Sepsis, acute respiratory distress syndrome, cancer and COVID-19 are seemingly incurable illnesses. We say ‘seemingly’ because there is a way to battle all of these diseases.

Cardiologist and lawyer Dr Thomas Levy joins us in this episode to explain vitamin C's role in disease treatment. He also talks about other essential therapies and nutrients that can help prevent illness and improve our health.

If you want to know more about intravenous vitamin C benefits and how it can save lives, then this episode is for you.  

Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode:

• You will learn how oxidation causes disease.
• Discover how vitamin C benefits fights oxidation.
• Learn more about the other key players in oxidative therapy and other useful nutrients in health and disease.

Resources

• Join Lisa's free live webinar on epigenetics to know more about personalising health according to your genes.
• You can also join her free live webinar for runners to learn how to run faster and longer without burnout or injuries.
• Grab a copy of Lisa's book Relentless from Amazon, her website or in bookshops near you.
• If you want to develop mental toughness, enrol in Lisa’s online course, MINDSETU.
• If you love running adventures, stream the documentary Desert Runners on TVNZ.
• Access Dr Levy's books through his website and check out his Hydrogen Peroxide Treatment.
• Learn more about Dr Paul Marik's protocol for sepsis using vitamin C and steroids. 
• Access the VICTAS study investigating the efficacy of combined use of vitamin C, thiamine and corticosteroids on patients with sepsis. 
• Learn more about the controversy surrounding the CITRIS-ALI trial investigating IV vitamin C in patients with sepsis-induced acute respiratory distress syndrome. 
• Watch Professor Margreet Vissers' lecture on her work on vitamin C.  
• Read on Dr Rhonda Patrick’s assessment of clinical data on vitamin C and her findings.

Episode Highlights

[06:10] How Dr Levy’s Vitamin C Research Began

• Dr Hal Huggins, a leading biological dentist, asked Dr Thomas Levy to do medical consultations on his patients and follow them long-term.
• Dr Levy saw a patient with an advanced neurologic disease but remained energetic after numerous dental work. 
• He began his research into vitamin C when he learned that Dr Hal gives the woman 50 grams of vitamin C through an IV.

[18:46] What Causes Disease?

• When you have an excessive amount of oxidation among your biomolecules, it causes disease. Oxidation happens when a molecule loses electrons.
• A biomolecule in an oxidised state loses some or all of its functionality.
• Toxins cause toxicity and secondary disease by oxidising biomolecules.
• Toxins have different physical and chemical characteristics that allow them to penetrate organs and tissues, resulting in various clinical diseases.

[21:52] What are Some Vitamin C Benefits and How Does It Work?

• Vitamin C is a small molecule with a structure similar to that of glucose. It also uses the same cell uptake mechanism as glucose. 
• Vitamin C battles oxidation by reduction, a process by which electrons are donated to biomolecules. Vitamin C donates two electrons instead of one. 
• The give and take of electrons induce a microcurrent. 
• The process of oxidation and reduction helps relocate the energy-containing molecule where it is needed.

[26:46] How Is Vitamin C Administered?

• IV administration gets enormous amounts of vitamin C into the body more quickly and at a higher concentration. It is usually given to patients in dire straits, but if you are needing higher doses due to things like sepsis, ARDs, pneumonia or cancer then IV vitamin is the best method.
• Liposome-encapsulated vitamin C gets absorbed almost completely into the gut, unlike other oral forms. 
• Liposome itself is a complementary supplement. It contains a lipid called phosphatidylcholine, which is identical to the natural cell wall of our body. 
• All modes of vitamin C administration (intravenous, oral, liposome capsules) are equally important, depending on a patient's situation. 
• In the hospital setting, vitamin C is given at constant levels every six hours. As a result, this keeps a more or less steady state of vitamin C in the body.

[31:59] Controversies Surrounding Vitamin C Studies

• Dr Thomas Levy says controlled trials are necessary only when a drug with potentially positive effects also has potential downsides.
• Since vitamin C is an essential nutrient, Dr Levy thinks it’s not necessary to do a trial with a large sample size.
• Large trials are designed to support pharmaceuticals.

[53:09] What Are the Other Key Players in Oxidative Therapy?

• Hydrogen peroxide kills pathogens and hydrates and oxygenates tissues to heal them.
• Nebulisers with 3% hydrogen peroxide or less help with acute viral infection, respiratory problems, and coronavirus.
• Ozone is the most potent anti-pathogen agent.

[58:07] Why Are Vitamin C & Oxidative Therapy Not Mainstream Treatment?

• Mainstream medicine is ignoring broad-spectrum treatments such as hyperbaric therapy, ozone, hydrogen peroxide and vitamin C.
• Pharmaceuticals are multibillion-dollar companies. Doctors can only implement treatments in such a fashion that does not threaten those profits.
• There is more politics in medicine. Patients are being told something that is factually not true and, sometimes, a deliberate lie.

[1:06:10] What Are Other Nutrients Beneficial to the Body?

• Magnesium is the most important single supplement. It antagonises intracellular oxidative stress caused by calcium.
• The recommended dose of magnesium is 600 to 1000 milligrammes.
• No other nutrient can substitute for magnesium. Magnesium deficiency can cause and worsen many diseases.
• People should never take iron supplements unless you have iron deficiency anemia.
• Keep ferritin levels at 25 or 30 microgrammes per millilitre. Only take enough iron to get the blood level back to normal.

7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode

‘Take responsibility for your own health and understand that we are all humans and that one person’s education may not have included some of the things that are happening now’.

‘We are co-learners with our patients’.

‘If you have a doctor who is annoyed by your questions or not open to explanations don't just walk away, run away from there and find one who is willing to work "with" you’.

‘Deal with your emotions, talk to some family and good friends, start your own research track and be the captain of your health care’.

‘Be preventative, not the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. And if you are in deep trouble, make sure you are vigilant. Make sure you ask questions’.

‘If everybody on the planet had access to hydrogen peroxide nebulisation and started doing it, there wouldn't be a single case of coronavirus on the planet in a week’.

‘If you're a clinician, and you've given just one patient who is just absolutely on death's doorstep intravenous vitamin C, and the next day they're well or 90% well, you don't need to repeat that with a thousand patients. You don't need to repeat it with five patients’.

About Dr Levy

Dr Thomas Levy is a board-certified cardiologist and a bar-certified attorney. After practising adult cardiology for 15 years, he began to research the enormous toxicity associated with much dental work, as well as the pronounced ability of properly administered vitamin C to neutralise this toxicity. He has now written 11 books, with several addressing the wide-ranging vitamin C benefits and properties in neutralising all toxins and resolving most infections, as well as its vital role in the effective treatment of heart disease and cancer. Others address the important roles of dental toxicity and nutrition in disease and health.

Recently inducted into the Orthomolecular Medicine Hall of Fame, Dr Thomas Levy continues to research the impact of the orthomolecular application of vitamin C and antioxidants in general on chronic degenerative diseases. His ongoing research involves documenting that all diseases are different forms and degrees of focal scurvy, arising from increased oxidative stress, especially intracellularly, and that they all benefit from protocols that optimise the antioxidant levels in the body. 

Dr Thomas Levy regularly gives lectures on this information at medical conferences around the world. His 11th book, Hidden Epidemic: Silent Oral Infections Cause Most Heart Attacks and Breast Cancers, was published in September of 2017.

If you want to learn more about oxidative medicine from Dr Levy, you may contact him at televymd@yahoo.com or through his website.

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To pushing the limits,

Lisa

Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.

Lisa Tamati: Welcome, everybody. I'm absolutely excited about this next interview that I have for you today. It is with Dr Thomas Levy who is sitting in Miami in America. And he is a board-certified cardiologist. He's also an attorney at law, and he has written 11 books. Now, talk about overachiever, thais man is amazing. But above all, he is a humanitarian. He is someone who writes about what he believes. He's a straight talker. And today we're going to be talking about vitamin C, continuing on this journey after my experiences in hospital recently with my father who died of sepsis, and I was unable to get him vitamin C. I am on a mission to let people know about how intravenous vitamin C works in the cases of things like sepsis, pneumonia and corona. 

And I'm getting a series of experts, we've already had Dr Ron Hunninghake on the show a couple of weeks ago. And this is his colleague, Dr Thomas Levy. You know, Dr Thomas has written a book called Curing the Incurable about vitamin C and its history, which is over 80 years old, a huge amount of evidence, a huge clinical experience with vitamin C. And Dr Levy, he knows how it works, the mechanisms of action, some of the reasons why this is not in the mainstream hospital care for these for viruses, and for cancers, and so on. And I really hope you get a lot out of today's episode.

You know, he is a man who does say it as it is. And I really, really respect him for doing that. Because, it's very, very hard for a doctor to criticize anything within the medical world and the way things are set up. But Dr Levy sort of tells us how it is—some of the systemic problems we have. And it's a really interesting interview, above all, about vitamin C and its mechanisms of action. So please take a good listen. Take heed of his advice. And make sure you share this with family and friends, especially if anybody is dealing with any major sort of health issues; it would be really beneficial. 

Just as a reminder, we are holding every couple of weeks with our company Running Hot Coaching, a running master class every second Tuesday at 12:30pm, New Zealand time. You can register for the next one at runninghotcoaching.com/webinar. On alternate weeks at the same time on a Tuesday at 12:30, New Zealand time, we are holding our Epigenetics webinar, which is all around personalizing health according to your genes and helping you understand this great set of genes that you inherited and what you can do to optimize your life, your fitness, your nutrition, your mindset—everything according to your genes and your epigenetics, how they are expressing right now. So register for that at https://wellness.lisatamati.com/epigenetics. That’s epi—E-P-I—genetics.lisatamati.com

And as a reminder, go and grab my book Relentless, my new book. If you haven't read my old books, Running Hot & Running To Extremes and you like running adventures, make sure you check those out. And just as a side note too, Desert Runners, which was a movie that I was involved with, is now playing on TVNZ OnDemand. It's on the Pulse Channel, I believe, under Documentaries. If you haven't seen that movie and you love adventures and running adventures, please go and check that out on TVNZ if you're in New Zealand. 

Right before we head over to Dr Levy, just a reminder, please, please, please give the show a rating and review if you enjoy the work that we do. This is a huge amount of work that goes into each one of these episodes. And it is for love, definitely not for money. And I really appreciate a rating and review. We are going to be introducing a way that you can support the podcast as a Patreon if you'd like in the coming weeks, so that you can actually support the work we do and get some bonuses for doing so. So stay tuned for that. Right, over to Dr Thomas Levy in Miami.

Lisa Tamati: Well, hi everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. This is Lisa Tamati here. And today I'm absolutely jumping in on my skin from excitement because I have Dr Thomas Levy, who is one of the world's most renowned researchers and doctors in vitamin C among a whole lot of other things. Dr Levy is also a board-certified cardiologist and a lawyer to boot. Go figure that one out. But Dr Levy is sitting in Miami, and he has given up an hour of his time today to share information that I think is absolutely crucial that you guys pay attention. So whatever you are doing, drop it and listen to this interview, because the work that Dr Levy and many of his colleagues have been doing, it’s been 40 years in the making and we're going to be talking today about vitamin C. 

Now recently, I had Dr Ron Hunninghake from the Riordan Institute on the show and we had a great interview. And now we're going to continue that conversation with Dr Levy, with his experience. So welcome to the show. Dr Levy. It's fantastic to have you.

Dr Thomas Levy: Thank you, Lisa. Glad to be here.

Lisa: So Doctor, can you tell us a little bit—just in brief—your background and your journey towards vitamin C?

Thomas Levy: Well, in a nutshell, I was a garden variety, mainstream cardiologist some 25 years ago. And through a bunch of circumstances that I won't go into it's—I don't know, call it karma or destiny or something like that. At the same time, I decided to wind down my cardiology practice, I met Dr Hal Huggins in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Dr Huggins, in my opinion, was the first and the world's leading biological dentist. He just wasn't a tooth mechanic, he took care of the whole body while addressing what was going on to the mouth. 

And anyway, to make a long story short, he ended up asking me to do medical consultations with his patients and follow them up long term. But that only occurred after I visited his clinic a few times. And I saw things that, well. In med school, you're taught: don't exist. As an intern and resident in internal medicine, you're taught these responses can’t take place. And in addition to seeing just overall dramatic improvement in patients—and I'm not going to say this is routine, don't get me wrong—but I saw a couple patients that had been wheelchair-bound with MS for over a year. And they took a few steps at the end of two weeks. I mean, so there was clear stuff going on physiologically. 

But the thing that really hooked me was, one day, early on, he had this very elderly patient with advanced neurologic disease. He was getting a ton of dental work—extractions. I mean, the type of stuff that puts a college kid in bed for a week. What he did, he gets his wisdom teeth yanked out, he just goes. ‘Ugh, I got to rest’. Well, at the end of several hours of this work, this woman was energetic. I couldn't believe, and I said, ‘Something's wrong here’. I said, ‘Hal, what's going on’? And if you knew Hal, you’d know Hal is a very dry, sarcastic person. I loved it.And he just pointed at the IV, I said, ‘Okay, yeah, that's an IV, Hal. Thanks’. ‘What does that have to do’, I said, ‘What's in it’? ‘Okay Hal, what’s in it’? And he said, ‘50 grams of vitamin C’. 

Lisa: Wow. 50 grams...

Dr Thomas: And that just came from left field, smacked me between the eyes, and I literally and figuratively went rolling across the room. And as the expression goes, ‘I wasn't going to be misled by my lying eyes’. I saw something. It happened. Something was going on here and at that point in time that began my research with vitamin C and just about everything else.

Lisa: Wow. So that's the story. And this is coming from dentist—Dr Hal Huggins was very, very famous for making us aware of amalgam fillings from what I understand and root canals. I need to go back and read his books after discovering him in one of your lectures and thinking, ‘Crikey, I've got a heck of a lot of those’. So I need to look into those for myself.

Thomas Levy: Absolutely.

Lisa: Yeah. Got me a bit worried. I've already spent a bloody fortune on this. So I don't know. So, you've come from cardiology and internal medicine and to this. And then you went to a law degree. Just to add to the achievements that you've had. And then...

Thomas Levy: I might add, Dr Huggins has taught me more real medicine than I ever learned before. So, my really—my second medical education was the one that counted.

Lisa: Wow. And so this is really important. So, because people I think, Dr Levy—and we were talking previously—a lot of just people listening, when you go to your doctor, they are not God, and they don't know everything on the planet. And what I try to advocate—and I'm not saying that your doctors paid or whatever—but what I'm saying is take responsibility for your own health and understand that we are all humans, and that one person's education may not have included some of the things that are happening now.

Thomas Levy: So along those lines, I like to tell people that, just as you pretty much said, you have to take responsibility for your health. And you need to understand and you need to proceed at your comfort level, which means if you have a doctor, he or she who is put off or doesn't want to take the time or is irritated by you asking questions, don't walk out of that office, run out. 

Okay, so you need to find physicians, medical care, that will work with you. And as we all know, I mean, hey, physicians like to believe they're brilliant, but it's mostly in their head. Okay, so, you know, they spend their time, they do their time in school, but in my humble opinion—and I know this is somewhat snide and sarcastic, but I gotta say it anyway—I find that most physicians view getting a medical degree as the validation that they no longer need to think the rest of their lives. ‘I'm a doctor, now I don't need to do anything else’. Okay, that's obviously only the beginning. And you should be continuing to learn and realize that you made a lot of mistakes until the day you die or lose cognitive function.

Lisa: Yeah. And this is remaining humble in your process to learning. And this is not just for doctors, this is for everybody. You know, like we have to be constantly learning. I love what Dr Hugh Riordon said in one of his talks, that we are co-learners with our patients. And I thought, ‘That is brilliant’.

Thomas Levy: That’s a good way of putting it.

Lisa: That's how a doctor should be approaching this. Okay, let's dive deep into the weeds here with vitamin C. So Dr Levy has written a book called Curing the Incurable, please go out and get this book, among many other books. He's written over 11 books. One was Death by Calcium, The Magnesium Reversing Disease. Yes, I'll find my notes here. Primal Panacea. His website, by the way, before we go any further is peakenergy.com. If you want to find out more about those books, really, really highly recommend people go and do that. 

But let's go into Curing the Incurable when I listened to this book, unfortunately, Dr Levy after my father passed. I was just like, ‘What the hell? And why has this been such a battle? And why is my dad not with me still’? Because I am sure if you had been his physician from day one, my father would be still with us. And that's a big call to make, but this is what I believe based on your book and other research that I've done around this. Can you tell us, Curing the Incurable, you talked about Dr Klenner, you talked about Linus Pauling, Dr Iriwn Stone. Can you give us a little bit of background—this is 40 years that you guys have been saying this stuff, you and your colleagues that vitamin C is a cleanser...

Thomas Levy: Well Klenner in 1940, that's 1940. So that's 80 years.

Lisa: 80 years? Wow. Okay, got that wrong. 80 years with Dr Klenner. And then Dr Linus Pauling—Linus Pauling Nobel Prize winner, two times in the 70s I believe, was the next sort of step in the process. Yeah. So like, we’ve known about this for so long, why is it not getting that message across? You know, why?

Thomas Levy: Well, this is not a medical issue. But you asked a the direct question, I'll give you a direct answer. Money. Money runs everything. And the pharmaceuticals are multibillion dollar industries. So what I've said many, many times is, ‘you don't bump out a billionaire’. Billionaires who will not be excluded, they're not being minimized. The only way you get something done is to hopefully analyze the situation and implement it in such a fashion that it doesn't threaten those profits. Okay?

So I mean, if you can put an additive into gasoline to make it a little more efficient, but not eliminate the gasoline, and the companies will probably let you be. But if you come along with something that replaces gasoline, don't think the gasoline, oil companies are gonna take it lying down.

It should not come as something surprising to people, except for the fact, and this is what people need to realize, doctors are the same type of people as any other profession. All right. We beat our chest and we try to make ourselves angels, if you will, but we're not even close. You have wonderful politicians, you have vicious politicians. You have wonderful physicians, you have, I won’t say vicious, I'll say physicians that do not place the patient's welfare as their number one concern. Whereas you have other physicians, unfortunately, of  a tiny minority who would give their life for their patient.

Lisa: Yeah. And you really put them first, and these are quite rare. And this is why, you know, this is, like, having Dr Ron Hunninghake on, recently. He's one of those, you know. 

Thomas Levy: Yes, he's spectacular. 

Lisa: He’s spectacular.

Thomas Levy: He is one of my best friends. But that's one of the reasons why he's my best friend.

Lisa: Yeah. Because, and we just connected so well, because I could see the heart and the man and the compassion. And, you know, I have had the privilege of having some of those types of doctors, and scientists as well, on the show because I searched those types of people out who are not cowards. I mean...

Dr Levy: Let me say this, since you mentioned Dr Hunninghake. I don't have a clinical practice. But I often get emails from around the world of people, ‘How can I see you? How can I do that? Can you recommend somebody’? Well, there's only one person on the planet that pretty much practices the way I would practice, and that’s Dr Hunninghake. So for someone who would be interested in following up on the type of concepts—in our, we're in this day and age of Zoom conferences and everything like that. They have the facility to offer video consultations in which he can analyze the data. And even if you could never see him directly, he can get you going in the right direction.

Lisa: Absolutely. That's a really good recommendation, you know, especially if you're fighting something serious. So back to the vitamin C story. So Linus Pauling, or Dr Klenner firstly, was using this in practice back in the 40s. And had some miraculous—and that word is probably not a good one to use because it implies something—but had some incredible recoveries and saw this. And then Linus Pauling’s work where he had cancer patients who lived four times longer in his study. And he was only using quite small doses of vitamin C. And then of course, the Mayo Clinic coming along and replicating his study. But using oral vitamin C, that's not a replication, and that one is still being quoted. 

So what is it that vitamin, C does? Let's get into a bit of biochemistry here and help us understand. Why is it such a broad spectrum panacea? Why can it help sepsis, coronavirus, any virus, hepatitis, shingles right through to cancer?

Dr Levy: Well, first, I would say let's understand what causes disease. there. And when I say that I mean all disease. I'm not talking about a percentage of the disease. What causes all disease is having an excessive amount of oxidation among your biomolecules relative to their normal state of reduction. So oxidation is when a molecule loses electrons and then it's in an oxidized state. When you have a biomolecule, RNA, DNA, protein, fat—you name it—enzyme, and that molecule gets oxidized, it loses one or more electrons. It either becomes less functional or completely devoid of function. So you completely take one biomolecule out if you will when it’s oxidized. 

Now you have different ages that oxidize and they're known as toxins. Toxin is the same thing as a pro oxidant, free radical, they're synonyms. So the enemies of health if you will are toxins no matter how you encounter them, because all toxins cause toxicity and secondary disease by oxidation, nothing else. 

Now you might say, well, how could then just that cause so many different diseases? Well, that's because the toxins have different physical and chemical characteristics. One toxin goes in the fat, others goes in water soluble, one penetrates membranes, one's ionic, one concentrates in this tissue—that gives you a variety of clinical disease, because different areas and different biomolecules are being concentrated to varying, in different degrees throughout the body. That's the entirety of what causes the disease. 

So when we hear this idea that oxidation causes disease, well, yes, that's true, but it's much more accurate to say, oxidation is disease. Okay? A tissue of a given disease, liver disease, whatever, there's not an additional ill-defined thing that's wrong with that tissue other than the unique array of oxidation. Now, having said that, your basic overall goal of therapy is to reduce—in other words, donate electrons back to biomolecules that have been oxidized. And the extent to which you can do this pretty much dictates the extent to which you can either stop the progression, reverse the progression, and in early stages even resolve chronic disease, no matter what the disease. So this is an antioxidant. Okay, the toxin is a pro-oxidant, an oxidizing agent. And the antioxidant is a reducing agent. A toxin takes away electrons, antioxidant donates electrons. 

Now vitamin C, even though there are many, many antioxidants out there, they all have a positive impact. The thing about vitamin C is, number one, it's a small molecule. Number two, it's very closely structured to glucose. Now we know every cell in your body takes up glucose. So vitamin C tags along and uses the same mechanisms as glucose for uptake into the cell, right? Number three, each vitamin C molecule can donate two electrons rather than one. So that makes it doubly important. Number four, it has an intermediate stable state. We know we talked about how vitamin C gets used up quickly, that's true. But it's sort of a biochemical phenomena type thing, when the vitamin C loses one electron it can stay indefinitely in the intermediate state where it can either donate another electron or actually go in the opposite direction. And when you have a lot of vitamin C in the cell, what happens when you reduce, oxidize, reduce, oxidize? Give, take, give, take, give, take? You induce microcurrents.

So electron flow is a current. Right. The more effectively vitamin C can do this trillions of times a second, determines as to how well you can establish healthy microcurrents inside your cells with healthy transmembrane voltages across the membrane.

Lisa: So this is meaning— oxidation isn't always a bad thing, is it though? Like when I...

Dr Levy: No, not at all.

Lisa: So when I exercise, I'm causing an oxidative stress onto my body and it's causing a hormetic effect that hopefully my body's going to see more soldiers to build my muscles stronger or whatever the case might be. And so this is like a redox, it’s like a cycle that is important and it's for cycling of the electrons that creates this microcurrent.

Dr Levy: The whole thing is designed—you're right—there's oxidation reduction and oxidation is part of it. The thing about a toxin is, a toxin takes electrons and keeps it.

Lisa: I gotcha, so yeah. 

Dr Levy: Vitamin C gives electrons and then when you take them away from electrons it goes back and forth, back and forth. But the toxin once it takes the electrons it becomes electronically more stable, biochemically more stable, and it doesn't give the electrons up. So that's a net fact of electrons from the tissues.

Lisa: Wow. Yeah. So this is stealing your energy.

Dr Levy: And the thing about it is with the oxidation, you need oxidation to stay alive. The thing about—one of the things oxidation does is it helps you relocate the energy-containing molecule where you need it. Okay, so, when you have vitamin C in the blood, you need active transport, you need to consume energy to get vitamin C inside the cell. And so the purpose of part of the energy is to get your energy providing substance in an area where it better does its function. So yeah, you absolutely need oxidation to balance back and off this. 

And the other thing, too is, when your oxidized vitamin C level gets high in the blood, then you pass into the cell without the consumption of energy, but then you need to consume energy inside the cell to restore the vitamin C back to its reduced state. But the important thing there is, the vitamin C, has unique ways of taking that energy and getting it where it's needed. So just because you're consuming another antioxidant to reduce vitamin C back to its normal state, that's not a loss of energy. It's a translocation of energy.

Lisa: Yep. So that's when things like will define we know it's going backwards and forwards. So this is the transporter of—what was that—the SVCT2 transporter that's getting it into the cell, that’s getting the vitamin C into the cell. So if we go and say intravenous versus oral, versus liposomal delivery of vitamin C. Oral has certain limitations, although important for everyday use. Liposomal vitamin C, like we're all hearing about liposomal vitamin C, is that a better way of delivery? What is the difference between intravenous, oral, and liposomal—in short, perhaps?

Dr Levy: Well, first of all, when somebody says, what would you use? My answer is all of them.

Lisa: All of them, yeah.

Dr Levy: Okay. And I'm not going to arbitrarily if I'm sick, just use one and not the other. They all have their own unique contribution. Intravenous, obviously allows you to get an extremely large amount of vitamin C inside the body much more quickly and at a higher concentration than you could by any other form. However, I also just told you that the vitamin C in the blood, you need to consume energy to get the vitamin C inside the cell, and it's reduced for. 

Okay, well, when you take liposome encapsulated, vitamin C, because it's like a little cell, a little fat, globule cell-like structure that's got the same construction, around the liposomes as the natural cell membranes in your body. So that gets absorbed almost completely and very properly in the gut, unlike the other oral forms. And then once it's inside there, it's either in the lymph or the blood. The lymph eventually makes its way into the blood. And then as the blood circulates, the liposomes can then get inside the cell without the consumption of energy.

Lisa: So if you've got a very sick patient who isn't really responsive to recovery, like can't handle a lot of oxidative stress. This would be a better delivery system, perhaps to get it to them without...

Dr Levy:  Well, certainly if you have a loved one who's in the hospital, and…

Lisa: He can't get intubated. 

Dr Levy: ...the doctors are giving you a hard time and they're don't they don't have a tube down the throat.

Lisa: Yes. And I would have done that if I had my case with my father. But he was unfortunately intubated. So I was stuffed in that. I had liposomal in the hospital room ready to go for when he was extubated. But unfortunately, we never got there. So I was really reliant on the intravenous way. And the intravenous is, like you say, a very, very powerful way for someone who is in such dire, dire straits. You know, as my father was in sepsis. 

Can we answer just one question on the liposomal? I was concerned about the number of omega-6, like that’s a phospholipid, and there's a lot of omega-6 in the delivery mechanism. Is that going to be a problem when you've got—we tend too many omega-6 and not enough omega-3 in our diet. If you're taking a lot of liposomal vitamin C that way, is there the issue? Well, not really?

Dr Levy: I don't think so. The type of lipid that's in the liposome—in this case, we're talking about the LiveOn product, I got to say that because there's a lot of fraudulent liposomes out there. That LiveOn became so prosperous so quick. Everybody wanted to jump on the bandwagon. And in the process, not realizing that it's a very complicated process to make quality liposomes. But those other companies had no problem with it; they just lied. 

Waiting to get the letter so that they can stop, but have been made an ungodly amount of profit until they're told to stop. But, the liposome lipid is past the phosphatidylcholine. And this phosphatidylcholine is identical to the phosphatidylcholine that’s in the natural cell walls of your body. So, really it's the liposome itself is a positive supplement in addition to what's inside the lens.

Lisa: Uh-huh. Oh, that clears that one up for me. Because I was concerned about the amount of omega-6 that I might be giving to my mom, in this case, recently through liposomal delivery.

Okay, so now let's go into—I was fascinated by the work of Dr Marik, Dr Paul Marik. I think you know of his study with intravenous vitamin C in the ICU setting. Unfortunately, it wasn't a double blind, placebo controlled trial. But he had a small trial with 96 patients, 47 in the control and 47 who received vitamin C. Now these were very small doses. And Dr Berry Fowler has also done this similar work. And Dr Berry fellows coming on in a couple of weeks. 

So Dr Marik—he reduced—this is the statistic that got me and what I used when I was advocating for my father, a 40% mortality rate was in the control group with sepsis; 8%, when they got the vitamin C, along with hydrocortisone, and thiamine and that's a hell of a drop. And those are all people. Those are people that are still walking around now, and this is a small study.

Dr Levy: The thing that maddens me is when you want to try something different, some of the standard opposition is where you don't have a double blind placebo control. Number one, if you have something, which as a competent clinician, you know has helped, and very importantly, has no defined toxicity, and is not experimental, and is inexpensive. The only time the trials that you're talking about are warranted, is when you're using a drug that has the potential to have a greater or positive effect, but also has the potential downside for negative side effects. So you need to balance one against the other. 

When you're talking about something like vitamin C, which is the most important nutrient in your body, it's a ridiculous and foundationless argument. So it's, to me, unethical to the highest degree, if you're a clinician, and you've given just one patient, who is just absolutely on death's doorstep, intravenous vitamin C. And the next day they're well, or 90% well. You don't need to repeat that with 1000 patients. You don't need to repeat it with five patients. Okay, so we really have—if you'll excuse the expression—a back-ass-wards way of approaching research. But it's all designed, as I said before, to do one thing: support the pharmaceuticals.

Lisa: And this is a legal thing, isn't it? Because evidence-based, it really was—and this is Dr Ron Hunninghake said this to me, ‘Evidence-based is not evidence-based, it was designed for the pharmaceutical companies so that they could defend their drug in a court case that they did with a placebo controlled group that didn't get it, so that they could prove it’. But it's not a practical approach for all of medicine to do it in this style. 

I mean, hyperbaric, I’ll use as an example. I do hyperbaric oxygen therapy. It was a key player in my mother's rehabilitation for her brain aneurysm. Also in the oxidative medicine family. They did a trial—a clinical trial—but the people know if they're getting hyperbaric. So they did, the control was 1.3 atmospheres and the other one was 1.5 atmospheres. 1.3 atmospheres, it's not a placebo, that’s a treatment. So they all got better. And they said, ‘Well, they all got better. So therefore there is no’... And it's just like, seriously? Or in Dr Marik study with a— or in the CITRIS-ALI study, sorry, where the SOFA scores were taken as the primary endpoint and not mortality is sort of backwards in my head. Surely we should be looking, ‘Did these people die or not’? Rather than this sequential multi-organ failure score. I get why they did it, because they were an early stage study, but it did throw a spanner in the works. And that wasn't a sepsis of study. That was an ad study, because they already had sepsis for too long. And that's why we probably didn't see the dramatic results in that one. Because that was one of the studies that was checked back at me when I was fighting for my father, the CITRIS-ALI study, bla bla bla. Didn't help with the SOFA score. Didn't help with the CRP. Didn't help with a couple of the other markers. And I was like, mortality and days in ICU, it did help with. And these people were already extremely sick because when they came into the study, they were already very far along the process.

Dr Levy: Which is what Madison likes to do with their prescription drug. Right now with the coronavirus in the US, I suppose elsewhere in the world, they have Remdesivir. And they're doing trials over Remdesivir with the endpoint of looking for less days hospitalized. So I mean that the same thing that they trashed on the one hand, but that's their endpoint with this insufficient drug therapy, if you will. ‘Let's see if it helps a little bit. And now we're going to get all excited. We took our prescription drugs, and we lessen the hospital days by 10, 20, 30, 40%’.

Lisa: Yeah, and ‘But we'll ignore vitamin C that could actually get the people and prevent them from dying’. 

Dr Levy: Even though it's also been documented by Hackney studies to decrease like the hospitalization as well,

Lisa: As well. And they have been studied around the world now with the coronavirus with vitamin C. So, a really sarcastic question. Do you think President Trump is getting vitamin C right now? Or is he on Remdesivir?

Dr Levy: Well, I don't have a crystal ball. But I think he is getting what was reported, which was—this is significant. Nobody talks about this but had this happened at the beginning of the pandemic, it would have been just incredible news, but shows like  yours, the articles on the orthomolecular medicine news service, all this stuff… It’s absolutely mind blowing to me that it's in the mainstream news, very casually mentioned, that President Trump was getting zinc, vitamin D, melatonin. 

Lisa: Oh, wow.

Dr Levy: Yes. Okay, and I mean, that was out there up front. What the medical community must have just choked on their tongue when they saw that our president was getting at least some natural approach to bring his virus under control? I doubt he was using vitamin C. But it's possible.

Lisa: Wow. But at least he’s on the melatonin and the zinc. I mean, that is a step forward. So but you know, like, you hear this coming from the head of the FDA, ‘None of that has been proven to help. Vitamins A, B, C, D, zinc, melatonin, vitamin C, none of those has been proven’.

Dr Levy: That's where politics gets into medicine. I've often said—and I'm sad to say it, and I don't mean to be sarcastic at all—there's more politics in medicine than there is in politics.

Lisa:  Yes, yeah.

Dr Levy: You have a better chance of a politician giving you an honest statement about a controversial issue than you have a drug representative or a physician representing a drug company, giving you the straight scoop about drugs. What you just said, and they'll say it all the time, ‘There's no study this. There's no study that’. It's a bald faced lie. What could you say beyond the fact that they're just lying? Now, let me say, let me backtrack with lie. I should say they're telling something that's wrong. Lie means intent. So I can't tell you whether it's their intent to lie, like, ‘I know I'm telling you something that's wrong’. But there's no question that most of the time, they're just telling you something that's factually not true. And I dare say most of the time, a deliberate lie.

Lisa: And it's ignorance.

Dr Levy: No, nothing wrong with ignorance,

Lisa: So they won't go and look at the damn study and its data.

Dr Levy: Ignorance can’t be remedied because ignorance doesn't mean, you have to have a closed mind. It just means you have a mind that hasn't been exposed.

Lisa: Yeah. I mean, don't we, you know, with the situation with my father. I had the studies, I was working with doctors outside who were helping me get the studies, present the studies, and they said ‘Don't want to see them. Won't be presenting them. All you're worried about is, is it legal? And with our staff are not trained in doing vitamin C infusions, and whether we are allowed to do it’. It was not about the clinical

Dr Levy: Well in New Zealand it was a registered medicine.

Lisa: And not in the hospitals. I was told point blank is an unlicensed medicine in our...

Dr Levy: I think, I'm not sure but I think you can say that was another lie. A lot of times our pharmacy, they'll do, they'll lie like anybody else. It’s something they don't want to do. So they'll just toss it aside, always not allowed. Until you take the law book, and stick it in their face, and say, ‘You're wrong, Stop lying’.

Lisa: But you, you know, as a lawyer, and as someone who's brilliant, can do that. A loved one who's fighting for their family who hasn't slept in two weeks, who doesn't know about the law is buggered to fear, so this is—why I'm doing these interviews because I want people to be just made aware of this sort of situation. 

So, okay, vitamin C, can help. And we've seen the studies now. And perhaps we'll link to some of the studies in the show notes with sepsis. And Dr Berry Fowler said, used this analogy, just in the States, ‘Two 747s of people are dying every single day of sepsis who don't need to be dying’, who are crashing into the ground, basically. There are a number of people, are dying daily in the States alone. Let alone the rest of the world from sepsis, which could be drastically helped with intravenous vitamin C. Do you think, like Dr Marik included thiamine and hydrocortisone? Is there a necessary additive or a beneficial additive to that protocol? Or is vitamin C the key player here?

Dr Levy: Yeah, no, they're not necessary at all. That's not to say they didn't have a positive impact. I mean, like when people ask about supplements, ‘So what supplements should I take’? And I mentioned something, that they ‘What about this, this, and this’? I said, ‘Well those are all good, too, but as far as being vital to the response, no’.

And in fact, predating Dr Marik’s study about a year earlier, they did a study in Iran, of all places, with patients with sepsis getting roughly the same dose of vitamin C every six hours. And that was it. And they got the same response and mortality rate. 

One thing about the hydrocortisone that makes it especially unnecessary in sepsis is, sepsis is a state where you have massive infection, massive increased oxidative stress throughout the body. When you have increased oxidative stress, what are you going to do? You're gonna, like we talked earlier, oxidized biomolecules? Well, as it turns out, in addition to oxidizing a lot of biomolecules, you also oxidize the cortisol receptors. Cortisol has receptors they bind to. Well, I just said, what happens when you oxidize a biomolecule that doesn't work? So those receptors aren’t taking up the cortisol anymore, so the body's natural reflex is to produce a large amount of cortisol.

In fact it is documented in sepsis patients, that there's already a high level of indiginous hydrocortisone. So then what happens when you give vitamin C? When you give vitamin C, one of the first things it does, is it starts reducing those oxidized hydrocortisone receptors, and then the hydrocortisone that's already circulating in the body can bind to the receptor, gets taken up into the cell. Okay, and one of the primary functions of hydrocortisone—not well known, I don’t believe—is that it profoundly increases the uptake of vitamin C inside the cell.

Lisa: In that way it would be beneficial? Is it why Dr Marik perhaps used it in this case? We don't—can't really…

Dr Levy: No, I don't think so. Because if that was the case, he wouldn't have given the hydrocortisone at all. I mean, you're already, there’s already present and high amounts of it inside the body. So I can't say for sure what his reasoning was.

Lisa: Yeah. Well, maybe it was a limitation of the study. And he had to use a drug. Possibly we conjecture here. So when you release cortisol—just for the people listening—it is an anti inflammatory, isn't it? It is one of the stress hormones and it basically takes energy away from you making inflammatory responses. And that’s its beneficial use

Dr Levy: Right and it's my opinion, based on the evidence, as I reviewed over the years is that vitamin C, of course is a powerful anti-inflammatory. And I would tell you that the reason hydrocortisone is a powerful anti-inflammatory, is because it gets the most important anti-inflammatory vitamin C inside the cells where it's needed.

Lisa: That makes good sense. Are you aware of...

Dr Levy: Remember anti-inflammatory just means you're in an area of increased oxidative stress that needs more electrons brought into it, that's all inflammation is. And another point to just to buttress all of this is when you have inflammation starting anywhere—often talking about the coronary artery getting inflamed, vitamin C levels go down to nil. So you have a lot of oxidative stress inside the blood vessel. Okay. And what's the first immune cell to show up?

Lisa: Neutrophil

Dr Levy: Neutrophils more specifically, the macrophages. The macrophages has 8,000% more vitamin C inside of the blood. So all you're doing in my humble scientific opinion, I think—personally and scientifically—that the primary role of the immune system since it’s precipitated always by areas of increased inflammation increase oxidative stress. My opinion is the primary—not the only but the primary—role of the immune system, is to bring vitamin C where it's most depleted.

Lisa: Wow. And that's what the macrophages are doing. So are you aware of the work of Professor Margreet Vissers? She's a professor here in New Zealand at Otago University and Dr Anitra Carr as well. But Professor Vissers is coming on next week, on the show. 

And forgive me, I don't have a scientific background. I'm trying to get my head around all this science, biochemistry, but she had showed on one of her lectures, the neutrophils coming to the site of infection, say, pneumonia or sepsis, eating the bacteria into into the neutrophils, they gorge on those bacteria, it's a good thing. The bacteria then inside the neutrophils and if the neutrophils don't have vitamin C in them, they vomit out—for the want of a better description—their own DNA. Eventually, they sort of explode and leave out and put all this DNA into the cytoplasm? And this is causing—so when you get wiped out on the lungs, that's lungs being filled up with neutrophils. And then the macrophages are made to come along and eat the neutrophils from what I understand. And they will only do that if there is vitamin C in the neutrophils.

Dr Levy: Both the macrophages and the neutrophils are phagocytic. Okay. And even though the macrophage has the most, I said 8,000% more vitamin C than the blood. The neutrophils have 4 to 5,000% more vitamin C in the blood. So they're sort of like—with regard to vitamin C content—they're right up there with the macrophage. And both the macrophage and the neutrophil, gave these phagocytic Pac Man like qualities, if you will.

Lisa: Yeah. And they're eating the bugs and getting rid of them. So she was talking about—no, Dr Berry Fowler—god I’m mixing my things up. NETS, neutrophil extracellular traps), have you heard of those? And the vitamin C prevents—from what I understand. And we'll have Professor Margaret on next week—that it stops the neutrophils from regurgitating basically their own DNA and poisoning the space around them and then the macrophages won't eat them. And then in the case of say, as acute respiratory syndrome, you've got white out and you can't get rid of it. It's not going to go away and it's not going to be taken out by the macrophages. Yeah, it’d be interesting to work to look at those NETS, neutrophil extracellular traps. That was Dr Berry Fowler that was talking about that. But I've got so much research in my head, I'm probably mixing professors up. I don’t have a biochemistry degree anyway. I'm doing my best. So hopefully I haven't butchered it.

Okay, so what should people do—on a practical standpoint—if someone is in hospital with a loved one, they've got pneumonia, they've got coronavirus, they’ve got sepsis, how can they get their doctors to give intravenous vitamin C or liposomal delivered vitamin C? What would be your—so they're not in a situation like I was fighting against the machinery.

Dr Levy: So we're talking about someone who's not intubated yet.

Lisa: Yes. Because when they're intubated, you’re buggered. But you gave me a couple of things that I never thought to bring into the conversation with the doctors. I brought them the clinical studies, I brought in the evidence. But I was saying to the doctor, ‘I'm going to come after you. And I'm going to sue you if you don't do this, because the evidence is there’.

Dr Levy:  And draw the vitamin C level and when it comes back low, ‘This doctor is a nutrient level that's low, please treat it’.

Lisa: Yep. Okay, so get the vitamin C treated, by the way, in my local hospital, they were unable to test it. Okay, so that's just ridiculous. So is it a very difficult thing to test for vitamin C levels? 

Dr Levy: I think so. Not that I know of. It involves a certain technique, and you either have the technique or you don't, but it's not something sort of exotic or out there.

Lisa: Oh wow. So anyone who is in that situation, basically, you need to get vitamin C, in somehow. And ideally, you're having it in six hourly, intermittent, constant levels, so that your, because vitamin C has a very short half Life, can you explain that a little bit? Why the intermittent—the every six hours is crucial?

Dr Levy: Well, it's just excreted, that rapidly of the blood, once it's in the—it’s excreted that rapidly in the kidneys, once it's in the blood. Like that, it goes down quickly. And that's why you have every six hours, so that as it starts going down, you have another bump up so that you more or less keep a steady state. Which is also why liposomes are so good because once they get taken up inside the cell, they effectively become a long acting form of vitamin C because they've been taken out of the area where they can be rapidly excreted. 

You know, you're talking about what to do for a patient in the hospital. And this would help anybody but it will especially help with the acute viral infection, respiratory problem, and the coronavirus. And believe it or not, it actually relates back to vitamin C. And that's the nebulization or inhalation of hydrogen peroxide.

Lisa: Oh, yes, I wanted to ask that.

Dr Levy: Hydrogen peroxide. Okay, little known facts, number one inside the body and inside the lungs, after it kills the pathogen, you know what's left? Oxygen and water. That's the breakdown products of hydrogen peroxide. So at the same time, you kill the pathogen. You do the two things that are most important for healing tissue. You hydrate it and oxygenate it.

Lisa: Yeah.

Dr Levy: Number two is we now know, that the respiratory lining of the lungs naturally produces and excretes hydrogen peroxide 24/7. So that you actually have hydrogen peroxide, existing already endogenously to protect you against new pathogens as you breathe in. And when you get an infection, that production increases, so all you're doing with hydrogen peroxide nebulization is you're augmenting a natural response.

Lisa: Wow

Dr Levy: And add to that the fact that there's been no infections, pathogens of any type that have been found to be resistant to hydrogen peroxide. Now, vitamin C and hydrogen peroxide. The Fenton reaction, vitamin C goes in, donates the electron to iron which passes along to peroxide, make hydroxyl radical oxidized, kills the cell or the pathogen or whatever. 

Another thing, little known fact that vitamin C does, is outside of the cell, it stimulates hydrogen peroxide production. So it causes more peroxide to be produced, which then passes easily into the cell and continues to give the vitamin C inside the cell more fuel to resolve the oxidative reaction that kills the patch.

Lisa: Wow. So okay neutralizing hydrogen peroxide. So just a normal 3% food grade hydrogen peroxide that you can buy at the chemists or the...

Dr Levy: Right. 3% or less. So only 3% percent is a little potent but if it's not, that's great but you could get a very positive response with half a percent or a 10th of a percent but I said don't I say, why not go up to the percent that you easily tolerate and get the job done a little more quickly’?

Lisa: Is there any danger with people you know going out buying nebulizers? So when you buy a little nebulizer, is it like the essential oil sort of thing that you have? You need to have a towel over your face or like you do when you get a cold and you put menthol or something in it. If you've got one for me. Oh, okay. No, that wasn't what I was picturing. Okay. Oh, great. nebulizer. Okay. And you just put it in here.

Dr Levy: Put the liquid in. 

Lisa: Yeah. Yep. And then you just breathe it. And for 5 to 10 minutes, sort of, a day.

Dr Levy: Yeah.

Lisa: Yeah. And if you've got a cold or something like that, it would help or flow things like that.

Dr Levy: That sounds grandiose. But I want to say to anybody that's listening, if you have this device, if you have your peroxide, you need never suffer from a cold or respiratory virus again, which also means influenza or flu. Wow, you should never suffer from that again. I don't know. I can't make it any clearer than that.

Lisa: No, that's amazing.

Dr Levy: But once you have the nebulizer, you know, how much the vitamin C cost? To heal your cold or flu? Less than 10 cents.

Lisa: Really? Like the vitamin C side of things?

Dr Levy: No, it's much cheaper than vitamin C.

Lisa: The hydrogen peroxide.Okay, so, hydrogen peroxide and vitamin C...

Dr Levy: And if people want protocols or articles, you could give them my email. I don't I don't try to hide from people who I get all upset and agitated about something. And I mean, I can't do consultations. But if people want information, a little guidance, you can give them my email address.

Lisa: Wow. Are you sure?

Dr Levy: Yeah. No problem. It's been available for many years now.

Lisa: Okay. That's, that's amazing. What is the email address that people can get you on the inductance?

Dr Levy: It’s my initials, T-E, Thomas Edward. Last name, Levy, L-E-V-Y-M-D. televymd@yahoo.com. 

Lisa: Wow, that's very, very, very generous of you. Is ozone, because I have been studying ozone as well. I've got a home ozone machine here. Is it—that’s related to hydrogen peroxide too?

Dr Levy: Yes, it’s interesting. Hydrogen peroxide, ozone, ultraviolet light, hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Yep, they're all basically doing the same thing, just but by different routes and different points of access. Well, I gotta say it for the peroxide too. But ozone is probably, if you had to pick one, the single most potent anti pathogen agent, there is. You put ozone