I want to express my gratitude for the generosity of everyone last time. The support was overwhelming, especially the messages. Thank you. My datasets now have a mansion to reside rather than a crumpled apartment (from 512 GB to 4 TB)
As to means to stick to my few self-imposed rules, first avoiding bad vibes in the Holiday season, and second avoiding hyper-short “meaningless” information (from my perspective), I will do a twofer. Add more information and context on the first paper and write a little about Thiamine, but for full disclosure, the internet has an absurd amount of resources on my favorite B vitamin.
If you are addicted to doom and gloom, there will be enough in January 2024.
Throughout late 2021, and 2022, a few hundred people sent me messages asking “I need to take the mRNA vaccine or I lose my job, is there any possible way to mitigate the damage ?”. My answer was consistent with previous and current evidence, the same “stack” (group of supplements) to avoid SARS-CoV-2 infection damage,it is similar to the one to recover from the damage, and especially similar to mitigate to the best of our knowledge the side-effects of the mRNA vaccines, with the addendum of just eat a load of fatty food (burger and fries being one example) before getting the damn thing, after all, fats want to stick to other fats, a way to avoid LNP going were it shouldn’t.
One of the suggestions was, is, forever will be Vitamin D, which is a hormone, not a vitamin.
A brief reminder. LL-37, a small peptide the body produces to kill pathogens, is very potent, and is naturally produced, but you can incentivize the production by taking certain supplements, such as Vitamin C and…Vitamin D.
It can lower the infection rate of SARS-CoV-2 (and many other pathogens).
It can enhance Type I IFN (antiviral immune response, that is responsible for triggering B and T cell responses, among many other effects). It directly modulates Galectin-3, Endotoxic responses, and its damage.
It directly suppresses Th17 cytokine production, a hallmark of the damage of Long Covid and vaccine damage
It prevents endothelial damage induced by NETs (Neutrophils Extracellular Traps)
It suppresses ferroptosis by activating the NRF2-HO-1 pathway (the important part for us here will be NRF2)
There is an extensive, exhaustive list of all the benefits Vitamin D supplementation can exert, these are but a few of them, important in a contextual manner to our use case. As another reminder, I have held the belief that a sizable portion of the global population finds themselves in a Vitamin D metabolic trap, optimal levels don’t persist.
The Effect of Vit-D Supplementation on the Side Effect of BioNTech, Pfizer Vaccination and Immunoglobulin G Response Against SARS-CoV-2 in the Individuals Tested Positive for COVID-19: A Randomized Control Trial
In this recent clinical trial, the authors measured if supplementation of Vitamin D3 could affect antibody levels and reduce vaccine side effects, and here they also took into account the BMI. Having a little bit “too much” fat (obese and above) directly impacts how you respond to almost everything, and given how a large portion of the planet is now overweight, it is something to consider often when designing studies.
Here they found that supplementing for a little over 2 weeks diminished the side effects of the second dose, which makes sense since as with most “supplements” it takes a while for any substance to exert an effect.
Now I will add the effects of Vitamin D on the potential long-term damaging effects of the viral infection.
Vitamin D Can reduce Covid severity by controlling the suppressive effect of PD-L1 on CD4 and CD8, it can reduce inflammation by increasing T Reg cells
Vitamin D supplementation significantly increased gut microbial diversity. Specifically, the Bacteroidetes to Firmicutes ratio increased, along with the abundance of the health-promoting probiotic taxa Akkermansia and Bifidobacterium.
Omicron at any severity displaces Akkermansia, one of the most important microbes in our gut, responsible for proper glucose metabolism, limiting neurodegeneration, and influencing our immune responses towards respiratory viruses such as Influenza, Bifido is directly correlated with mitochondrial function and directly displaced by the vaccine, and in severe/Long Covid.
It can stop the occurrence and development of Colorectal Cancer by regulating Akkermansia-mediated colon barrier integrity, in simple terms, helps heal from a “leaky gut”
Arguably from my perspective, one of the biggest problems, present in both vaccines and infection is the “stalk” of the Spike Protein, causing the active suppression of the cholinergic system, while avoiding the bad vibes, the virus is developing the tendency to stick around everyone (recent mutation in the newest Omicron), so these “odd” effects are significant long-term. Therefore…
Vitamin D inhibits LPS-induced IL-6 overexpression (hyper inflammation), repressing NF-kB phosphorylation (the mechanism by which LPS does it), and regulates AhR/NF-kB signaling, also important because this is something the virus does
It can reverse T cell exhaustion and enhance antitumor immunity
Vitamin D Is Required for IFN-γ–Mediated Antimicrobial Activity of Human Macrophages
On the opposite side, “This study demonstrates that vitamin D modulates IFN-γ and IL-10 production and provides a rationale for evaluating vitamin D as an immunomodulatory agent.” This means Vitamin D can play a dual role when it comes to IFN-gamma activity…our bodies are more complex and “smarter” than all of us
And the last one, making sense online in a couple of weeks, Vitamin D and Omega 3 fatty acids control serotonin synthesis and action, you need both for the proper function of serotonin… and there is an untold amount of people developing serotonin “insufficiency”, but again, more on this later
The rationale behind having optimized Vitamin D levels, and while there are large debates on the proper levels, upwards of 70 nmol/L would be the required minimum to me if the person has any type of disease, and especially true the older they are. At high enough levels Vitamin D can even act as a fungicide and help the body deal with active Candida Albicans.
Once again, these are but merely contextual positive effects that proper Vitamin D and its supplementation provides, the list of positive effects on other conditions is rather extensive. It will be incredibly important in the next 2 to 5 years for most people to have at the very least, proper Vit D levels (yes, it is a forecast).
Also worth noting, if you have a chronic disease, a chronic infection, inflammation, ME/CFS, Long Covid, or hormonal dysfunction, assume you are always “deficient”, and long-term follow-up of your Vit D levels is necessary since any test is merely a momentary snapshot of you. All these complex conditions create metabolic traps that can persistently lower your levels of many nutrients. I am the perfect, living example of this.
And there is no better example than Vitamin B1. Thiamine., the singular of the B vitamin bunch. For a few decades now besides all the other critical effects B1 possesses, it has been speculated that it had a cholinergic effect, especially at high dosages.
In a very recent paper on a hypothyroidism model for learning and memory dysfunction, thiamine for 7 weeks improved both by positively regulating the redox hemostasis (your antioxidant system) and the cholinergic system too.
Thiamine is critical for the integrity of the Blood-Brain Barrier, and its deficiency directly affects the deposition of iron in the brain (aka developing and accelerating Alzheimer’s)
In another test related to avoiding Th17 immune storm, the authors found evidence that thiamine for 3 weeks lowered Il-17, thus diminishing its inflammatory response
As mentioned previously, the higher the carbohydrates you consume, the more refined they are, and the more “deficient” you are, in this case, there is room for an argument that most of the planet is “thiamine dependent”. Dependency means you need regular consumption of said nutrients to have effective function dependent on those nutrients, be it an amino acid, enzyme, or vitamin.
If there is one thing I would highly suggest, incentivize the consumption, besides a common, good multivitamin a day and the occasional Vitamin D, would be Thiamine, especially if worried about neurological and cognitive function, overall health, memory, and learning. There are only upsides given our modern lives. Do not underestimate how just a few changes or additions can vastly improve whatever condition you find yourself in.
For last, and as the best vibes possible, we may have finally found ways to deal, long-term, with very nasty autoimmune diseases.
‘It’s all gone’: CAR-T therapy forces autoimmune diseases into remission
Engineered immune cells, most commonly used to treat cancers, show their power against lupus and other immune disorders.
Engineered immune cells have given 15 people with once-debilitating autoimmune disorders a new lease on life, free from fresh symptoms or treatments. The results raise hopes that the approach — called CAR-T-cell therapy — might one day be extended to a variety of other conditions fuelled by rogue immune cells that produce antibodies against the body’s own tissues.
All 15 participants, who each had one of three autoimmune conditions, have remained disease-free or nearly so since their treatment, according to data presented on 9 December at the American Society of Hematology meeting in San Diego, California. The first participants were treated more than two years ago.
These successes, although preliminary, have been electric, says Marco Ruella, an oncologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. “We’re all excited,” he says. “There’s a lot of potential.”
CAR-T therapies harness the immune players called T cells. T cells are removed from the person being treated, genetically engineered to produce proteins called chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) and then reintroduced to the person’s body. In many therapies, the T cells are tailored to recognize a protein made by immune cells called B cells. When reintroduced, the CAR T cells will target the B cells for destruction — a useful feature for treating cancers caused by abnormal B cells.
Other groups have since taken up the approach and reported similar results. Earlier this month, another team added a fourth autoimmune disorder called myasthenia gravis to the list of successes
CAR-T cell therapies still have some ways to go, to figure out any potential side-effect and long-term consequences of perhaps targeting cells you previously didn’t mean to, referred to as off-target effect, but it is promising that many of the patients in both studies experienced long-term relief and huge improvement in quality of life. Given the potential for God knows how many to develop autoimmune diseases in the decade to come, it is a welcomed progress.
With the advent of generative AI and fast progress into agent (AI models that you can task with X, and they will do the task by themselves and produce the result, capable of reasoning and logic), I have high hopes we will able to figure out many conditions and help people who previously couldn’t be helped.
I am very grateful for the support, both old and new alike ! Thank you.
Had to spend over 30 hours just mildly organizing all my data/datasets. Never thought my autsitic drive to save every text I read because "who knows about the future" would be a good thing.
=( being disorganized all those years did NOT help.
I hope everyone is having a great week. Will publish something else soon.
"thiamine (50, 100, and 200 mg/kg, oral"
That's a lot of thiamine. I've suspected my lingering sensitivity to light is due to issues in the cholinergic system. My 100mg/day would be like a grain of sand in the desert. I will try increasing dosage. Thank you!