[AR] Re: ... Coronavirus
- From: Henry Vanderbilt <hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2020 09:44:44 -0700
On 3/23/2020 4:32 PM, Norman Yarvin wrote:
On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 12:37:48PM -0700, Henry Vanderbilt wrote:
FWIW, YMMV, I took a dose of zinc, zinc gluconate 50 mg (about 7 mg
actual zinc) right after I first noticed mild shortness of breath/spO2
92% yesterday evening. (Previous bottom extreme of my normal range was
93%, when I was being particularly sessile.) Also bit off a few mg more
and let it dissolve between cheek and gum, renewing as needed since (my
usual cold-reduction dose.) Theory being common colds are often also
small-c coronaviruses, and zinc is proven to reduce cold duration and
severity. (Been taking it for that for years, it just works.)
For oxygen saturation, 92% is a pretty low number; the Zhejiang
University Hospital COVID-19 handbook classifies anyone with less than
93% oxygen saturation as a "severe case" (not "mild" or "moderate",
but less than "critical"), who should be in the hospital and on
high-flow oxygen.
I was aware of 92% being quite low. Hence my concern.
I was also aware that the Chinese COVID-19 spO2 screening thresholds are
significantly higher than US standards. One possible factor there might
be the Chinese playing catchup and casting as broad a net as possible
for potential cases, in the aftermath of their initial botch. Another
is likely the default US medical establishment attitude of "go away,
stop bothering us, you're not sick" until you fall bleeding on the floor
in front of them. Which a 90% spO2 reading is the blood-oxygenation
equivalent of.
But when a scale is non-linear to the point where 94% is healthy and 90%
is get-to-the-hospital-FAST time, minor differences in calibration can
be a factor too. At that point, the thing to watch for is deviations
from your known baseline. Mine, on the meter I own, being the range 93-97.
Reliably back up in the 93-96 range since I started taking zinc, FWIW.
But the coronavirus doesn't give the usual symptoms of "a mildly
annoying generic respiratory bug": the ACE2 enzyme that it latches
on to is expressed in the lungs and not in the mouth or nose. So it
mostly infects the lungs, sparing the upper respiratory system. Also
one normally gets fever with it.
You know, if you're going to proclaim like this, you should probably add
a "I am not a medical professional, nor do I play one on the internet"
disclaimer. An hour's study of the field reports would reveal that
actual COVID-19 cases present a mix of symptoms all over the map,
ranging down through random scattered entries from the overall generic
respiratory-bug symptoms menu, to none at all in something near half of
infections.
So if it seems like a "generic respiratory bug" it probably is.
Thank you, Dr. Yarvin.
My actual words, which you deleted, were "I now have what I'd _normally_
call a mildly annoying generic respiratory bug." (Emphasis added.)
Did it perhaps occur to you that I am neither an idiot nor overly prone
to self-dramatization, thus that I wouldn't have even mentioned it here
among numerous old friends if, in the currently decidedly non-normal
context, I didn't have good specific reasons to suspect it may NOT be
just "a mildly annoying generic respiratory bug"?
(Short version, the specific mix of symptoms feels very unfamiliar, not
a respiratory-bug gestalt I've ever encountered before. And I have,
alas, encountered a lot.)
One more interesting symptom to report, BTW. My sense of taste has been
AWOL since the weekend. Down to perhaps 1/3rd usual sensitivity - I can
tell what I'm eating, barely, but everything tastes massively bland.
(And I did not read that this is now also a known COVID-19 symptom till
well after I'd already decided I might as well drink my cheap backup
coffee because I could no longer taste the difference.)
With the coronavirus and zinc, the problem would be getting enough
zinc into the lungs. It's easy to bathe the nose and mouth in a high
concentration of zinc: you don't even need to (and indeed shouldn't)
apply it to the nose, but can just let the zinc ions migrate up there
by themselves. There is (I swear I am not making this up) a small
potential difference, usually about 60 to 120 millivolts, between the
nose and the mouth that drags positive ions from the mouth to the
nose. (I had to grab a multimeter and measure it in myself before I
believed it.)
Interesting data on the potential difference. Yes, I've observed
empirically that zinc dissolved in the mouth seems to permeate the upper
respiratory mucous membranes in general (and to then inhibit common-cold
small-c coronaviruses.) Good to know a bit more about a possible
distribution mechanism.
Anyway, moving a lozenge around in your mouth, you can get a far
higher concentration of zinc than you can by swallowing it and letting
the body absorb it and transport it to the mouth: zinc is an essential
nutrient, but the body controls its absorption and stops when it's
gotten enough for its own needs. So getting a high concentration of
it into the lungs would be a problem.
I've read that chloroquine works by allowing more zinc into lung cells.
Given however the resource I had was 50mg zinc gluconate pills, period
(CVS store brand, on the shelf here for some years) I elected to
experiment with raising my overall zinc levels to see if some useful
amount might get to my lungs, in parallel with the established
suck-on-a-pill-fragment method of raising neck-up respiratory-tract
mucous-membrane levels.
Early non-scientific results: The rapid initial lung deterioration (over
the course of a couple hours) that was making it subjectively difficult
to breathe and presumably was related to a couple of
outside-my-normal-baseline spO2 readings of 92% was halted within an
hour of taking 50mg zinc gluconate, and after 36 hours of 50mg ZnG q12h
(plus semi-constant cheek-and-gum dissolved zinc) has been modestly
reversed - lungs still feel raw, but breathing is not subjectively
difficult and my spO2 has been averaging 94-95%.
FWIW, I'm not notably prone to placebo effect. (LOTS of people have
tried to feed me placebos over the years in the space business, heh.)
Pure coincidence is possible, yes. But I'm unfortunately familiar with
the sensation of my lungs going south fast. They were doing so Sunday
night. They stopped. I'm quite pleased.
Now there is one well-known way of getting zinc into the lungs: weld
some galvanized steel without wearing sufficient respiratory
protection, and give yourself the "zinc flu". But that is most
definitely not medical advice! (I mean, if anyone is crazy enough to
try it on the coronavirus, by all means let us know what the results
are, but it's definitely not something that is safe to try.)
Well, yes, I have a welder here, and plenty of galvanized scrap, but
that never occurred to me as a delivery mechanism, no.
Given the idea is to heal the lungs and not traumatize them even more, I
think I'll leave that suggestion firmly on the shelf...
My experience too is that zinc lozenges work against colds. A lot of
studies on using them against colds have come out negative, but that
seems to be because they did it wrong: it's free zinc ions that are
effective, and free zinc ions give a "metallic taste" which is
somewhat unpleasant. Most commercial zinc lozenges have some
ingredient that binds the zinc (such as citrate), which both makes
them more pleasant and ruins their effectiveness. And the zinc has to
be in a form that dissociates well in the first place: gluconate is
good, but acetate is better. (Combining either with a citrate still
ruins them.) But when you do get it right, the zinc has a direct
antiviral action against many cold viruses, as well as being something
of an astringent:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19906491
Again, thanks for the data. Yeah, I tried the candy lozenges for a
while, but they didn't work as well. Metallic taste with the gluconate
pills? I liken it more to sucking on chalk. Either way, it
unmistakably works for colds. And yes, shifting them around your mouth
is good - leave them in one spot overnight and you'll get a mild local
skin reaction. Nothing uncomfortable for me at least, just an increased
surface bumpiness that fades in a couple hours. Better to avoid it though.
Henry
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