GRANNY SCIENCE VERSUS THE MIRACLE MINERAL AGAINST COVID-19 (PART 1)

Everyone knows granny science. It is hundreds of years old and is the common knowledge of both home and herbal remedies. Those remedies are sometimes marginally beneficial against illness but usually do not accomplish much besides a temporary placebo effect. Common applications of granny science were when people were told to eat beetroot and vegetables to help against AIDS, and more recently when people were told to take vitamin C to prevent Covid-19. According to the proponents of granny science, vitamin C evidently prevents everything, and beetroot works because it is red, just like blood. Vitamin C found in citrus fruit, does cure scurvy, a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency. Historically, the first proto-clinical-trial ever conducted was in 1774 when a British ship’s surgeon discovered that citrus fruit could cure scurvy that can cause pneumonia and death. Forever after British sailors have been branded “limeys.”

Linus Pauling won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 1970 he theorized that high doses of vitamin C could help prevent the common cold. This was based on his review of early research plus one clinical trial of children in a snow-ski camp in Switzerland who were given extremely high doses of Vitamin C.

Pauling extended that slim evidence to the idea vitamin C - ascorbic acid - could help everyone avoid the common cold. It does not. In his 2017 review of one hundred years of research on vitamin C and infections in the journal Nutrients, Harri Hemila found that high-dose vitamin C reduced the frequency of colds only in children, extreme sports athletes, and in soldiers undergoing rigorous training in harsh conditions. While it does not prevent colds in most people, vitamin C may even slightly increase the chance of colds in women.

However, it does appear to reduce the length of a cold. While vitamin C will obviously not prevent infection with the SARS-CoV-2 (SARS-2) virus that causes Covid-19, it has been shown to help prevent pneumonia. Thus, if one feels they are coming down with a cold or flu – which today might actually be SARS-2 infection - it would be a wise precaution to take a high dose of one gram of vitamin C daily. It does nothing to prevent a cold, influenza, or Covid-19; but it may help prevent that illness from progressing to pneumonia.

For years scientists and doctors have referred to selenium in the scientific literature as “the miracle mineral.” When given to seemingly hopeless medical cases, some patients miraculously recovered after taking selenium. Now, after decades of research, scientists understand this remarkable phenomenon.

Selenium is the key element required by all aspects of the immune system, the most complex system in the human body. All human cells also contain selenium. Like nails, selenium molecules hold cellular membrane structures together. Each cell also possesses an immune system in miniature, the antioxidant system that keeps every cell in the body clean, detoxified, and healthy. Most cellular antioxidants also require selenium.

Selenium molecules form antioxidants’ “active site”, the part that does the work. An essential but scarce trace element, adequate selenium is required for both cellular and human health. Just as in individual cells where selenium is essential for antioxidant action, it is likewise concentrated in the cells and organs of the immune system including the liver, spleen, thymus, kidneys, and lymph nodes – and the white blood cells. In the entire body, selenium is most concentrated in the thyroid gland.

The thyroid affects the efficiency of other organs and the energy level or metabolism of the body. However, the liver contains the largest amount of selenium. There it helps cleanse the blood.