How to resist viruses and the gut microbe.

0:00 Speaker 1 What is today is doctor Peter Mihillos on Long, Live, Long, and prosper What are we going to do this week to live longer and not get sick?

0:11 Speaker 2 Well? This week we’re going to talk about the importance of boosting our immunity and boosting our gut microbiome. It turns out that eighty percent of our immune system actually is embedded within our intestines and our guts, and that’s why they say we are what we eat, and when we have a healthy balance of gut bacteria, we tend

0:31 to have a stronger immune system and we can fight off infections more readily. And now we’re hearing again about the resurgence of this new COVID variant. It’s a KB three variant that’s about twenty five percent of the cases and growing. The good news is that, as we talked about in the past on WABC, that these viruses learn

0:53 to coexist with us and learn not to be as deadly because they can’t keep killing their hotel human hosts because they need a place to live. So we’re seeing less hospitalizations, less ice you admissions, less deaths, which is all very very positive news. The other reason we want to boost our immune system, because it’s kind of a

1:14 little bit of an ominous sign that the European Union just ordered forty million avian bird flew vaccines. And as we’ve heard, this avian bird flu spreading among the populations of birds and chickens has killed millions of chickens and birds, and that’s affected the price of chicken and the price of eggs, and we’ve all seen that on the store shelves.

1:37 So that’s something that we’re going to probably be hearing about more and more. There’s been very few human cases, but more reason why to live long and healthy, we need to have a strong immune system and taking our vitamins like vitamin C and eating healthy eating fruits that have a lot of vitamin C in them is very important. Berries,

2:01 especially blueberries, turn out to be extremely healthy and powerful anti oxidants and also seems to boost our immune system as well. The Mediterranean diet, as we’ve talked about, having healthy seen wild caught fish, olive oil, fruit, salads are all very important to boost the immune system to prepare us for these oncoming events. And the other thing we’re

2:32 watching for is the increased legislation to ban and stop manipulation of viruses called gain of function research, because we have to stop playing with nature because one of these days, one of these scientists is going to move around one of these viruses, change it, and it’s going to cause another pandemic. And that’s the last thing we need after

2:54 what we went through with COVID and all the masking and every else. And now criminals are taking advantage of masking and using it to cover up their faces so they can’t be identified. So we’re seeing that movement and other parts of the world where they’re banning face masks so that they can identify people, which is something new.

3:17 But the bottom line is the healthy immune system also includes things like good sleep, staying away from tobacco, avoiding excess things like alcohol, which doesn’t seem to do much after you have one glass of wine, and a lot of these studies that show that more than five drinks a week you increase your risk of cancer and other diseases.

3:40 Speaker 1 And Liverpool, is it five drinks that’s like scotch or five drinks including wine.

3:50 Speaker 2 That’s including wine, five glasses of alcohol. They don’t specify the exact amounts because when they do the surveys, they don’t have the exact number of ounces, but basically the average drink in a bar, when you ask for a glass of wine or a glass of scotch or it’s basically the five times because your liver has to process that,

4:09 so it’s probably every time your liver gets exposed to it. It affects your ability also to break down other medications. And even when you get anesthesia when you drink alcohol regularly, guess what, they have to give you a lot more anesthesia to knock you out because your liver is used to breaking down toxins, so it breaks down the anesthetics

4:31 more readily as well. So that’s another thing that people are always asked for before surgery. How much do you drink? How many per week? And the reason that they ask you that is because of that, because it affects how much anesthesia you’re going to get. So if you don’t drink any alcohol, you want to make it clear of

4:48 the anesthesiologists because you may not need as much anesthetic if you don’t drink on a regular basis understood.

5:00 Speaker 1 The alcohol kills certain things in your gut.

5:07 Speaker 2 That is that correct, well, it kills certain it might kill certain good bacteria and certain bad bacteria, and the other problem is the sugar and the alcohol also feeds some of the bad bacteria, which is a problem. And also it also makes you urinate more frequently. So if you have diabetes and then your blood sugar goes up,

5:29 the way we know we have high blood sugar initially peop don’t even have diabetes is that the blood sugar goes up and then the body needs to get rid of the sugar, but it needs water molecules in order to carry the sugar, so that’s why we urinate more.

5:45 The other first early sign that a blood sugar is going up alcohol affects the eyes because when blood sugar goes up, it causes a swelling, closed asmotic swelling. That’s why people odd. And when people’s blood sugar goes up, they have blurry vision, and that’s why they first present to an ophthalmologist. Because when they go to an ophthalmologist

6:07 and they say, I’ve been very blurry, and then you ask them have you been urinating a lot? They go, yes, please go get your blood sugar checked. A many times the first diagnosis of diabetes is done in the ophalmologist’s office.

6:20 Speaker 1 Got it, Doctor Peter mihillos, anything else you want to tell our audience, our listeners this morning.

6:28 Speaker 2 I want to tell them that I need to keep listening to WABC for more health tips. They need to focus on their sleep as much as possible, rest your brains, try to eat healthy, avoid eating excess sugar, consider intermittent fasting, and try to live long and prosper and you’ll have a much better aging process if you can stay healthy

6:51 and stave off a lot of illnesses and continue to enjoy life and have a positive attitude.

7:00 Speaker 1 Thank you, doctor Peter, me hellos, and we’ll catch up with you again real soon.

7:04 Speaker 2 Thank you, John. Get the truth out on the cats round there.