July 29, 2024 • 12 mins
In this episode, Dr. Paul Anderson discusses comprehensive strategies for managing infections, including prevention, effective treatments, and recovery tips. He covers:
- Types of Infections: Overview of bacterial, viral, fungal, and parasitic infections, and how they affect the body.
- Prevention Strategies: Practical tips for preventing infections, such as good hygiene practices, vaccination, proper nutrition, and lifestyle habits that boost immune function.
- Recognizing Symptoms: Common signs and symptoms of different types of infections, and when to seek medical attention.
- Conventional Treatments: Overview of standard medical treatments for infections, including antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals, and antiparasitic medications, and the importance of proper use and adherence.
- Integrative Approaches: How to complement conventional treatments with integrative therapies such as herbal medicine, nutritional support, and probiotics to enhance recovery and reduce side effects.
- Immune Support: Strategies to strengthen the immune system during and after an infection, including the role of vitamins, minerals, and lifestyle factors.
- Managing Antibiotic Resistance: Understanding the issue of antibiotic resistance, and how to use antibiotics responsibly to minimize the risk.
- Recovery Tips: How to support the body’s recovery after an infection, including rest, hydration, balanced nutrition, and gradual return to normal activities.
- When to Seek Help: Guidance on recognizing complications or persistent symptoms that require medical intervention and follow-up care.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Good day, Welcome messine Health, Doctor Paul Anderson. That's me
on Doctor Paul. Please like, share, subscribe, and hit the notifications.
By the way, we love all the new viewers we're
getting really appreciate it. Vitamin C and infections generally speaking,
So we've done some little mini recordings on vitamin C
(00:22):
generally speaking, what's to do in our body? We did
one on vitamin C and cancer. Now I want to
talk about There're two sub sections on vitamin C and infections.
So the first thing to keep in mind is with infections,
there's a whole lot of ways that vitamin C gets
in the act or gets in the game of the infection.
So the first thing, if you go back to our
(00:45):
original where we just talked about the biology vitamin C.
Normally we use vitamin C. We can't make it in
our own bodies, so we have to consume it by
our food and maybe supplements, and we use it up
very quickly when we are getting sick or under stress.
It is responsible for operating the oxidative reductive mechanisms to
(01:06):
antioxidant READOX sort of mechanisms in the body, so that
when we have a response it's inflammatory or an oxidative response,
et cetera. The vitamin C can kind of level that
out and quell it. It's becomes very important because there's
certain immune cells that use vitamin C to help them
(01:28):
do what they need to do, and so far blood
levels keep going down we're sick, they're going to slow down.
But also it becomes important because the biology, the chemistry
of you having an immune response when you're sick is
that you have immune chemistry that starts the immune triggering response.
(01:51):
Then that marches forward and triggers a body wide immune response,
and the initial triggering is very pro inflammatory. We want that,
so we think inflammation is bad. It's not always bad.
We need inflammation and we need anti inflammation. Well, when
it comes to triggering a response and an infection, the
(02:12):
immune response has to have that upswing in inflammatory activity,
and then it has to be modulated so that the
inflammatory activity tails off and goes down and we don't
have damage. Well, vitamin C has a good way of
having the ability to support your immune system so that
(02:35):
it is permissive of this upswing and immune activity. But
it helps along with the number of other factors, some
of which are hormonal, some are nutritional, some are other things.
It helps with all those other factors to kind of
calm down the over exuberant immune response so you get
enough immune response but not too much. And the reason
(02:59):
we don't want too much immune responses that can have
other consequences that we are not going to be in
favor of downstream. That could be lingering inflammatory problems, could
be triggering autoimmunity. A number of things can go on there,
so vitamin C is really important in that respect. The
next thing is, as I mentioned, anytime we're sick and
(03:21):
under stress, our vitamin C levels go down, and because
our body cannot make its own vitamin C, we have
to increase the amount that is coming in or our
vitamin C levels will stay very low. So the thing
to keep in mind there is if you or me
(03:43):
or getting sick, or you are sick and you are
unable to consume enough vitamin C to kind of keep
the thankful because you can't make any on your own,
your vitamin C levels keep going down, and these important
things like supporting the immune cells and supporting the oxydative
reductive mant mechanisms, et cetera, start to tail off. They
(04:03):
get weaker and slower. Another thing that is important is
vitamin C is very critical to local cell regulation, local
cell activation, activation of internal enzymes, internal oxidation reduction inside
the cell, protection of mitochondria. So again, when we're sick
(04:27):
and we're inflame, there's a lot of that that's getting
really beat on all the time, and it's important to
not not have that you know, beating go on there,
not have that excessive amount of damage going on. So
another way to consider this is if you recalled that
the immune system and many of the immune cells, do
(04:50):
you know they're they're very favorable to vitamin C. If
the levels drop and the immune cells slow down, you
can imagine that then if I have this infectious proce
process moving through my body, the infectious process is going
to have a better chance of speeding up and being stronger.
(05:11):
If I don't have my immune cells working as fast
and as spunky as they ought to, it's going to
slow down. It's going to do more damage. If I
don't have this other immune regulatory benefit of the redox
mechanism of vitamin C sits, we're going to have an
imbalance between the incoming infection and then the activity of
(05:34):
the vitamin C in our immune system which is deficient,
and then everything slows down, and so the immune the
immune activation isn't full it's not full force because vitamin
C and other things are starting to be absent. Now,
what about treatment and infections. First thing is, like we
(05:54):
talked about with vitamin C and cancer, you have these
variable absorption limits to vitamin C. So if you're eating
a food or you're taking a pill of vitamin C
or some combination of both, you're going to be limited
in the amount that you're going to absorb. And there's
(06:15):
some forms that are a little more absorable than others,
but still by mouth you're going to be limited. So
for normal daily requirements, probably your diet should be really
the cornerstone where you get vitamin C. If you're under
constant stress, etc. As we most of us are, you
should probably take a little bit of extra in a
(06:36):
supplemental form just to supplement your diet. And a lot
of people think, well, you know, I don't really like
citrus fruit, so where am I going to vitamin C? Well,
you go online and just look at food sources for
vitamin C. You'll find there's a whole bunch of other
things beyond citrus fruit. That you can eat and get
vitamin C from. Now, another thing is if I give
(06:57):
you intravenous vitamin C, so in the vein, intravenous vitamin
C is going to go around the digestive tract and
so it can go into your body at higher doses.
It's not going to give you digestive upset, etc. So
when we think of intravenous vitamin C, we also have
(07:17):
a low dose and a high dose strategy. And normally
with infections, if somebody comes in and let's say their
labs are appropriate to do vitamin C at high dose,
what we prefer with acute infections is to do higher
dose to vitamin C on the front end of the
infection and then back the dose down. Reason being that
(07:38):
we put more vitamin C in the system, we get
more of an oxidant activity. So you say, well, vitamin
C is an antioxidant. At high doses, it can be
a prooxidant and trigger peroxide surges in abnormal tissues. A
lot of virally infected cells are affected, some back curious
(08:00):
and other infections, and then the rest of your immune
system sort of will benefit from it as well. But
as we're moving forward here, and we're thinking about this. Okay,
So will vitamin C make it so I don't get
an infection? Is it preventive in that respect? Well, it's
(08:22):
very hard to prove prevention. You know, you need kind
of long term trials, and you need a whole lot
of people and all this stuff. But what I always
tell people is it's not necessarily. It's certainly not a
guarantee that something like vitamin C or we talked about
vitamin D or other stuff if I take that during
(08:42):
bold lusas and I won't get sick. The reason that
you're taking it is, yes, if you had a low
level attack of something and your immune system was right
there and it pushed it away, as your immune system
does every day. We just don't know what it's doing that,
then having the vitamin C coming in could be some
portive enough to help you in that respect. If you
(09:05):
don't have the vitamin C, remember that as you keep
getting assaulted during cold and flu season, et cetera, your
vibin C levels will dropping in you're a better target.
So it's a guaranteed preventive, no, but is helpful on
a preventive front. Then while you're sick, what you want
to remember is your requirements and your absorption usually will rise.
(09:26):
So if you're eating it and taking as a pill,
you might notice when you're healthy you only need five
hundred milligrams or a thousand milligrams, and then you start
to get loose bowels, right, because it's an osmotic agent.
What you often find when you're sick is if you
divide the dose up and you take some with breakfast, lunch,
and dinner, and you're taking in the vitamin C at
(09:47):
higher doses, you'll find your bowels do not get loose
because your body is sort of sucking up all of
that vitamin C because it needs more because you're sick.
If you're doing IV vitamin C, generally speaking, if you
can get early to somebody who has you know, cold flu,
something like that, well, and again if the labs are
(10:10):
appropriate for safety, will give higher doses like fifty grams
maybe or seventy five grams sometimes or more. And the
reason for giving those higher doses again is to be
a little bit more of not only an immune support,
but also to trigger some immune chemistry that would bother
(10:31):
especially virally infected cells other things like that. Now, as
we'll talk about in another section. If you're in the
hospital and you're getting vitamin C, which does happen now
and then, and there is an approved FDA approved intravenous
vitamin C product. I had somebody try to point out
(10:51):
one day, vitamin c's not FDA approved, etc. I know,
it's actually an approved drug for uses in the hospitals
and out of the hospitals as the same as any
other drug. Often, if you're in the hospital and you're
not going anywhere, rather than give you a big bull
it's a large dose of vitamin CIV, they would give
(11:12):
you maybe a continuous drip of vitamin C, so it's
going into your system constantly, and that can be very
protective and very helpful. Now we're going to do a
section subsection on COVID invitamin SEEING. I'll explain a little
bit more about how that might work. But if you're
out patient, you know, and you're certainly not going to
(11:32):
go into your doctor's office get vitamin C and stay
there for you know, two or three days and not
leave like you would at a hospital. That's why the
doctor may give you a higher dose twenty five grams,
fifty grams, seventy five grams maybe more. And that is
why that would be done, because then your body has it.
It will take hours and hours for that to leave
(11:53):
your body. Well, this has been Medicine Health with Doctor
Paul Anderson, our sub section on vitamin C in infections
generally speaking, and thank you for subscribing. Please like, share, subscribe,
do the notifications we're on all the pod burners. We're
on YouTube. Please check out the YouTube channel which is
(12:13):
this doctor a Online and I will see you all
for the next installment.
Good day, Welcome messine Health, Doctor Paul Anderson. That's me
on Doctor Paul. Please like, share, subscribe, and hit the notifications.
By the way, we love all the new viewers we're
getting really appreciate it. Vitamin C and infections generally speaking,
So we've done some little mini recordings on vitamin C
(00:22):
generally speaking, what's to do in our body? We did
one on vitamin C and cancer. Now I want to
talk about There're two sub sections on vitamin C and infections.
So the first thing to keep in mind is with infections,
there's a whole lot of ways that vitamin C gets
in the act or gets in the game of the infection.
So the first thing, if you go back to our
(00:45):
original where we just talked about the biology vitamin C.
Normally we use vitamin C. We can't make it in
our own bodies, so we have to consume it by
our food and maybe supplements, and we use it up
very quickly when we are getting sick or under stress.
It is responsible for operating the oxidative reductive mechanisms to
(01:06):
antioxidant READOX sort of mechanisms in the body, so that
when we have a response it's inflammatory or an oxidative response,
et cetera. The vitamin C can kind of level that
out and quell it. It's becomes very important because there's
certain immune cells that use vitamin C to help them
(01:28):
do what they need to do, and so far blood
levels keep going down we're sick, they're going to slow down.
But also it becomes important because the biology, the chemistry
of you having an immune response when you're sick is
that you have immune chemistry that starts the immune triggering response.
(01:51):
Then that marches forward and triggers a body wide immune response,
and the initial triggering is very pro inflammatory. We want that,
so we think inflammation is bad. It's not always bad.
We need inflammation and we need anti inflammation. Well, when
it comes to triggering a response and an infection, the
(02:12):
immune response has to have that upswing in inflammatory activity,
and then it has to be modulated so that the
inflammatory activity tails off and goes down and we don't
have damage. Well, vitamin C has a good way of
having the ability to support your immune system so that
(02:35):
it is permissive of this upswing and immune activity. But
it helps along with the number of other factors, some
of which are hormonal, some are nutritional, some are other things.
It helps with all those other factors to kind of
calm down the over exuberant immune response so you get
enough immune response but not too much. And the reason
(02:59):
we don't want too much immune responses that can have
other consequences that we are not going to be in
favor of downstream. That could be lingering inflammatory problems, could
be triggering autoimmunity. A number of things can go on there,
so vitamin C is really important in that respect. The
next thing is, as I mentioned, anytime we're sick and
(03:21):
under stress, our vitamin C levels go down, and because
our body cannot make its own vitamin C, we have
to increase the amount that is coming in or our
vitamin C levels will stay very low. So the thing
to keep in mind there is if you or me
(03:43):
or getting sick, or you are sick and you are
unable to consume enough vitamin C to kind of keep
the thankful because you can't make any on your own,
your vitamin C levels keep going down, and these important
things like supporting the immune cells and supporting the oxydative
reductive mant mechanisms, et cetera, start to tail off. They
(04:03):
get weaker and slower. Another thing that is important is
vitamin C is very critical to local cell regulation, local
cell activation, activation of internal enzymes, internal oxidation reduction inside
the cell, protection of mitochondria. So again, when we're sick
(04:27):
and we're inflame, there's a lot of that that's getting
really beat on all the time, and it's important to
not not have that you know, beating go on there,
not have that excessive amount of damage going on. So
another way to consider this is if you recalled that
the immune system and many of the immune cells, do
(04:50):
you know they're they're very favorable to vitamin C. If
the levels drop and the immune cells slow down, you
can imagine that then if I have this infectious proce
process moving through my body, the infectious process is going
to have a better chance of speeding up and being stronger.
(05:11):
If I don't have my immune cells working as fast
and as spunky as they ought to, it's going to
slow down. It's going to do more damage. If I
don't have this other immune regulatory benefit of the redox
mechanism of vitamin C sits, we're going to have an
imbalance between the incoming infection and then the activity of
(05:34):
the vitamin C in our immune system which is deficient,
and then everything slows down, and so the immune the
immune activation isn't full it's not full force because vitamin
C and other things are starting to be absent. Now,
what about treatment and infections. First thing is, like we
(05:54):
talked about with vitamin C and cancer, you have these
variable absorption limits to vitamin C. So if you're eating
a food or you're taking a pill of vitamin C
or some combination of both, you're going to be limited
in the amount that you're going to absorb. And there's
(06:15):
some forms that are a little more absorable than others,
but still by mouth you're going to be limited. So
for normal daily requirements, probably your diet should be really
the cornerstone where you get vitamin C. If you're under
constant stress, etc. As we most of us are, you
should probably take a little bit of extra in a
(06:36):
supplemental form just to supplement your diet. And a lot
of people think, well, you know, I don't really like
citrus fruit, so where am I going to vitamin C? Well,
you go online and just look at food sources for
vitamin C. You'll find there's a whole bunch of other
things beyond citrus fruit. That you can eat and get
vitamin C from. Now, another thing is if I give
(06:57):
you intravenous vitamin C, so in the vein, intravenous vitamin
C is going to go around the digestive tract and
so it can go into your body at higher doses.
It's not going to give you digestive upset, etc. So
when we think of intravenous vitamin C, we also have
(07:17):
a low dose and a high dose strategy. And normally
with infections, if somebody comes in and let's say their
labs are appropriate to do vitamin C at high dose,
what we prefer with acute infections is to do higher
dose to vitamin C on the front end of the
infection and then back the dose down. Reason being that
(07:38):
we put more vitamin C in the system, we get
more of an oxidant activity. So you say, well, vitamin
C is an antioxidant. At high doses, it can be
a prooxidant and trigger peroxide surges in abnormal tissues. A
lot of virally infected cells are affected, some back curious
(08:00):
and other infections, and then the rest of your immune
system sort of will benefit from it as well. But
as we're moving forward here, and we're thinking about this. Okay,
So will vitamin C make it so I don't get
an infection? Is it preventive in that respect? Well, it's
(08:22):
very hard to prove prevention. You know, you need kind
of long term trials, and you need a whole lot
of people and all this stuff. But what I always
tell people is it's not necessarily. It's certainly not a
guarantee that something like vitamin C or we talked about
vitamin D or other stuff if I take that during
(08:42):
bold lusas and I won't get sick. The reason that
you're taking it is, yes, if you had a low
level attack of something and your immune system was right
there and it pushed it away, as your immune system
does every day. We just don't know what it's doing that,
then having the vitamin C coming in could be some
portive enough to help you in that respect. If you
(09:05):
don't have the vitamin C, remember that as you keep
getting assaulted during cold and flu season, et cetera, your
vibin C levels will dropping in you're a better target.
So it's a guaranteed preventive, no, but is helpful on
a preventive front. Then while you're sick, what you want
to remember is your requirements and your absorption usually will rise.
(09:26):
So if you're eating it and taking as a pill,
you might notice when you're healthy you only need five
hundred milligrams or a thousand milligrams, and then you start
to get loose bowels, right, because it's an osmotic agent.
What you often find when you're sick is if you
divide the dose up and you take some with breakfast, lunch,
and dinner, and you're taking in the vitamin C at
(09:47):
higher doses, you'll find your bowels do not get loose
because your body is sort of sucking up all of
that vitamin C because it needs more because you're sick.
If you're doing IV vitamin C, generally speaking, if you
can get early to somebody who has you know, cold flu,
something like that, well, and again if the labs are
(10:10):
appropriate for safety, will give higher doses like fifty grams
maybe or seventy five grams sometimes or more. And the
reason for giving those higher doses again is to be
a little bit more of not only an immune support,
but also to trigger some immune chemistry that would bother
(10:31):
especially virally infected cells other things like that. Now, as
we'll talk about in another section. If you're in the
hospital and you're getting vitamin C, which does happen now
and then, and there is an approved FDA approved intravenous
vitamin C product. I had somebody try to point out
(10:51):
one day, vitamin c's not FDA approved, etc. I know,
it's actually an approved drug for uses in the hospitals
and out of the hospitals as the same as any
other drug. Often, if you're in the hospital and you're
not going anywhere, rather than give you a big bull
it's a large dose of vitamin CIV, they would give
(11:12):
you maybe a continuous drip of vitamin C, so it's
going into your system constantly, and that can be very
protective and very helpful. Now we're going to do a
section subsection on COVID invitamin SEEING. I'll explain a little
bit more about how that might work. But if you're
out patient, you know, and you're certainly not going to
(11:32):
go into your doctor's office get vitamin C and stay
there for you know, two or three days and not
leave like you would at a hospital. That's why the
doctor may give you a higher dose twenty five grams,
fifty grams, seventy five grams maybe more. And that is
why that would be done, because then your body has it.
It will take hours and hours for that to leave
(11:53):
your body. Well, this has been Medicine Health with Doctor
Paul Anderson, our sub section on vitamin C in infections
generally speaking, and thank you for subscribing. Please like, share, subscribe,
do the notifications we're on all the pod burners. We're
on YouTube. Please check out the YouTube channel which is
(12:13):
this doctor a Online and I will see you all
for the next installment.
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