Innovatia

T he world will be more resilient in the face of future pandemics only when we acknowledge that certain scientific fun- damentals have not been applied in the fight against COVID-19. While the social distancing, hygiene, testing, tracking and tracing have been effective, a comprehensive approach should include keen attention to vitamins and nutrition. Currently, the innate strength of the human immune system is substantially ignored by the mainstream, and yet it is the most powerful defence we all have against coronaviruses and every other pathogenic microbe. The effectiveness of the immune system de- pends significantly on an individual’s nutri- tional status and genetic makeup. It is the ba- sic building blocks of amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, minerals and trace elements that de- termine how powerfully the immune system responds to an infectious agent such as a virus, bacteria or fungus. Any deficiency or imbalance of a single nutrient will weaken the response and permit invasion, infection, and potentially

and a high end (meaning based on molecular and clinical analysis) nutritional aids company, Nutrition Care. Recently, he partnered with a Chinese company in that venture and launched a new research company devoted to medical applications of cannabis. He is active, fit and healthy at age 75. In the following viewpoint article, Professor Brighthope promulgates one of his life’s mis- sions: awareness of the medically-based value of vitamins and nutrition, in particular vitamin C. He was a personal friend of Dr. Linus Pauling, a two-time Nobel Prize winner and the original vitamin C advocate, who wrote the foreword to the professor’s book The AIDS Fighters. Dr. Paul- ing was arguably America’s finest chemist of the 20th century, yet was attacked vehemently by many in the medical establishment for his con- tention that vitamin C in large doses had numer- ous disease-prevention effects. Although the de- bate continues today, many have found benefit from high-dosage vitamin C intake on a person- al, empirical basis. Dr. Pauling’s basic hypothe- sis was science-based: the human body does not manufacture vitamin C, which is essential for proper functioning, and therefore supplementa- tion is required in the absence of adequate die- tary intake. As Dr. Hilary Roberts wrote in a 2015 article in support of Pauling’s theories: “Irwin Stone first introduced Pauling to vitamin C, and explained that it wasn’t really a vitamin at all, but an es- sential substance we could no longer manu- facture in our bodies. Most animals make their own vitamin C, in large amounts. In humans, the gene for this ability has mutated and no longer works properly”. Dr. Brighthope’s views on vitamin C and nutri-

tion are best considered against a backdrop of continuing debate. Notably, some of the world’s foremost nutrition doctors (such as Dr. Mark Hy- man in the US) now focus on vitamins and nu- trition on molecular chemistry level, just as Dr. Pauling did.

serious symptoms – in some cases, mortality. Doctors practising nutritional medicine un- derstand how important diet, nutritional sup- plementation and the elimination of excess sugar, alcohol and saturated fats are to prevent- ing or managing most diseases. For decades now, experts in nutritional medicine (NM) have been quietly defeating infectious diseases, of- ten where orthodox medicine has failed. They have been preventing or successfully treating influenza, severe herpes simplex, coronavirus infections, intractable bacterial infections and pneumonia using nutrients that are essential for improving the immune response, suppressing the viral load and killing the viruses responsible. The advent of COVID-19 saw panic, pande- monium, economic destruction and death. We have now witnessed the extent to which our health institutions were unprepared for a pan- demic of this magnitude. Countering the out- break with complementary strategies – beyond applying simple epidemiological tools – could improve outcomes. The scientific evidence and practitioner ex- perience that NM has accumulated over the decades has been largely ignored by much of the establishment. NM exponents have tried valiantly to make authorities aware of its bene- ficial attributes, but often to little avail. January 2020 saw the start of the ‘CD-Zinc Campaign’, which consisted of public health recommendations for the entire population to take vitamins C and D and the trace element zinc, the most critical, effective, safe and readi- ly available nutrients for optimal immunity. The common cold is typically caused by res- piratory viruses. Regular oral supplementa- tion with Vitamin C has been found to reduce

INNOVATIA

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INNOVATIA

| Health & Wellbeing

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