I have the opportunity to help someone at work who is battling COVID for the second or subsequent time.
What options are out there that you can recommend and partly explain? Things the normal doctors might not suggest.
This coworker is one who would typically take the doctor’s first advice without much questioning. All vaccines and boosters already taken as soon as available. But they are open to hearing suggestions from me.
A lot of people swear by ivermectin. It’s been studied and found to make no difference. I wouldn’t bother with it.
I’d personally take vitamins D, C, and Zinc.
This is about not getting COVID again, or helping him fight this round of it off, if it’s going to be protracted?
If it’s relevant, I would suggest getting to an ideal weight. The CDC has a good page on weight and COVID. The stat that leaps off the page is that obesity triples the rate of hospitalization. There is also a connection between general immune performance and weight, so he should have fewer days of the non-life-threatening symptoms, too.
Monoclonal Antibodies, recommended and used by my sister-in-law (family practice doc) who is part of the Mayo Clinic network.
These are well filed under “might help/highly unlikely to harm.” As always, dose intelligently.
To that list I’d add sunlight. Getting a few minutes per day of sunlight, particularly on the torso or back is very useful for generating vitamin D. I usually try for 20 minutes per day in the wintertime, a little less in the summer, but I have very light skin.
I’ll also add some anecdata: a year or so before Covid, I started megadosing vitamin C as an anti-inflammatory (2-3000 mg daily). It didn’t apparently help my inflammation at all, but I haven’t been healthier in my life from a sniffles/cold/flu/Covid standpoint.
Ivermectin is also “might help/highly unlikely to harm”, at least with a modicum of dosing intelligence, but it is more expensive and harder to get. I’ve heard mixed anecdata on it. Supposedly the newer studies are showing pretty close to no effect. It’s possible that the third world results from ivermectin were a function of cleaning out parasite infections (ivermectin’s on-label usage) improving Covid outcomes.
+1 for weight loss, too, though it’s too late on that for someone who already has Covid.
Thank you.
Recent studies of ivermectin in mainstream medical journals have been extremly flawed. They would have been completely shredded in every journal club I attended in residency and fellowship if it were any other topic. Doctors do the same thing everyone else does on-line: get the gist from the heading and don’t pay attention to the study methods and validity of the conclusions.
Since they already have COVID taking vitamin D won’t help (now). But I think every doctor’s visit should include a review of whether or not a patient has had their vitamin D level checked recently.
FLCCC has some alternative protocols. I tell my patients that they seem safe. I’m still not sure how helpful any of them are… but I have them in my medicine cabinet.
If your friend has had the vaccinations there’s a low chance he’ll have serious issues and end up in the hospital.
Thank you, Jay.
I’m sorry…which direction are you meaning this? I thought the studies have absolutely slated the effectiveness of ivermectin. Are you saying those studies are flawed? Or the positive studies have been flawed?
Just trying to understand your comment.
The TOGETHER trial was published in NEJM and swooped through mainstream media (I believe at least NYT, Washington Post, and WSJ) and the CW was “welp, that didn’t work.”
The authors themselves didn’t recognize things that should be obvious: they were using lower doses than recommended by Ivermectin advocates, the medication was started relatively late in the course (I believe the average was 5 days but as long as 8 after symptom onset), the duration was short (three days I believe), and Ivermectin is available OTC in Brazil, meaning that their placebo pool may have been tainted.