Trained male cyclists who were given 1,000 mg of quercetin per day, before, during and after intense exercise—cycling for 3 hours per day for 3 days—experience 9-times fewer upper respiratory tract infections than cyclists who were given a placebo—1 out of 20 given quercetin versus 9 out of 20 given placebo (5% vs 45%)—according to a study from researchers at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, USA.

(The cyclists averaged about 1.5 hours of cycling per day, so “the 3-[day] intensified exercise period (9 [hours] of exercise) represented nearly a doubling of their normal exercise workload” the paper noted.)

“Quercetin versus placebo ingestion did not alter exercise-induced changes in several measures of immune function, but it significantly reduced [upper respiratory tract infections] incidence in cyclists during the 2-[week] period after intensified exercise,” the authors of the study concluded.

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Thyroid expert, Broda Barnes, MD, PhD found that heart attacks increased in Graz, Austria from one in 125 to one in 14 after antibiotics were introduced which prevented early deaths from tuberculosis, Mark Starr, MD notes in this audio clip.

After analyzing 70,000 autopsies, Barnes also noted that prior to 1945 when antibiotics were introduced, people dying of tuberculosis had advanced atherosclerosis in their coronary arteries. After the introduction of antibiotics which prevented these deaths, deaths from heart attacks increased nearly 9-fold, from one in 125 deaths, to one in 14 deaths.

Barnes also found that those dying of heart attacks, had evidence that they had had tuberculosis in their lungs.

He then realized that hypothyroidism was the cause of both conditions.

He also found that deaths from various cancers and emphysema increased 3-fold or more, suggesting to Barnes that hypothyroidism increases the risk of cancer and emphysema, and that treated people with desiccated thyroid might reduce the risk.

(In a speech Barnes gave, he noted that cancer deaths in his patients treated with desiccated thyroid were about half the national average in the U.S.)

Here is a short audio clip of Dr. Starr talking about this in a speech he gave at a 2007 Orthomolecular Conference. Read the entire article | Email this article

“One of the cardinal symptoms [of low thyroid]... is a susceptibility to infections,” Broda Barnes, MD, PhD said in a speech he gave called “The Importance of Thyroid Therapy in Preventive Medicine”.

This 3-minute audio clip is from his speech. The text of the audio clip is below. Read the entire article | Email this article

“In 1976... [Dr. Broda Barnes] estimated the incidence of hypothyroidism in America to be 40%,” Mark Starr, MD noted in his wonderful book Hypothyroidism Type 2: The Epidemic (p. 52). Read the entire article | Email this article

Obesity increases the risk of certain bacterial infections leading to longer recovery times and an increased risk of dying according to research presented at Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, in Washington, DC on Monday, October 27th, 2008 by Matthew Falagas, the director of the Alfa Institute of Biomedical Sciences, in Athens, Greece as reported on Bloomberg. Read the entire article | Email this article