Texas Covid-19 Summit

Dr. Dan Stock

I'm going to try and put out some understanding of how a functional doctor looks at theoretically, and then specifically what you can do to prevent and treat COVID-19 Other than the stuff you've been given right now.


So the first thing I'd like everybody to know is something that I learned in medical school that's kind of different about COVID-19, if you look at Rubella ... 95% of people will get symptoms.


So the equation of disease where disease equals pathogenicity of the bug versus the quality of the immune system, the big variable there is the pathogen, isn't it?


Only 5% of people have a good enough immune system that they can get infected with rubella and get through without symptoms.


But what I learned after I got out of medical school and started doing more research is if you look at influenza and the common cold, it's actually 70% of people who get infected have no symptoms.


...And then I found it's the same number for COVID-19.


So what does that tell you is the big difference when 70% of people who get the infection have no symptoms and 30% of them do have symptoms? Is the problem the pathogen, is that where you're going to get the most traction say with a vaccine, or remdesivir, which aims at viral replication, or are you more likely to get it [with] something that tackles the whole problem of inflammation and the malfunction of your immune system?


So I don't want anybody to get the idea that it's one or the other. ...


[W]hat's the biochemical difference between that 70% Who gets infected and doesn't even know they have it ... and that 30% have got infected and didn't have a very good time with it.


So you should know what we call functional nutritional repletion assays, which is where we take some cells out of the human being and we say, hey, if I give you some more of this, or some more of that, will you grow faster when I give you a growth signal? And by doing these things, we can actually identify nutrient things that tell us that hey, if we were to give you more of this, if you had more of this to begin with, you would actually have your cells grow faster.


And you know what we do those assays on? We do this on the lymphocytes, the immune system cells that actually are probably the primary thing in fighting the virus.


So this isn't just theoretical, you should know that we've actually done studies first of all in these studies where we took some of your immune system cells and say, hey, when we give you a signal that you've just got an infection around you, and you need to respond Hey, you respond better if I give you some of this, but then also then did placebo controlled randomized blinded trials and many of these things in human beings and showed wow, you know, it does reduce the duration and degree of symptoms.


So think about when you start thinking about we're going to prevent and treat a disease that what we're going to do is make the immune system like that 30% More like the immune system of the 70%.


So what kind of things do we have data on that do this and I'd like to kind of start with the stuff we have the most shaky data on. All right. My favorite of those is selenium, which for my patients in prevention—and one of these I like to tell people, I got pilloried by one of these [?] things because I made the brag that I treated 15 patients with COVID 19 staff 15 people is like you're right. I don't have the experience that Peter McCollough does, right. But that's 15 People—10 of whom were actually not my patients until they got sick with COVID-19, the other five or five of my 200 patients who didn't come down with symptoms, so that's five out of 200 people who because we were doing some things before COVID-19 Got to them ended up more like that lucky 70%.


So the first of those things is a Selenium, 200 to 400 micrograms a day and for adults who are much bigger I lean more towards the 400 a day. You should know that selenium is actually not just used to make the [?] hormone but so that your cells use it right. And it's also used by your immune system cells, so that your T cells develop into the TH1 or TH2 correctly, so they go to become cytotoxic T cells and mature, so that natural killer cells develop. So that's the first thing that I would have in all of my patients prophylactically.


I do want people to know we don't have any data that says this works if you use it acutely in a patient. I do it for my patients acutely, but [there isn't a placebo controlled randomized blinded trial of selenium]. By the way, and everything we're going to talk about today, understand that the sooner you get this under control, the better it does. The immune system has got a positive feedback system. When it gets stimulated to a point. It actually gets into a positive feedback loop about a week into it where it's no longer—you don't even need the virus anymore. Your immune system and your inflammatory regulatory mechanisms are so broken, they'll go out of control and hurt you even if you don't have virus anymore.


And so that's what we're trying to make sure we can do—selenium isn't something that you probably get a lot of benefit using very early, but 200 or 400 micrograms a day is something that my patients who have very little problem with symptomatic COVID-19 are all doing.


And then let's move up a step to something like zinc.


So the zinc has got so many things that it does with the immune system and even against viruses. It does both parts of that equation, that I can't possibly go through all of those with you guys right now, but I think what I want people to understand about zinc is that Zinc has been proven to be useful both in the acute setting and I can tell you it works in the long term setting. The doses are a little different between those things. studies I've seen placebo controlled, randomized blinded trials of zinc, about 30 to 50% effective not only at reducing the duration and degree of symptoms, but the duration and degree of viral shed, which [unintelligible] I see with any vaccine product on the market right now.


...


Zinc, we've talked about the cost of ivermectin versus doing vaccines ... the cost of zinc to do this is extremely low.

I'd like to step that up a notch when somebody comes in and they're not been taking zinc and they have acute symptoms with hydroxychloroquine. That's—hydroxychloroquine, of the most wonderful things it does is actually make zinc move into the cell. Most of the zinc in your bloodstream when you start taking it will be on the outside of the cell where it doesn't do a lot of good, but you can move whatever zinc you have into the cell very quickly with hydroxychloroquine.


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Dr. Dan Stock continued:

I don't use hydroxychloroquine prophylactically, very much although I guess you could. I understand they do it quite frequently in Africa.



I think there's other things I prefer to use for prophylaxis than that. One of the things I would recommend people consider using is Iodine. ​

Interestingly, when your body gets inflamed, the body actually tries to turn you into a state of hypothyroidism called tissue fibroid resistance. It's doing that on purpose because intracellular pathogens like viruses and bacteria like to actually use your own cells machinery to reproduce.
​

We're kind of trying to slow that down a little bit. But interestingly, your immune system cells can make their own thyroid hormone as long as they have adequate iodine, because they don't want to slow their metabolism down. ​

Your thyroid gland tends to be an iodine hog. And so it's a good idea if you're low on iodine—once you've made sure somebody has adequate zinc and adequate selenium, and I do want to stress to people that I never have any patient I practice add in larger doses of iodine until I know they have adequate zinc and selenium function because high doses of iodine without those things can actually cause the thyroid gland injury.​

...

But after you've got sufficient zinc and selenium, then I'll have somebody start on iodine six and a quarter milligrams of an iodine iodide combination. So that's another thing that you can do for prophylaxis. ​

I understand from Dr. Brownstein. This actually can be used acutely, I don't have any experience using it acutely. The risk of the thyroid is a long term use of iodine problem. So I'm not going to contradict Dr. Brownstein. He knows much more about iodine function than I do. But it's one of the things that you can use prophylactically that works very well and is why that large percentage of my population never get symptoms from COVID-19. ​

Another thing that I think people need to know about is iron sufficiency. And unfortunately, many doctors have not been taught to test for iron and a very good way, they were taught the way I was in medical school, which is to measure a level of something called a ferritin level. ​

The problem with ferritin is that just inflammation by itself drives ferritin up. Iron deficiency drives ferritin down and so if you see somebody who's chronically inflamed, they can many times have a good looking ferritin level despite having a very low amount of iron ​

... ​

Iron can cause the same kind of problems that iodine can but know that it's something that you can have your doctor check that will make it so you are less likely to get in problems if your immune system and your inflammatory mechanism have to go fight a cootie.​

Then let's move up to some stuff in acute treatment, which we actually have very, very good data on COVID-19 for, with enormous effect and very low side effects. My next favorite guy after that I should mention inhaled steroids for anybody who's acutely symptomatic and oral steroids as well. And again, as we've seen with monoclonal antibodies, steroids work better when used early in the process rather than late. Only about 30% effective as I recall once you're in the ICU​

... but around 50 to 70% effective system early on in this.​

And after that ivermectin ... One of the things is the problem with trying to use the nutraceutical approach to getting your immune system to working right is it's a slow moving therapy. ​

...​

If I shoot you in the middle of the chest, you're going to need surgery. We're not going to get out of this. Alright, so we're going to have to do some unnatural things. And among those things, ivermectin is a wonderful chemical. ​

I can tell you for most of my patients within 36 hours, symptoms are down 50% if I choose the right dose.​

...​

The only way I've found to injure anybody with ivermectin is to load it into a gun and shoot it at them. ​

I have to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, things—as horrible as the positive harm from these vaccines is, what I'm watching is a Tuskegee experiment going on in the United States where we deny people things that are very safe and very effective.​

And this is very difficult to watch as a doctor.​

Studies I've read with ivermectin, and these are placebo controlled, randomized blinded trials of ivermectin in acute therapy, use both early and late because ivermectin is not just something that makes a virus so it can't bind to the spike protein receptor, it's actually something that changes that inflammatory over-response that's going on in COVID-19. ​

... You should know that what kills you in COVID-19 is not all of the cells in your body becoming infected with virus rupturing open and dying. What you die from is an uncoordinated inflammatory response that tells every cell to go into something called cell danger response where it quits doing its job right.​

... You don't die because virus is filling up all your cells and killing them. Your own inflammatory regulation systems are what's destroying your body. And ivermectin actually has been shown that it actually interferes with those out-of-control inflammatory processes, and does this with side effects that I can't distinguish from placebo.​

So I routinely use this in patients no matter what time they come in to me. ​

Prophylactically, I've actually seen a study done in COVID-19 nurses in the COVID-19 Ward, where they were randomized to either placebo or ivermectin to use once a week, twice a week for the first week and once a week thereafter, it was 100% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19.​

 

Dr. Dan Stock continued

...You can only get so stupid for free when you see something that's that cheap and that effective, that well studied, being sidelined, banned. I have on my phone, the recording from a CVS pharmacist refusing to fill an ivermectin prescription for a patient that she had filled three weeks before for the very same patient and admitting that it was a CVS corporate policy that made it so that she couldn't fill that.​

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And let's talk about vitamin D. So, the first thing everybody here in the room needs to know is vitamin D is not a vitamin, alright you don't get it from food. Almost everything in your body has been made by your skin when you're exposed to sunlight unless you're taking a supplement. It really doesn't even function like a vitamin it is what we call an autacoide prohormone. ​

Your liver takes vitamin D and converts it to the active form which is called 25 hydroxy vitamin D or calcifediol. ​

And that active form is actually taken up by cells and used to regulate multiple processes including inflammation control and regulation, and the development of immune system cells and their proper maturation in the right type of cell at the right time.​

I should take you back even to 2008 we had data that showed in placebo controlled randomized blinded trials in influenza that we could reduce the risk of symptoms, the duration of symptoms, degree of symptoms and even the duration and degree of influenza shedding with vitamin D by itself. 30 to 70% in those trials, depending how you looked at. ​

I gotta tell you, nobody has an expert-o-meter, but if I was working at the NIH and the CDC, and I had somebody come rolling in with this new virus that was respiratory transmitted, the first thing that you want to do is say, well, Vitamin D is dirt cheap. It already prevents influenza. By the way we have that data for the common cold as well. I would say the first thing I want to do is start doing this with people and COVID-19.​

Wasn't paid for by NIH or the CDC, but there were trials done very early on with COVID-19 with vitamin D that showed that it reduced the duration and degree of symptoms, the duration degree of viral shed, by actually making those things change very early on. ​

We had data that if you made a plot of your risk of death, versus your 25 hydroxy vitamin D blood level, that is your 25 hydroxy vitamin D level went higher from zero to 55, your risk of death started off dropping linearly until it got to around 45, and around 45 are starting to drop off and it leveled off at a level of 55 or greater. And at that point you had one quarter the risk of dying from COVID 19 If your level was 55 or greater.​

Now statistically that strongly suggests that 75% of dying from COVID-19 is simply having an adequate 25 hydroxy vitamin D blood levels. And, guys, that's data from I think June of 2020 that we had that data. ​

So there's a problem with vitamin D and that is when you get really inflamed, your liver actually starts to lose some of the ability to convert vitamin D to that active form. And in fact, some of the most sad studies I've seen done with vitamin D, one of them funded indirectly by your NIH who, by the way, when it wants to fund a really bad study it launders it through a group of other companies who then give it to the final person who's going to do the horrible research, but they'll take research into somebody who's already severely ill and in the intensive care unit and give them vitamin D versus placebo, usually dosing it in a bizarre dose schedule of one huge dose once and then never again repeated.​

To say that it doesn't work and to realize that when you're that inflamed, it's probably not going to work. But it'll have some effect. But if your livers already in trouble, you're not going to turn to the active form. ​

So if I was an expert, I would really like to have somebody do a study where you say, hey, what we're going to do is take a group of people with COVID-19, divide them in half and either give them dummy pills or the active form 25 hydroxy vitamin D bypass the liver. ​

Your CDC and NIH didn't do that. ​

But a hospital in Spain did. As a matter of fact, they took a group of people who are not all the already hospitalized with COVID-19. They were already on hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. And that matters because if you're already trying to cure people with one other treatment, it makes the second treatment so that doesn't look as good as it really would be if you used it alone. ​

And so they took a group of 76 people with COVID-19 randomly divided them up and 26 of them got placebo and 50 of them got 25 hydroxy vitamin D and in a dose of 532 micrograms on day one, half the dose on day three, another half the dose on day seven and every week thereafter. ​

They reduced the risk of progression to the intensive care unit by 90%. That's right. And that ladies and gentlemen was so highly statistically significant that it actually had enough statistical power that he could ask the question, Well, did vitamin D work better on people who are thin versus obese or normal blood pressure versus high blood pressure or old versus young, diabetic or normal blood sugar? And they were able to do that analysis come back and say it worked equally well in all of those settings. ​

It even had an effect on death that was not statistically significant. But there were two deaths out of 26 and placebo and zero out of 50 in the 25 hydroxy vitamin D group. Yeah. ​

So now you understand when somebody comes into my practice and say, Doc, I feel good while everybody gets on whatever dose of vitamin D it takes to get your level laced greater than 55. I prefer in the 70s. And I'll tell you why I prefer in the 70s is vitamin D is consumed by the cell as it's running its regulatory mechanisms. So if you start off at 54.5, you may be able to start getting that level to drop as you get more inflamed. That dose is typically between 5000 and 10000 international units a day. But if you come in to me and you're acutely inflamed, Gee, doc, I've got COVID-19 today and I haven't been taking anything for a walked in its routine medical practice. I was taught in medical school 50,000 international units a day for three straight days, and then five to 7000 A day after that. ​

Now since that time, ladies and gentlemen, when we finally had data on 25 hydroxy vitamin D come out. I have to tell you, the first thing I did after this study came out. I got online and found a chemical company that would sell it to my compounding pharmacist and called up my compounding pharmacies to say how quickly can you make this up it looks like the price which you can buy it as you can get that treatment regimen for people for probably in the neighborhood of around $10 for the entire two weeks of treatment. And my compounding pharmacist told me Dan, the FDA has already sent us a note that if we compound up something without a USP monograph, we'll get a $50,000 fine and lose our license. ​

And the reason it doesn't have a USP monograph is several years ago your FDA actually licensed a patent for 25 hydroxy vitamin D in a controlled release form called Rayaldee for secondary hyperparathyroidism, so it can't have a USP monograph, I'm told by my pharmacists friend.​

So you can still get Rayaldee to treat acutely with this. It's very expensive. But it's now actually sold online. ​

And some of your pharmacies carry a product called D.velop, which is​

10 micrograms of 25 hydroxy vitamin D, that you don't have to even have a working liver to make this work and I routinely start my patients off on 54 of those on day 1, 27 On day three and day seven, and every seven days thereafter. Checking levels to see if your level goes up greater than 55 or 70. After that all of these things work better if they're starting earlier on in treatment.

And ladies and gentlemen, the idea from the FDA that you should go home and wait a week for 10 days until you need a ventilator. When the inflammatory regulatory mechanisms have already gone out of control, and we're trying to cram it back but the genie back into the bottle is the most disastrous advice you could be given. We have safe effective treatment for this prescription and non prescription that are available. And if I could leave you with anything in the prevention of this, start early, find a doctor who will, if you can't do it on your own, it's better than sitting at home doing nothing.​