I got sick... AGAIN

[00:00:02]Do you know what this is? This is a childhood memory. I grew up on a farm that was 10 miles from the closest town that had 800 people in it, 35 miles from the closest doctor's office, and 100 miles from a hospital system. So, when I was a kid on the farm, if you got sick, my dad built one of these to get rid of the infection. And he would take a pencil and then he would take a cotton ball and he put the cotton ball on the end of the pencil and then wrap it with dental floss and then he would spray it with this orange stuff, this pinkish orange stuff that tasted terrible. He would put me over his knee and he would take this cotton ball and paint my throat. He did it to me and my brother and my sister and he would, you know, break open those pus pockets to get the infection to go away quicker.

[00:00:59]and did it. We're going to talk about what it's like when I get sick. Uh I I looked back when's the last time I did this uh I got sick show and that was two years ago. And I really think that's the last time I've been sick. This uh improvement in your immune system while on the ketogenic diet isn't a fad. It's not fake news. It is really true. And I looked at the answers I gave you two years ago and they are a little different. And I don't think I talked about this. Welcome to tonight's show.

[00:01:29]tonight's show. You guys, we are going live early because I don't know if my voice is going to make it all the way till the next hour. I am really happy to see so many of the regulars that showed up a little bit early. Thank you. Thank you. Uh we are going to do a a retake of some of the things I told you a couple years ago, but also give you a little deeper insight into [clears throat] what it is it get sick. So, um, today when we were at the Pinch Chasers at the bowling alley across the parking lot where we have a a free meeting if you're in Tampa and you want to join the Dr. Baj team for a day, our check-in today was, "What do you do when you get sick?" And I got some old-timers in there. They're like, "Ah, well, I've stuffed onions in my [laughter] my shoes. I've had an all garlic diet for three days." We shared some pretty good stories. So, I'm going to share what I did and what got me uh um what I think works uh especially two years later when I am re reviewing what I told you then. Uh so, let's go back.

[00:02:32]Uh we're going to start with uh a slide because it'll keep me on task and um I will go here. Here we go. So, this is the word that I remember mytholate. And so I have this I look at this and I have this cringe of saliva, you know, this reflex of saliva uh just looking at this device of a pencil with a cotton ball and the and the dental floss tying on the cotton ball. And my dad would spray this methylate, which is this orange spray. Uh and I mean there were hardly worse things in my life than getting your your throat painted. That's what we called it. He called it got to paint your throat. You got a cold, kids are all sick. We're just going to paint your throat. So he had this orange stuff that he would use on the livestock, the cattle, whenever they had a abscess or a wound and he'd spray it on them and he'd rub it in them and then he'd, you know, soap and water and then spray them more methylate on it. And I I I said this word over and over again as a kid. And then I got to be an adult and tried to look the word metholate up and well that word doesn't exist. [laughter] Apparently I was trying to say mertholate otherwise known as thyarisol and it is a anti- septic uh put on wounds. Very popular in the 70s and early 80s. Again this is a childhood memory. So this is a perfect time frame for when my throat was getting painted. And I I remember uh thinking this was the biggest torture session. This is worse than getting a spanking because he thought it was helping me at least when I was getting a spanking. He was, you know, trying to punish me for something I did wrong.

[00:04:13]This he thought was good for me. And I was like, "Oh my god, this is the worst thing ever." And he'd put us over his knee and he'd rub that in the back of my throat trying to pop the pus pockets on your tonsils. And oh, and usually all the kids uh were sick at the same time, so he'd have one's one pencil made up for me, one for my brother and one for my sister, and we all had our throats painted by dad. So, I remember in college, I'm living in a sorority, and the whole sorority is sick. Everybody's got a sore throat. Everybody's got pus pockets on the back of their throat. And I've got a big test. I cannot afford to be sick. These girls are getting sick and it's lasting forever. And much like what happened to me on Sunday, I could feel the critters move into the back of my throat. I can feel the invasion. How do I get this to stop? So, I I remember calling my dad and saying, "What the heck is the formula for that thing that you tortured me with when I was seven?

[00:05:14]You know, how do I how do I paint my own throat?" [laughter] And it was one of those adult moments like the first time your parents see you as not a child. And I'm reaching back for this awful memory to say, "Dad, please help me. I don't like to be sick. I don't like to slow down. H how do I not do what every sorority sister is doing around me, which is get sick and be pathetic for at least a week?" And sure enough, that's where I learned that it's not called methylade. It's mirth. I can't even say it. Mythilade or ther theryarisol.

[00:05:46]Uh, and it does have a a bit of mercury in it. The reason you don't see it anymore around is apparently that there was a big scare that it was causing mercury infections.

[00:05:55]Probably not such a true statement, but the hype was uh big enough to get it off the market and you hardly ever see it anymore. Uh, so instead of painting my throat, what is it that I do when I get sick? So, let's start with one of my favorite statements, which is sinuses are like vaginas. [laughter] We're going to talk about that. I remember writing a newspaper paper article uh and the this was an article in the green sheet in South Dakota which meant it went to the farmers. went to my people, my dad, you know, my dad, my uncle, my cousins, and I was doing an not an op-ed article, but a informative article about what happens when cold and flu season comes around.

[00:06:35]And I was trying to explain to them something that I'm going to try to explain to you, which is these critters are setting in. And the best place for them to set in, let's see if I can make this a little bit bigger here. best place for them to set in is actually a an air pocket in your body that doesn't have a good blood supply. So, if I draw this arrow here, you can see that's a sinus in your face. And if you've ever had one of these infections, you can feel the tenderness in the places where the air pockets are. Uh what happens in an air pocket is there's no blood supply. The blood supply will go around the, you know, tiny edge of that mucous membrane, the the the lining of the air pocket. Uh, but there's really no blood supply to that sinus. Um, and then of course if the bugs win, you get a nice pile of uh goo, snot, infection, uh, pus, whatever you want to call it, uh, boogers inside your sinuses. And they, um, they make it a great home for those bugs. Not very good for your immune system. Your immune system gets around through blood vessels, right? So, as long as blood is getting to those uh those area, you're going to have a great delivery of your immune system. Well, if I was a bug, I'd hang out right here in that sinus cuz this air there's not any um there's not any blood supply. So, uh the bug wins, which is of course why we all get sinus infections. If you look at this air flowing in and out through the sinuses, um the pockets are all gravity based. And so, this is where you can feel the pain in your face. So, how are sinuses like vaginas? This was the title of my uh informative article during flu flu season to the farmers. It's it is true that this air pocket has a propensity has the ability for you to grow four types of critters. You can go grow bacteria, you can grow viruses, you can grow fungus, or you can grow yeast.

[00:08:35]And these four critters fight for uh the right to live there. So when something overgrows, when some and a critter invades your sinuses and you feel it, it means that at least three of them are not um thriving and one of them has taken over the land inside that uh real estate in your face. So if you're looking for the reduction of that, patients of course will call in and say, "Doc, I've got this pressure in my face.

[00:09:03]Uh I've got uh I've got pus pockets in the back of my throat. I need an antibiotic." And although I would always think of painting their throat because of my childhood memory, uh the better answer was you shouldn't you shouldn't assume that it's a bacteria. You have three other uh critters that could have been a virus, fungus, and yeast. But what all of them are allergic to, what all of them are you not can't survive is a a flushing of salt. You put salt water in this area of sinuses and vaginas, especially sinuses though. Uh and that salt water kills all four of those. So now you have no longer have such a a dominance. So you'll see nasal flushing.

[00:09:52]In fact, um when my clinic was full internal medicine, you know, seeing 20 to 30 patients a day, I would have a cupboard filled with nasal uh uh kits that you could flush in and out that nasal cavity. Uh you will notice that if you push the fluid up the nose, you need it to come back out the other side. Uh this is of course when you block off the glattus at the back. Your tongue has to block that off and you're going to push water in one side and have it come out the other side. What happens when you do that is the irrigation, that salt water gets all throughout the mucous membranes. It makes it impossible for all four of those types of bugs to continue to live. It also gives a good rinse of whatever allergen might be in the air. For those folks of you up in the Northeast with all that smoke, just kind of rinsing off all of that uh toxic uh smoke in the air that your nose is catching and really causing a swelling of. Uh you can flush that off with this nasal flushing. So, um what does that have to do with vaginas? Well, when you're talking to um farmers, which is what the Green Sheet, the newspaper I was writing for, is talking to, they've got, you know, they've got more experience with the vaginal cuff, the vaginal parts of their animals than they do sinuses. So, when you would tell them, I mean, many people know that when you have a vaginal infection, they'll think of a yeast infection. Uh they they I mean, easy for them to see that, but that's also what can happen in your sinuses. this mucus lined area that doesn't have a blood supply where the where that liquid is hanging out, where that bug is growing. It's not a blood supply. So those four critters grow together. When you take the antibiotics, it can only go through your blood to get to where the bug is living. A much faster way to deliver that um that antidote for whatever is growing in your throat is the salt water. So the first thing I do whenever I get sick is number one, I gargle with salt water. Uh I uh rinse my nose uh with salt water. Uh and I am trying to fight against the bacteria, fungus, virus, and yeast, all four of them at once by changing the chemistry in that nasal cavity. I think on Sunday I flushed five times and I wasn't even I didn't even have that the pressure in my face yet. I just could feel the invasion coming. Uh and I think I got this from one of my kids who struggled for about five or six days and I'm like, well, I cannot afford to be sick that long. Uh I have a I have a schedule to keep. So then I got to Monday and the throat was a little worse, but again I flushed and gargled about five or six times on Monday. Uh finding pretty good relief in what I was feeling. [clears throat] But the um the uh that's step one. And that again, if you go back two years ago and you look at the first thing I talked about, all of my kids know how to flush their nose.

[00:12:44]they know better than to ask mom for any advice about what to take for uh a a sinus or infection if they haven't flushed their nose. And if they're if they're feeling too wimpy to to do it, they shouldn't they should call dad.

[00:12:55]They should not call mom. [laughter] They're not going to get the answer they want. So, when I look at um the second big rule of what happens when you get sick is uh many of you know that I'm on this challenge that's about about halfway point. I I started about three weeks ago. I have three more weeks until the solar eclipse and uh I'm trying to eat only sardines after 3:00. I'm trying to keep my ketones high, really reverse a bad habit that was trickling back into my life. Uh trying to not eat late at night, not snack late at night. And the best answer for me to do that is consistently say, "If you're going to eat after 3:00, it's fine. Uh it's fine.

[00:13:33]You can just only have sardines." And so, uh husband's been mostly supportive of that. Um, but when I got sick, I was like, "Oh my god, I don't want I don't want to eat sardines. I don't want to eat sardines anymore than the rest of you do." So, when I look at what is the the second rule of what happens when you get sick is it's a cortisol response.

[00:13:53]Your body is fighting off infection and it's really easy to see the ketone Oops.

[00:13:58]Let's try that again. [clears throat] See the ketones go down and the glucose go up. And when you do that, uh, you know, that's that's part of just being sick is that cortisol response. And I look at my ketones over the last couple of weeks. I wore that continuous ketone meter until it fell off and got to see really in real time what my ketones were doing. The first time I've done that in probably four or five years. Really impressive. As soon as I added that rule of sardines after 3:00, boy, I was waking up in the morning with with ketones at 1.8, almost two. Really high for me. Uh, and I think that's not um uh that's a been an advantage for whatever's invaded the back of my throat here is that when you're sick, trying to keep the ketones high and get that glucose to it's it's going to rise when you're sick. So, plan for that, but just try not to let it skyrocket, right? When that uh shift of glucose going uh up and ketones going down, uh you get a higher inflammatory process. So that inflammatory uh response, the goo that you just saw in the sinuses, well that's good for the bugs, not good for the human. So you want to keep that body in anti-inflammatory. You want to keep those. So how do you measure anti-inflammation on a ketogenic diet?

[00:15:16]That's when the ketones stay up and the glucose goes down and that can be a bugger when you are sick that I I struggle with this too. Uh, so when I look at what I what do I do to take those glucose uh parts and just keep them from going too high and keep the ketones as best I can is yeah, you probably guessed it. I put sardines back on the menu. Um, so that's number one.

[00:15:41]If I don't feel strong enough, if I'm like, I don't feel good. I want to have comfort food. I grew up on a hog farm, so sausage is actually my comfort food.

[00:15:52]And so I'll put sausage in and say, "All right, sardines are perfect for the menu." But sausage is the good second best. And if I'm really feeling strong enough, I would fast. I mean, fasting really raises my ketones. Not everybody has that privilege. Not everybody is healthy enough that if you fast, your ketones will rise. So, please know your response of your system. Fasting in a state of um uh severe insulin resistance. I mean, I've shown you several examples of this where their glucose doesn't do much and their ketones don't rise for days and days and days. So, if that's you, find a different way to get those ketones to rise. I push folks to take uh C8C10. I know that we're out of stock on that right now, but this is the fastest way to get my family and friends. If you say it's idiot proof, you just take it and your ketones are going to go up. As long as you don't get diarrhea from it, that's going to help. So, all of those little tricks help people when they're in the midst of they can feel an infection coming on really pushing the ketones. Uh I I've been, you know, touted by some of the other influencers as a a number chaser. And I would definitely be chasing numbers. If you get sick, you want those ketones to rise. But the other part that I do during uh my infe when I can feel an infection coming on is I I get in the sauna. Again, the sauna puts the body under a heat stress. And that heat stress then asked my mitochondria to do their job. Uh so Sunday I got in my sauna twice. And then on Monday my sister came to town. So I went to my favorite sauna here in town which is called Shanganger. It's a Korean bath spa where they have an awesome steam sauna. And so I went in the steam sauna and instantly my sinuses drained. My head felt better. It was like like the old trick I would do in college, which is the dishwasher would be going and I would open the dishwasher and I would inhale the hot steam and you just see the the uh the nose start to run. If you could get the a good uh inhalation of steam. Uh so I get in that steam sauna and boy within like 3 minutes I can breathe better and it it's just a really good probably the best steam sauna in Tampa is at Shankerla. And then of course we treated oursel to a good uh Korean scrub where they take magnesium.

[00:18:06]I swear they charge me by the dead skin cells that they [laughter] scrape off of your body. If you've never had one of those, it does feel great. So a little bit of TLC for me, but really the steam sauna before that scrub and after that scrub. Emptied the saunas. I went home. And then uh and then it does uh say, well, if those are the first two things, number one is remember sinuses look like vaginas. salt water uh does clear off all four of those critters living there. Number uh two is get the ketones to rise. And then the third one is sleep. But before I go into sleep, I like to tell folks um we had a good discussion. What other things would I take uh that might help my immune system when I'm struggling? Uh and you know, people brought up vitamin D. Indeed, if my vitamin D is uh Oh, I feel a sneeze coming on. Um if my vitamin D is low before I get an infection, um it is [clears throat] uh not a good thing, not uh your white blood cells have a responsibility for making certain proteins that cause the demise of a of an infection. And those proteins are linked to whether or not vitamin D was available at the moment they needed to make those proteins. So, uh, even though, uh, if you look at some of the COVID studies of who survived more, I I give a lot of credit for the brave people inside an ICU that injected vitamin D into the dying patients on a ventilator. And the ones who got the injected vitamin D lived more, not, you know, some nuance thing. They lived more when they got that injected vitamin D.

[00:19:43]But that's not the kind of vitamin D that you're taking at home. the vitamin D that you're trying to swallow while sick and probably having a inflam inflamed gut. So, it's not going to absorb those fat-based hormones as well as fat-based vitamins as well when you're sick. So, shoving down a bunch of vitamin D the moment you get sick probably is just wasting your vitamin D.

[00:20:03]You're going to want to do that before you get sick. Uh so, I said no, I don't I don't chug a bunch of vitamin D. I I do I think it's really important that your vitamin D is high when you get sick. So that uh was planning ahead versus crisis management. The second one people brought up was vitamin C. And a lot of folks throughout the the pinch chasers throughout the room said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do that." I'll tell you, I'm not a big fan of vitamin C. Um it totally I think it's it just causes my my gut, which is pretty healthy on a ketogenic diet, when I add vitamin C, I bloat up and I have such bad gas that I'm like, I can't be around anybody. So, I don't do the vitamin Z vitamin C when I'm sick. I mean, I um I do I do recommend the zinc, though. I was talking about that this morning as well.

[00:20:52]Zinc does seem to shorten the lifespan uh of the infection. Uh I think the last study I went through this, yeah, it takes took it from 7 days to 5 days, you know, 2 days less of being infected.

[00:21:04]Personally, I would be offended if I let this critter live in me for for five or seven days. I'm on the second day and I'm on the tail end of it, which is why I am going to uh uh [clears throat] give you the punchline that is the number one thing that I will be doing right after this show. That's why we went an hour early is to go home and go to sleep.

[00:21:24]That uh on Sunday night, I think I went to bed at 7:30. [laughter] On Monday night, I went to bed at 8. Uh and really getting those, you know, good 9 to 10 hours of sleep. Uh I'm far ahead. I definitely are am feeling better. But uh it is why I threw out the show I was going to do today and said, "You know what? Uh the best thing I can show you is how I'm probably not the best patient." My husband says to tell everybody that that the right thing to do would have been probably to cut the day short at about noon today. But I pushed it and said, "Ah, I can do a quick show on what is it that Dr. Boss does when she gets sick." Uh the difference between what I was doing uh two years ago is I put a lot of emphasis on ibuprofen and I talked about mucinex BM. I haven't taken those once during this infection. Uh and I really think it's because I think I'm healthier than I was 2 years ago. I think my immune system is working better. As much as that's counterintuitive that as you age those white blood cells are supposed to get weaker and slower and more inefficient, I feel like uh I'm doing way better on this infection than I was 2 years ago. And I should be back in the saddle full full throttle tomorrow.

[00:22:36]Until then, I'm going to cut this off short and say good night. Thanks for tuning in. And I hope it helps you if you get sick.