Granny Science versus The Miracle Mineral against Covid

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 theorised 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.

The secret of viral diseases is that most viruses that make us sick also require selenium for their formation.

When viruses infect human cells, they “mine” them for selenium, stealing the biologically protective selenium to protect themselves. That destroys the cell’s antioxidants defences, and eventually overcomes the body’s immune defences. As viral replication continues unchecked, viral load eventually shoots through the roof and the body’s selenium resources fall though the floor. This is the common disease trajectory of HIV, Ebola, Marburg virus, Hantavirus, and most deadly viral infections. Only the timing is different between these diseases. HIV is a lentivirus, a “slow” virus. It takes years to kill instead of just weeks.

Selenium is the fuel that keeps the immune system running. When viruses shoot holes in the immune system’s proverbial selenium petrol- tank and selenium resources drain out, CD4 counts plummet and the immune system ceases working.

However, if doctors provide high- dose selenium to replace that lost selenium supply and refuel the immune system, the patient can often be saved if sufficient selenium is supplied quickly enough. Many times a patient seemingly on their deathbed due to viral infection can recover if provided adequate selenium.

In the early 2000s, a young girl of sixteen arrived at Mother Teresa’s hospice in Lusaka, Zambia emaciated and sick with AIDS. There, in addition to standard hospice care, the sister in charge Sister Mary gave the young woman selenium tablets to help her. Sister Mary reported that the young woman regained her appetite, gained strength and the weight she had lost, eventually recovered, and went home. Of course, this restoration of immune function would have been only a temporarily cure since she still needed ARVs to fight the virus. However, it does reflect why doctors use the term “the miracle mineral.”

This occurred on a more massive scale during the 2014- 16 Ebola Crisis in West Africa. When Dr. Jerry Brown working with the Liberian Ministry of Health added 1.2mg of selenium per day to the then standard- of- care for Ebola, the mortality rate in his Ebola treatment unit quickly fell by 46.8 percent. Liberia tried selenium because German doctors had reported that selenium therapy completely eliminated deaths in an outbreak of deadly Marburg haemorrhagic fever virus in Angola, and Chinese scientists had reported an 80 percent reduction in deaths from a Hantavirus haemorrhagic fever epidemic in China. If Dr Brown had used 2.0mg of selenium daily as the doctors in Angola and China had,

Gthe mortality rate in the Monrovia ELWA- ll Ebola treatment unit easily should have fallen by 65 percent. High- dose selenium therapy is very safe to use in advanced disease.

S elenium shows similar benefits against HIV disease. Dozens of medical journal articles report the multiple ways selenium helps against HIV/ AIDS and the extensive benefits it provides against almost all opportunistic infections. Selenium works as an anti- viral ( ARV) via several different mechanisms including inhibiting both the reverse transcriptase enzyme, and the primary stimulant to viral replication, the cellular replication factor nuclear- factor kappa- binding ( NF- KB).

The NF- kB protein increases both inflammation and the replication of HIV as well as many other viruses, including SARS- 2. This does not mean selenium is as strong in inhibiting HIV replication as ARV drugs are or can be used in place of them.

It should not. But it should be used in addition to ARVs to improve overall treatment efficacy and boost CD4 count and haemoglobin levels. In 2015 Dr. Julius Kamwesiga and his group of Rwandan and Canadian researchers reported in the journal AIDS that just one tablet of 200mcg selenium daily could slow progression of HIV by 43.6 percent. Nothing else except ARVs can do that.

Harvard University in conjunction with the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research reported at the Toronto AIDS Conference in 2006 that in advanced AIDS patients 200mcg of selenium daily added to advanced HAART therapy more than doubled the increase in CD4 count and tripled the increase in haemoglobin compared to HAART therapy alone. Science has shown that although they are not the strongest inhibitors of viral replication, selenium supplements are the strongest, quickest way to increase CD4 count. This is because the body’s selenium level has a direct effect on the production of CD4 as compared to CD8 white blood cells by the thymus gland. Since HIV causes the thymic generated decline in CD4 count by gradually using up and draining the level of selenium in the body, AIDS accurately can be called Acquired Immune Deficiency of Selenium. iven the plethora of benefits selenium has repeated demonstrated in treating viral infections and the Lancet medical journal review article suggesting it sometimes can even prevent viral disease, it is surprising most ministries of health in Africa and the World Health Organization have ignored selenium. If they ignore what beyond any scientific doubt is a powerful, broad- spectrum antiviral medication that can prevent many deaths, what is their real agenda? How has it been compromised?

In Zambia from 2002 through 2006, 100,000 people died on average every year from AIDS as the Ministry of Health ( MoH) refused to inform people about selenium therapy against HIV, or to provide that proven life extending therapy to them.

The MoH said they could not provide selenium because “ARVs are coming,” even though they would not arrive for several years. When the first generation ARVs - AZT and D4T - did finally arrive, they were not particularly effective and caused a painful epidemic of peripheral neuropathy side effects. Meanwhile the employee HIV- committees in every government ministry had decided to use and were supplied selenium. That included every ministry but one – the Ministry of Health.

The MoH employee health committee was not allowed to access selenium. Eventually the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health was removed from his position for stealing over

S$ 3 million of Global Fund money. Zambia was penalised by the Global Fund Against AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria for that diversion of funds.

Sepsis or blood poisoning occurs when bacteria or viral infection causes extensive cellular damage with toxins pouring out from dying cells. That causes a chain reaction of cellular and tissue destruction, putrefaction, and eventually organ failure. Severe Covid- 19, AIDS, Ebola, and other killer viruses cause a death spiral sequence of end- stage disease consisting of a cytokine storm, sepsis, multiple- organ- failure, and death. A review of the last twenty years of research on selenium’s effect on sepsis and organ failure shows that the more severe the stage of sepsis, the greater effect selenium has against it. Different trials showed that high dose selenium supplementation can reduce death from sepsis and multiple- organ- failure by between twenty and ninety percent. This compares with the reduction in mortality rates in viral diseases by using selenium of between 46.8 percent and 80 percent. ome months ago, a member of the South African Ministerial Advisory Committee for Covid- 19 recommended that selenium be added to the standard protocol for treating Covid- 19 in KwaZulu Natal. This recommendation by a top professor of medicine from a major university was rejected. Of course, when Covid- 19 first arrived, the South African Ministry of Health recommended everyone take vitamin C, although vitamin C has never been shown to independently reduce the mortality rate of any viral disease. Selenium has repeatedly demonstrated a huge impact reducing death.

Twenty months after this pandemic started there still is no internationally recommended treatment for early Covid unless one wants to spend R12,000 for a five- day course of pills or R35,000 for a one- day infusion of antibodies. Meanwhile a whole class of drugs that are safe, available, and affordable that inhibit NF- kB and reduce inflammation and viral replication stand unused.

However, if we ignore how viral replication occurs and the cascade of events that leads to death, we lose two obvious but major parts of the solution to this pandemic puzzle. Meanwhile, scientists have shown that 100 percent of Covid patients that are on ventilators, have severe Covid, or that die, are deficient in selenium.

There is seldom one single magic- bullet that cures a disease in one fell swoop. An effective combination therapy is gradually built up over time by adding and improving different partial solutions as they are discovered. This therapeutic defensive wall is built brick by brick. However, if the current medical construction crew ignores all the effective therapeutic bricks scientists have left scattered around the construction site, they will never build an effective defence - at least until after many millions of lives are needlessly lost.

One must question what the motives are, what the incentives are for ignoring and rejecting real science and recommending the public follow granny science instead?

This appears to be a broken record. Does society have to repeat the same deadly mistakes we made with HIV in this pandemic? Will we continue to make this same mistake in the next pandemic - a pandemic that may be just a few years away? Why do we continue making this massively costly mistake time after time? As they say in the movies, “Show me the money.”

Howard Armistead is an AIDS, Ebola, and Covid- 19 researcher. He is director of the Selenium Education and Research Centre in Johannesburg. For more information visit winagainstcorona. com.