Garuda Health | Part One in Coronavirus Series

Categories: Educational , Events , Garuda Health General News , Information , News , Uncategorized

The Latest Information on COVID-19 and How Chinese Herbal Medicine Has Shown Promise As One of the Only Viable Treatments

Part 1 in a 3 Part Series

Hello everyone, I have a great deal to share with you in May’s Newsletters.

Updated clinic policy, the latest information on COVID-19, and how Chinese Herbal Medicine has shown promise as one of the only viable treatments through several research articles.

We also have a new lecture from Doctor of Pharmacy and Chinese Medicine, John Chen, that goes into further detail. However, coming in at 3 hours long it has taken me a little longer to compile the data for easy reading. I will be breaking this newsletter into 3 parts and will be sending them out throughout the week, so stay tuned.

Garuda Health will continue to remain open with limited business hours. We are seeing all acupuncture and herbal patients again and will continue to schedule everyone apart to maintain distancing protocols.

Please wear face masks into the clinic and if you are accompanied by another individual please have them wait in the car. We will continue offering telemedicine herbal orders and the preventative herbal medicine formula. We continue to sanitize between each patient and maintain a safe environment, so we appreciate you all working with our shifting schedule and understand our response times being slightly delayed.

I would like to make it clear to everyone that COVID-19 is still an issue and will remain even after the stay-at-home orders start being lifted.

I am incredibly surprised that I am still hearing people claim this virus is no different than the flu, so here are the facts you can share with that friend or family member who still doesn’t get it:

• The mortality rate from the seasonal flu is .1% and the mortality rate from COVID-19 is between 1 and 4%. What that means is if you take a group of a thousand people one person will die of the seasonal flu.
• Whereas COVID-19 a group of a thousand will result in 10-40 deaths. Significantly higher; but also, the season flu person who died was probably immune compromised or closer to life expectancy age; meaning they in some degree had their end of life affairs in order.

In addition, the dozen or more individuals who died in the Covid-19 group most likely did not even know they had a co-morbidity that put them at risk and spent their last hours of life on a ventilator unable to see family or friends who now have to deal with this unexpected loss. (A co-morbidity means another disease the patient had before getting sick. The most common, heart disease, is usually silent in most adults and is contributing to vascular damage from the virus they cannot recover from.)

Believe me, I know there is an abundance of hardship created from the stay at home order. However, because of the statistics above, the reason we cannot open at once is to again prevent another surge of critical hospitalizations at once.

I think the gradual opening will be the best option, especially in Michigan. Unfortunately, because of how infectious COVID-19 is and how much our economy is now globally intertwined the statistical likelihood is that most people will be exposed to the virus at some point.

Keeping social distancing measures for the time being will at least allow the hospitals to keep up with the severe cases. The only way to guarantee you do not end up in the critical stage would be a vaccine, which we are still some time from getting (as of this week Oxford University has claimed they have a vaccine using a hollowed out flu virus, however, it has not been tested in humans, so its effectiveness is not known and is simply speculative at this stage).

The other issue is many people have very mild or asymptomatic (no symptoms) presentations. Currently the antibody testing that we have in place is not precise enough to identify if our body has produced antibodies specific to COVID-19, so most being made are essentially useless.

There is also the big issue of availability and the uncertainty of knowing if you can be re-infected with the virus. Even Dr. Fauci is making sure to clarify we still do not know if certain antibodies prove we have immunity or could easily fight off infection a second time.

So, this produces a big quandary for a lot of us: how do I know if I’ve had it, if I’ll get it, or if I should go out until that time? The answer unfortunately is still: we do not know yet.

However, the best option as given by Dr. Chen in his seminar, is prevention. Research actively shows that properties found in Chinese Herbal Medicine are not only good for preventing the virus, but also stopping the virus from replicating if you do happen to be exposed.

If indeed most of us will be exposed to the virus, then prevention or treatment at the initial stage is most important. I am hopeful a vaccine is made readily available sooner rather than later, but I am also hopeful other countries are making a more concerted effort to make reliable antibody tests and can clinically verify antibody means immunity, because that means you could be tested and not have to wait for the vaccine to know you are safe.

Part 2 will cover more in depth of how the virus is behaving clinically and how Chinese Medicine is being used to prevent it. Stay tuned!

In Health,

Jason Gauruder, RAc