Your Best Medical Defense Against COVID-19: Keep Your Inflammation Level Low
On Tuesday, New York reported its highest number of COVID-19 deaths in a single day – 731. But Gov. Andrew Cuomo emphasized that the death rate is a lagging indicator. The number of hospitalizations is falling, and New York is projecting that the spread of the virus is reaching a plateau.
In an interview on Tuesday's 700 Club, Dr. David Perlmutter talked about why the death rate is actually higher in New Orleans than it is in New York, the current epicenter of the outbreak in the US.
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Perlmutter emphasized that a good outcome for those who contract COVID-19 is tied to whether or not the person who gets it has underlying health conditions.
Perlmutter said fighting COVID-19 is a game of defense since we currently have no offensive weapons to fight it. He said that getting enough rest and keeping ourselves free from stress will lower our inflammation, and keeping our inflammation levels low is our best defense against the virus.
"We have to do everything we can to shore up our defenses," Perlmutter said. "I think it's interesting to look at the role chronic disease is playing in terms of risk for a bad outcome. When we look at the statistics, for example, the risk of death in New Orleans is seven times what we are seeing in New York. Trying to understand that, it's these underlying health conditions like diabetes, hypertension, and coronary artery disease, and obesity that are dramatically associated with the greatest risk of a bad outcome," he went on.
Click on the link above to see Pat Robertson's full interview with Dr. David Perlmutter from Tuesday's 700 Club.
"We have heard that COVID-19 is indiscriminate as to who gets it. That it might be the Prime Minister of Britain or it might be your next-door neighbor. But it's certainly not indiscriminate in terms of who has a bad outcome. We know that 97 percent of people in Louisiana who have died from COVID-19 have had one or more underlying health conditions. So in terms of outcome, being healthy on the front end is very important," he said.
Host Pat Robertson also asked Dr. Perlmutter about the convalescent plasma treatment that's being used to help COVID-19 patients. That treatment involves taking blood plasma from someone who has had Coronavirus and recovered from it and giving that plasma with the COVID-19 antibodies in it to those who are sick with the virus.
Dr. Perlmutter called this a "very exciting treatment" for COVID-19, and said that it's actually a very old technology – one that was used in 1918 during the Spanish flu epidemic.
Perlmutter said that until the virus winds down, we should continue all the things we're currently doing – social distancing, hand washing, and self-quarantine – because those things are working to flatten the curve.
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