`{`Wellness Optimization Series`}` Episode 1 with Dr. Maya Shetreat: Natural Supports for Immunity, Lungs and Stress
Michael Roessle…: All right, we’re recording. Hey everyone. Hello. Thanks for checking out this video. I am joined by Dr. Maya Shetreat, a good friend of mine. Dr. Maya, thank you for hopping on with us.
Maya Shetreat: Oh, my pleasure.
Michael Roessle…: So, everybody wants to know what’s going on, and we’re not going to have answers necessarily for you, as far as that. But, we are going to talk today. I’m going to be bringing on some friends of mine who can offer knowledge and advice and suggestions and ideas from various perspectives, and today Dr. Maya’s perspective is going to be related to immune lung and stress support in very simple, natural ways that might even be as accessible as your backyard. So, did I say that correctly?
Maya Shetreat: Yeah, yeah. Definitely.
Michael Roessle…: All right. But, I want to be clear, what we are not going to do is be offering you cures or preventions for any disease or anything else like that. So there will be none of that language, and that’s not what we’re doing. We’re just trying to bring as much information and empowerment to people as we can. So, I talked to Dr. Maya on the phone yesterday, and she was sharing some really incredible things with me, and she’s actually putting together a video series for her community that’s going to start tonight, which is Friday, which I don’t know when you’ll see it. But, it’ll be live now when you see this, and there will be a button directly under this video. So the whole time, at any point, you can hop over and sign up and see all of Dr. Maya’s videos, which are going to be a little bit more elaborate than this one. We just wanted to give you some quick pointers.
Michael Roessle…: So, the floor is yours, whatever you’d like to talk about, and I will ask questions if I feel the need, or add anything in that I might be able to offer.
Maya Shetreat: All right. So, I’m going to very briefly touch on, since we don’t have ton of time and it’s a ton of material, which is why I’m going to do several videos. But, these viruses are … coronaviruses are actually like viruses that are circulating all the time. They cause the common cold, among other things, and there are certain coronaviruses that are obviously potentially more severe and more serious, and this seems to be one of them. I think initially people weren’t taking it that seriously because of many reasons, and I want to talk for a minute about … well, what I want to kind of be clear about, first and foremost, is that we don’t know about cures for coronavirus. If we did … this is the common cold. Any of us would be billionaires if we had a cure to coronavirus, so we don’t.
Maya Shetreat: And what I want to do essentially, because many of us are going to contract this virus because it’s very contagious, and probably many of us maybe already have and most of us are just going to get a cold maybe. It could be a mild cold, it could be a bad cold. Some percentage of people are going to have something worse than a cold, and maybe much, much, much worse than a cold. We thought this was only going to affect elderly people and autoimmune/people with medical conditions. That does not look to be completely the case. Not that that should stop us from preventing spread. It’s our responsibility. All the recommendations around hand washing, around isolation, I firmly believe are the right thing to do. Don’t go to the shows. Don’t go to the restaurant right now. Even though we want to support our economy, we want to be with people, we feel stressed out, right now is not the right time for that, and we have to be able to step back and not transmit this all over the place.
Maya Shetreat: I don’t need to share all this. I think we’re all seeing this a lot on social media. So what I can tell you is that there are certain things that you can do that can strengthen your terrain. Your terrain is your body and all of the organ systems in your body. Okay? So you strengthen your terrain and you make it more resilient, more resistant to anything that would come and disrupt it. And there are some things that we can do that just strengthen the terrain and the immune system overall, and there are things that can very specifically be targeted botanically directly to particular aspects of what this virus does.
Maya Shetreat: So, what we know about this virus is that it affects in the cell through a particular receptor that’s called the ACE-2. That’s on the surfaces of our cells, and it’s throughout the body, many cells in the body, but is also in the lungs, less so in the nasal passageways or in the sinus tissues. And basically, it does a lot of things which are related to the kidneys and other things, but also has a lot of regulatory functions in the body. What happens is that this group of viruses, we call them the SARS group of viruses, attach to this receptor whenever it occurs on the surface of the cells and one of those places is the cilia of the lungs. That’s kind of the surface cells of the lungs.
Maya Shetreat: So, we can protect that receptor, that’s one target thing that we can do, using things like elder flower. So, a lot of people I’m seeing going to elderberry, and it’s still a good prevention, but elder flower is something which you can get in actually a liquor form. It’s used as a tonic in Europe and has been for a very long time, and something that you can maybe even get in a grocery store or in the liquor store. Elder flower is something which is protective of the ACE-2 receptor. Licorice is another thing. You never really want to overdose on licorice, but drinking a cup each day of licorice tea could not do you wrong. Too much can cause it’s own problems. So again, I’m saying this because there is a tendency, when we feel like something might protect us and we feel fear, to go overboard. Not every-
Michael Roessle…: More isn’t always better.
Maya Shetreat: More is not always better. Thank you. Another thing that actually can be very protective is Japanese Knotweed. Japanese Knotweed is an invasive plant. It’s everywhere. So, the root of that plant is incredibly beneficial to a lot of conditions. It can actually be helpful in Lyme. It’s been used in a lot of different invasive conditions. As an invasive, this is actually something that I teach about, and how we work with the plants is that they show you what they’re good for by how they grow. So, if you have a very invasive plant, it’s good for very invasive things. So it could be for cancer. It could be for Lyme. But in this case, it’s actually also protective of the cilia of the lungs and the ACE-2 receptor. And that is something you might actually have.
Maya Shetreat: In my videos, I’m going to show people how they can make medicine from what they have, because there’s a lot of stuff sold out. We’re hearing of all the vitamins and all the different things and you go on a lot of online things, like Elderberry’s totally sold out even though Elderberry’s probably not even the best thing to take right now at this point. Another thing that’s very beneficial are plants that are high in certain lectins. So, we’ve heard a lot about how lectins are bad for us. Turns out that those plants actually are protective, some of them for the ACE-2 receptor, and for the lungs. So cinnamon is one of those things.
Maya Shetreat: So if you have access to cinnamon, which many of us do in our kitchens, then again, this is just like … more is not always better. It’s making sure you have all those things going in. So, maybe if you’re going to have a little oatmeal or something, put some cinnamon. If you’re going to have like … put a little cinnamon in some tea. I keep cinnamon sticks available in my house so that I might put them in some different things. My kids like to chew on them, believe it or not. So, these are things which are protective of those receptors, and we want to protect them and keep them intact and healthy.
Maya Shetreat: The thing is that they can be damaged. When they’re damaged by viral attachment, then it starts to decrease ACE-2 function in that particular organ system, so in the lungs, and it can then show more permeability, vascular permeability and edema, swelling in that area, and neutrophil accumulation and then lung function actually can decrease. People who are older have less ACE-2 function anyway, so we want to up regulate that for people who might be elders, or anyone who might have vulnerable lungs. A simple way to do that can be Hawthorn.
Maya Shetreat: Again, this is something you can get as tea. But, Hawthorn and Kudzu, which is very invasive plant in the south. So that might be growing. Depending on where you are, we need to kind of look at what we have available to us. Again, these may be things you may be able to buy. I’m not saying you have to go out and make everything, but sometimes it’s good to know that not everything’s going to have a run on it and be sold out. We’re surrounded by plants that actually … both in our kitchens and in our yards and in our parks that actually maybe we’ve been trying to get rid of, maybe we’ve been poisoning them, hopefully not, but they actually are medicine for us.
Maya Shetreat: So Kudzu is something which actually can increase the presence of ACE-2, and help protect the lungs from injury as well as Hawthorn and there’s some others. Ginkgo is another one. So we have these things, again, which are potentially available to us. Now, viruses are very effective at manipulating our cytokine system. So cytokines are the way immune cells talk to each other and they’re important. They trigger inflammation and inflammation is not necessarily always a bad word. We need inflammation in our bodies to heal sometimes and to do a lot of different things. Inflammation can be important. But cytokine release can also get out of control in some people.
Maya Shetreat: So, viruses are billions of years old. Plants are about a billion years old, and we are much less than that, and our modern medicine, we could say, is something like 50 years old maybe. So we’re trying to kind of catch up with the intelligence of something that’s been around a really long time, and they’re great at manipulating our cytokine system. So, things that we can do, for example, to lower some of the different cytokines that can be harmful … because this is what happens, your lungs can be affected and they start to function less. The ACE-2 drops. The receptors are damaged. And then what can happen won’t happen for everybody, but could happen, is that you start to have what we call a cytokine storm. When cytokine storm happens, it releases all these different inflammatory modulators that turn on … that start to basically turn your body, and your lungs in particular, into like a little bit of a war zone. Think of grenades flying everywhere.
Maya Shetreat: So, what we want to do is we want to help lower certain cytokine levels. So some different things that can do that are like Astragalus, which is an herb that’s used in Chinese medicine, and you can literally make a tea from it. And Angelica is another plant that can lower those levels. So, the reason I’m giving you a lot of options here is because some things you might find easier to access, and some things you’re going to find more difficult. But I don’t want anyone to believe that you must have this one thing or all is lost. We don’t need to rush everything. In other words, we’re surrounded by things that can help us, and there’s many options and some things might work better for one person than another too.
Maya Shetreat: But if you have certain plants that are around you, maybe those will be the plants you turn to. If you have certain things in your kitchen cabinet, then go for those plants first. Just because they’re in your kitchen cabinet does not make them less effective. Reducing a certain cytokine called IL-1B can really decrease the impact of the disease and potentially inhibit mortality in people who have SARS category of infection. So Japanese Knotweed is also one of those, as well as kudzu, also Chinese Skullcap, which is also known as Scutellaria baicalensis, can be helpful there. That’s not that easy to get your hands on. If you happen to have access to Chinese herbs, then you might be in luck on that.
Maya Shetreat: And Boneset is another one, Eupatorium. And actually, I have that growing in my flower garden. I have a medicinal flower garden. I have that in my garden-
Michael Roessle…: What’s it called? Boneset?
Maya Shetreat: Boneset. Boneset, yeah. Eupatorium. It’s a beautiful flower. What I will say about that is, especially if you’re actually infected, it’s good. You drink the tea. It tastes bad, but it’s good medicine.
Michael Roessle…: Got a lot of medicines around here right now that taste terrible, and I love them.
Maya Shetreat: Yeah, some of us kind of feel that. I also kind of like the bad tasting stuff.
Michael Roessle…: The bitters.
Maya Shetreat: Oh, so let me say this.
Michael Roessle…: I just ordered some Bitters because of what you told me yesterday, so can you share that with them?
Maya Shetreat: I am. I mean, I think I’ve actually said a lot here of more specific lung stuff. What I want to do now is just talk for a minute. Obviously I’m going to get way more detailed on the options that we have available to us when I’m doing my longer videos. However, there’s just some simple, simple things you can do. Very simple. Bitters is one of those things, and I’m basically obsessed with Bitters. I always have been. And in a time like this, this is like number one … and when they say Bitters, it could be dandelion root tea. It could be coffee actually, has a lot of bitter compounds in it. For a child, it could be chamomile tea, or even for us, we want to make it extra strong.
Maya Shetreat: So if you happen to have chamomile tea, you might use three teabags or four teabags, or even six teabags for yourself as opposed to just one.
Michael Roessle…: And that’ll help you chill out too.
Maya Shetreat: Yes, and that is also calming. I’m going to say a few words, and then again, get more into it on how to just balance your stress because this is so damn stressful, I think for all of us. Just the uncertainty and seeing people suffer and feeling like we want to help, and all the things that are happening and are going to happen. We’re going to need to really go really deep into ourselves to stay as grounded as we can.
Maya Shetreat: So, what I’ll say about this is bitters increases your immunity in your ear, nose, throat, in your lungs, in your GI tract, but especially right now in your ear, nose, throat. So, that is going to help protect you. If you were exposed, it’s going to help protect you. It turns on your immunity in so many other parts of your body, and it increases your detoxification mechanisms. At a time like this, anything that can amplify your ability to clear things from your body is your friend. So, you don’t want …
Maya Shetreat: Our bodies, if you think of our bodies as a basin, and I talk about this in my book The Dirt Cure, but our bodies are like a basin and we have a drain. Some of us have nice big basins and really fast moving drains, and some of us have smaller basins and tighter drains. But whatever is filling the basin that doesn’t need to be there, you don’t want it there, because then a virus comes around, or something else, that’s challenging our bodies, and it causes the basin to overflow. And when it overflows, that’s when kind of we see symptoms and potentially start running into problems.
Maya Shetreat: So, what we want to do is clear the basin, and there’s some very simple ways to do that. One of those things could be taking a hot/cold shower, so going back and forth between hot and cold. Another thing … and it doesn’t have to be that long. You could do it over two, three minutes, maybe switch it over, start with hot, go to cold, go to hot, go to cold. And that actually helps your lymphatics to kind of clear. It causes your vascular system, your blood vessels to kind of expand and then constrict and then expand and then constrict, and so it kind of pumps things through and pumps things through your lymphatic system in the meanwhile, and that kind of moves things that you don’t want sitting around in your extra cellular space out of your body.
Maya Shetreat: Dandelion tea is another good thing. It’s a bitter, and it’s turning on all of those immune mechanisms and helping you detoxify. So, I’m a big fan of bitters. You can get them as tonics. You can literally also, again, believe it or not, you can go to the liquor store and get like Angostura Bitters. They work, just a splash.
Michael Roessle…: Also tastes awesome.
Maya Shetreat: Yeah. Well, some people love bitters.
Michael Roessle…: I know, I used to bartend and there are people who loved them. Now, did you know there’s like a hipster trend of like boutique bitter flavors? Bitters is like a thing now.
Maya Shetreat: It’s a thing. It is a thing.
Michael Roessle…: When I bartended, there was that one and that was it, and that went in every drink.
Maya Shetreat: I have many in my house of all kinds, including for mixed drinks, but mostly for just the other stuff. And there’s some great brands out there, but you kind of can’t go wrong with the bitters. So I highly recommend that. And leafy greens, this is something else. So bitters are great. Everyone has access to dandelion leaves, because they grow all over and dandelion roots. So even if you can’t get to the store, even if there’s a rush on dandelion, you can find them. But also, eating vegetables, I cannot emphasize this enough. Eating vegetables, and not eating sugar, this is like if you can eight to 10 servings of vegetables a day, which is actually not necessarily that much, you are in pretty good shape.
Maya Shetreat: So, that is another thing, because bitters and the bitter compounds and different components that exist in things like leafy greens and vegetables are actually turning on your immune function. Sugar actually down regulates your immune function. So really, minimizing … we all want to stress eat right now. We all are kind of looking for that fix because we want to just turn off to all this stress. I think a lot of people are feeling that. We need to turn off. We need to not, as much as possible, eat a lot of sugar right now because that’s not going to be your friend. And now’s the time to be a little more cautious obviously with that.
Maya Shetreat: Basic things like fish oil, getting your Omega-3s, are just naturally anti-inflammatory and are going to help balance your immune system in many cases. Again, more is not always better. Around 1000 is, I think, fine. Minerals. Minerals are super important as well. So, a lot of people are talking about selenium. That’s another thing that you can take too much of, but you don’t want to have too little. So doing things around like 200 mcg if you’re taking it orally is a good idea. Zinc as well. If you can get a good trace mineral supplement, that’s good. If not, eat Brazil nuts. Brazil nuts are high in selenium and other trace minerals.
Maya Shetreat: Vitamin D and vitamin A, also things you can take too much of, but I think right now you couldn’t go wrong somewhere between 3000 and 5000 a day of vitamin D for the next several weeks unless you’re already taking a lot of vitamin D. But I think for most people, and obviously this is not individual medical advice. This is very general. And I’m talking about adult amounts right now, not for children. And vitamin A, making sure you’re just at least getting a sufficient amount, because we know vitamin D turns on more than 100 gene transcription factors that modulate the immune system and vitamin A has been shown to mitigate negative outcomes with viruses, all different viruses.
Maya Shetreat: So, I think I’m hearing my patient at the door. So, I think I’m going to have to stop here, but I want to hear people’s questions and I’m very happy for people to reach out. Obviously, I’m doing a video series, so we can do this in a more organized way and not kind of super, super intensively, but in a more –
Michael Roessle…: No, I just wanted to nudge our way in there. So, I wanted some of this wisdom to reach our audience after we chatted yesterday. So I’m going to get this recording, and then I’m going to get it posted on our site, and if you’re watching this, like I said, just below this video there’s going to be a button that will take you over to Dr. Maya and you can sign up there and get the video series that she’s working on that’s going to be all of this but a lot more and kind of more organized and broken down into sections and topics and things that are going to be really cool.
Michael Roessle…: So, I’m going to head over there and watch it. I would encourage you guys to do so too, and during this crisis, what I’m really going to do is just try to bring people in to share their perspective and their information and different angles we can talk about and just try to bring as much knowledge and empowerment to people as we can. We really don’t know what’s going to happen, and we can’t pretend to. So that’s all we’ve got to do. Everything else is kind of closing down, and so I’m going to try to do what I can to share with you what we’re doing personally in my home, and what my friends are doing in the industry and doctors and researchers. And I’m just going to try to bring stuff to you guys that can help.
Michael Roessle…: So, there will be more of these videos in the coming week, weeks, and we’re going to try to put some posts together too. So thank you Dr. Maya. I know how busy you are, and I know how chaotic it is there, and I really appreciate it and I’m looking forward to your videos and thanks for hopping on and doing this and for doing that and for all that you do.
Maya Shetreat: It is my absolute pleasure. And I just want to close by saying I think this is really time we all have to show up for each other, and if we can walk away with like just anything that I’m doing, I hope … I want to share everything that I can share, and I hope we’re all able to really get into that space of being able to share what we have to share and be in a place of real compassion for each other. I think that is going to be what is going to really help us overcome this. Even though it is scary, this is all of us trying to do our best to come together and share all of what we have to share.
Michael Roessle…: Yeah, I agree. It’s time to be kind.
Maya Shetreat: Yeah.
Michael Roessle…: All right, we’ll talk soon.
