COVID

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Audiocast Volume 12 Issue 25

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Coronavirus Update 63 plus other stuff – Lots on boosters today while the persistent world of Covid exposure drags on. Omicron US strains: newer variant BA.2 makes up 35% of current case volume based on different parts of the country while omicron BA BA 1.1.529 is at 6% and B 2.12.1 is 59%. Delta is gone by competition. Cases are increasing in some cities with little increase in hospital morbidity and mortality. In essence we are still fairing quite well in the new norm. Quick Hits and other musings!
Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Audiocast Volume 12 Issues 10 and 12

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SPA Audiocast Newsletter Volume 12 Letters 10 and 12

In issue 10, we look at effort and resilience. We take a look at non nutritive sweeteners and the microbiome. And finally, sugar and the risk of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.

In issue 12, we discuss trauma and the epigenetic realities that follow these events. We look at some new research related to type 1 Diabetes following Covid infection as well as the effects that Maternal Gestational Diabetes on newborn offspring.

Enjoy,

Dr. M

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #16 – Dr. George Munoz – Covid Risk and Prevention

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Podcast #16 – Dr. George Munoz – Covid Risk and Prevention

Dr. George Munoz is a board certified Rheumatologist with over 30 years of experience with complex immune related disorders. He obtained his undergraduate degree from Columbia before heading to Mount Sinai School of Medicine for his medical degree. He pursued a Rheumatology fellowship at Harvard before we crossed paths during our Fellowship in Integrative medicine at the University of Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine.  George is a thinker and a gentleman whose mission has been to change the lives of individuals suffering from Rheumatologic disease.

As Covid has been omnipresent in our lives, we decided to sit down and discuss the underlying risk factors of Covid disease and what can be done to reduce future risk. It is a wide ranging conversation that covers the gamut of lifestyle related factors predisposing us to disease.

 

I hope that enjoy my conversation with Dr. George Munoz,

Dr. M

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #13 – Dr. Peter Rowe, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Long Covid

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Dr. Peter Rowe is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is the inaugural Sunshine Natural Wellbeing Foundation Professor of Chronic Fatigue and Related Disorders and serves as the Director of the Chronic Fatigue Clinic at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

His areas of clinical expertise include chronic fatigue syndrome and other disorders characterized by fatigue and orthostatic intolerance. Dr. Rowe and his colleagues were the first to describe the relationship between chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and treatable orthostatic intolerance syndromes, as well as the association between Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and CFS.

In this episode, Dr. Rowe and I dive deep into CFS and long Covid for both the parent and the clinician. We set the stage for a better understanding of this complex disorder in order to encourage earlier diagnosis and better therapy.

Please Enjoy,

Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Audiocast Volume 11 Issues 37 Covid Update #43

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Delta is a pain in the BUTT, but our T and B cells are ready to wage war once we have either had natural infection or received the SARS2 vaccine.
Evolution of the SARS2 coronavirus may have reached a perfect level of fitness with the delta variant. It is incredibly effective at transmission while not being more deadly than alpha. Time will ultimately tell if it evolves again in a significant way. If you think of the evolution of humanity with respect to SARS2/Covid19 risk, it is clear to me that this virus would have been much less deadly 30 or 50 or 100 years ago before the invention of modern processed foods, chemicals and stress that have upended human immune health and lead to an era of metabolic diseases and disease. I have thought about this for some time and the reality is as such. We are here to some extent by our own doing and that is a tragedy of our time.
Some may say that modern medicine is saving countless lives and that is so, but how many would have never entered the hospital based on much better baseline health? Ah, these are questions that we cannot answer less we just hypothesize.
Read more for COVID #43….https://www.salisburypediatrics.com/patient-education/dr-magryta-s-newsletter
Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Audiocast Volume 11 Issues 33 and 35 Covid Update #41/42

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A few people are asking about the need to vaccinate if you have already had COVID natural illness. What is the story here? Hot off of the press from Cell Reports Medicine, we see: “Ending the COVID-19 pandemic will require long-lived immunity to SARS-CoV-2. Here, we evaluate 254 COVID-19 patients longitudinally up to 8 months and find durable broad-based immune responses. SARS-CoV-2 spike binding and neutralizing antibodies exhibit a bi-phasic decay with an extended half-life of >200 days suggesting the generation of longer-lived plasma cells. SARS-CoV-2 infection also boosts antibody titers to SARS-CoV-1 and common betacoronaviruses. In addition, spike-specific IgG+ memory B cells persist, which bodes well for a rapid antibody response upon virus re-exposure or vaccination. Virus-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells are polyfunctional and maintained with an estimated half-life of 200 days. Interestingly, CD4+ T cell responses equally target several SARS-CoV-2 proteins, whereas the CD8+ T cell responses preferentially target the nucleoprotein, highlighting the potential importance of including the nucleoprotein in future vaccines. Taken together, these results suggest that broad and effective immunity may persist long-term in recovered COVID-19 patients.” (Cohen et. al. 2021)

Read more for COVID #41……https://www.salisburypediatrics.com/patient-education/dr-magryta-s-newsletter/988-volume-11-letter-33-coronavirus-update-42

Read more for COVID #42……https://www.salisburypediatrics.com/patient-education/dr-magryta-s-newsletter/994-coronavirus-update-42

Happy listening

Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Audiocast Volume 11 Issues 32 and 34

Majestic poplar

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Newsletter #32 covers – School and the Covid Generation

More than a year later, as we had feared, we are starting to see and feel the repercussions of the school closure pandemic phenomenon. The K shaped recovery of the economic pandemic is also playing out similarly in the school system. Last year, private schools stayed open while public schools shuttered. Of those in public school systems, many that could afford one, hired tutors to bridge the academic dysfunction of zoom education. The gap between the rich and poor just widened like never before right before our eyes. Regardless of the intent behind the outcome, we are now here. It serves no purpose to blame teachers unions or local governments or parents living in fear or any other publicized reason to date. We are Americans and we must now roll up our sleeves and begin the process of bridging this gap again. These children deserve our total and unwavering support. Link to more….https://www.salisburypediatrics.com/patient-education/dr-magryta-s-newsletter/983-school-and-the-covid-generation

Newsletter #34 covers – Long Covid and its association with Epstein Barr Virus, EBV, reactivation

This is a very important topic for clinicians and parents to understand so we are going to look at it a little more deeply.
Long COVID or what appears to be a post infectious inflammatory issue may now be a consequence of another infection. What are the symptoms of long COVID and when do they occur? From the CDC: Some people are experiencing a range of new or ongoing symptoms that can last weeks or months after first being infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. Unlike some of the other types of post-COVID conditions that only tend to occur in people who have had severe illness, these symptoms can happen to anyone who has had COVID-19, even if the illness was mild, or if they had no initial symptoms. Symptoms can even begin weeks after the infection.  Link to more…. https://www.salisburypediatrics.com/patient-education/dr-magryta-s-newsletter/990-long-covid-and-its-association-with-epstein-barr-virus-ebv-reactivation

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