Top Tips for a Healthier 2022 by Dr. Joseph Mercola
- The start of a new year is often a good time to take stock and plan out beneficial lifestyle changes. Included are 22 tips for making 2022 your healthiest year yet
- Top tips include optimizing your vitamin D, targeting your immune system with immune-boosting nutraceuticals, treating COVID symptoms early, improving your liver health, protecting your vision and combating inflammation and autoimmune diseases
- Items to eliminate include processed foods high in seed oils and processed sugar, as well as electromagnetic field exposures, freedom of speech robbers such as Google and Facebook, and toxic clothing
- Items to add include magnesium, collagen, filtered water, vision-enhancing nutrients, osteoporosis-busting exercise and healthy sleep
The start of a new year is often a good time to take stock and plan out beneficial lifestyle changes. Here are 22 tips for making 2022 your healthiest year yet. How many have you incorporated so far, and which ones can you add to your toolbox for the coming year?
Tip 1: Optimize Your Vitamin D
Vitamin D optimization is an absolute foundational strategy for fighting infections as it bolsters the first line of defense of your immune system. Ideally, test your vitamin D level twice a year, in the winter and summer, to make sure you’re in a healthy range of 60 ng/mL to 80 ng/mL year-round. (A compelling body of research suggests 40 ng/mL is the cutoff for sufficiency.)
Vitamin D can reduce your risk of COVID-19 and other respiratory infections by reducing the survival and replication of viruses, reducing inflammatory cytokine production, maintaining endothelial integrity and increasing ACE2 concentrations, which helps lower COVID-19 severity.
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If your vitamin D levels are not optimal and you come down with COVID, it is best to take 0.5 mcg of calcitriol on the first day and then 0.25 mcg for a week, as this is the active form of vitamin D. Merely swallowing regular vitamin D capsules will not help with COVID for one to two weeks, which is why you must add calcitriol.
You can learn more about the mechanisms behind vitamin D in my June 2020 scientific report, available on StopCovidCold.com. October 31, 2020, I also published a scientific review1 in the peer-reviewed journal Nutrients — “Evidence Regarding Vitamin D and Risk of COVID-19 and Its Severity” — co-written with William Grant, Ph.D., and Dr. Carol Wagner, both of whom are part of the GrassrootsHealth expert vitamin D panel. You can read the paper for free here.
Tip 2: Up Your Intake of Key Immune-Boosting Nutrients
Many nutrients are known for their immune-boosting properties and ability to ward against encapsulated RNA viruses such as influenza and coronaviruses. A number of them were identified and listed in a February 2020 article in the journal Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases.2,3,4
A number of nutrients have also shown promise against the atypical symptoms associated with severe COVID-19, such as excessive, out of control inflammation and blood clots.
While these symptoms have become increasingly rare as the virus has mutated into milder strains (Omicron being a prime example), some early COVID-19 patients are still struggling with long-term symptoms, colloquially known as “long COVID.” For them, such nutraceuticals may be particularly helpful.
Here’s a summary of the nutritional supplements identified. (For suggested dosages, see the Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases paper.5)
| N-acetylcysteine (NAC) — Encourages glutathione production, thins mucus, lowers your chances of influenza infection and reduces your risk of developing severe bronchitis. |
| Elderberry extract — Known to shorten influenza duration by two to four days and reduce the severity of the flu. |
| Spirulina — Reduces severity of influenza infection severity and lowers influenza mortality in animal studies. In a human trial, spirulina significantly lowered the viral load in patients with HIV infection. |
| Beta-glucan — Reduces severity of influenza infection severity and lowers influenza mortality in animal studies. |
| Glucosamine — Upregulates mitochondrial antiviral-signaling protein (MAVS), reduces severity of influenza infection severity and lowers influenza mortality in animal studies. |
| Selenium — Selenium deficiency increases the rate at which viruses can mutate, promoting the evolution of more pathogenic strains. |
| Zinc — Supports “effective function and proliferation of various immune cells,” lowering mortality in the elderly by 27%. If treating acute COVID, it’s best taken with quercetin (500 mg) to drive the zinc into the cell to limit viral replication. |
| Lipoic acid — Helps boost type 1 interferon response, which activate intracellular antimicrobial programs, thereby limiting viral spread between cells, and modulate your innate immune responses, restraining pro-inflammatory pathways and inhibiting cytokine production. They also activate your adaptive immune system.6 |
| Sulforaphane — Helps boost type 1 interferon response. |
| Resveratrol — A 2005 study7 in The Journal of Infectious Diseases found resveratrol has the power to inhibit the replication of influenza A virus, significantly improving survival in influenza-infected mice. According to the authors, resveratrol “acts by inhibiting a cellular, rather than a viral, function,” which suggests it “could be a particularly valuable anti-influenza drug.” |
Tip 3: Treat COVID at FIRST Sign of Infection
Should you develop COVID symptoms, you simply MUST start treatment immediately. We now know early treatment is key for successful resolution of the infection. It could literally be the difference between life and death and I can’t stress that enough. It is far better to overtreat a cold like COVID than ignoring the symptoms and dismissing them.
There are several early treatment protocols available, most of which focus on similar remedies. I believe the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance’s (FLCCCs) protocol is among the most comprehensive. You can find a listing of doctors who can prescribe necessary medicines on the FLCCC website.
There, you can also find downloadable PDFs in several languages for prevention and early at-home treatment, the in-hospital protocol and long-term management guidance for long-haul COVID-19 syndrome.
A slightly revised version of the FLCCC protocol is below. I’ve altered some of the dosages, and added a few more therapies that they have yet to include, such as nebulized hydrogen peroxide and intravenous ozone.
