[I’ve passed this information on to the federal and provincial governments of Canada, their respective health agencies, and several media outlets for consideration.]
At this point in the coronavirus pandemic, we can state facts with some certainty.
- This virus is new, so our immune systems have never encountered it before.
- Those hit the hardest tend to be older and/or suffer from conditions that impair their immune function.
Adaptive immunity vs Innate Immunity
There are two different levels of immune response capable of fighting off the virus. The most studied is the adaptive immune system. This involves white blood cells and the development of antibodies capable of attaching to and deactivating the virus. This is the target the development of vaccines aims towards, training the adaptive immune system to recognize a pathogen. The first line of defense against pathogens is another system, the innate immune system, which occurs within the cells themselves.
The response of the innate immune system is governed by the mitochondria. The mitochondria is an organelle that exists within the cells of almost all eukaryotic life, from plants to people. It is responsible for producing energy through the process known as oxidative phosphorylation, where oxygen and simple sugars are burned to produce energy for the cell. There are only a few known species that fall into this category that don’t contain mitochondria and they all live in anaerobic environments. One lives in dung, the other is a fish parasite. All higher forms of life contain mitochondria and it governs some of their most essential cellular processes.
In higher life forms like humans, the number of mitochondria within cells varies significantly. Different cell-types have different numbers of them. Liver cells have some of the highest numbers. Exercise causes the body to produce more mitochondria. Without functioning mitochondria, the cell will die. The only mammal cells that lack functioning mitochondria are red blood cells, whose function is primarily to carry oxygen to other cells.
The mitochondria also contribute to adaptive immunity. Healthy cells will produce more mitochondria when the body is under energy stress while fighting an infection. They will contribute these additional mitochondria to cells involved in the immune response.
Hypothesis
The trend towards older people and those with certain medical conditions to be at a greater risk of dying from COVID-19, while other people are able to be asymptomatic carriers who
only show the most mild symptoms, correlates to the strength of their innate immune response. There is no adaptive immunity as the virus is novel.
This leads to three conclusions:
1. The virus is completely survivable.
When not overwhelmed by the virus through a deficient innate immune response, the adaptive immune system is able to produce antibodies that can deactivate the virus.
2. Healthy mitochondria prevent the adaptive immune system from being overwhelmed.
As the first line of defense, healthy mitochondria can halt the proliferation of viruses early on in the infection of a cell. This reduces the total number of virions moving through a host body, allowing the adaptive immune system time to develop the antibodies needed to deactivate the virus entirely and aggressively suppress the infection.
3. Therapies that target the mitochondria can prevent the host from being overwhelmed by the virus, reducing the risk of death.
There is a group of chemicals, the dihalogenated acetates, that have demonstrated the ability to improve mitochondrial function. One member of this group, DCA (sold as sodium dichloroacetate) has been actively studied for its use in humans for a number of decades. Originally it was studied for its use in treating a metabolic disorder, lactic acidosis, but in more recent years it’s been used to treat cancers, endometriosis and other conditions. Its primary target is the mitochondria. It is considered non-toxic and safe to use. It is off-patent and cheaply produced, widely available for sale to the general public commercially through outlets like Amazon or direct from laboratories.
This compound, and it’s associated higher family, should be considered for use against the current COVID-19 pandemic. If stimulating the mitochondria enhances the innate immune response in individuals with age or illness-related impairments to their mitochondria, the virus should become more survivable and developing the herd immunity to protect the more vulnerable members of society should become easier in the absence of a vaccine.
It should also be noted that this compound is considered to be only artificially derived by agencies like Health Canada and the FDA, only discovered in the last century. Contrary to that belief, it has been reported to exist as a seaweed metabolite since the 1960s. Since seaweeds were the first multicellular life to evolve, this compound has existed since multicellular life began and would have been among the first vitamins that allowed other early multicellular life to flourish in an ocean awash with viruses, bacteria and other pathogens, conferring a strong innate immune response in the complete absence of an adaptive immune system.
Conclusion: Strengthening the mitochondria will harden the host against pathogens like COVID-19, increasing the survival rate.
I have another planned follow up on this one that shows these plants have been used for this purpose by ancient peoples. In some cases entire religions were built around them and their health benefits. This isn’t a new discovery, this is something very old we’ve forgotten.