let's talk about the COVID-19 cytokine
storm what is a cytokine storm well it's
a situation that occurs in severe cases
in critical cases where you have a very
high fever the spleen can be enlarged
you have this serious out-of-control
inflammatory State not just in the lungs
but spreads throughout the body you can
have a decrease or an increase in the
white blood cells low blood pressure but
the point is that if you have this your
risk of dying goes way up
another name for cytokine storm is
macrophage activation syndrome okay
macrophage is a white blood cell I'll
talk about it in a second they also
observed that cytokine storms usually
occur when someone's immune system is
weak or they may have a genetic weakness
towards this condition or they're
grossly overweight which increases the
risk for this condition so the question
is what is a cytokine a cytokine is a
communication messenger okay it's
something that signals the cell to do
certain things so it's like a hormone
like message and it's a protein so when
the virus invades the cell your cells
will then send out these messages okay
to let your immune system know there is
a problem and we need help
this is why when this protein gets
signaled you have this huge inflammatory
reaction and if it happens in your lungs
there'll be destruction in the lungs and
the problem is if it gets out of control
your lungs fill up with fluid you get
damaged and then you basically drown and
you're in fluid it can also destroy
other cells as well so the cytokine
basically tells your soldiers to fight
okay
so let's first talk about the macrophage
this cell means macro means big or large
and phage means to eat so they're this
large immune cell that can eat certain
things and it eats microbes it eats
viruses it'll eat bacteria so it'll
engulf them and
they'll bind it to a certain vesicle or
a certain little sac filled with acid
and poisons so it literally dissolves
them and kills them through toxic
chemicals these chemicals leach out into
the macrophage it'll kill itself so it's
highly protected now the b-cell is a
part of the immune system that helps you
develop antibodies so in that way if
you're exposed to the virus later on you
have a memory of it and you have
protection because now your army is
ready for them and prepared to fight off
the virus or the bacteria and then you
have the mast cell which is involved
with histamine reactions you've probably
heard of an antihistamine for sinus
congestion in mucus but these guys are
heavily involved in cytokines and
inflammation and then you have this
thing called the cytotoxic T cell cell
toxic T cell and you have natural killer
cells and you also have this thing
called interferon so interferon
actually releases cytokines but this is
not a cell it's just the body chemical
that's produced by your body to protect
it but this is heavily involved in
attacking viruses now this one the
cytotoxic T cell and the natural killer
cell have a weapon to kill off the cell
that's infected with the virus okay and
that weapon is perforin okay now what
they found with the cytokine storms is
that the perforin is defective also if
you have a genetic defect or a problem
with making this and you're deficient
you may have a tendency to have a
cytokine storm in your body as well so
it could be a genetic thing or it could
just be that your immune system is weak
and you're deficient in this weaponry
so if you can imagine having an army
that you take away their weapons and you
have them try to fight they're going to
lose every single time but this protein
perforin literally punches holes in the
infected cell
and injects a poison into the cell to
kill it now the problem is when you have
your army fighting this infection
without all the weaponry so you can't
end up killing the cell so it creates
this feedback loop that never turns off
because we never are able to complete
the action of killing the cell so it
keeps going on and on and on now there's
also parts of your immune system that
are supposed to suppress this
overreaction that's not working as well
so you get the situation we have this
out-of-control storm of inflammatory
reactions that end up destroying your
own body so that's really the basic
mechanism behind this but the
interesting thing is this zinc enhances
perforin now this is just another
reason to beef up on zinc no pun
intended it just so happens that beef has a
lot of zinc in it and so does shellfish
and especially oysters zinc has over 200
enzymes and a lot of these enzymes are
involved in various ways of improving
the immune system so you'd want to lose
weight get healthy we talk about that
in our videos a lot and lastly which is
not really talked about now especially
in the news is you want to strengthen
your immune system to understand more
about that I created a video on that I
put it right here check it out
