Hi Raingarden:
Thanks for responding to my inquiry. I had already taken a screen shot of the slide in Chris’ presentation where he tells us he takes 2 grams of Vit-C, zinc, quercetin and 5,000 units of D3 every day.
But he doesn’t say how much zinc or quercetin he takes. I assume he is taking one of the quercetin pills from the bottle he shows, and one of the zinc picolinate tablets from the bottle shown…but he doesn’t say for sure one way or the other.
I would like to know so that I can decide how much to take if I take these supplements in a different form. For example, one of the Rapid Melt Zicam tablets contains 10 mg of zinc…so you would need 5 of those per day to get a daily dose of 50 mg of zinc.
Some medical folks advise against taking zinc for longer than 2 months, but Chris apparently has been taking these supplements for a long time. Again, I am just trying to get more data so I can make the best decisions possible right now. So any feedback from Chris regarding these questions would be welcome…but I know he has his hands full.
Bruce
was probably the correct model. The agricultural revolution has been one of the great undoings of our species. Plant or animal based, matters not. We need fewer people and local, small farm produced plant and animal products raised in a holistic manner.
I would suggest a couple of things in regards to dosage. Numero uno I recommend a Spectracell analysis. It tells you what vitamins and minerals you have in your blood. It is very comprehensive. You can then get a baseline of where you are fine and where you are deficient… What Chris Martenson or anyone takes is irrelevant. What might be right for one person may not be right for another.
My go to book for supplementation is Prescription for Nutritional Healing by Phyllis A Balch. It is a very comprehensive book that has nutritional recommendations for specific uses. It has a lot of info on not only supplements but herbs and food as well.
Btw I would consult with a medical practitioner of your choice for info on supplementation. Generally that would leave out MD’s as they know next to nothing about nutrition or supplements. I would try to find a functional medical practitioner whether it be an MD or not. If you search under functional medicine you will find some sites with locators so you can find one in your area. There are lots of Naturopathic docs around and they are a great resource.
There are a number of considerations in supplementing with zinc such as ts relation to copper and vit c. Also fructose is a consideration. It all works together and sometimes it doesn’t.
Spectracell is the way to go
Just an observation, but around 80% of the US population lives in cities so recommending growing your own food is not a solution.
Finding good organic produce and pastured meat and eggs is the best strategy for urbanites
Just to add another positive vote for this book - I have used it for 30 years - it is my go to reference and it has been a lifesaver time and time again. I consider myself a healthy person in general but just like everyone else - things happen. I have managed to stay out of the medical system 90% of the time - and IMO that’s an amazing record. I have only had one instance of having to take a prescription medication. I have avoided taking yearly flu shots as I have always thought the mass marketing pushing them was highly suspect. Phyllis Balch must have dedicated her life to this subject. as the book is very in depth and detailed but also very accessible. I have given away many copies over the years. If I had to go live on an island and could only have one book - this would be it.
Hey Les - That is a great link re: the philosophers commentary… But take heart…your comment “Neither Hippocrates or Socrates convinced people then and no one has been able to do so since.” Actually there is a wonderful MD - Michael Greger, who has written “How Not To Die” who advocates a Vegan diet. Not only is this a very good read, he also has a website, an online presence and daily blog or video. What I really love about him is that he has a team of people who collect, dissect, and analyze all medical studies related to diet, and then he interprets and delivers the most salient points of information. If this man cannot convince you, I suspect no one will. Super sincere, very smart & credible.
Neither Hippocrates or Socrates convinced people then and no one has been able to do so since.I'm personally not interested in "convincing" people, merely sharing information. I wish somebody had done so for me two decades ago! And it's all easy to verify; just monitor one's own health metrics and expect consistent:
- Never get sick, year after year (low blood sugar). Check.
- Blood pressure of an athlete. Check.
- Waist/Height Ratio < 0.45. Check.
- Squat/deadlift/bench 1-3x BW/run 7 min/mi+. Check.
http://Nutritionfacts.org
a great resource
spoiler eat a plant based diet. Take B12.
most other supplements are unnecessary but many do not hurt.
There is some evidence pro vitamin C. Probably D since most of us don’t spend time in the sun. Omega-3 maybe from flaxseed. Maybe iodine eg sea vegetables
The low grains high meat is not hte only diet that works. differnt things work for different people.
The only consistency I have seen is the low to no sugar and no processed foods. Vegetarian, not vegetarian. Various amounts of grains or animal products. Just no processed foods,or sugars, then eat lots of good vegetables, plenty of nutrients. There is nothing wrong with grains or milk. There are alot of questionably grain and milk based processed foods, just like there is McDonalds hamburger meat. Dont eat junk. I just made dough yesterday where the first step was to fresh grind some organic hard red wheat berries. Often I make a dough and it ages ) ferments ) for many days before use. There is no comparing this to wonder bread ! Commercial milk is not even milk any more, they seperate the milk with centrifuges into component parts, then add back just enough fat to “produce” the “milk” product they are packaging, even whole milk is not whole. They also homoginize it so the fat doesnt seperate out, they pasturize it ( cook it). I drink whole milk as it comes from the animal, not a processed product.
So, anyway, yes, the thing to do is to not think there is only one way to eat. But the real comonality for health is to eat non-processed, whole foods, grown on good soil, etc…
was probably the correct model. The agricultural revolution has been one of the great undoings of our species. Plant or animal based, matters not. We need fewer people and local, small farm produced plant and animal products raised in a holistic manner.There is no probability about it. We are Great Apes, along with Gorillas, Orangutans and Chimpanzees. Great Apes are herbivores. There are a ton of philosophical, nutrition models available you can choose from, or you can tap nearly 4 decades of crystal clear science. The choice is yours along with the consequences, like cardiovascular disease, cancer, obesity and diabetes, just to name a few. If your a careful sudo omnivore, you can probably avoid obesity and possibly diabetes, but you are going to risk CVD and increase your cancer risk by perhaps 400%. But don’t believe me. The science regarding plant based nutrition is readily available on the net. Dr. Greger has a fun little video on nutritionfacts.org, where he sites studies that link the Western diet to 14 of the 15 leading causes of death in the US. The only one he doesn’t link to is accidents. Likewise Neal Barnard has a video on YouTube on the addictive casomorphins in dairy products, but especially concentrated in cheese. Casomorphins, as in morphine. You wonder about the global overweight problem? Try food addictions as a theory.
cant include Inuits or Aleuts as they…
Hi there, TB vaccine is not without its own problem. Once you get the shot the skin test will always be positive for TB and the only way to now the person doesn’t have it is to do chest x rays.
The circumstantial evidence showing that nations with mandatory TB vaccinations are much less severely impacted seems pretty solid. It got me thinking that maybe this could explain, at least partly, why immigrant groups seems to be so much harder hit in some nations. Here in Sweden, we had mandatory vaccinations up until 1975 and I think many got it later too. I did and I was born in 1986. Maybe the homelands of these immigrants never had mass-vaccination against TB. It seems to be the same in Britain but I don’t know if they had or have the vaccinations there. Would be interesting to see the past/present TB vaccination status of each country and see if it correlates to immigrant groups being much harder hit.
https://www.foxnews.com/science/could-a-100-year-old-vaccine-protect-against-covid-19
I guess there must be a reason, but why does it take hours, sometimes even at least a day, before Chris’ next update is posted here at PP? The “New Route of Attack” video that came on YouTube yesterday (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9wbb0FN6sM&t=12s) was extremely interesting and worrying. Makes me very uneasy about Sand_Puppy’s thoughts about trying to get a “safe” version of the virus to get it over with and get immunity. I hope he’s rethinking it. But please, could we have these updates in a timely way here at PP as well as on YouTube? Thanks hugely for your work on this Chris!
Quoting the famous watergate inquiry.
Found a heart wrenching story of an ER doc on vacation who went through Italy as they were ramping up, then returned to NYC to her home ER to work just before the floods came in. The story is personal and intense.
What was most significant to me is the learning curve she describes and the dates she learned about the high infectivity, the high lethality, aerosol transmission and the varied symptom presentations. She learned all this some 6-8 weeks behind Chris’ video series where this information was laid out clearly. Here at PP, we all learned this a full month ahead of her.
Thanks PP. The adjustment time was appreciated.
LesPhelps
You are absolutely right, but forgot to add insects, worms and bacteria to the list. The issue probably boils down more to cold blooded vs warm blooded animals. Our biochemical machinery is clearly developed for cold blooded lipids (looking at Km and Vmax of the relevant enzymes and binding proteins, they discriminate vs hard lipids and favor more fluid such as unsaturated fatty acids found in cold blooded animals). Also the fossil evidence shows teeth that have endured lifetimes of scraping on insects and plants, and not bones. Insects and worms (and bacteria) constitute the majority of our native diet (that is why we have a nutritional requirement for Vit B12 and polyunsaturated fatty acids by the way). So we are not strict herbivores just strict non-vertebrate (and non warm blooded) animal eaters.
Mohammed
You wrote : Just an observation, but around 80% of the US population lives in cities so recommending growing your own food is not a solution.
You need to take the recommendation further as:
- leave the city
- grow your own food
There, fixed it.
And if you need something closer to home, look at the pics of Taggart on an earlier post; I can assure you his method works well. I know, because I do the same thing, and have the results. But don’t trust me; it’s simple to test yourself.My path has been similar, and my diet the same as you describe; my source book, however, has been Catherine Shanahan, M.D.'s "Deep Nutrition: Why your genes need traditional foods." Key to that are her two prohibitions - very, very low sugar/starch; no "man-made" oils/fats. In my experience (akin to mtnhousepermie's comment) those are more important than her 4 principles (eat field-raised meat, slow-cooked in moisture with the bone; consume greens and milk fresh and raw; eat home-made ferments; include offal in the diet.) Rather than join a gym or box (both of my sons are Crossfitters), I took up building a rural "ark" for coming hard times. The steady, regular exercise of constructing outbuildings, creating and tending gardens, tending animals, maintaining woodlands, learning new hand skills, etc., provides a perfect balance of sustained moderate exercise punctuated by periodic heavy exertion, in a low-stress setting. I started making the changes at age 58. Just shy of 66, now, I'm in much better health: 30+ pounds lighter (at my college weight, now), joint pains gone, mental "fogginess" gone, emotional swings gone, nascent hypertention gone. No medications or supplements of any kind - until the last few weeks, when I've been taking Chris' recommendations prophylactically against Wuflu. My wife contracted Lupus in her 30s. Over this same period of time she went into remission, then was categorized as "cured" by her specialist. Now, "cured" means it's no longer expressing, not that it'll never return, and she still has the damage from almost 30 years of having the disease (a lot of it affected her ligaments and some organs), but she also has much greater vitality and is on the most minimal dosages of 2 meds she still needs to counteract what her body no longer does. She's the reason for the prophylaxis supplements and our thorough self-isolation in our already remote setting. One really curious byproduct: I'm congenitally color blind, and I have prescription glasses for near-sightedness. Two years ago my wife and I were in the nearby town as evening fell and I saw colors on lighted up signs for businesses like I'd never before. I see shades of blue, red, and green that were indistinguishable to me for over 60 years. At the same time, my nearsightedness has dramatically improved, to the point I'm often forgetting where I last put my glasses down, and I've frequently gone most of a day without realizing I wasn't wearing them. (Most of my life, I was hyper-protective of them - it's the one thing the kids knew they must never touch, even when they were on my face, and they were on my face from the moment I woke up until I got into bed.) Meanwhile, we farm, bring in our own firewood every year, raise chickens for meat and eggs, and have a small organic spice blend business. We could live on what we produce if we had to, but we buy in local, field-raised organic beef and lamb in bulk, sometimes a half pig, too. We eat 1 main meal a day in the late morning, and often a small follow-on (3-4 oz of something or other) in the late afternoon. (Curiously, we eat more in winter when we're more sedentary up here in the northland snow; and less when we're quite active during our warmer 5 months.)
Tina, I’m going to be long-winded here because your question comes close to my heart’s passion. (Plus I’m old, so I get to ramble…)
Whether to cash out investments to pay off house and land is a very personal decision, of course. So this is my personal opinion only: The best security is productive land - not rent producing, but food producing - owned outright. On that land, you need enough infrastructure to supply your basic livelihood: food, shelter, heat. If you’re prepared to invest time or money into building that infrastructure and learning how to supply your own life, reducing investments and savings for the purpose is a good choice - again, in my opinion. Our infrastructure now allows us to live completely independent of the market economy and utility grid, if necessary. We believe that’s the foundation of real freedom and lifetime security.
After securing the land, you have to develop it into a “resiliency ark” if it’s going to replace a 401k fund. That requires either time or more money. Each substitutes for the other. The more you can learn to do for yourself, the less external resources you need, which (if you work for someone else) can liberate more time to work on self-sufficiency. We are of moderate means, so we’ve invested time rather than money wherever we could over the last 8 years. Still, we’ve paid for some pricey infrastructure. One example: a big kitchen wood cook stove, and installation, that heats the main living area of our house, and that can heat water to pipe into our house hot water system if needed. By using it as our primary house heat through the winters it paid for itself in saved oil expense in 5 years; now we’re net saving money. (We produce our own fire wood most years, but even when I’ve bought logs to buck and split I’ve kept my all-in winter heat expense more than a third less than it would cost to heat by oil.) I also pay for good, proper equipment. I have an impressive selection of sturdy shovels, forks, rakes, and picks, for example, as well as two garden tractors, 2 good chain saws, and a powerful rototiller, wood splitter, and brush chipper. Spending on the right equipment, and getting quality, pays for itself over time. I even have a really nice scythe with incredible German blades that I’m learning to use (and repair).
I treat every line item in our budget separately and brainstorm ways to reduce each expense without sacrificing quality of life. To do that, I play a series of games. First I look for how I can get something of quality for net free (my “Make It Free” game); if I can’t achieve that, I try for net less than retail (my “Never Pay Retail” game).
For example, here’s the current state of one “Make It Free” game, that I call the “Free Food” game: I raise and butcher my own grass-fed meat chickens, and keep egg birds. I learned how to butcher chickens by apprenticing myself to an abbatoir I hired the first year on condition he let me work alongside him as we despatched 105 birds. He was thrilled to share his decades of experience with someone who wanted to learn how to do it right. I got a master’s degree in chicken butchering in 3 pleasant late summer hours for $335 - all of which, and more, I recouped when I sold 70 butchered and packaged birds for $4/lb. (average weight: 7 lbs). I also saved the cost of 35 organic, grass-raised chickens I would have paid $4-5/lb for at my local healthy food store. All in, I netted over $2000 that first year in combined saved (ie, not spent) and farm-generated money.
Now I raise extra meat birds and sell them off the farm (legally in Vermont) every couple years for enough to pay all the expenses of the birds I keep for myself (thus I get free organic, grass-raised, heritage breed chicken), and the project produces extra cash that largely off-sets the cost of the local grass-raised, organic beef and lamb I buy off local farms in bulk. Similarly, I produce more eggs than I consume, sell the excess, and so get free eggs. Any extra egg money also counts against the bulk beef and lamb purchases. I could do the same with vegetables if I increased my production, but there’s a more contested market for local, organic veggies in my area, and the dollar value of a production hour is much less, so I don’t.
Buying directly from local farms in bulk, I get my half or whole butchered and packaged cow for about $7.35/lb ($5.35 hanging weight), plus all the bones I want for beef broth, and the organ meats thrown in free. Lamb is about $11/lb. Pork, about $4/lb. We’ve found that eating high-quality meats means we eat less meat to feel satiated, so our net per-meal cost is lower than when we ate commercial meats, plus our health and vitality are greater, allowing us to do more for ourselves. (I take no meds at 66, my slightly younger wife takes bare minimum doses of two meds because of the organ and joint after-effects of 30+ years of once-active Lupus, now deemed “cured.”)
Examples of my “Never Pay Retail” game. One: we buy some food, such as coconut milk (we like exotic recipes) and wheat (for grinding into bread flour). Those we purchase in bulk through a neighborhood buying group, reducing our price nearly 50% from retail.
Two: my little spice blend business lets me buy exotic spices at wholesale, and sales of my unique blends offsets most of the cost for the spices, jars, and equipment, giving us nearly free spices (eventually the business will more than pay for our spice cost, if Honey Badger hasn’t killed it, and the profit will be counted against our overall food budget, contributing more progress to our “Free Food Game.”)
Three: a different kind of example: Since we don’t work outside jobs any more, and seldom need to go in different directions at the same time, we let go of one car, reducing another line in our budget and eliminating another periodic retail expense. When we do need a second car (3-4 times/yr), we rent one, effectively outsourcing the cost of our second car and its expenses to Enterprise. They will even deliver the vehicle to us, 20 miles out in the country.
We play other games, too, but the upshot is that by taking to heart the old adage “a penny saved is a penny earned,” we’ve been able to extend the value of every dollar we would otherwise spend from our regular income. Every time we save a dollar from out of our baseline income stream, or stretch what it will buy, we count the gain as the equivalent of going out and earning another dollar just to spend it at retail.
As a result of making strategies and goals into real-world games we live a good lifestyle, the one we want, on less cash by doing more for ourselves, which improves and preserves our health, too; and we know that if the economy tanks or the dollar inflates into toilet paper we will go on living as we do, only mildly inconvenienced. That’s the real value of our investment, and it’s worth much more than money housed in the bank or invested in the stock market, imo, although we have some of both - but we’ve positioned ourselves to continue if (or when) we lose those dollars. Apart from property taxes, we have nothing leined against the land and house, and no other debts. And as long as the market’s good, our portfolio pays the taxes, plus a bit. Up until this shut-down hit, the portfolio was growing at a slightly higher pace than our taxes, but even with the current Honey Badger loss it won’t be far behind in generating what we will need for that purpose.
For what it’s worth, my opinion is that if you think real security lies in your own two hands, and if you have the self-discipline and physical stamina to set long-term goals, to articulate them in daily and seasonal tasks, and to work the plan, then by all means redirect your invested money into something truly safe…and satisfying.
I am ready to make gel caps and I want to know what people think about my doses and mix. Here are the mixes I propose:
#1 250mg Quercetin, 15mg Zinc Sulfate, 5mg Zinc gluconate (this mix is finished and cut with powdered sugar to be dosed at 1 level teaspoon per dose, sold in 50 dose loose powder.) Named QZ1 this is already on market now on eBay, but I don’t think it is ideal, I made it while I was waiting for the Calcium Ascorbate to show up.
#2 500mg Quercetin, 50mg zinc Gluconate. In #0 gel caps. Named QZ2
#3 500mg Quercetin, 50mg Zinc Gluconate, 100mg Calcium Ascorbate. In #0 gel caps. Named QZ3
#4 500mg Quercetin, 50mg Zinc Gluconate, 150mg Calcium Ascorbate. In #0 gel caps Named QZ Smoke
#5 750mg Quercetin, 50mg Zinc Gluconate, 500mg D3. In 2 #0 gel caps Named QZ Exposed
#6 500mg quercetin, 50mg zinc Gluconate, 75mg Calcium Ascorbate, 75mg D3. In #0 gel caps. Named QZ Black
I was originally going to make them into lozenges, but I was having issues being certain I was getting the correct dosage as all I could so was add powder to an off-the-shelf candy as drop rollers were over $2k and I don’t have that kind of money
The next though was a rapidmelt and I ran into the same issue of expense when it comes to a powder press.
So then I made a loose powder and I didn’t have the level of interest I expected due to the perceived uncertainty, mess and novelty of a self dosed powder.
If anyone has a tablet press that can make a large amount in a small amount of time, perhaps I could rent use on it, as I think that attacking the mouth with the zinc and quercetin might be the best place to start. I would also attempt to encourage people to chew the gel caps, but I don’t have a whole lot of faith that it will happen. In my mind if I can price it low enough, perhaps people will throw $10 at 50 doses prepackaged.
I am also making 50g and 100G repacks of each for those who are really poor and have time to cut and dose themselves.
My question is this: does anyone here thing it is worth adjusting the PH to be more basic? I am thinking of baking powder, my reasoning goes this way: it is well known that citric acid causes the Zinc to bind together in ways that make it pretty much impossible to be bioavailable. I am focusing in on the “acid” part of citric acid. I am no chemist, but after watching more hours of Nurdrage and Nilered I have seen that acids can often be changed out to have similar results. Since the stomach contains acid, perhaps the acid could be neutralized locally as the gel caps sits next to the stomach wall and the gel caps is penetrated. Perhaps the neutralization of the acid will allow more zinc ions to be absorbed without clumping in this case. So, am I just a moron who knows nothing of which I speak, or is it worth pursuing, what say you?