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TMHS 506: Anxiety, Fear, & The Risk Of Death From Covid-19: Is Fear Killing Us?
It’s been proven that chronic stress can take a toll on our well-being, and right now our society is dealing with an increasingly stressful and uncertain time. Now, more than ever, it’s critical that we have a deep understanding of the role that fear can have on our biochemistry. More importantly, we need to have access to real strategies to optimize our health and lower our stress levels.
The more stressed we are, the more susceptible we are to an entire host of health problems and illnesses, including viral infections. On today’s show, you’re going to learn about the link between fear, anxiety, and COVID-19 outcomes. We’re diving into the studies on psychoneuroimmunology and COVID-19, immune function, and so much more.
This episode is intended to arm you with real, sustainable strategies you can use to empower yourself, manage your mindset, and create a healthier environment that allows you to thrive. At a time when it can be easy to feel like so much is out of your control, I want to remind you of your innate power to cultivate change and transform your health. Enjoy!
In this episode you’ll discover:
- The definition of a psychosomatic illness.
- What the top two risk factors are for COVID-19 deaths.
- How fear changes our biology.
- What psychoneuroimmunology is.
- The impact that psychological stress can have on our immune cells.
- How the media perpetuates fear and stress into our citizens.
- The connection between your mental state and your inflammation levels.
- What percentage of Americans struggle with anxiety.
- How stress and fear can contribute to cytokine storms.
- The importance that preventative lifestyle strategies have on your immune health.
- Pros and cons of the US healthcare system.
- Why meditation is a powerful player in your overall health.
- How to create your own inputs, empower yourself, and transform your biochemistry.
- Why sleep deprivation can suppress your natural killer cells.
- The role that vitamin D plays in immune function and COVID-19 outcomes.
Items mentioned in this episode include:
- Foursigmatic.com/model — Get an exclusive discount on your daily health elixirs!
- Organifi.com/Model — Use the coupon code MODEL for 20% off!
- Psychosomatic Effects of COVID-19 – Episode 461
- What Is Stress Doing to Our Immune Systems? with Dr. Bruce Lipton – Episode 445
- Cancer Truth with Ty Bollinger – Episode 22
- The 5 Biggest Myths About Meditation with Light Watkins – Episode 267
- Master Your Mindset with Dr. Michael Beckwith – Episode 495
- What’s Really Causing the Susceptibility to COVID-19? with Dr. William Li – Episode 470
- Vitamin D Masterclass – Episode 476
Thank you so much for checking out this episode of The Model Health Show. If you haven’t done so already, please take a minute and leave a quick rating and review of the show on Apple Podcast by clicking on the link below. It will help us to keep delivering life-changing information for you every week!
Transcript:
SHAWN STEVENSON: Welcome to The Model Health Show, this is fitness and nutrition expert on Shawn Stevenson, and I'm so grateful for you tuning in with me today. Recently, we did a master class diving into the psychosomatic effects of COVID-19, that's noted in the peer-reviewed evidence. A psychosomatic condition is a physical illness that is caused or aggravated by a mental factor such as internal conflict, fear, or excessive stress. With all of the leading science that we already have on psychosomatic illnesses, exacerbating diseases, I warned the impact that this is likely having on our citizens or being bombarded constantly with fear, and what are the out-pictures of this, has it turned out to be true, was I right. Well, a brand-new study that was just published by the CDC, analyzing COVID-19 hospitalizations and severe illnesses from over 800 US hospitals and analyzing over 540,000 COVID-19 patients over the course of a year, they found that the strongest risk factor for death from COVID-19 is number one, obesity, which is already well-established, is it getting attention, not very much, but it's already well-established.
Number two, the second biggest risk factor for death from COVID-19, is anxiety and fear-related disorders, fear, this is one of the biggest issues right now. Literally, the second biggest risk factor for death from COVID-19, is anxiety and fear-related disorders, why is this happening, why isn't this getting a lot of attention, what's going on with our biochemistry, how can fear induce such susceptibility to infectious diseases. Well, fear changes our biology instantaneously, every thought that we have has correlating chemistry that's released into our system, it changes, every cell in our body gets affected, and as strange as this might sound, this is happening to us all the time, 24/7, every single microsecond of our lives.
Our thoughts are controlling our biology, we have entire fields now dedicated to studying these things like Psychoneuroimmunology, Psychoneuroimmunology is a field of science has evolved over the last four decades to study how our endocrine system and nervous system controls our immune system. In this manner, the hormones, neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, that we all produce have been found to regulate our immune cells. Scientists from the University of Rochester stated, "Of critical importance is the effect of the central nervous system and nerves, on the maintenance of the delicate balance between cell-mediated and humoral immune responses." Though the impact of psychological stress on the immune system has been identified in recent decades, it always existed.
This is how we are designed; we are hard-wired to have this interaction between our levels of stress, our level of fear, that engagement that it has with our immune system. In fact, neuroscientist Dr. Candace Pert, who actually discovered the opiate receptor, by the way, she said that "Viruses use the same receptors as neuropeptides to enter into a cell and depending on how much of the natural peptide for that particular receptor is around and available to bind, the virus that fits that receptor will have an easier or a harder time getting into the cell. Because the molecules of our emotions are involved in the process of a virus entering the cell, it's, therefore, logical to assume that the state of our emotions will affect whether or not we succumb to a viral infection." And Dr. Pert later discovered even more data affirming how our nervous system and immune systems are in constant communication with each other. So again, if you're wondering how, it could be possible, the CDC doing a massive analysis of over 540,000 patients, finding that the second leading risk factor for death from COVID-19 is fear and anxiety-related disorders, if we're wondering how that's possible, this is exactly what we’re talking about.
And cell biologist, Dr. Bruce Lipton, recently shared with us, here on The Model Health Show, how the stress response from fear, worry, and anxiety are particularly suppressive to the immune system. According to Dr. Lipton, one of the major problems we are currently facing is the fear response that is being fed to us in large part by our media. When we are constantly in this fear response, our immune systems are compromised because vital resources that are needed to regulate and run our immune system, are being siphoned away and channeled to mobilize this fight or flight response, this sympathetic nervous system response.
This again automate it's... Automatically happening when we're in a state of stress, our biology does not know the difference between a real imminent threat, your life is in danger, there is a saber-toothed tiger on the prowl, or something that is imagined. It does not know the difference, you're going to have that same biological reaction whether or not the threat is real, and so for constantly being inundated with fear and being programmed and fed messages that our life is in danger we're going to be creating that chemistry of stress and fear, and therefore suppressing our immune system in a short term, the data actually shows that a short stint of stress can actually heighten the immune function, but when we get that chronic low-grade fever of continuous stress and fear without any context, fear without context that's when things can go really wrong.
In fact, he shared the stress hormones are so effective at suppressing and shutting down the immune system that they're actually used in treatments to suppress the immune system for patients receiving an organ transplant, for example, because our bodies would basically reject someone else's organs so, in order to get that transplant to take, you have to suppress the immune system using stress hormones. Now, this is obviously a time for us to be educated, to be informed, and to be conscientious and cautious about our decisions that we're making for our health and for our protective modalities.
Now, unfortunately, most folks are glued to their television today and just being kept in a state of hyper-alertness and this cortisol-driven fear response continuously day after day after day, and when in this state we feel powerless, we feel vulnerable and this psychosomatic effects, make us more vulnerable for diseases to overtake our system., and this needs to be understood, it needs to be talked about, and it needs to be transformed because at this point, most folks have no idea that this is happening, and again, it's the second leading risk factor for death from COVID-19, I don't know how to say this any stronger, or make this any more important, but this is real and this is an opportunity for us to finally understand how powerful our minds are in regulating our immune responses when we are subjected to viral infections or any infectious disease, our minds definitely play a huge part and it is seen clearly in the data at this point.
And so again, the question should be Why isn't this getting more attention? Well, a big reason why is that the same media channels that would be discussing this are in fact the very same entities that are exacerbating the problem, that's why very simple.
Instead of talking about how fear is suppressing people's immune system and making us more vulnerable to infectious diseases and dying from COVID-19 specifically, which is a fact, these same media channels are too busy pumping out more fear. The media and the so-called public health experts have truly been complicit in the deaths of millions of people. They've been stoking this fire of fear constantly, 24/7, not letting up. And why, was this for our own health and for our own safety, or was it for ratings and to capture our attention, knowing full well, the power of psychology and what it takes to keep our attention and to keep us inundated, not educated, not informed, but inundated with fear, and this was highlighted in a recent discovery, which again, we know that these things are happening, but to hear it right from the horse's mouth, when CNN Technical Director, Charlie Chester was caught sharing the fact that they are purposefully using fear constantly to keep people glued to their television. So, we've shared this before, but I want to make sure that you hear this again and again and again until you get this, that these entities that are supposedly keeping us informed and educating our public are actually doing things that are nefarious that are actually leading to more harm than good. Listen to this directly from Charlie Chester.
Now, this is just one example, all news networks are doing this, so we don't want to get into that politicized thing where that news network is doing this kind of manipulative behavior, and this one isn't, my news source doesn't do that, all of them do it, and that's a fact. So, in the words of DJ Khalid, don't play yourself, never play yourself, please understand this is happening all the time. They are very well aware of the psychology, the very primal psychology and wiring that we have to constantly be hyper-alert and have this negativity bias looking for problems, it's helped us to survive and get to this point. But by leveraging that and keeping us inundated with fear, as we stated multiple times already, in the CDC's most recent report is the second leading risk factor for death from COVID-19, fear, anxiety, stress. They're not letting up. As he shared, the woman asked him, "Why don't you also show the recoveries? Why don't you have a recovery Ticker as well?" And he said, "That's not scary. Why would we do that? Why would we let people know that things are, okay? Why would we let people know that people are staying healthy, that good things are happening, why would we do that? We've got to keep the fear pressure on, we've got to keep people enslaved in their minds with fear, that's the goal."
And also strategically, they put that little segment at the end of that bombardment, 90% fear, give you a little sports and weather and sprinkle in a little feel-good story, like ice cream at the end of the hard thing, at the end of the suffering to kind of give you a feeling that everything might be okay, but then we hit you again with more fear and create that vicious psychological circle cycle. It's very purposeful. We're seeing this again, out-picturing itself, and this is why I'm so passionate about this. I knew, anybody who's well-versed in real science and what real health is could see this coming from a mile away. I know knew it was going to happen. Having a culture or society that's inundated with fear without context. Yes, we're dealing with a tremendously complex health issue right now, but to be inundated and to be in a state where we feel that we are victims, and there's nothing that we can do, and we just have to sit back and wait until we die or our loved one dies. It's going to... For most people who are not initiated into empowerment and being able to control their minds, they are going to be easily victimized by this system, and so I'm standing for change, I'm standing for accountability because again, these media outlets and public health officials have been complicit in people's deaths. Supposed to be helping us.
But again, I'm a big proponent of like, "Let's just look at the results. How's it going? Has it gone very well? Has any of this gone very well?" We've done the things, checked the boxes, each thing they say to do, it doesn't work, and then they get us blaming each other instead of punching up towards the entities that are controlling our decisions, that are controlling the narrative. You will very rarely see a narrative disrupting idea come across your favorite news channel. That's just not going to happen. And in fact, if anything even starts to rub in that direction, they're going to bombard it with doublespeak and with disrespect, and again, unfortunately, it pulls us further apart as a community where we start blaming each other, victim-blaming, and not actually looking at who's controlling these decisions, who's controlling the messaging that we're getting, that our children are getting. I know so many children who have been glued to the television and getting their education about health from the news, from these public health officials that again, have been complicit, and you can't do anything but take a drug and wait to die if you don't. That's not okay.
Now, let's dig deeper into this and see what are some of the other underlying issues that are happening that are creating such a vulnerability, and what are some of the science that's affirming this phenomenon of psycho-neuro-immunology, for example. A study published in the peer-reviewed journal, Brain Behavior and Immunity investigated the dynamics of psycho-neuro-immunology and COVID-19. This already was around. Some of the key points the research has revealed are, number one, there's a substantial unanticipated impact of COVID-19 on the psychological health of both the general community and affected individuals. We know this is... There's a big psychological impact taking place, okay?
Question should be, what can we do about it? What can we do to support better mental health at this time?
Number two, the fear of COVID-19 and the consequent lockdown, and economic crisis has led to globally increased psychological distress.
Number three, this is very important, activated immune-inflammatory pathways, especially chronic low-grade inflammation are associated with major psychiatric disorders, so these psychiatric conditions that any of us can evoke actually are found to increase inflammation in our bodies, and what is COVID-19? It's a pro-inflammatory condition that has a tropism towards lung tissue, but more specifically the endothelium, and so damaging our blood vessels lining the lungs, involved with the lungs, but also other places in our body we found COVID-19 showing up with the heart tissue, also with the brain being able to integrate and cross the blood-brain barrier, so this has a lot to do with the endothelium and that inflammation, so it's a pro-inflammatory condition, what if you're inflamed even more from the stress, the fear, and the worry, it's like adding fuel to the fire, that's what it is in this context.
And that inflammatory response, by the way, in the engagement with your body with COVID 19, that inflammatory response is not COVID 19, it's your body's response to it, which might be excessive, for example. It might be appropriate, it might under-respond. All of these are possibilities, but it really boils down to a healthy response by the immune system, which for millions of people, they've had that occurrence where we have this mass case of folks who have been asymptomatic throughout an entire infection course, for example, which again, it's not really talked about like, how did their immune systems do that, how were they okay?
Let's study that. Let's see more of that. Let's do more of that. Whatever it was. Instead, again, we've just been focused on the problem and not the good. The potential good. And so one of those players in that equation is the response of to the natural killer cells, so one of our immune system weapons that was found to be so effective at killing SARS-CoV-2 infected cells that the FDA early on in and this was trying to fast track a drug to address the natural killer cells performance, and our natural killer cells are things that we can proactively, that can be suppressed, but also we can proactively increase their activity and their mobility and their intelligence with simple things that we're going to talk more about, but I wanted to make sure that you know this one is very important, that our mental condition, our belief structure, our perspective, can actually create low-grade inflammation in our body and add fuel to the fire of COVID 19.
Number four: COVID-19 infections activate immune-inflammatory pathways as well as we mentioned. Number five: As such, psychological stress appears to increase severe reactions to COVID-19 infections, and COVID-19 infections appear to exacerbate psychological distress. They go together like hand in glove. Michael Jackson or OJ, either one of the... Never mind, never mind. It depends on if it fits, but if you think about it, Michael Jackson's glove looked a little bit too big. If you see the original Billie Jean jump off and then you know OJ Simpson.
So, understanding that these things are going together intimately, inherently, they can't be separated. Your mind and your body's response. It's insane that we even have to have this conversation that our mental health, that our perspective, that our thoughts can not only have an impact on our biology but control our biology.
Our thoughts create our body, and as mentioned every single thought that you have releases correlating chemistry, whether that thought is affirmative or detracting, whether that thought is based on something real, or something imagined. It's up to us. Our minds are powerful. It's not to say that getting your mind right is some super invincibility shield from COVID-19. Anybody can be exposed, anybody can get sick, but the likelihood, your risk goes down dramatically when you are well. Now the argument comes up with healthy people too, it's healthy people get sick too, healthy people are dying too. This is called 'missing the point.' This is called 'Whataboutism.' Instead of addressing the fact that 95% of the people who died from COVID-19 had an average of four pre-existing chronic diseases and/or comorbidities.
Again, reported by the CDC, who everybody wants to point to the CDC, follow the CDCs guidelines follow these mandates and these different things that are getting pumped out through the media, keeping people in fear, but people aren't really looking at the CDC and actually analyzing their data. I do. It's what I do. So, knowing that, and also in this report that, again, brought to the forefront this revelation, this warning that I was calling out for a long time ago, that the psychological distress that we're being inundated with is going to greatly diminish our immune health and lead to far worse health outcomes, and we've got to do something about it. There's so much fear being propagated without any context on purpose to keep us controlled, to keep us in a state we feel victimized, and we need big brother, we need that the guy on the television to save us, to tell us what to do, 'cause I don't know. I don't know what to do. It's my body, I have no idea, I just live here.
They got to tell me what to do, but again, in that report where they found that the second leading risk factor for death from COVID-19 being anxiety and fear-related disorders, within that same report, 540,000 plus patients, 800 US hospitals, but they also shared that, again, affirming 95% of the folks analyzed had at least one pre-existing chronic disease. It's not an accident, it's not 5%, it's not 40%, it's not 50. Like, "Oh, that's interesting, half of the people." It's damn near all. But again, we have the 'Whataboutism.' What about the perfectly healthy? And even that definition of perfectly healthy in our society is very "hmm" because again, we understand we can be somebody who eats well, exercises, and sleep all the things, but if you're hyper-stressed, if you're in a constant state of fear, even if it's not fear about the pandemic but fear about other people's fear about the pandemic, this can suppress your immune function.
Anybody can get sick, and this happened for many of us. If we're excessively stressed, going too hard, whatever, burning the candle at both ends, we become more susceptible, but we're missing the point. It's this 'Whataboutism.' Instead of focusing on, "Hey, 95% of the people have at least one pre-existing chronic disease." Now I mentioned at least one in this report, but the pre-existing chronic diseases and/or comorbidities, dying from additional things as well, is an average of four reported by the CDC. Alright, so we want to keep these things in context and keep the emphasis on the big issue and stop letting them manipulate us into focusing on the small thing in the 'Whataboutism' and pointing fingers at each other instead of actually waking up and acknowledging the government bodies, the media that's controlling our perception, that's controlling the actions that we're taking, that again are not working. Still.
Didn't work in the beginning, everything they said, we did. We checked the box. I live in Los Angeles now, I just got here. Alright? Since day one, there's a thing synonymous with LA, which is traffic. When things got shut down, it was like Vanilla Sky for me. I went on to the highway, going to a physical therapy session, I can literally look one direction in front of me and look behind me and I didn't see a single car. Going from seeing cars packed every day, everywhere. On the 405? On the 405.
We did the things. We checked the boxes. Stop the spread, flattened the curve. Just got more curvy and curvy. Alright. We got Kim Kardashian. Or fill in the blank with your curvy prototype. She's not my prototype. It just jumped in on my mind... I was thinking about Kanye. He's crazy. Who's crazy anymore? We don't know. We don't know. So again, this is published in a peer-reviewed journal, Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. Really analyzing what was already gained. Researchers who are versed in these things we're asking questions. Who are not being censored by popular media and also but not being featured by popular media? Being able to get this out, this information, and some procedures. Peer-reviewed journal is very, very important. But the question is, what are we going to do about it?
Now two additional studies highlighted in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity demonstrate that, again, this is now confirmed to be real. Demonstrated that mood disorders dramatically increase COVID-19 risk and potentially make your body's disease response equal to that of an elderly person. We know that that demographic is the most susceptible to COVID-19. So essentially, their data uncovered that being exposed to this kind of imminent virtual feeling of doom propagated by the media and creating that exacerbated fear continuously again and again and again and again increases our COVID-19 risk and potentially makes our body's disease response equal to that of an elderly individual. So just basically putting us in the highest risk demographic if we are manifesting a mood disorder.
Again, which if you're talking about the garden variety anxiety, that's about one-third of the United States population right now. This was prior actually to pandemic circumstances. About one-third of the US population has anxiety rates going up or down. Simple question, A or B? C is not all of the above. C is not an option. You know the answer is A. It's going up. Now the researchers also noted in this particular study... And if you're watching the video version, you're going to see these studies pop up for you to get a peek at. So definitely head over to YouTube and check out The Model Health Show. Check out this episode if you're listening. The researchers also noted how mood disorders can create abnormal senescence in our T-lymphocytes. So again, mental health challenges, which all of us are subject to today, can create abnormal senescence in our T lymphocytes, killing off our T cells that are kind of important in fighting infections and defending ourselves once our bodies if we do come down with an infection for our recovery as well.
Also, they noted that mood disorders, excessive stress, fear, anxiety can cause dysfunction in the immune system. Memory cells as well. So, your body's ability to literally remember the exposures and being able to quickly apprehend a repeated exposure to a virus or bacterial infection, whether the case might be. This is very important. Who knew that? Who's telling us that? We need to manage our mental health and regulate our fear so that our bodies can be better equipped at not only protecting itself from a viral infection but being able to have long-term protection by the function and activity of these memory cells. And also, they noted that mood disorders, fear, anxiety, and this kind of fear-related category of conditions also increase pro-inflammatory cytokines. One of the major symptoms associated with COVID-19 are these cytokine storms. But you're not hearing about how stress, fear, and poor mental health are creating these cytokine storms of their own. You're not hearing that. And but what if two storms have a baby that they get together? They create like a volcano. It's not a cytokine storm anymore. It's a cytokine volcano eruption. That can't be good. I don't want that on my menu.
Now a scientist in one of the studies titled Using “Psychoneuroimmunology Against COVID-19” talked about something that you just might actually say yes to having on your menu. They stated that we need to, "Address both physical and biopsychosocial aspects of this infection. We need to address both physical and biopsychosocial aspects of this infection. As well as psychoneuroimmunology of preventative strategies of healthy lifestyle, regular exercise, balanced nutrition, quality sleep and strong connection with other people. Social distancing and wearing masks might help us from pathogen exposure, yet these measures also prevent us from expressing compassion and friendliness," they go on to say. Therefore, all forms of psychological support should be routinely implemented. Not only to consider psychological resilience but also to enhance psychoneuroimmunity against COVID-19.”
How dare they? How dare they mention healthy lifestyle, regular exercise, balanced nutrition, quality sleep, and strong connection with people, how dare they? Blasphemy. That's not the science that we get, that's not part of the doctrine. These principles of health that our genes expect of us, that our immune system expects from us to do so that it can actually run properly, how dare they mention those things in this peer-reviewed journal? These are all critical factors that impact our physical, mental, and emotional state, controlling our cycle, neuro-immunology, all of those things. And that's what we've been dedicated to here for many years. I've been in this field almost 20 years, I'm knocking on the door of my 20th anniversary in this field as a clinician, as a teacher, as an author, as a host of the number one health podcast in the United States, very grateful to say. I'm knocking on the door of 20 years of all these great things in this field. And what I know for certain is that literally it always boils down to the basic foundational principles of what do my genes expect of me in order to have a healthy expression?
We're talking about epigenetic influence, we're talking about the thousands of possibilities with expression of our genes that can code for what we'd experience as vibrant health or they can code for things that might manifest in the form of a symptom, which we give these disease labels but it's just our bodies giving us feedback, expressing these symptoms that we need to change, that something is going on with the environment, the external and or internal environment that we need to adjust. It's a beautiful system, but it's as if we've lost the owner's manual on this, we don't get one anymore, they're not passing them out that you actually have dominion over your health, that you actually have dominion over your body and the expression of that body. And the truth is, you actually, you already... Nobody can give you the owner's manual, you already got it. It might just be in the glove compartment, is a little bit messy in there. I don't know about you, but I've seen a messy glove compartment, or to the owner's manual, is in there, it might just be covered up with a lot of stuff. Why do they even call it a glove compartment still?
Is anybody driving with gloves? I don't... I'd be worried if somebody... You get into the passenger seat to somebody, and they open their glove box and they put some gloves on, I'd be worried. I will actually be like, "You know what, I'm just going to... I'll catch up with you later." So again, these are very foundational tenets, and we're going to talk more about this in a moment, but I want to also reiterate the fact that these very vital tenets of health and human performance are not getting attention. The thing that is the most important, the thing that is the most important is not getting attention in these major media outlets that are keeping us inundated with fear, do you think that's an accident? The most important thing, not getting any attention, them inundating our public with fear and anxiety and being funded, by the way, billions of dollars every year, the pharmaceutical industry is funding our major media networks.
Conflict of interest. At minimum, nefarious in its truest sense of the word, from my perspective. Because again, this is not about education, this is not about service, what they're doing is entertainment.
It's not the news anymore, it's not news, it's scripted entertainment. Now they're getting more spicy personalities to do the entertainment report and talk about nothing except things for you to be afraid of. Just taking... Honestly, the news now is just taking from the sports center model, they're just sports centers with crime and death. They're just using the... They got the socials and the greasers constantly facing off against each other. Shout out to The Outsiders, anybody read that in middle school, high school, that's what I'm talking about. It's all about the fight 24/7, you versus them in a battle to the death. Don't let them take control, let us stay in control, we got you. But they're not talking about the things that are most important. So, in this conversation about the immune system, for example, your immune cells, your T lymphocytes, neutrophils, B cells, your natural killer cells, the list goes on and on, it's so incredible, hyper-intelligent, amazing, amazing immune system that we have.
Our immune cells are literally made from food; it's made from food. See I'm whispering in your ear right now, so you really hear me, your immune system is made from food. How important is that? And we get to decide what our immune cells are made out of because our bodies will with its infinite intelligence that not a single person on planet Earth has even a fraction of a percent of an understanding of how the human body really works. It is too complex. We know a little bit while we act like we know everything. The human body is way smarter than any of us. All we do know for certain is that our bodies are made from the food that we eat, and our bodies will preferentially choose the best things that it can to create our tissues, to create our cells. But if it has to, it will do what it’s got to do, it will adapt. That's a thing about humans, we are very adaptable. We can be really messed up and still be walking around. You've seen it, I've seen it. Messed up. It's like, how are you getting around? I know this because I was that as well. I was still a baby for real, when the onset of this condition, 20 years old is when I get the diagnosis of this advanced arthritic condition of my spine.
I was a kid, that's something that's supposed to happen in the senior years, not senior high school, senior citizen. That's what's more attributed towards, and the physician told me, "I've never seen someone so young with this condition, you have the spine of an 80-year-old man." When I said kid, that was just the diagnosis, it was brewing for years, it was brewing behind the scenes for years, in my body, because honestly, I was on... My diet, there’s the Keto diet, there's the vegetarian diet, there's the South Beach diet, there's the blood type diet, I was on the drive-through diet, that was my diet of choice. If I could drive up and grab that back from your hand through the window, nice little smile, exchange a little dollar for some food, that's my favorite diet, and I was making my body out of those compounds, those ingredients that heavily processed absolute.
I struggled to even call it food, but my... I was getting by, I was getting by, I was a ticking time bomb. But my body was doing whatever it took, I barely ate a vegetable my entire life up until that point, barely, barely anything with any kind of vitality in it. The vast majority of my diet, upwards of honestly 90% of my diet was not just processed food, but heavily processed food, the super processed foods, these hyper-palatable processed foods, 'cause I didn't know any better. I didn't know any difference because of my environment, that's what I was inundated with, I'm eating what I seen on television, again, guess what happens on a commercial break while you're watching the news, "Order your pizza," guess what, they got a new soda out, you got to check out. And then they got the erectile dysfunction commercial on there as well, 'cause you're probably going to need it... If you keep on jamming down the... Never mind. But it's all the system, the media itself is funded by pharmaceutical companies, and in between commercial breaks and that spacing that these companies... These food companies are paying massive amounts of money for promoting their processed foods that are destroying our health. And then they're playing the commercial for the cholesterol-lowering medication or the erectile dysfunction medication, or the anti-depressant, the list goes on and on.
And we become numb to it. Most people have no idea what's going on, they have no idea that that's happening to them, ask your doctor, next thing you know, they're asking their doctor. Because they see the person, they're in the wheat field, and it's like, "I want to be in a wheat field and be happy, I've never been in a wheat field, I just need that drug, it's going to make me happy again." That's not how biology works, that's not how the human body works, that's not how the human mind works, we're being sold the bill of goods, that is not real, we've got to wake up.
You are Neo, you are Neo in this scenario, if you've woken up, got to get other people out. The analogy is sick, I know it's crazy, it's crazy, but it's such an interesting and appropriate analogy because most people they're living in this... In this eternal nightmare, actually, it's not even a dream... They're living in a nightmare. And right now, the nightmare narrative is nightmare on Wuhan Street, and the one coming for you is Freddy COVID, constantly, he's coming, he's coming, matter of fact, don't go to sleep, don't go to sleep, don't go to sleep. Keep watching, keep watching the news, keep watching all the media and all the shows and all the gossip, keep watching, don't go to sleep.
Funny enough, prior to all this, about 115 million Americans are regularly sleep-deprived, and our sleep issues just jumped up mightily, once this all took place, because it's all interconnected, it all feeds into each other. We've got to take back control of our minds, to dig a little bit deeper into this, I want to reiterate this point because again, we think that the media might be there to keep us informed and to support our collective good, and maybe the local media. And here's the thing, there are degrees of this, but even local media is becoming more and more like the mainstream media, everybody's just vying for eyeballs, but there are good reporters out there. Many of them actually listen to The Model Health Show, and we're connected, and they're trying to get these stories out there, trying to address the real issues, but oftentimes, they are denied to get their stories published or run because it doesn't fit the narrative, unfortunately.
But even in local news segments, and this one was here a local Los Angeles segment, and I shared this before as well, and I want to play this for you again, to reiterate this point, that they're broadcasting things that put us in perpetual fear that can cripple us with fear. And this is a particular physician, this well-accredited physician coming on and telling people essentially that this new variant that's out there, "If you step foot outside of your door, you're putting yourself and the people that you care about in front of a firing squad," listen to this again from his mouth, not mine.
How is this allowable, that someone can get on television and reach millions of people with this message of such inappropriate fear without context? Now, here's the thing, because I'm coming at this from multiple perspectives, and not just like, "This guy is a bad guy, and he shouldn't be allowed on television." My perspective is, I have a belief that his intent might have actually been righteous, his intent might have actually been to simply get folks to exercise more caution, but instead, he inflicted more harm with his words, he was complicit in... Again, the second leading risk factor for death from COVID-19, anxiety, and fear, he's complicit in adding more to it.
That's the truth. But also, the truth is that was likely not his intent. He just doesn't know any better. He just doesn't know any better. He's taught his certain way of thinking, which again, not just our media, but our education system is indoctrinating very smart people with the wrong way of thinking, and this is one of the biggest issues today. And you might be seeing this, there's this classism, even with education, "Oh this... I'm going to listen to this immunologist, I'm going to listen to this infectious disease expert," that doesn't mean they know what the hell they're talking about, not even close. What if, for example, you go to school for eight years studying immunology, but not one day do you learn that your immune system is made from food. How good are you actually going to be at informing and educating about the immune system if you don't even know what it's made of? This isn't rocket science. See people say that, but even the rocket scientists, they're making rockets off of the standard American diet, just imagine what we could do if we get people on the good stuff and how our brains and our cells and our bodies can really perform.
But we're not taught that, we're doing the best that we can, our bodies again, we're very resilient, were very intelligent, but we can also be a very smart, dumb person by taking a very smart individual and indoctrinating them with the wrong way of thinking, they become very smart and something that is not effective. That's the truth. So, we got to take back control of that as well and stop being dissuaded by, "Well, this expert, my sister is a fill in the blank." Come on man. What kind of results do they get? Because you know my track record, I've put up this... A matter of fact, we'll put one up for you right now on this video, one of the last patients that I worked with in my clinical practice. She came in, and oftentimes I would get folks coming to me, referred by physicians who are in my network, oftentimes, who they were having the toughest cases with. As a matter of fact, a lot of physicians were my clients by the way, but this young woman in her 20s, she just had her third child, she's late 20s, baby, it's a... The baby was about two months old, and she found out that she had a breast cancer tumor that was growing rapidly.
And the physician that she was working with told her that she needed to make arrangements for her children because she's probably not going to survive. It's so wrong, it's so wrong to do that to somebody. And I know he meant well. So, she came to see me, and we'll put up her before and after. In 30 days, you can see the size of her breast tumor shrink by more than half its size in 30 days. That was just 30 days because she's cancer-free today, all these years later, I see it. That's why I stand with such authority because that's what's possible. I didn't put her through chemotherapy and radiation, but those are tools that can be viable. But we have a system of healthcare that does not teach people how to be healthy.
And again, as I'm talking about this, for folks who aren't affiliated with me in this work, you might think, "That sounds crazy, how did... Breast cancer, huh? Without surgery or radiation, and... Yes. As a matter of fact, if you have the audacity to ask questions, you'll find tens of thousands of those stories online. You could just go to Dr. Google. It's not even irregular anymore, but we were looking at, Okay, the first fundamental thing is, what is cancer? Let's educate her on that. Nobody ever even talks... She's got cancer, death. You're going to die. That's it, end of story. The most important work that we had to do, was with her mind, for her to know that she has some power in this situation. That was where the real work was over the course of those months of working together.
And so again, we'll put the before and after up, because I want to make sure that it's seen. I want to make sure that you know the same thing. Folks coming in, they're on Metformin, they're on Celebrex, they're on Lisinopril, they're on Statins, they got a whole bag of medications consistently for the majority of folks, not always, but the vast majority, we were able to normalize their blood sugar without medication, normalize their hypertension without medication, Crohn's disease, Colitis, Asthma, Eczema, the list goes on and on and on, seeing success. If they're not doing this, if your health practitioner, the person you're getting advice from on health and what to do right now isn't getting results like that, if they're instead treating symptoms and keeping you on drugs for the rest of your life just to have a modicum of normalcy, that's a problem. Because here's the thing, those symptoms that the body is manifesting, be it in the form of a skin issue or be it in the form of cancer, our bodies are giving us feedback that something is off here.
And the most important thing is the conditions in which our cells are existing, and what are we making these tissues out of. So even at the time of that experience with this particular young woman... I'm so proud of her, so proud of her. But at this particular time, it's simply educating her on simple principles, okay, so how is a cancer tumor, how does it manifest in this cell replication process? And I taught her about the Hayflick limit and cellular senescence, and all these things that might have sounded complex to her, but brought it to life for her, just like, Okay, that happened, what are the things that created conditions where that might take place? And this... Then we get into the conversation of what are the known carcinogens, the cancer-causing agents that can damage or manipulate our healthy, normal cellular replication? What do those things look like? What are those particular things? The ones that she's exposed to knowingly or unknowingly, and let's start to strike those things out, let's remove the cause as much as we possibly can, in addition to encouraging the health and improving the environment within her body and around her. But again, the most important work was with her mind.
I didn't know that I was going to talk about that today. And we last mentioned this. And when I put it in the show notes for an episode that we did many, many years ago, addressing the industry of cancer... The cancer industry. This is a multi, multi, multi-billion-dollar industry. And if you look at the results... I'm about... I'm a results guy. How is it faring? And we're not doing well. As a matter of fact, our cancer rates keep skyrocketing. And the success rates, the recovery, are dismal. They keep coming up. They're doing the same thing now with COVID. We've got to find a pharmaceutical. We've got to come up with a drug intervention. Our manipulation of nature and of science, possibly contributed to this whole thing kicking off in the first place, but let's go ahead and manipulate, and misconstrue, and twist up science even more and provide a new cure, a new drug that's going to save the day, like this is a damn movie. That's not how nature works. And again, just look at the results. Stop letting them point the finger. Make us point the finger at each other. Because if it works, it works. There's something wrong here. There's something wrong.
Now we got to get into some solutions. We got to get into some, what are the principles here in regards to taking control of our health, taking control of our minds. And understanding that we are being controlled or manipulated by a system of healthcare and of health policy that is exacerbating the problem. By one bombarding and controlling our system of health, with government subsidies that have massive amounts... That provides the opportunity for massive amounts of processed foods to fill our store shelves and our neighborhoods... Alright... With government support. We have a system that is proactively keeping people in this victim mentality and feeling disempowered. And not educating them on how their bodies actually work. With 95% of folks dying from COVID-19, having at least one pre-existing condition, but overall, an average of four pre-existing chronic diseases and or co-morbidities. Why are we not talking about actually getting our citizens healthier? We've done the mitigation strategies; we got the new drugs now... I'm telling you right now... I've already said it. I told you... The beginning of the year, the boosters are coming. It's not going to go well, boosters are coming. Guess what? Boosters come... Now, the boosters are here. They're knocking on the door, right.
It's going to continue to be this way because we're not addressing the underlying susceptibility. Which clearly our underlying susceptibility is our overall terrible level of health as a society. So even the story that I shared with helping folks to recover from what deems oftentimes to be incurable circumstances, that was me. So even when I'm saying this, it's from a place of authority, it happened with me. I was diagnosed with an incurable arthritic condition of my spine. Here I stand today. When I had that happen to me... When I was able to have something that was so-called incurable no longer be a part of my life, it created a level of certainty, and authority in me that nothing could touch. And so, to pass that off on to you and on to other people to know how powerful that they are... That what somebody outside of you says about you it does not have to be your final story... They do not have the final say about you and what's possible for you. Because truly that system that diagnoses... The system that I was in, every one of the four physicians that I saw over the course of those two years when I was in limbo with my health and just decaying basically, from 20 to 22... Every time I go into a different physician, get another opinion, I leave with another prescription.
Our system of healthcare is an absolute tragedy when it comes to addressing our susceptibilities. It's amazing for emergency medicine. It's absolutely amazing. It's amazing for acute situations. But if we can just get to a place of just being honest, it is treacherous and deadly when it comes to addressing our chronic diseases and the things that are truly killing the most of our citizens. In 2020 alone, almost 700,000 people... Here in the United States, almost 700,000 of our citizens died from heart disease. And you barely hear a peep about it. You barely hear anything about it, if at all. The Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA 2018 came out... Big meta-analysis, poor diet is the leading cause of our epidemics of chronic diseases, including hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, obesity. But we know. We know this. But what is our medical system doing about it? Are things getting better, or getting worse? Just answer that. Are they getting better? Are the numbers of our chronic diseases going down or up? Just asking for a friend.
Once we get that piece like, "Wait a minute, this isn't working." We can start to chip away at that false reality that we often carry around putting our authority into figures who don't actually have authority on what health really is. Alright, so let's move on and talk about some of these solutions in this context. I mentioned earlier, natural killer cells being very effective at killing SARS-CoV-2 infected cells. A study published in a peer-reviewed journal, Stress, and Health, found a significant correlation between the capacity of individuals to cope with daily life stress and their NK cell activity. And they uncovered that folks who don't cope well with stress have significantly lower NK cell activity. That's not good. That's not good. But coping with stress, these are things that everybody can learn. Is this being taught to our children? How do you manage your mental health? How do you manage anxiety and stress? What is anxiety?
What happens if you are inundated with fear, how does that affect your system, what can you do about it? We're not trained on how to cope with stress, so guess what, our immune system is suffering. So, what do we do, now, we have a massive amount, there are mountains of studies on how we can regulate our stress and have a more healthy stress response activating that parasympathetic, rest, and digest system more gracefully. The sympathetic fight or flight system is not bad, but it's just when these things get out of balance is where things can start to really go haywire with our immune system, specifically is what we're talking about today, but also just our health overall. And again, it's important for us to note that the mind, body affects, these are bi-directional, our body, the physical activity we do dramatically affects our brain, and our brain and our thoughts dramatically affect our body and our biochemistry downstream. So, this study published in the Peer-reviewed journal, OBM Integrative and Complementary Medicine, demonstrate the different forms of meditation can actually increase the activity of our natural killer cells and our memory cells as well the memory cells of our immune system from a meditation practice,
The stress reduction positive effect associated with meditative practices were found to be able to undo the physiological reactions leading to inflammation and reduced immune function brought on by... Sorry, brought on by negative emotions and stress. We have the power within us. You are not a victim, you have the power within you to effect change instantly, instantly in your biochemistry. Your thoughts create chemistry in your body, we are more powerful than we know we have to have a practice of self-regulating if you keep pushing this practice off to the side, I've done it, I'm not speaking from a place of supremacy on this, it's happened with me, the practice can get put to the side, but I know for certain and I'm dedicated now more than ever, and I'm sharing this with you myself, having that practice of going within, of helping to self-manage, self-regulate and remember who I am, remember how powerful that I am as an individual to effect change in my own health and my own body, but also in the world around me, to have that affirmative practice to be still, to start to separate the noise from what is real and what is eternal. It's priceless. It's priceless but are we doing it?
Now, there are literally thousands of different meditative practices out there, you just kind of find something that feels good to you and that might change over time, but I'm telling you right now, this is a time more than ever for you to explore your inner world for you to get tuned in to your power, your own power, and stop outsourcing your thoughts and your power to people outside of you, more important than ever. And for you to also get a vision of what's possible for your life and also the lives of our communities because we're bombarded right now, with negativity, we're bombarded with messages of death, we are bombarded with messages that keep us in a victim mindset. What if you were bombarded every time, you turn on the television, you were bombarded with things to be grateful for, what if you were bombarded with how good things are in the world all the good things that are taking place, the billions of good things that are taking place, that's not the situation right now, that's not what we're being fed when we turn on the television. But the good news is that you can create that.
You can do that for yourself, you can provide yourself with the good news every day, you can create that gratitude practice within yourself every day, you can bombard yourself with things to be grateful for and transform your biochemistry as a result, you can transform the function of every cell in your body, the power is within you, but are you going to do it, are you going to take control? So, that's one thing. Again, mountains of evidence now, and if we're talking about fear, anxiety, stress, these things that are leading to the second biggest risk factor for death from COVID-19. What's more important than... Again, the thing that's really well established be a primary point of emphasis and tool for us to modulate and reduce that stress and anxiety, a meditation practice. So, we'll put a couple of episodes in the show notes for you with some renowned experts in meditation, just put some more insight, a little bit more education, in addition to that, obviously, again, our immune cells are made from the food that we eat, but they're also managed and engaged from the nutrition that we bring in. In a study published in biomedical research, test subjects with a variety of health complaints including anxiety and poor sleep were given Lion's Mane medicinal mushroom or placebos for four weeks, so we've got a placebo-controlled study here.
The participants who used the Lion's Mane medicinal mushroom, significantly reduced levels of irritation and anxiety compared to those in the placebo group. Also, Lion's Mane, the University Of Malaya researchers uncovered that Lion's Mane is supportive of something called neurogenesis, it has these neuroprotective effects but also the potential to help to stimulate the production of new brain cells, and The Lion's Mane again, it's been utilized for thousands of years but most folks were educated on fruit roll-ups way more than we are on Lion's Mane. Alright so, where do we get Lion's Mane, well, the important factor here, whenever we're talking about this wide variety’s kingdom of medicinal mushrooms, be it lion's Mane or be it Chaga, which has a tremendous amount of efficacy in regards to support with cancer, for example, with interacting the natural killer cells. Also, if we're talking about cancer, we're talking about the immune system's response and being able to essentially take out rogue cells, so we've got Chaga in that domain also being the highest antioxidant food, or in that kingdom, but also stacked up against the most antioxidant-rich foods as well, it's right there at the very top of the list. We're talking about top two, top three things out there.
And we've got Cordyceps with all its affirmative data regarding sports performance and the health of our lungs and addressing symptoms regarding things like autoimmune issues like Asthma, for example. And then we've got Reishi with all of its components in activating natural killer cells and improving sleep quality. All these medicinal mushrooms that's amazing, we've got a ton of evidence on this, but what's overlooked is the fact that it's not just, give me that mushroom, it needs to be extracted the right way, in traditional ways, hot water extract and alcohol extracts have all been utilized throughout time. You need both. And for years, I would actually get both. I got to go to this company for that one, this company for that one, but now for years now, so grateful of Four Sigmatic for their incredible extraction methods and also making the process enjoyable by marrying Chaga and Lion's Mane for example with organic coffee. Or you can get the Chaga on its own, or the Lion's Mane on its own, but it's dual extracted, so you actually get all of these beneficial compounds out of the mushroom.
Go to foursigmatic.com/model. That's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.com/model, you're going to get a special discount, at least 10% off of all of their incredible medicinal mushrooms, so make sure to check out Four Sigmatic. Is every day, I'm... Every day, I'm on my Four Sigmatic. Alright, that's one of my all-time... It's an essential in my universe. Now moving on to look at one of our other big stressors that are adding to that ingredient of anxiety and fear, this can be exacerbated significantly when we are sleep-deprived because researchers at UC Berkeley did some brain imaging, they actually looked at the brain to see what happens when individuals are sleep-deprived, so they looked at a well-rested brain and then sleep-deprived, the person, and then examined their brain again. When the individual is well-rested, there was plenty of activity happening in the prefrontal cortex, that's the part of the brain responsible for distinguishing between right and wrong, social control for executive function. But when they were sleep-deprived, they saw a dramatic decrease. Actually, they called it... That part of the brain went cold in the prefrontal cortex. So that's the part of the brain, again, responsible for social control, distinguishing between right and wrong, and perspective-taking, and all these other things, being able to manage the more primitive parts of the brain in the sense.
But they also, in addition to that, reduced activity, noticed much higher activity in the amygdala. So, this is a part of the brain that is much more emotional and reactive. And so, they can see that the person essentially went to a much more emotional reactive state, whether they realized it or not when they were sleep-deprived. So, their ability to assess threats adequately, their ability to distinguish between ideas, to distinguish between right and wrong, for social control over themselves and their activity, all of those things are dramatically reduced. We know this, we can actually... This is the great thing about technology today, we can look at the brain and see if this is happening. And for certain it is. And so, what do we do about this? We've got to address our sleep, it's a master, major regulator of our immune function overall. Data published in the journal, Psychoneuroendocrinology, found that sleep deprivation directly reduces the production and performance of your natural killer cells. There it is again, suppressing our immune system. This isn't getting highlighted. Why would it? It doesn't fit the narrative. It doesn't fit the narrative that there's actually something sustainable that you can do that isn't a superficial treatment, but we get that education right here. The power is in your hands.
So obviously, this is creating that cascade of what are the things that my immune system expects from me, my DNA expects from me, my genes expect from me to keep my health fortified? And putting a priority on just getting to bed, getting some sleep, we don't have to be perfect, but especially during this time we got all these variants dropping off, we got to make sure that we are strong as possible, not just to handle any exposure, but to handle the people who are obsessed with the exposure, let's get ourselves stronger in mind and body right now, will we? Because we got to be about that life, and basically help to save all of us on some real stuff. Alright, Avengers. I'm not even going to say yet, I'm not even going to say it, I'm going to save it. Alright, another thing for us to do, reduce inflammation obviously, reducing inflammation and enhancing immunity at the same time, it's another thing that I really love. Scientists at the Department of Neurology at USC found that the active ingredient in turmeric called curcumin... There is so many studies done on curcumin now, it's crazy, it's crazy. They found that this active ingredient in turmeric called curcumin is able to help eliminate metabolic wastes and reduce inflammation, significantly reduce inflammation in the body.
Powerful stuff. Also, something really noteworthy about turmeric is that it's been found to improve the function of your resident macrophage cells that operate as really the front line of your immune system. Check, another check. This is good. And also, turmeric has anti-angiogenesis effects, proven anti-angiogenesis effects, essentially cutting off the blood supply to cancer cells. Selective anti-angiogenesis effects. We've had on the president of the angiogenesis society, Harvard researcher, my friend, Dr. William Li. I'm not just pulling this stuff out of my ass, like Hey, turmeric guys, right? I'm not doing that. Is based on science if we care to look. And this is science without side effects. So, we're talking... Again, going back, it's hard to believe that somebody... Their bodies can recover from hypertension, from severe diabetes, from cancer, from a severe autoimmune disease, Crohn's disease, the list goes on and on. But.
We are so powerful. Don't let anybody tell you other than that, you are more powerful than you know. You are more powerful than you know. So turmeric, really, really remarkable, massive amount of peer review trials and studies affirming its efficacy. So that's one thing, and I combine that with... And this was published in the BMJ, one of the most prestigious medical journals, the BMJ found that COVID-19 ICU risk is 20 times greater in people who are deficient in vitamin D. You should check out the Vitamin D master class after this episode. Check out the vitamin D master class that we did, we'll put in the show notes for you the essential, we dive in deeper on this. We cover multiple studies, I think we cover eight studies, and some of the most prestigious peer-review journals on vitamin D and the relationship with COVID. But vitamin D got my turmeric plus some of the most vitamin C-dense superfoods. All of these are combined together, and the vitamin C is a master regulator also of our inflammation response. All these together in Organifi immunity.
So, if you're trying to do the stacker, if you're trying to do the stack, get all these together in one sauce, and also kids love it as well. We don't want to ever if you're checking out at the store, at a drug store, or at a grocery store and you see those little emergency packets, come on, don't ever. That's not for you. What does the sugar do? That's counter-productive for your immune cell activity, you need to avoid that stuff, get real, not synthetic, we've talked about this multiple times on the Model Health Show, looking at peer-reviewed studies with synthetic vitamin C versus botanical vitamin C and seeing it outperform in clinical trials. So, we want to get whole food concentrates, real superfood concentrates, also avoiding those crazy amounts of sugar. So that's what you're going to find in Organifi immunity. Go to organifi.com/model that's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com/model. You're going to get 20% off the incredible immunity formula, but also everything else, they carry organic superfood concentrates, whole-food-based nutrition without any crazy binders and fillers, and things that are nefarious for our immune system.
Again, super simple stuff, organifi.com/model for 20% off. Our nutrition is of the utmost importance, but again, most importantly, in this episode is about managing our minds because understanding truly... And I want to reiterate this study one more time because there's one other little loophole here, and again, this was published by the CDC, detailing how 95% of folks monitored 540,000 citizens with COVID-19 analyzing their data again, 800 US hospitals, they uncovered that 95% of these folks had at least one pre-existing chronic disease, they also uncovered that of those chronic diseases, hypertension being the leader and issues regarding disorders of lipid metabolism, so this could be bunched into that metabolic syndrome category, was another one, and then obesity being the third leading cause if we're talking about hospitalization, but risk of death, number one was obesity, number two, anxiety and fear-related disorders. So, we know that these things are incredibly detrimental to our health and to our citizens, these underlying issues, these underlying risk factors, and we're not going to take, we can't get people healthier overnight anymore, we're not going to take that whataboutism anymore we're done with that.
It's going on two years now, and these issues are still not being addressed, it's up to us. Because unfortunately in this CDC report, which is to be expected, they highlight this data, they say what is added in this report while this cross-sectional study of 540,000 plus adult hospitalized patients with COVID-19, again, 95% had at least one underlying medical condition, hypertension, disorders of living metabolism were the most frequent, whereas obesity, diabetes complications, fear and anxiety disorders, were the biggest risk factors for severe COVID-19 illness and death. Now they noted what are the implications? This is the summary of the study, by the way. So, I went through and read the entire thing, but this is in the summary, this just... If people just want to pump jump here like, Okay, I see this information, what do we do? What's the summary? So, this says, what are the implications for public health practice, preventing COVID-19 in populations with these underlying conditions and multiple conditions should remain a public health priority with targeted mitigation efforts and ensuring high uptake of vaccine when available in these individuals and their close contacts.
Do you see anything wrong with that? They're telling you what the big risk factors are, but they're not telling you how to fix it. Mitigation, vaccine. Is that going to help you for the next virus that's coming? Is that going to help you to protect you from the chronic disease that's very much more likely to end your life than this particular viral infection? Absolutely not, they're not in the business of helping you to actually get better, so they can get the data, they could compile the data for us and we can have our eyes open to it, but then if we're not aware, we're going to get directed to their same old, same old cookie-cutter efforts that have led us to the place that we are right now, and enough is enough. And I appreciate you so much for tuning into the show today, I hope you get a lot of value out of this episode, and we are just getting warmed up, we're just getting warmed up. We got some more incredible guests coming up for you and also some more vital information because I just got a new study put on my desk that is going to blow you away.
So you want to make sure that you are staying tuned and ready for it, is very, very important because there's so many things transpiring right now, but at the same time, there's so much opportunity, there's so much good, if we are empowered enough to know that truly what we've been indoctrinated with, that we are victims, that there's nothing that we can do that truly, there's a massive lack of education around how our health actually works, and to reduce our risk factors, that doesn't have to be our story, we can get our citizens healthier. It starts with us, it starts with us, and being the model, it starts with our families, and then we can start to branch out to our neighborhoods, to our communities, and really to the world at large, you can help to educate the masses right now, but you've got to share your voice. And I appreciate you so much, you can also help to share by sharing the show out with your friends and family, you could share on social media, of course, you can tag me, I'm @shawnmodel on Instagram and Twitter.
And I'm at the Model Health Show on Facebook, and of course, you can send this directly from the podcast app itself to somebody that you care about, and I care about you, I appreciate you, and I'm not stopping any time soon. I appreciate you so much for tuning into the show today, take care, have an amazing day. I'll talk with you soon.
And for more after the show, make sure to head over to themodelhealthshow.com, that's where you can find all of the show notes, you could find transcriptions, videos for each episode, and if you got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome, and I appreciate that so much. And take care, I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.
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When you gather your family around the table to share nutritious food, you’re not only spending quality time with them - you’re setting them up for success in all areas of their lives.
The Eat Smarter Family Cookbook is filled with 100 delicious recipes, plus the latest science to support the mental, physical and social health of your loved ones.
Is there a place where you cite your articles and resources? I would love to cite the research when posting and supporting my position regarding these topics.
I love these podcasts! Fun and easy to listen to, and packed with information.
Is there a place that you cite your resources? I’m arguing a point, and would like to cite the CDC study analyzing COVID-19 hospitalizations regarding anxiety and fear related disorders. Any help is appreciated.
Thanks for your hard work making life healthier and better for people.
Doug Vogt