Alternative treatments for COVID-19. Is it possible?

While scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and elsewhere around the world are testing vaccines and therapies against COVID-19, since the beginning of this pandemic there is a parallel search for a natural or alternative remedy to prevent Coronavirus infection, including the possibility of curing patients already infected with the disease. 

Recently, encouraging feedback has been reported from many fronts about people diagnosed with COVID-19 who successfully heal from the virus by strengthening their immune system with herbs, supplements, and/or home remedies.

The difference is that there nowadays more data is available to support those claims and promote a more serious scientific discussion. Besides, without too many more options available for a short term resolution, Traditional Medicine data has been cross-referenced with Holistic Medicine data and it has produced encouraging possibilities for treatments and even disease eradication.

IMPORTANT:
This article is not a “hall-pass” for anyone to feel safe and ignore this pandemic. The only real prevention is to avoid exposure to the virus. There is no cure, no effective treatment, and no assurance that people who survive the infection won’t have collateral effects for life!

If you understand those statements and take it truly seriously, be my guest and continue reading beyond this point… 

Some Alternative Treatments

There are reports from real COVID-19 patients about natural remedies and their benefits. Many people claim to have found help preventing the infection and the majority of the reports put emphasis on the easiness of the disease symptoms. At the top of the recommended list are high dose Vitamin C and Colloidal Silver.

Vitamin C is a well-known supplement and people have been taking it for decades to boost their immune system without major side effects. It has been used as well in the treatment of many aggressive diseases, and it is now in the center of worldwide research that has been very promising. I will talk more about it below in this same article. 

For now, I’d like to bring your attention to the Colloidal Silver. It is a mineral with no known function in the body and is not an essential mineral supplement. Colloidal Silver products were once available as over-the-counter drug products. In 1999 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ruled that these colloidal silver products were not considered safe or effective. There are currently no FDA-approved over-the-counter or prescription drugs containing silver that are taken by mouth. However, there are still colloidal silver products being sold as homeopathic remedies and dietary supplements. If you think about using it, be aware that Colloidal Silver is likely unsafe when taken by mouth, applied to the skin, or injected intravenously (by IV). The silver in Colloidal Silver products gets deposited into organs such as the skin, liver, spleen, kidney, muscle, and brain. This can lead to an irreversible bluish looking skin that first appears in the gums. It can also stimulate melanin production in the skin, and areas exposed to the sun will become increasingly discolored.

As such, if you feel that Vitamin C is for you, go for it. It is safe. But, do not fall for the idea of using any sort of Colloidal Silver product without consulting a specialist you may be better off dealing with the Coronavirus! Be advised!

If you plan on guinea-pigg’ng yourself, STOP!
You must check this list of unproven methods against COVID-19 on Wikipedia before proceeding.
It may actually save your life!

Assuming that you actually accessed the Wikipedia page above suggested and now you know more about what not to do, there are other paths you can follow to stay healthy and safe that includes less dangerous supplements like: Iodine, Selenium, Zinc, Monolaurin, Grapefruit Seed Extract, Sea Salt, Oregano Oil, etc. It has been also reported that potassium can be an important supplement to take during Coronavirus recovery. Some people may like it… 

You can follow the author Bill Thompson who provides an extensive list of supplements and herbs that he is taking to prevent COVID-19. You can read his post with many Q&A on the Earth Clinic website.

There are also encouraging success in the Center for Holistic Medicine (CHM) where Dr.  David Brownstein reported having 85 COVID-19 patients with zero hospitalization, no pneumonia, and no deaths.

In his blog post about his experience treating the disease (here), Dr. Brownstein brings forward data, patient stories, and guidance that should be taken more seriously and studied for the benefit of everyone else. Among all the information he shares, he also says this:

“ The initial conventional approach to COVID-19 was to encourage people to wash their hands (a good thing). As things worsened, the only other conventional idea was to quarantine. When the disease spun out of control our Government and conventional medicine panicked. They had no real therapies to help COVID-suffering patients except for supportive care. Thankfully, a few conventional therapies, like hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, have been promoted—though many in conventional medicine were downplaying it for far too long. “

He explains how he encourages his patients to take high doses of vitamins A, C, D, and iodine at the first sign of illness. It is important to notice that it is not a cure or a remedy, but an immune-system booster so patients can avoid deteriorating.  However, its effectiveness is directly related to how early in the infection stage the protocol is implemented and followed. It makes sense as strong bodies will always have a better chance to fight infections! 

Another approach that is gaining more and more traction around the world is to nebulize hydrogen peroxide and iodine. Some of the sickest patients were advised to nebulize every hour or two for a short period and it seems to have reverted their decaying, preventing them from being hospitalized with the need for mechanical respiratory support.

In fact, due to the severity of COVID-19, many specialists in Holistic Medicine now recommend starting to nebulize hydrogen peroxide and iodine early into the illness as well.

Hearing from the patients makes it much more believable

This video is a real testimony of a patient named Christopher, who is treating COVID-19 at home. He discloses, among many important revelations, how he has been literally abandoned by the current health system and how the alternative medicine prevented him from ending up in a respirator, probably saving his life. Here’s the video:

https://youtu.be/YYiFuWa5ito

So much information around! How can we know what is true?

There is truly a great amount of material online that anyone can research. However, it is also true that it is hard to filter gold from crap with so much disinformation floating around. So, I did a small digging and here some good pages from reputable doctors you can safely start from. 

Dr. Michelle Honda, a Holistic Doctor PhD. D.Sc. with a Master’s Degree and Doctorate in holistic health sciences, explain in her blog post from February 4 about the abundant clinical evidence confirming the powerful and stellar treatment of natural medicine, vitamin C and hydrogen peroxide to wipe out super-bugs and stave off infectious illnesses. She explains that viral infections, flu or pneumonia symptoms and duration can be significantly reduced our vulnerable to pathogens that our immune system has not previously come in contact with. You can access her entire post here: Best Treatment and Prevention of Coronavirus.

What I personally like about Dr. Michelle’s article is that she goes deeper than most into each product providing clear information on how it can be effective, sometimes even disclosing suggested dosages and with tons of external references to be followed. I strongly suggest anyone read her post thoughtfully.

Another post that I found incredibly interesting was posted by Dr. Richard Cheng (@DrRichardCheng1) on March 21 (here) detailing the benefits of the Hydrogen Peroxide nebulizer to treat COVID-19 infection. 

In addition to all that, there are tests with high-dose IVC (high-dose Intravenous Vitamin C) being performed all over the world as a result of the success reported by Holistic Medicine specialists who treated COVID-19 patients with it. Before used to control inflammation in cancer patients, among other illness, the high-dose IVC tests on COVID-19 patients is a new frontier for Conventional Medicine. On April 16 there was a video conference with Dr. ZY Peng about the world‘s first trial in China. In the discussion, Dr. Peng brings forward results that days later matched with tests made here in the USA (see this Twitter posts with links from Dr. Cheng himself).

Conclusion

The importance of having those discussions is because it breaks new frontiers we must bravely go beyond while dealing with this very serious pandemic. With most of the world researchers now trying to find ways to prevent, better treat or cure this disease, we cannot simply ignore possibilities, especially when factual data exist to be scrutinized. 

The tug of war between Holistic Medicine and Traditional Medicine is not something new, and I do not want to take any side here. I personally believe that both are onto something and filled with flaws at the same time. I always questioned why such a separation exists when there should be a combination of knowledge and experiences for the greater good of everyone? I know, I know… It is a rhetorical question! Nevertheless, the world is changing rapidly and there is no much more space for such a distinction anymore. The survival of the species depends on killing this virus.

I just hope those discussions and discoveries, in the face of this adversity, can break the barriers that distinguish those two sciences fields so their strengths can be united into a single weapon that will win this damn Coronavirus war.