An Italian paper released as a preprint* on June 18 documented a very high rate of hypokalemia, or low blood levels of potassium, among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Among 290 hospitalized but non-critical COVID-19 patients, 41% had hypokalemia. In roughly a third of them, urinary potassium was measured. In that subset, 96% of the patients had …
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New Insights Into Clotting and COVID-19
In the six days since my last newsletter, five interesting studies were published providing some insights on COVID-19 and blood clotting. Deep Vein Thrombosis Is Very Common in Moderate to Severe Cases The first is a preprint* released on June 14 suggesting that clotting is an even more frequent problem in COVID-19 than we might …
Getting Potassium on Carnivore Diets: The Database
How Much Potassium Do We Need? From 2005-2019, the official recommendations were that we should all get 4.7 grams of potassium per day. This was because studies have shown some people need this much to abolish the rise in blood pressure that otherwise occurs when they eat lots of salt. In 2019, the official recommendations …
How the Chili Pad Took My Sleep To the Next Level
Originally published July 15 2019. Updated June 13, 2020. Skip to one-year reflections, or read from the beginning. I’ve been using the chiliPAD as one of my key tools for better sleep for the last 3.5 months (update: 14.5 months), and here is my experience. I had been thinking of buying a chiliPAD for years, …
IgA Antibodies, Vitamin A, and COVID-19
There are four types of antibodies that each have different functions: IgM, IgG, IgA, and IgE. Generally IgE are responsible for classical allergy symptoms, while IgA are particularly important for protecting the mucous membranes of the eyes, nose, mouth, and gastrointestinal tract. In the immune response to an infectious disease, IgM usually appear first, followed …
NSAID Use in COVID-19 Remains Questionable
Yesterday, researchers from Denmark released a preprint* suggesting that use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) is not associated with severity or mortality in COVID-19. However, this paper leaves the issue quite unsettled. In Denmark, prescriptions are required for all NSAID use except ibuprofen in doses 200 mg or less in packs with no more than …
12 New COVID-19 Studies
Since my last newsletter, none of the new preprints* look interesting enough for deep dives, but a number deserve a mention. Here they are. One showed that immune system cells known as neutrophils respond to SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, with “neutrophil extracellular traps” (NETs), which play a role in damaging lung tissue. I …
Lactoferrin, Whey Protein, and COVID-19
Lactoferrin is an iron-binding protein naturally present in milk that has a number of properties that make it important for newborns, with antimicrobial properties being some of them. Lactoferrin from cows, or bovine lactoferrin, is commonly available as a supplement. Can it help with COVID-19? My position, explained below, is that, although it does inhibit …
COVID-19, Iron, and the Anemia of Chronic Disease
A new meta-analysis on COVID-19 and iron metabolism was released as a preprint* yesterday by researchers from Turkey, Colombia, Hungary, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Meta-analyses are studies that pool the results of many studies together to look at the net results. The analysis included 56 studies that together included 14,044 COVID-19 patients. 49 studies reported …
A Few Interesting COVID-19 Studies From Today
Nothing published in preprint* form was interesting enough for me to take a deep dive into, but there were a few studies worth mentioning, and here they are. One paper suggested that tocilizumab, an inhibitor of interleukin-6 (IL-6), reduces mortality from COVID-19. Whether patients received it, after some basic inclusion criteria, was left to the judgment …