was it, but my mom had never been confirmed, and neither had I. For non-Episcopalians in the crowd: confirmation is the opportunity for teenagers and adults to sacramentally and publicly say “yes” to Jesus and His church as expressed through the Episcopal Church. To be confirmed is to be strengthened for ministry by the Holy Spirit and laying on of apostolic (i.e. a Bishop’s) hands. For everyone in the crowd, my favorite saying about being Episcopalian is that we are Catholic light; we haveall the pomp and circumstance, but half the guilt.
Mom and I would commute from our rural abode in Amston, CT into Hartford once a week for months. Ironically, one of the other members of the class was a girl named Karen, an old neighbor from West Hartford days, who I used to tear around the neighborhood with on our Big Wheels. On the actual day of confirmation, there was a service during which the Bishop, who would have been William Bradford Turner Hastings, laid his holy hands on our heads. Aside from Karen and the bishop, I have the gestalt of sharing an experience with my mother in which we were almost equals. It was new, different — and welcome. It was a rare opportunity to see her in another light, as a fellow student and traveler.
PRESENT
Mom in Ithaca, summer 2023
Last summer my mom came for a visit in Ithaca while my wife was away, and we had a lovely time. One of the highlights for me was going on a sailboat cruise up Cayuga Lake with Captain Dave. He grew up in Ithaca, and has been sailing since he was a wee lad. He knows a lot about the history of not only the various structures on the lake, but also the geography surrounding it. The conversation was wide ranging, so of course we got into the topic of the COVID shots and spike protein. Fortunately, that was a side note to the afternoon, as the weather was too glorious, the skies too beautiful, the sails too full, to dwell on such things as we turned southwest to glide back into Ithaca.
Mother’s Day is too easily subjugated by crass commercialism and jostling for position at a crowded Sunday brunch. What I’d like to celebrate today is the imperfection, humanity, and long-term influence of the mothers in my life. Aunt Sue, Aunt Julie, Nana, Baba, Grandma Jones, Grandma Chavez, Betty Ann, my wife (the consummate mama cat), and the woman who gave me life, my mom. Thank you. I love you.
Happy Mother’s Day.
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My family moved from Horsham, PA to West Hartford, CT in 1973. For the next six years, we would make trips back to Pennsylvania for holidays such as Easter, occasionally Christmas, but always Thanksgiving. The Marsland clan holiday was Thanksgiving, and was spent in Parkerford with my Nana and Pop pop.
During the decade that my wife and I lived in Philadelphia, we made the trip to CT and back many times. The experience of a five and a half hour drive as an adult is soooooo different than that of a child. You have a steering wheel in your hands, your foot on the gas and brake pedals, and must pay attention. Driving is the most complex behavior which many of us engage in on a regular basis, judging distance and speed, calculating risk, and exercising situational awareness.
As a child in the backseat, five and a half hours was a prolonged period of boredom, counterbalanced by the adrenaline-filled anticipation of seeing my grandparents. My little sister Sharon would be seated in her car seat between me and my older brother John. Our occasional squabbles were limited by my mother’s sharp fingernails. There weren’t the tools of distraction which contemporary parents use, such as CD players extending from the ceiling or mounted on a headrest. The Sony Walkman hadn’t been invented yet. Thankfully, I was a reader, and could spend some time engrossed in a book. Still in elementary school, I made my way through The Kent Family Chronicles, which were adult novels of adventure and romance by American writer John Jakes.
I didn’t recognize landmarks, but my body knew when we were getting close to Parkerford because of the change in texture and pattern of the roads. There was a series of stop lights as we drove through Phoenixville and and past Spring City; some railroad tracks we would cross over, and then the left turn at the light off of Rt 724 onto Old Schuykill Rd. I knew that intersection, and felt the slower speed of the car for the next few minutes. My excitement grew until we turned left onto Zeiber Rd, reached the crest of the hill, and turned right into Nana and Pop pop’s gravel driveway.
Nana must have heard the crunch of tires on gravel, and would be at the door to greet us with a big wet kiss. She smelled like Dove soap. As I entered the tight space between the kitchen door and the basement door, I could smell a combination of cooking smells, with lingering elements of natural gas from the stove pilot light, cigar, and old wood. I swear that I could smell the Froot Loops among the little cereal boxes she would keep in the oven for our visits. (Why keep cereal in the oven, I will never know!) There was gentler, warmer lighting of incandescent bulbs, long before LEDs became pervasive. We would bring in our suitcases, and I would take a minute to bounce on the twin bed on my side of the room which I would share with my brother, listening for the reassuring squeak of the old box springs.
Pop pop would still be at the service station he ran in Norristown. I loved my Nana, but I adored my Pop pop. His return home was my highlight of our visits. He would be wearing his dark blue Dickie’s work shirt and pants with his black workshoes. He smelled like cigar and sweat with hints of gasoline and oil. He had a big smile of crooked tea-stained teeth, a rich laugh, and baritone timbre to his voice.
Before we could get down to playing a card game of Hearts or Oh Hell, or dominoes if it was later, Pop pop had to tally up the day’s receipts. He had an old Phillies cigar box, and I could smell the cash as he counted bills, doing long addition with a pencil and piece of paper. It was all so tangible and immediate.
As I drifted off to sleep, I could hear the tinkle of the old radiators, and in the middle of the night, my Pop pop’s snoring from the adjacent bedroom. Because of his work, he was an early riser both during his working years and in retirement. We kept our bedroom doors open, and even if I wasn’t ready to get out of bed yet, I could hear Pop pop’s footsteps on the hardwood floors as he passed our bedroom. I could smell the whiff of cigar smoke as he lit up before going outside for a walk. I didn’t need to ask “Are we there yet?” I was home.
RECENT PAST
Copenhagen Fall 1989
In the Fall of 1989 I was attending Denmark’s International Study program (DIS) in Copenhagen, Denmark. I was a Business Economics major back at Susquehanna University, a small liberal arts college in Central Pennsylvania, and was enrolled to study international business at DIS for my entire junior year. When Winter break came, I flew to Madrid, Spain to meet up with my friend Kelly Hayner, a former Susquehanna graduate who was now teaching English. It was a great visit, with late-night dancing, standing meals at tapas bars, and several day excursions. We paid a visit to Museo Reina Sofía, where Picasso’s Guernica and all of the steps leading up to its creation are displayed. We also traveled to Segovia to see the Roman aqueduct and its Gothic cathedral.
At the end of our visit, I boarded a plane in Madrid, with plans to land in Paris. When I was a teenager, I was an informal exchange student with la famille Tardiveau near Nantes, and intended to visit them again. The weather goddess had other plans, and, less than an hour after takeoff, our plane was diverted back to Madrid, where we were placed on a train instead. It was chaotic; babies were crying, kids were whining, and tempers were short.
There are more pigs than people in Denmark, and few people outside of Denmark would bother learning Danish, because most Danes speak excellent English, and German, and French. I noted that when Danes are traveling abroad, they are comfortable expressing themselves without restraint in their mother tongue, as they can rightly expect that no one else will know what the hell they are saying. I enjoy languages, and as usual was motivated by romance and lust, so took up studying Danish during my first semester at DIS.
Back to the train. I knew that the passengers were getting to the end of their patience, when I heard a deep man’s voice yell “Hold kæft!”, which is a crude way of saying shut up in Danish, in response to another passenger’s crying baby. Thankfully, the train arrived at the Gare Montparnasse within the hour. Unfortunately, it was now past midnight, and no trains were running again until 6:30am.
Gare Montparnasse
Being a college student with limited funds, I figured that I would just find a corner and doze against my backpack until later that morning. Two members of the Police Nationale and a nasty German Shepherd had other ideas, and sent me packing. They did give me space to stow my backpack in a locker, but a few minutes later I was standing outside the station getting the once-over by several prostitutes. I proceeded to walk across the street to enter an open cafe, thinking that I would hang out there for a while. I ordered an omelet with jus d’orange and half a baguette. I was about to order coffee when the waiter let me know they were closing. It was only 1:30am! I paid my bill and walked outside. It must have been a slow night, because the same prostitutes were giving me looks of reconsideration.
I flagged a taxi, and in my adequate French explained that I was looking for a restaurant that was open all night. He obliged me, and dropped me off on a street corner which had an open restaurant on each side. I walked up to the door which was closest to me, and as soon as I entered, felt out of place. Everyone looked like they had just come from the opera, wearing tuxedos and full-length dresses. I was wearing a red Marmot shell over a flannel shirt with blue jeans and hiking boots. The maître d’, without hesitation escorted me to a two-top with a fine linen tablecloth. The equally professional waiter arrived but a moment later to deliver a menu.
Everything on the menu looked good—and expensive! I picked the least expensive item I could find, which was a broiled white fish, which came with cream sauce, blanched asparagus, and a delectable whipped potato creation. I drank from une carafe d’eau, not daring to get into the wine list. I ate v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, but still, when I finished, it was only 3:00am. I paid my bill, walked out of the restaurant, and across the street to the other restaurant!
I’m not sure how to describe this third restaurant. It was brightly lit, and bustling with customers. The menu was eclectic, and I was not starving for sure, so I decided on a chef salad. When the salad arrived, it was huge! There were FOUR hard-boiled eggs, sliced in half, a generous amount of sliced ham and cheese, tomatoes, different types of lettuce, red onions, olives, and a lovely vinaigrette. I dug in, and even had some buttered baguette on the side. When I finished, it was…4:30 am.
I left the restaurant, thinking that I would get a cab, but when I counted up my remaining Francs, I realized that I had just enough money left to buy a train ticket. Well, then I could use the Metro. Wrong. The Metro stops were shuttered by iron gates. I didn’t have a map, but had been here three years before, and using the maps in the bus shelters I began to make my way back across the city to Gare Montparnasse. It was surreal. There was hardly anyone out and about, just a rare taxi and no other pedestrians. I walked by the Obelisk on Place de la Concorde, Jardin des Tuileries, the Louvre and its pyramid, all dramatic light and shadow in their spotlights. At first I was scared, but then just accepted my fate and enjoyed myself.
Obelisk at Place de Concorde
I arrived back at the Gare Montparnasse around 5:30 am, and it was starting to come to life. I got in line to buy a ticket to Nantes on a train leaving at 6:30am. In my well-structured but poorly pronounced French, I told the ticket counter clerk, “Je voudrais un billet pour le prochain train pour Nantes.” I.e. I would like a ticket for the next train to Nantes. The price of the ticket was unexpectedly low. I puzzled over this as I walked away, and as the minutes ticked by I came to understand my mistake. The clerk had heard my prochain (next) as chien (dog), and issued me a ticket for a dog!
It was now 6:00 am, and the ticket line was long. When I reached the clerk, again, I summoned up some indignity. (If you’ve ever heard an indignant Frenchman saying “Incroyable!”, you’ll understand). With pained emphasis and pronunciation, I said, “Je suis pas un chien (I’m not a dog), je suis un humain, et je voudrais, un billet, pour le prochain train pour Nantes!” Ah, this time he understood: with a quick grimace, he accepted my old ticket and issued a new one.
I got to the train about five minutes before departure. It had been more than twenty four hours, one train ride, two Police Nationales and one German Shepherd, two prostitutes, one taxi drive, three restaurants, three excellent meals, one very long and lovely walk, and one train station clerk, but I was finally on my train. I was already dreaming of the cozy bed awaiting me chez Tardiveau.
Toute la famille Tardiveau, juin 1986
PRESENT
Several times this week during patient visits, I fielded some form of the question: “When can I stop taking ______ prescription medication?” I usually respond with a question to try and gauge the patient’s willingness to continue—indefinitely. “What are your concerns about continuing with ______ medication?
Given that we are talking about post-acute sequelae of COVID (PASC) and vaccine injury, the relevant medications are most often IVM, LDN, Ketotifen, Eliquis, Plavix and Aspirin. But patients are also weary of taking fistfuls of supplements, and will ask about NAC Augmentata, Nattokinase, Lumbrokinase, etc.
When the patient’s primary concern is cost, I try to help them discern what the priorities of treatment are in each case, keeping in mind that there can be significant differences between patients. That is why I like the low-cost or free interventions such as intermittent fasting, extended fasting, grounding, prayer, meditation, cold-water showers, Baobab, Lithium, and alkaline water.
More often, patients just don’t want to keep taking a prescription drug. In part, it’s a self-image issue. Most patients with PASC and vaccine injury were high-performers in their lives before COVID. Their self-perception didn’t include having a pill organizer the size of a laptop with color-coding, nor did they expect that their Saturday night routine would include filling said pill organizer. Bless her soul, my wife got me some super-thoughtful Christmas presents last year, and not that a pill organizer wasn’t thoughtful, but damn, that wasn’t on my wish list for Santa.
I don’t have a crystal ball and, certainly, the front-row seat I have had to this genocide in progress has colored my perspective. Yup, I used the g-word, and mean every syllable of it. I expect patients (and you, dear reader) to take what I say with a boulder of Pink Himalayan sea salt. Yet I have a perspective that I think is worth sharing, otherwise I wouldn’t be spending some of my few free hours writing this.
Spikopathy is instigating a list of pathologies longer than…Fauci-Pinocchio’s nose during a recent congressional hearing. The world is contaminated with spike. Our bodies are contaminated with spike. I don’t know when or if that will ever end. Spike is provoking microclots, in all of us. Microclots provide refuge and mobility to metastatic cancer cells. Turbo cancer is a real thing, and in case nobody close to you has been diagnosed with cancer in the last two minutes, I’ll say that it arrives in the middle of the night and doesn’t wait to kiss you goodbye in the morning.
IVM blocks the influence of spike on platelets and red blood cells (RBCs), so that they are less inclined to aggregate and activate into microclots. LDN decreases the cytokine IL-6, a provocateur of mast cell activation, clotting, and cancer. Ketotifen stabilizes the mast cells which can be connected to every symptom a person has, from head to toe and everything in between. Because mast cells survive two to four years in our body, attending to their misbehaving ways is a priority. Eliquis, Plavix, Aspirin, Nattokinase, and Lumbrokinase are all helping our bodies cope with the burden of microclotting. NAC Augmentata breaks the disulfide bond between spike and ACE2 receptors, smashing spike into nearly 100 fragments so that our liver can break it down further and we can pee it out of our bodies. Every one of these therapies is doing something very important.
The comparative mind is a source of tremendous human suffering. “I look around and see everybody else living their lives, doing what they please, and they aren’t taking these drugs or supplements, they aren’t fasting, they’re not paying to speak with you every month. So, I ask again, how long do I have to take these drugs?”
Well, I can be blunt. First, there weren’t any classes in school about how you heal people from an intentional bioweapon. This is an on-the-job living classroom situation and we’re learning as we go. Second, third and fourth: how long do you want to live? How well do you want to live? How much of your mind do you want to keep? If your answers are, a long time, as well as possible, and all of it, then I would advise you, don’t stop taking those pills and potions.
Over the last thirty years, it has been my tremendous honor to be present as countless fellow humans grappled with their mortality, and often, while they passed over to the other side. For every person whose chronic illness has engendered bitterness in their soul, there is another who has made lemonade out of lemons, asked themselves what lessons they are meant to be learning, and made significant changes to how they live, in order to keep living. Sometimes these are people who are near death, but they are extracting meaning from their journey. By the calculus of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel: pain without meaning equals suffering.
Many of you had your eyes and ears open long before the lies and coercion to be vaccinated came tumbling down from on high. I was slower to pick up the plot, but I’ve been busy catching up. The last people I would be watching for clues about what to do next are the people who are doing nothing. I mean the people who are living their lives without a care, because they didn’t get a bad batch shot, and, by golly, those boosters were no trouble either! The time for wishful thinking is long gone. Never before in the history of humanity has our capacity to look squarely at reality been so important to our survival.
P.S. My colleague Dr Mobeen Syed or Dr Been has returned his focus to his medical education company, and recently completed a course on pain titled DEA Requirement for Opioid Use Disorder Management. For the medical professionals who read Lightning Bug: if you have suffered through tedious lectures which reinforce the pharma-influenced narrative in order to meet your obligatory CMEs, Dr Been’s lectures are a joy to behold. He is a brilliant and talented teacher, and you will learn concepts of anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, and practical treatment which will make your daily practice more interesting, and more effective. The cost is also very reasonable. For both practitioners and laypeople alike, I highly recommend the second lecture in this series, in order to understand the dynamics behind the chronic muscle pain which so many of us experience as a result of the spike protein.
P.S.S. I have no financial interest in Dr Been’s company.
Writing has held solace and meaning for me since I was a boy, sending and receiving letters to my Pop pop, Aunt Julie and Grandma Jones. In ninth and twelfth grades I had a superb English teacher named Kate Forney. Never do I put pen to paper without thinking of her lessons on the variety of sentence structures available to us in the English language. Occasionally I’ll think of the sign which she had on the front of her desk: “When in bed, read instead.”
Powerfully written letters have helped me beat adversaries in the realms of legal challenges, financial missteps, unionizing struggles, human resource quagmires, and healthcare revolution. They have also helped me woo my beloved wife and make amends for thoughtless acts and spoken words.
If I had my druthers, I would write this Substack on paper, in cursive, and blue ink. This immediate act of writing gives me joy, and makes my right middle finger sore just below the distal interphalangeal joint. Alas, most of you wouldn’t be able to understand what I wrote, because my handwriting, which was never penmanship worthy of Catholic school standards, has not improved with age.
It was with surprise and delight that I received an invitation from Jenna McCarthy to submit up to three essays for inclusion in her book Yankee Doodle Soup. The material is wide-ranging, with a Covidian theme, and generally uplifting. If you feel inspired to buy a copy, for yourself or as a gift to another, please use the code MARSLAND to send some royalties my way.
Below is one of the essays which was accepted for Jenna’s book. I’m still wrestling with how to reconcile my spiritual path with organized religion at a time when the communities with which we might worship may still be slow to acknowledge the dark underbelly of the pandemic, and the physical risks which we take with our attendance.
DISTANT PAST, RECENT PAST, AND PRESENT
My religious experience as a child was all over the map. The first church I attended with my family was a white clapboard Congregationalist in New England. It was open and sunny, but very plain on the inside. As children we were permitted to attend the first 15 minutes, and then were dismissed to Sunday school. For several years, I attended a Lutheran Summer camp. I became a choir boy in an Episcopal church, the same denomination in which I was confirmed. One summer I spent a week going to a Bible camp led by our Evangelical neighbor. As a teenager, I began attending Quaker meetings at the invitation of my best friend’s parents.
Out of all of those experiences, I think that I felt most connected to God in music and in nature. As much as I have embraced Quakerism, I miss the hymns and the exquisite liturgical music of composers such as Handel, Bacon, and Mozart. Just thinking of The Doxology stirs my soul, the enormous pipe organ belting out the low rumbling tones and signaling the end of a service. We all knew to sing, “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow. Praise God, all creatures here below.”
After college, I volunteered for a year in the Brethren Volunteer Service. I worked at a Catholic Worker House, which ran a soup line and a homeless shelter for families in Texas, then at a very rural retreat center in Pennsylvania. Those were very rich years in my life, with an ongoing exposure to a wide range of practice, including working with DignityUSA (a nonprofit advocacy group for LGBTQ+ Catholics), and witnessing the quiet demonstration of faith working alongside men in their 70s and 80s as we cleared land to build a new retreat center.
My departure from the volunteer service and return to Philadelphia marked the beginning of a long dry spell in my relationship with religious practice and faith. Although Philadelphia has many lovely green spaces, I never felt that I could let my guard down for fear of being accosted or attacked. This wasn’t a figment of my imagination as during the decade that my wife and I lived in Philadelphia she was mugged, a store I was working in was held up at gunpoint, we interrupted a rape, and our neighbor was the victim of a drive-by shooting. I witnessed the inequality and suffering from an unjust economic system, and could not come up with good explanations for why God allows this to happen. I joined friends for services at three different inner-city churches, and each time I heard the minister railing against the sins of homosexuals and the punishment of God in their affliction with AIDS. I left in disgust, because the vitriol conveyed in the sermon was incongruous with Jesus’ message of love and compassion.
A lot of water has flowed under the bridge between then and now. Living in the much smaller city of Ithaca, New York, I no longer look over my shoulder or cross to the other side of the street to stay safe. The glory of God‘s creation is not far away in our gorges, fields, and lakes.
The thing which has propelled me back to communion with others in our shared faith has been the burden I have carried as a caregiver for those afflicted by COVID and vaccine injury. The more I learn and the closer I come to the evil center of intentional actions which have led to the illness and death of so many people, the more fully I understand that I do not have the personal resources alone to handle this. The dissonance between those who see and those who don’t becomes more tense day to day. The houses of worship in which we would find comfort are often themselves places of denial, and pose a very real risk from shedding due to ongoing vaccination. Such is the case with my beloved Quakers.
Yet I have hope. “Did you realize that we have a Christian practice?” I recently said to my partner, Dr. Kory. The question made him squirm and his response made me laugh. Pierre is a deeply committed humanitarian and has the professional ethos to separate church and state. “People didn’t come to us for religious counseling,” he replied. “They came to us from medical care.”
Shit, I’m a Quaker. By my works, shall you know my faith. You couldn’t find me farther away from an inclination to evangelize. But the people who have held independent thoughts, resisted the onslaught, fought against our loss of liberty, and dedicated themselves to this work and to our patients are faithful Christians. In the 30 years that I have been in healthcare, I never before prayed with a patient until now. Funny how a genocide will change you. Yes, I have had patients ask to pray for me, and it has always been awkward. Last week one asked to pray for me and for the practice at the end of our visit. I easily accepted, and it lifts me still.
During the same visit, the patient told me about how he has struggled with his church’s inability to discuss the truth behind the virus and the jabs. As a result, he has stopped attending. Out loud he asked, “Where is God in all of this?” In this early morning hour, I am beginning to find an answer, which has been there all along but has a renewed vibrancy. God is in nature, God is in music, God is within each of us, God is in our loving relationships, God is in mercy, God is in tenacity, God is in renewed community. Praise God, from whom all blessings flow. Praise God, all creatures here below.
Taking a break from writing Lightning Bug every week since October 2023 has been helpful, in order to rest, ponder and organize ideas in my mind. I like noticing what bubbles up to the top. Today’s post is a nod to one of my favorite Beatles songs, but also a hypothesis that sharing how I have personally implemented a lifetime of learning could be instructive, and even invite thoughts and questions from readers regarding their own experiences and strategies.
From A day in the life by The Beatles
Woke up, fell out of bed Dragged a comb across my head Found my way downstairs and drank a cup And looking up, I noticed I was late Found my coat and grabbed my hat Made the bus in seconds flat Found my way upstairs and had a smoke And somebody spoke and I went into a dream
MORNING
When the alarm goes off at 6:10am, I snuggle up to my beloved for some spoony physical closeness. Our orange and white cat, Renny, who will have spent the night on one of our pillows, settles back onto our heads. After two snoozes, Renny gets up, we role away from each other, I turn on my left side, kick out my right leg, and push myself up to a sitting position. I take the Arc Microtech device I wore during the night off my ankle and set it aside to recharge. I then use my fingertips to perform a percussive self-massage up, down and across my chest. This was a lesson from Jovanna, née Joan Perna, the mother of my friend Larami.
Jovanna was a hot-blooded Sicilian, masseuse, nudist, and pursuer of many things alternative. Never mind that I was a little squirmy touching and being touched by this beautiful woman, twice my age. It was a hot July summer morning and she was visiting us in the third-floor walkup apartment we were sharing in Philadelphia’s Center City. Jovanna explained that this massage technique helps brings blood flow to the lungs and thus the brain and rest of the body, which eases and speeds one’s waking. Lesson learned, I never stopped, and have done it every morning for the last thirty six years.
As we make the bed, I straighten out the cord to the grounding pillow cover underneath my pillow case, and straighten out the grounding sheet on top of the fitted sheet at the foot of the bed. Grounding, which can also be accomplished by walking on the earth in our bare feet, or touching soil and plants with our bare hands, is a manner of accepting negative electrons freely donated by the earth. This negative energy helps move the charge of our cells back towards negative polarity, which the Substack writer A Midwestern Doctor discusses as the Zeta Potential. Spike protein, lipid nanoparticles and other pathogens disrupt the Zeta Potential, and adversely impact the permeability of our cells. EMF also adversely the Zeta Potential, and grounding sheets are a simple way to push back, which helps weaken the energetic attraction of platelets and red blood cells (RBCs) to each other in aggregates, thus reversing flocculation.
“In certain circumstances, the particles in a dispersion may adhere to one another and form aggregates of successively increasing size, which may settle out under the influence of gravity. An initially formed aggregate is called a floc and the process of its formation flocculation. The floc may or may not sediment or phase separate. If the aggregate changes to a much denser form, it is said to undergo coagulation. An aggregate usually separates out either by sedimentation (if it is more dense than the medium) or by creaming (if it less dense than the medium). The terms flocculation and coagulation have often been used interchangeably. Usually coagulation is irreversible whereas flocculation can be reversed by the process of deflocculation.” https://www.research.colostate.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/ZetaPotential-Introduction-in-30min-Malvern.pdf
Within minutes of rising from bed, ten at the most, I drink a thirty-two ounce glass of roomish-temperature distilled water, and then pour another, to drink within the next half hour. Mohit Bali taught me about water upon waking. Mohit, a reclusive computer geek from Eastern India, was a quad-mate my freshman year at Susquehanna University. One day he completely surprised me—and slightly creeped me out—by offering this observation. “Scott, I think that you need to drink more water. You should do this every morning when you first arise. Every human being wakes dehydrated, because our body has been repairing itself during the night, which uses fuel and makes waste. This is an ancient teaching of Ayurvedic medicine. Here is a mason jar. Fill this and drink a glassful of water every day upon rising.” Mind you that he rarely came out of the dark lair of his room, let alone conversed. Then he disappeared back into his room, leaving me standing there with the mason jar in my hand. Weird. Crazy weird. But, I took his advice and still do to this day.
Why distilled water? I’m betting that this is where the first alternative perspectives, questions and strenuous objections will arrive, such as, we should add trace minerals or a pinch of Celtic sea salt to our water. Well, there was this older African American man. He had a riotous head of grey hair, and he smelled like basement and oil furnace. I would encounter him sometimes in the grocery story where I worked while attending nursing school in Philadelphia about thirty years ago. I’m not sure why or how we hit it off, but we both lived within walking distance of the store, and on more than a few occasions he would stop by our little Trinity house and we’d sit on the steps and visit. One day he brought me a book called Water Is Life, which laid out the argument that the inorganic minerals and elements, including limestone, which were dissolved in water, accumulated over time in our bodies and led to the development of atherosclerotic plaques and decreased kidney function. He was preaching, and this was his sermon to me. It made enough sense and Philly tap water tasted terrible. We were spending money from our limited budget on spring water, so we pivoted and purchased a water distiller from Waterwise in Florida. With occasional postal trips to Florida for maintenance, that first distiller lasted more than twenty years. We are now on our fourth generation….
Each morning with that first glass of water, I take one capsule of NAC Augmentata from Italy, which breaks the disulfide bond between spike and ACE-2 receptors, along with 500mg of esterified (Ester) Vitamin C. There is synergy between NAC and Vitamin C such that together, they have more antioxidant and immune-supporting action than either by itself. Each acts through different mechanisms. Vitamin C can directly scavenge free radicals, while NAC boosts the level of glutathione, another powerful antioxidant. Vitamin C can also help regenerate oxidize glutathione back to its reduced form, thus maintaining higher levels of active glutathione in the body. NAC Augmentata is made by ZeroSpike in Italy, a small non-profit start up which is trying to save humanity, and at at dose of 200mg is exponentially more effective than other forms of NAC. We source it from our trusted colleagues at Vitahealth Apothecary in NYC, which has been the primary U.S. distributor, although there may be a few new U.S. suppliers at this point.
My introduction to esterified Vitamin C was very personal. I met Chef Robert Lehmann (pronounced LAY-man) at The Commissary Restaurant in Philadelphia, where I was a busboy in the summer of 1989. He later become the Executive Chef of MANNA, a meals-delivery service organization for homebound people with AIDS in Philadelphia. As such he developed diet and nutrition standards for people who are HIV positive. He wrote a book: “Cooking for Life: A Guide to Nutrition and Food Safety for the HIV-positive Community.” When I next returned to Philadelphia during Winter break 1989-1990, I would volunteer with MANNA, where Rob would supervise food preparation and occasionally I delivered those meals to the beautiful gay men who were languishing during what some call Fauci 101. Rob taught me that esterified Vitamin C could deliver much needed nutrition and immune support to these fragile people without upsetting or harming their stomachs. I took note.
While in the kitchen finishing my second glass of water, I light the burner under the old English-made copper teapot, and when it whistles, I fill up my thermos and leave the lid off to let it cool a bit before making green tea with loose leaves. As the tea steeps, I stir two tablespoons of Baobab powder into a cup of water, and divide this into two other thermoses, which I then fill with water; one for my wife and one for me. Both the green tea and the Baobab have EGCG, which blocks spike entry into cells. The Baobab has many other benefits, but serves to promote a robust and diverse microbiome in the gut. I bring the green tea, Baobab and half gallon of distilled water to my office, and drink these three beverages over the course of the day.
Meanwhile my wife has made her way to the back, lifting shades, opening curtains, and turning the Wi-Fi back on as we start the day. Some time ago we made it a habit to turn the Wi-Fi and all of our electronic devices off at bedtime. This routine was inspired by Dr Robert O Becker, a Veterans Administration researcher and orthopedic surgeon who studied how energy can be used to heal—and whose research provided the scientific basis of the Arc Microtech device we use with more than three hundred patients. Given his (now quaint) concerns in the 1980s re: CB radios and FM radio towers, it is a short skip and a jump to realize that nothing good will come of the barrage of EMF we live in on a daily basis. The very least we can do it dial it back when we are trying to sleep.
I then head for the sauna with Malcom, the big black cat with soulful eyes who we adopted in January. He likes to join me in the Sauna Space near infrared (NIR) sauna for some chin rubs and warmth. I get naked as the day I was born, sit on the towel-draped stool, and over ten minutes, do two 360 degree rotations of exposure to the lights. Ten minutes is the sweet spot to help repair mitochondrial function and increase ATP production; not five, and not fifteen, but ten. Thanks for the tip on timing Dr Been!
While I’m in the sauna, I will often pray, or chant. As Quakers say, I hold others in the light. This is when I will seek sustenance, clarity and direction in my care of our complex and chronically ill patients at The Leading Edge Clinic during the upcoming day. When I say “or chant”, I refer to what I learned from our Japanese neighbors Hiro and Akiko Uhuru when we lived in Philadelphia. I remember them taking me to a gathering and chanting session of their Buddhist organization, and really not knowing what to think about it. After we left Philadelphia, they sent me a book which gave me some insight. Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō (南無妙法蓮華経) are Japanese words chanted within all forms of Nichiren Buddhism. In English, they mean “Devotion to the Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutra” or “Glory to the Dharma of the Lotus Sutra”. It is a vow, an expression of determination, to embrace and manifest our Buddha nature. It is a pledge to oneself to never yield to difficulties and to rise above one’s suffering. At the same time, it is a vow to help others reveal this law in their own lives and achieve happiness. I can get behind this. For those of you who have seen The Life of Pi (one of my top ten favorite movies ever), you may appreciate the main character’s curiosity, embrace and practice of multiple spiritual practices in his joyful life. It is one thing to pray, but quite another to chant Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō the hour and a half home from a twelve hour COVID shift in the Emergency Department (ED).
Our time in the sauna complete, Malcom and I step out, and I drink my second glass of distilled water. This glass of water is accompanied by 4,000FU of Nattokinase and two capsules of Flavay. Both are used to help breakdown the amyloid fibrin micro clots which we all have secondary to the spike protein in our bodies. Flavay is small molecule pycnogenol, using a patented formula which not only decreases platelet aggregation to other platelets and the walls of our blood vessels, but also has an antihistamine effect within the blood vessels.
Next stop is the bathroom where our little Manx cat, Sophie, is waiting for me on her cat mattress, taking second shift following my wife’s shower. Near the end of the shower, I take a deep breath and as I’m blowing it out, turn off the hot water. For sixty slow, deep breaths, I turn as the cold water falls on my body. More than a year ago, I developed reservations about using cold water exposure in post-acute sequelae of COVID (PASC) and vaccine injury, as I understood how prevalent micro clotting was, and constriction of blood vessels in cold water was concerning. My personal experience was that an old surgical site in my groin would start to ache in the cold water, and the numbness/tingling in my toes and feet would worsen. Since February of this year however, my appreciation and treatment of mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS) in my patients has grown by the day. Knowing that cold exposure can be helpful in dampening MCAS, I’ve revisited this intervention. It’s worth noting that summer is the ideal time to initiate this practice, as it gives us time to build up brown fat cells so that when the weather turns cooler, we will better be able to tolerate the cold.
Brown fat cells, cold exposure, and the Wim Hof Method were introduced to me by my cousin Danny more than five years ago during a Marsland family vacation at the Jersey shore. These days, Danny is working as a welder and helping to build a nuclear aircraft carrier for the US Navy…so, not a medical professional. But, I’ll say that he has been years ahead of the curve on a number of health-related topics. He was the first person to ask me about IVM at the beginning of the pandemic, back when I thought vaccines were a good thing and that I could trust my ED pharmacist colleagues. Boy was I wrong! Brown fat cells came up in two continuing education lectures I watched pre-pandemic, when the topic was medical and about scientific developments around managing obesity. Yes, I was thinking, “Damn, Danny was right about this too!” We were all born with brown fat cells, and quickly lost them, because we are modern creatures of comfort, with central heating and air conditioning in our homes, our cars, and workplaces. Brown fat cells, unlike the white fat cells that adorn our bellies and buttocks, burn energy and can produce heat. This is how/why earlier humans could withstand the elements with greater tolerance than us pampered modern folks.
After my shower, I apply a roll-on deodorant which is made by the German company Weleda. It is essential that no one use a deodorant which has aluminum in it. The aluminum will be absorbed through our pores, and into our lymph glands as well as, ultimately, our blood stream. The aluminum will promote flocculation (mentioned above), a nasty aggregation of platelets, red blood cells and fibrin, which will make a sludge in our blood stream and further impair our circulation.
I get dressed and head into the kitchen where I unplug my Arc Microtech from the charger and put it back on my ankle for it’s first cycle of the day. This device was introduced to us by our British colleague Dr Tina Peers, who at that time had seen tremendous benefit in more than 140 people. This included her father, who went into heart failure after COVID shots, and whose cardiac pumping function recovered from 40 to 55% with use of the device. The Arc is a genetic repair tool. It systemically decreases inflammation, repairs mitochondrial damage so that ATP production returns, and influences genetic expression to limit pathology and encourage cellular repair.
Sophie and Renny are both standing by, hoping for a lick of butter from my fingertips as I prepare my breakfast. For many years I would make toast with Hazelnut butter, nutritional yeast, and then prepare oatmeal with flax seeds, prunes, dates, apple and Silk soy milk. Recently I have shifted to a lower carb routine, with free-range eggs, sausages with local pasture raised pork, and a single slice of Vollkornbrot rye bread with butter and nutritional yeast.
Renny volunteers to clean up the egg yolk from my plate when I’m done. If it isn’t too hot, he’ll settle in for a post-prandial nap by my side while I read a few pages of a study or clinical book while I’m eating. Morning is probably the best time for our brain to take in new and complex information such as this. I try not to turn my phone back on until this time, allowing at least two hours of electronics-free time from when we first woke. Our nervous systems need regular pauses and vacations—fasts if you will—from our electronic devices.
After washing the dishes, I take 4.5mg of LDN liquid, and 1.5mg of Ketotifen. Then I wash down three fistfuls of pills with water containing 25mg of Lugol’s 5% iodine, and 50 drops of Boiron Ribes Nigre gemmotherapy. The pills include Eliquis 2.5mg, Plavix ¼ tab, Aspirin 81mg, IVM 18.5mg, Bacopa 500mg, Lithium 5mg, Dr Wilson’s Adrenal Stress and Adrenal Rebuilder, a B-complex, Resveragen, Ester-C 500mg, pre-natal DHA/EPA, Antronex, and Bromelain 500mg.
I head to the bathroom and brush my teeth. A recent arrival in our routine is a water flosser. Where has this been my whole adult life? It would have saved us a lot of money in dental bills for sure. When it comes to dentist visits, I’m like a little boy, wanting to get the gold star because my gums don’t bleed when probed, and I hear that I’m one of “the best” patients. Dr Richard Oberly is my dentist, and has become a friend over the last twenty four years. He was the second person, after my cousin Danny, who asked me about IVM. I give him a gold star for persisting in teaching me, as an adult, over a period of years, how to correctly brush and floss my teeth. Gold stars aside, good oral hygiene is key to optimal health, as chronic inflammation of the gums and its causes have been associated with heart disease, diabetes, and dementia. We simply must take the time to gently and thoroughly clean our teeth, gums, and mouth before we carry on with our day.
Moving to the kitchen, I put on my backpack and call out to my wife that I’m leaving. I move into the mud room, where our youthful and bright black cat Charlotte is swishing her tail as she watches the morning attendees at the bird bath, including birds, groundhogs, red squirrels, grey squirrels and chipmunks. Kerrie and I hug, there are kisses to lips, left cheek, right cheek, lips, and wishes to each other for a good day. And up the hill I go….
P.S. I opted to leave out the nitty-gritty re: the fistfuls of pills I swallow, and will take this up in my follow up piece(s) to A day in the life.
Today I have a facility with numbers and finances, but that wasn’t always the case. When I was a boy, I delivered papers for the New Britain Herald. It was an afternoon paper, back when there were such things. In my substack Capital C Characters, I wrote about the “bionic” man who was one of my customers. I had about 60 customers. Depending on the weather — and how many stops I made for socializing— it took me anywhere from a half hour to an hour to bicycle around delivering their papers after school.
On Saturdays I needed to collect payment. Some customers had subscriptions through the office and mailed in their monthly checks. Most of my customers paid on a weekly basis. I had a little flipbook with tiny, dated coupons that I would tear out and give to the customer when the payment was made. I think this was good practice for life because it meant handling money on a regular basis and, by extension, that means dealing with people’s idiosyncratic quirks around money.
Most customers were home and answered the door on Saturday, knowing I would be there to collect. But there were always a few who either weren’t home or didn’t answer, even though I suspected that they were in there somewhere. This gave me an early lesson in persistence.
Weather in my area of Connecticut at that time could still deliver extreme conditions. Winters were marked by bitter cold and plenty of snow. Flash rain storms with thunder and lightning, gale force winds, hundred degree days with high humidity, not to mention the ferocious dogs that wanted a piece of me: it was all part of the mix. There was one day that I just didn’t feel up to delivering papers and so I didn’t. I delivered Tuesday’s paper with Wednesday’s paper. There weren’t a lot of complaints, but the ones that I did get stung. This was my introduction to providing good customer service while managing extreme dissatisfaction.
At least three times a year my family would leave town on a road trip. This was usually to spend Thanksgiving and Easter with both sets of grandparents in Pennsylvania, and sometimes a week at the shore with the Marsland clan. My parents weren’t micro-managing my affairs, and so this meant that it was up to me to find a substitute to meet my obligations, and pay him well enough that he found it worth his time and effort. This was the upside of my not having helicopter parents. I had to figure this stuff out on my own as early as fourth grade.
Zhivago Velasco and Larry Lebatique became my go-to guys to cover my route. They were both classmates, first generation Americans of immigrant Filipino families. With a memory that astounds me today I was able to easily recall the street names and house numbers for all of my customers and write a list from which Zhivago and Larry could deliver the papers. If I was lucky and most people paid their weekly bill, I would net about $10 a week, which wasn’t bad for 1976. I think that I paid $15 to Larry and Zhivago. I intuitively understood that they didn’t have the relational capital or emotional investment in this enterprise that I did and accordingly I would have to compensate them with more financial reward.
On the other end of things, I would have to hand over the payments to my handler, the nameless adult who dropped off the bundle of newspapers in our driveway six days a week. Every Sunday evening, I would be sitting at the kitchen table with a pencil and eraser doing long addition, subtraction and multiplication to determine the amount of cash and coins I needed to leave in an envelope taped to the storm door for the handler to collect every Monday morning. I never got it right. I never left enough. I tried and tried and tried to understand the formula. I’m pretty sure that I called the main office more than once to try and get some insight. The experience which I had around paying my handler, probably planted the seed for me to become a union agitator and organizer many years later.
What I knew for sure was how hard I worked. And that it felt like I was being cheated. Even worse was that I couldn’t crack the code and challenge my handler, so that his skimming capitalist enterprise could and would exploit my cheap labor. It’s not like I had a mortgage to pay, but I did depend on that money to buy the model planes I liked to build and the candy of which my mother disapproved. I wanted to buy the sugary Fruit Loops and Applejacks cereals that would never make it into our family shopping cart. I even ventured out into more “exotic” cuisine like yogurt, and the stir fried rice from the local Chinese takeout. I acquired an appreciation of the scent of incense from the New Age store, and bought some Phillies blunt cigars, and Malboro cigarettes. So, I continued to ply my trade, knowing that I was being exploited, but was getting some reward that definitely improved my quality of life.
RECENT PAST
When the nuclear power plant at Fukushima, Japan melted down in March 2011, I felt despair which landed on top of my feelings at following the prolonged war in Iraq. I determined that the most achievable and sensible way to counteract that despair was to put solar panels and solar thermal tubes on the roof of our house. My wife certainly didn’t stand in my way, but she never had— and still doesn’t have— the same enthusiasm which I did, which was necessary to pull it off.
We needed to replace the roof around the same time. My wife had been working in construction for 6 to 7 years at that time, co-owner of a small residential building company. Their preferred roofing material was corrugated metal, and some of their customers from the Ithaca community and its environs would install solar panels on their roofs. This meant drilling holes through the corrugated metal which not infrequently led to leaks—and call backs!
At the time, New York State had generous rebates for solar electric, solar thermal, and reflective roofing material. My wife and I are generally inclined to pay more for something that’s built well and will last longer, and we decided that installing a standing seam roof would be the best investment of our money. The racks for the solar panels and tubes could be attached to the seams without compromising the integrity of the roof. Of course, standing seam metal roofs are only slightly less expensive than slate.
We obtained a home equity loan, borrowed more than $10,000 from our stepmother Betty Ann (who took this out of her retirement in order to bridge the expenses until the NY rebates came in) and signed contracts for a roofer and solar installation.
That was thirteen years ago. Given that the roof hasn’t leaked, gas and electric prices have increased exponentially, and the solar thermal tubes paid for themselves by 2019, I think we made a good choice. My wife might still disagree. Her partner in residential construction was very critical in 2011, quipping that “You’ve got a Cadillac sitting on top of your house.” I’m curious, but only slightly, what he would say today.
What I didn’t know back then, but I know now, is that solar electric panels are no bargain for the global economy and environment. The harm to the environment from mining and processing the raw materials to make them, exploitation of cheap labor, and rebates which ultimately serve bigger corporations that finance installation of PV panels on fertile farmland, taking it out of commission… these are all concerning and give me reason to pause.
But let me tell you, when I see neighbors whose 30 year asphalt shingle roof is being replaced after 10 years, I count myself lucky. It gives me great pleasure every time I come down to the basement on a sunny day and see that the domestic hot water has been preheated to more than 100° by the sun. We resell our excess electricity to our utility company. It’s delightful to see the drop in both the charges for supply and generation of electricity sold to us at retail by NYSEG, now a Spanish conglomerate, but retaining its New York name.
These investments would not still be useful if there were not several passionate men who arrived in our moments of need to help troubleshoot and maintain the electricity, plumbing, and various components of these complex systems from which we benefit.
Robert Leroy Nape 1951-2021
It is here that I can write about one of the finest human beings I ever had the pleasure of knowing. Bob Nape and I first met in 2005 when we were both helping to start the Ithaca Free Clinic (IFC). He had serious carpentry skills and together we put up partition walls and drywall to build out the internal exam rooms of the IFC. The thing is that he didn’t just bring his skills, he brought his warmth, humor, and love of humanity, which made it a joy to be around him.
Bob was a man of long-standing passions. He became keenly interested in solar hot water back in the 70s in Philadelphia. He was also an enthusiastic and probably very good basketball player. He certainly had the height and the speed for it. He was more faithful in living his Catholicism and doing good in the world than the Pope, as exemplified by his perspective and actions from the moment he woke every day. Years after we met through the IFC, Bob started his company Solar Is Hot, through which he helped legacy solar thermal systems dating back to the 1970s, as well as newer ones such as ours, remain functional. I cannot take a hot shower without giving thanks to Bob.
We connected around our mutual challenges with heart disease and arrhythmias, which in my case kept me out of competitive sports, but in Bob’s case never kept him from his basketball games. During the pandemic, he developed complications following acute COVID, had a stroke, and ended up at SUNY Upstate, my previous employer. His loving partner Elizabeth, who also helped start the IFC, attended to him faithfully during his last days, and was at his bedside when he died January 2nd, 2021. I count Bob as one of the many great losses of the COVID era, who I think could still be alive today, but for the war on Ivermectin and all repurposed drugs. An odd twist to our story is that when I signed up for a post office box for the Leading Edge Clinic, it turned out that the one assigned, #6834, had been Bob’s.
Another person who has helped us over the last twenty years of home ownership is David, whose last name I don’t know, but who is the constant presence behind the service counter of an old-fashioned plumbing supply business in Ithaca. I have literally carried in a four foot section of twisty plumbing that I cut out of it’s place under our utility sink, and he helped me identify and assemble the new pieces I would need to replace it. He would guide me with patience and humor every time. And so, for good reason, I trusted him.
In September of 2021 our solar thermal system had a problem, and I didn’t have Bob. There was a puddle of the glycol fluid, which was supposed to be circulating in the system, but was instead pooling beneath the expansion tank. Because I didn’t have a choice, I started reading and watching videos, ordered a new tank, and went to David for advice on a fitting. He gathered what I needed from the warehouse, out of my sight, while I waited at the counter. I paid him and drove home to begin my project.
Eight hours and a lot of cussing later, I was unsuccessful. I had depressurized, disassembled, reattached and re-pressurized the new expansion tank six times, and each time there was a leak around the fittings. My kind, loving, patient wife, was trying to have a productive day in her stained glass studio on the other side of the basement, and it wasn’t going well, because as the hours went on, the number of f-bombs coming out of my mouth was increasing.
I had one lifeline which I hadn’t used…Paul Czarnecki, who was mentioned in my Capital C Characters substack. Via phone and text, I explained my predicament, but even Paul couldn’t get me out of this jam. And it was then, after eight hours of blood, sweat, tears and a blue streak of foul language, that I finally understood what went wrong. My dear trusted David had sold me this:
But he didn’t tell me, it was a combination of these two pieces:
As a result, there was not teflon tape or paste between the threads of these two fittings, and under pressure, the connection was leaking. By the time I figured this out, I had put so much torque on the original two pieces that there was not chance of getting them apart, and David’s store was closed. Off to Home Depot I went, purchased the two pieces, came home, wrapped Teflon tape around the joints, reattached the joint and tank, repressurized, held my breath, and turned the circulating pump on again. I swear that on the other side of the wall, my wife was holding her breath too! This time—success— there was no leak!!!!
To this day, that damn fitting sits on my home office desk, to remind me that if we persist and approach challenges with an open mind, questioning our assumptions, we just might sometimes come up with a solution. We just need time to let the little grey cells of our brain work on the problem.
PRESENT
With the author’s permission (my own), I’m going to reiterate part of what I wrote in my subtack Hot Mess Express, in which I discussed the use of Lithium as a trace mineral.
What about Lithium Orotate? Dr Michael Nehls, the neuroscientist from Germany, has been talking a blue streak about Vitamin D and Lithium Orotate to protect our brains from the onslaught of spike. Pierre and I had the pleasure of a private meeting with Dr Nehls nearly two months ago, and he helped us understand that Lithium Orotate was a key tool in the fight to reclaim our brains in general, and the hippocampi in particular. If therapeutics such as Vitamin B6 (as P5P 50), or 5-MTHF, or L-Theanine are useful to rebalance specific neurotransmitters, then Lithium Orotate is a general tonic which helps rebalance all neurotransmitters, because it reestablishes neuronal connections, decreases neuro inflammation, and enables the brain to start making new neurons. The particulars for inidividual patients have proven to be nuanced. I generally start with 130mg, but India Scott FNP-C prefers to start with 20mg of Lithium Orotate and work up to 130mg, stopping if clinical benefit is achieved earlier. Dr Nehls strongly recommended 130mg for symptomatic patients, dropping back to 20-30mg for maintenance when stability has been achieived. It’s important to note that 20-30mg of Lithium Orotate equals 1mg of active Lithium and 130mg of Lithium Orotate equals 5mg of active Lithium.
Because most health professionals — and many laypeople — have preconceptions about Lithium as solely the province of psychiatry and bipolar schizophrenia, it’s important to note that we are talking about Lithium as a trace mineral. Would you be concerned about toxicity from a pinch of Celtic sea salt in your water, or 25mg of Vitamin C? No. Neither should you be concerned about trace amounts of Lithium which are many times less than the doses used in psychiatry. You can get 1mg of active Lithium by drinking a pricey bottle of San Pelligrino mineral water, or eating a lot of seafood, but you’ll also quickly empty your wallet, and in the case of seafood, there are so many toxins in the ocean that you’ll poison yourself with mercury before you reach therapeutic levels of lithium. And it’s cheap, cheap, cheap. Horbaach makes a 130mg capsule of Lithium Orotate which costs $15 a bottle, including shipping, and provides six months worth of the supplement.
The Leading Edge Clinic has several dozen patients in Canada, and together we find ways to get lifesaving supplements and prescription medication to them, in spite of the totalitarian and life-threatening restrictions which the Canadian government continues to impose upon its citizens. Thanks to one of these patients, this week I came to understand that I was somewhat befuddled about the dosing and active Lithium content of the supplements I was recommending. It is my hope to bring light to this topic, as there is ample potential for confusion.
The form of Lithium which Dr Nehls recommends is Lithium Orotate, and that is primarily because of its bioavailabilty and affordability. The trouble begins with how the different supplement manufacturers label their products, and then how the supplement vendors (we use FullScript for a 30% discount for our patients) catalogue the supplements. From my perspective, Horbaach does the best job in their labeling, as the front of the label states “Lithium Orotate 130mg”, and the back states “Lithium 5mg (from Lithium Orotate).” What follows below is correspondence from three other suppliers of essential Lithium as Lithium Orotate: Vital Nutrients, Pure Encapsulations, and Doublewood. First, Vital Nutrients:
Vital Nutrients – Support From:support@vitalnutrients.co To:X Mon, May 13 at 4:42 p.m.
Good afternoon,
Thank you for contacting Vital Nutrients.
There is 500mg of total lithium orotate and 4% is elemental. So 20mg of elemental lithium and 480mg of orithic acid. (for round number purposes)
This is the highest we do carry. We are unable to do a comparison as other companies may source raw materials from other vendors. It would not be an accurate comparison.
If there is anything else we can do today, please let us know.
Omar Customer Care Representative II 888.328.9992 | vitalnutrients.co
On Mon, May 13, 2024, at 08:41 PM, X> wrote: To follow up on my previous question…I think the confusion has arisen from the fact that it doesn’t say Lithium Orotate on the front of your bottle, just Lithium. So I read it as 20mg of pure lithium. If it’s not correct, and 20mg is the amount of lithium orotate, then what is the actual amount of pure/elemental lithium in your supplement? If the opposite is true and 20 mg is the amount of pure lithium, what is the amount of lithium orotate per capsule?
On Mon, May 13, 2024, at 08:29 PM, X> wrote:
Hello, could you please confirm the amount of active/elemental lithium in your supplement Lithium 20mg? My health care provider thinks it’s 1mg of active/elemental lithium, but it looks like the label says it’s 20mg. Is this the highest amount available in North American market? Could you please also compare your Lithium 20 with Horbaach Lithium Orotate 130mg, in terms which supplements contains more active/elemental lithium? I am attaching the link below. Again, my provider thinks Horbaach contains more of active lithium, but I think it’s the opposite. Please advise. This is very important for us to sort out, so thank you in advance! X.
Second, Pure Encapsulations:
And third, Doublewood. I actually found their answer more confusing. But doing a quick calculation clarifies it. 9% or 0.09 x 57mg of Lithium Orotate = 5.13mg of active Lithium.
Here is my translation:
Horbaach delivers 5mg of active Lithium from 130mg of Lithium Orotate
Vital Nutrients delivers 20mg of active Lithium from 500mg of Lithium Orotate
Pure Encapsulations delivers 5mg of active Lithium from an unstated amount of Lithium Orotate
Doublewood delivers 5mg of active Lithium from 57mg of Lithium Orotate
Pure Encapsulations also has a 1mg Lithium product, which delivers 1mg of active Lithium, ideal for titration in very sensitive patients.
Clinical reports of symptomatic benefit from our patients indicates that the Vital Nutrients product is either not as effective, or too high a dose in some people. Dr Nehls recommends daily dosing with 5mg of active Lithium for symptomatic patients (active brain fog, neurological symptoms), and 1mg for maintenance. However, we can use up to 40mg twice daily without toxicity in severely symptomatic patients, and so people can titrate under medical supervision.
Normal Lithium dosing for adults with Bipolar disorder is 300-600mg of Lithium Carbonate, two to three times daily, with long-term control using up to 1200mg daily. Lithium Carbonate has 18.78% active Lithium, so that typical daily dosing in psychiatric treatment delivers between 113mg to 229mg of active Lithium. It is for this reason that Dr Nehls writes and speaks of Lithium Orotate as a trace mineral, as 5mg of active Lithium is 4.4% the psychiatric dose, and 1mg is 0.8%. At 40mg daily, which is the highest we have gone in any of our patients, we are still at only 35% of the lowest psychiatric dosing.
P.S. I have no financial interest in any of the supplements which I am discussing.
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