Dr. Sarah Marshall on COVID Long Haulers, Post-COVID Syndrome and the Vaccine
In this episode, we’ll be talking about a topic that’s been a main concern for many of us this past year: Covid-19. We’ll discuss what you need to know about Post-Covid conditions and long-term covid syndrome, and whether or not YOU should get the vaccine. (Spoiler alert: it’s up to you!)
Referenced in the Show
Sarah’s Bio
Dr. Sarah Marshall is an educator, speaker, and advocate for the holistic healthcare model. She currently resides in Rochester, NY and, when not practicing medicine, can be found traveling, skiing, hiking, running, sailing, and generally having the adventures of a lifetime. Read Dr. Marshall’s full bio.
Kendra’s Bio
Kendra is a marketing expert and artist based in Salt Lake City, UT. In addition to painting and the work she does for her wonderful clients, Kendra enjoys beekeeping, holding her chickens, cuddling her dogs, and adventuring with her husband and daughter. You can connect with Kendra here.
Full Transcript
Kendra Vicken: Welcome to Heal. I’m normally your producer but today, I’ll be interviewing Dr. Sarah Marshall for the final episode of Season 4. In this episode, we’ll be talking about a topic that’s been a main concern for many of us this past year: Covid-19. We’ll discuss what you need to know about Post-Covid conditions and long-term covid syndrome, and whether or not YOU should get the vaccine. (Spoiler alert: it’s up to you!) I’m Kendra Vicken and this is Heal.
(music)
Sarah Marshall, ND: Ready to start?
Kendra Vicken: Yeah, let's get started. It is the last episode of Season 4 and just a little past our anniversary. Our first anniversary.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Oh my gosh. Yup, Episode 52 this is.
Kendra Vicken: Yeah. Can you even believe at a full year of podcasts?
Sarah Marshall, ND: No, it's awesome. I remember when we very, very, very, very, very first started talking about this and there was a woman who had created a blog called 50 coffees, and she was one of my inspiring creatives out there. When I saw the project she had created and her intention was actually about switching careers. She was shifting away from the nonprofit world and going to do something different and she interviewed 50 people and she wrote about it and she had this awesome structure around it.
And it was these 50 coffees, which I don't actually think she ever finished. I've never seen all 50 of them, but just that concept was one of the first things we talked about. And here we are at 52.
Kendra Vicken: Yeah, we did it. I know when we first started this, we said we were going to do it for a year and then, you know, revisit and just depending on how well it was doing…
Sarah Marshall, ND: (laughter) We’re trapped! We're never getting away from it. Hah! No, in the best possible way though.
Kendra Vicken: Yeah, it has. It has exceeded my expectations. Absolutely. Me too, at least, you know, when we were kind of goal setting for where we'd be at this time, I, you know, we're doing better than I even thought, which is a really, really good feeling and this season's been awesome.
You know, we've got to bring back some of our heavy hitters from prior seasons. People like Ed Kennedy, and Corey Three-Wing Thorell, and Audra Boyd, and Molly Evans. And what an awesome time to hear back from some of our favorites.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. Oh my gosh. I mean, Molly was our very first guest ever, so to get a year later recap on where she was, and at this new benchmark for her seven years into her healing journey of topical steroid withdrawal and how that's like not even the context for her anymore.
And what is it to just let go of your diagnosis and be a person in the world who has these things that she does and doesn't do, and where her health was at. She lovingly fired me as her doctor, actually! And it was awesome. She was like, I adore you and I don't want to have to talk to you all the time anymore. So I'm going to go do something else.
And it was perfect. It was perfect timing. It was awesome for where she was at and launching off. And then Corey Three-Wing, holy hot beans. What the heck? That was like the most intense, most amazing, power-packed. I mean, that was like a seminar, not just a podcast on creating your life. That was incredible.
Kendra Vicken: Oh yeah! I actually will behind the scenes for everybody listening to this now, I edited Corey's episode last night of us recording this episode, and you – you weren't kidding me. What…I mean it, and you kind of joked in that episode about it being like a coaching session for you and then listening to it felt like that for me.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah.
Kendra Vicken: Especially I listened to it on a day I was kind of having a bad day, and, you know, like had these like negative thoughts and then this whole concept, you know, kind of just comes in about, you know, what are you like manifesting and thinking of and how are you chasing joy and what are you creating with your thoughts?
And it, yeah, that was a rockstar episode for sure. One of my favorites.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah, absolutely. And we had Audra come back and deepen the conversation about emotional intelligence and dealing with all of our uncomfortable emotions, and Ed Kennedy taking it a step further sharing about what he's been dealing with – with, you know, male depression and, you know, not that it's really gender specific, but the things that specifically men deal with when, around the world of depression and, you know, an addiction to accomplishment and all of that comes with it. And then all of the amazing new topics we took on that we've never ventured into.
Kendra Vicken: Oh yeah. Yeah. I loved, you know, getting to hear from Cori Lovejoy and about her transformation and going deeper into the roots of racism with Maiysha Clairborne, and getting to talk about climate restoration with Greg Peterson.
This whole season was like a beautiful marriage between going deeper in places we had gone already and going to places we hadn't really explored yet.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. And a big stretch for me was when we had the medical doctor on talking about women's cancers and how like I loved having her. And at the same time I watched myself have to deal with my own biases of like, am I going to be pro-HPV vaccine?
Like, that's the cornerstone of one of her tactics of preventing women's cancers. And we have a different opinion about her approach to vaccination, but it was so great to actually bump up against my boundaries and then examine them and get new information and be able to talk about something that normally I would have just had an automatic “I don't know if I'm into this” or “I disagree” just having an opinion about it, even as a physician – and so it was really great.
And that episode was way more than about the HPV vaccine. I mean, just, she's been cutting cancers out of women's bodies for 25 years. So, you know, she's got a pretty strong stand about, you know, how much our lifestyle choices can make a difference in preventing cancer and how little we tend to focus on that.
Kendra Vicken: And she's not the only doctor we got to hear from this season either. You know, we got to talk to Dr. Mandolin Hoffman about Marfan syndrome, and we got to talk about the physician burnout and suicide and with Dr. Rachel Reinhart Taylor.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah.
Kendra Vicken: As well as neuro linguistic programming, that one was super interesting to me that wasn't something I was even aware of…
Sarah Marshall, ND: Maiysha Clairborne, yeah.
Kendra Vicken: …prior to that episode. This was an awesome season – through and through.
Sarah Marshall, ND: So fun, so fun. Yup. And so, you know, for those of you that maybe haven't hit all the episodes yet, now you've got your teaser alert! (laughter) And you can go back and pick on some of them, ‘cause they just were all…
I mean, and our first Yogi! We had Holly on and she was just rockstar and you know, loved having that different perspective about a deep yoga practice and somebody who's actually made a career out of being a yoga instructor and like, it's literally her expertise and the whole world, she could come from have different ways of thinking about yoga than just quote unquote an “exercise” class and what it is is a practice, and what it is is, you know, a lifestyle.
Kendra Vicken: Yeah, it was, it was a great season. And like you said, people should definitely make sure they listen, go back, and listen if they've missed any, because we'll be out right-quickly with the next season. And we have some amazing stuff coming up in Season 5, too. So you don't want to get too far behind listeners! Get caught up before there's even more awesomeness coming towards you.
But this year hasn't even just been like awesome stuff for the podcast. We have some awesome stuff going on in the lives of the people who are – who are doing it, and your life, and my life. And you have some big updates for people listening to this podcast.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah, I moved to New York!
And this was like, holy moly. I mean, I've been actually, I've been threatening about moving to New York for years. And it's literally been like, so my family, I grew up in Rochester New York, right on the shores of Lake Ontario.
And my parents have lived here the whole time, my whole life. And my sister’s in the area, she's actually down about five hours South in Pennsylvania. I have aunts and uncles and cousins who live here, and then I've got cousins in downstate New York and Vermont and Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
And you know, my whole extended family pretty much is in the new England, New York region. And – except, I have some cousins in Sweden, although we'll see if they stay in Sweden! But, it has been a… quite a transformation to even confront moving back to my hometown of Rochester, New York. And it just, quite frankly, it came up in conversation again with my partner and I pretty much put my foot down and said, this isn't the year. Not happening, not doing it, not going to.
I don't want to deal with my health with, you know, chronic fatigue syndrome has gotten way better to the point where I've even said on a couple episodes, like, I don't think I even qualify for the diagnosis at this point. Like, whatever I'm dealing with is a functional version. It's something… it's not completely gone out of my system – I can definitely tell I hit my limits, but I'm in like a different phase.
And I can actually look back and say, probably when I started feeling the changes in my body was about a year ago. I didn't get diagnosed until last August, but you know, it was, it was about this time last year that I definitely started experiencing it. And I'm in a whole new place now with my health and wellbeing. But part of this next phase, well, the question I've been in is now what? Like, I can “function” quote unquote, but I do know from my own experience as a physician and what I've done with my clients is if I stay where I am now, something's gonna to happen and then I'm just gonna bottom out again.
It's like, I've just barely got my head above water. I am not on dry land yet. And this is a place that's so often I watch my clients struggle with. Where, they're not in crisis anymore and they can pretty much participate fully in life, but then they hit this place where then life starts coming back at you.
My practice is full again, I'm working full time, the podcast is cranking, I'm working on building those courses we've been talking about. Like, there's a lot of things happening and here I am, like, I still am not all the way through though. So part of that was what else do I need to do? Like, to really transform my lifestyle?
What are the actions that could be taken? And that's a big chunk of where the conversation about moving back to New York came from, and it was to be close to family, to be in a different environment. I mean, right now I'm looking out at a forest of green trees and grass. And I have a lot of nature around me.
Like technically there's a subdivision somewhere on the other side of that forest. I can't see it, but I know it's back there. But then out the front side of my house is farmland. Like my neighbors on the other side of the street is 125-acre farm. There are like all these small family farms up and down my street.
I mean, like I'm right on the edge of where suburbia and the rural part of town is. And I'm, you know, as the crow flies, three quarters of a mile from the shore of Lake Ontario and like, they just have so much access to quiet and nature and greenery – which is hilarious, saying that, having lived at the foot of the mountains in Salt Lake City, it's different, different pace of life here. So that was a big art of it.
Kendra Vicken: Yeah, sounds like a great place to restore and rest and ensure that your progress is sustainable.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then how about you, my dear? we've moved along with a few things in your life.
Kendra Vicken: No. Yeah. I actually think I announced on the last episode of Season 3, that I was pregnant, which has been quite a journey. I still am pregnant. (laughter)
Sarah Marshall, ND: You’re very, very, very pregnant!
Kendra Vicken: Well, now I'm pretty pregnant, yep. And things are going well. We found out that she is a girl. We've, we've named her, her name is going to be Ivy. And so we're just busy over here, making sure that things are ready for her arrival in September. And that includes, you know, working ahead with you on stuff, for HEAL, as well as some of your courses, hoping to get all of that done before the Fall, so we can take a little bit of a break, which will be nice.
Sarah Marshall, ND: I’m going on maternity leave with you! (laughter)
Kendra Vicken: Yeah, yeah! Oh - you’re gonna have to!
Sarah Marshall, ND: Hah – I doubt it, but, we are pulling, I mean, it was so awesome to get to look at that with you – and I just share this with our listeners – ‘cause it's like, this is the shit that happens in our life and we have something occur. And then you look at what are you committed to and what's happening in your life.
And we could have easily said we're going to take a season off. I mean, we've been producing and we've got this great amount of material and – no, no, no! We went the other way and we said, how could we set this up? Where we get a season ahead and create spaciousness on the other side, but not just overburdening ourselves, but being efficient.
And so that's what we've taken on for this Summer is we're going to actually get through recording Season 5 and Season 6 this Summer, and set ourselves up to have some space around it. And you guys won't even know. It'll just keep rolling out.
Kendra Vicken: Yeah, the listeners will have no idea as it's happening.
We've told them now, but I'm sure they'll forget, and they won’t even notice it by the time they are listening to Season 6, And then, you know, we'll be right back at it for Season 7, which will be, which will be awesome. And you know, I've been doing some other work of my own. I did my own course. That's a branding course for people who are kind of just starting out their businesses, entrepreneurs that need a place to start to establish a business for themselves, to have, you know, a look and feel that's cohesive.
And so that's been super exciting and it's been good practice for some of the bigger courses. I'll be helping you to develop over the Summer and getting used to running those types of systems. So it's, it's, you know, it's been, it's a very busy season for me, especially with all that I am trying to accomplish prior to having a baby.
But it's like one that's really full of joy and like stuff I'm excited and passionate about. And it definitely has a season of growth and transformation. And this podcast continues to somehow inform everything I'm going through… (laughter)
Sarah Marshall, ND: I know, right? We can't get away from it. But I love it. It's like the best Petri dish cauldron we've put ourselves into.
So thank you guys, who are listening to support our inner transformation. As we work out this freaking thing called producing a podcast about the inquiry of what does it mean to heal, and how do we heal, and how do we live whole healed lives?
Kendra Vicken: And I love that we hear that from listeners too, that it seems like the episodes are speaking right into something that they are going through or processing because even the ones that are about really particular topics, there's still these overarching concepts that are applicable then to so many other scenarios.
And that's one thing I love about it is that it does just echo in this idea of like, healing and growth and transformation and pursuing our best lives and living those lives and – what a cool place to be.
Sarah Marshall, ND: All right. Well, what should we, what, what do we do now in the rest of this episode?
Kendra Vicken: I think it's time to address the elephant in the room, which is that, you know, we keep wanting to talk about what people are going through you know, major applicable healing topics. And there's one that we've continued to touch on, but never talk about in depth.
And that is COVID-19.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Mmm hmm, mmm hmm – I thought you were going to say that. That's awesome! And I immediately have a pit in my stomach, as soon as you say that!
Kendra Vicken: It's a big topic to cover and it's new. It's such a new topic. It's not one that we can, you know, have decades of research about because…it’s new!
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I mean, I am glad, I mean, clearly we did play on this guys, but still – preparing for this episode, I have been more, worked up more nervous, more concerned about what am I going to say that's wrong. Where's I'm going to stick my foot in my mouth, which I'm really good at doing, where am I going to go too far?
So like, look, here's my giant disclaimer about this episode. It is time for us to talk about, you know, there's some big things going on. There's a lot of people now in the world of either post-COVID syndrome or COVID long haulers, which that's a whole thing. Do we even know what the difference is? We're going to talk about what the differences between that.
And then, you know, a lot of Americans are vaccinated, but not all of Americans are vaccinated, so. for some of you guys who are already vaccinated, this is going to be well... now let's talk about the choice you already made.
Like I'm already vaccinated and…and I'll, I mean, Kendra, you can ask me, why did I choose to get vaccinated? Knowing what I know and like…all of that. And, and it's, we don't know. There's a lot we don't know. And there's a lot we're not gonna know for decades.
But we, again, like when I took on saying we're going to talk about physician suicide and physician burnout, like it's, it's gotta be talked about if we're not willing to actually share about this and I'll do my best to bring as much hard science and knowledge as I can.
And if I can't remember a reference off the top of my head, we'll be able to look stuff up and provide it for you guys in the show notes. But yeah.
All right, let's do it.
Kendra Vicken: I think that's great. Yeah. Where, where should we dive into this ginormous topic?
Sarah Marshall, ND: One thing I’ll say is – you know the other thing I’ve been doing since the end of Season 3, well kind of, it was happening already at the end – so since January – is I have been kind of a continuing education, medical, continuing education junkie. I've taken twice as many credit hours as I'm actually required to in a year this year already. And it's like, not even halfway through the year because they just kept having these incredible seminars.
And I'm like, I can't not dive into that because it's what we're dealing with right now. So, I had already gotten pretty interested in learning more about mold and fungal infections like chronic candida and aspergillus, and even some pretty significant GI dysbiosis because – and dysbiosis just means that when the microbiome of our gut…
So, all of the gut bugs that are supposed to live in there, when they're not in a healthy balance, just like the environment when it's not in a healthy balance, you get dysbiosis. The biotic, the microbiome of your gut is not in alignment to produce the best health possible. And you know, for 10 years of being a naturopath, one of the big areas that I've studied a lot is adrenal fatigue.
And the adrenal glands are these two little glands that sit on top of the kidneys and they produce cortisol. They produce epinephrine and norepinephrine. If you think of the word adrenaline, it's literally got “adrenal” in the name, cause that comes from the adrenal glands. And it's the part of the body that deals a lot with stress.
And it's like, traumatic stress of getting in a car accident, or having surgery, or being in an abusive relationship, or getting yelled at by somebody. So it's emotional stress can actually impact the adrenal glands, but then also there's these other sources of stress in our body like toxicity and in low grade infections or long-term chronic or latent infections, they all are related to adrenal stress.
And what I noticed after years and years and years of trying to treat the adrenal glands is there were some people where it was like we could never get out of the hole. They would only get so much better. And so that had me researching and getting into what's underneath that. And one of the big areas I had not yet explored were things along the lines of very persistent, difficult to treat gut infections like clostridium carriers or candida. And then, like I said, mold.
So I took a two day seminar on that and it just like blew my mind. Got into the relationship too, like neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and dementia. And then also what kids, a lot of kiddos, deal with with learning disabilities, ADD, ADHD, spectrum disorders, and then even behavioral stuff – anxiety, depression.
So like, why the heck am I talking about that related to COVID? It's super related actually, because the gut microbiome has a lot to do with how people responded to COVID or how they'll respond to the vaccine. And the gut microbiome is all connected to this, so – there's just been this, like, I'm going to do my best to make sense out of it all today.
I've been swimming in this pea soup of like, and then over here I learned this. So I did that; I loved it. So I registered for their master practitioner seminar. So I did three more days of training – it was like 27 hours total. And then I got an email that there was a group of people that had gotten together to put together a symposium on the aftermath of infectious disease.
And we did a whole series of stuff on long-term COVID and post-COVID syndrome, and then talked more about viral infections and Epstein-Barr virus, which is the key virus that's connected to chronic fatigue syndrome and how we're dealing with that.
And then one of my favorite professors ever, Dr. Heather Zwickey, who is a brilliant immunologist decides to lead her vaccine and seminar two-day intensive that she hasn't taught in 10 years because vaccines are such a controversial topic. And she was having such a hard time with responses and she just stopped teaching it and she taught it again. So – I tossed that one in.
So, I got sources!
Kendra Vicken: Yeah! Sounds like you, it sounds like you've been busy doing the, doing the homework.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. And it's like, it is relevant, and it is what we're dealing with right now. And it's like there and there's unfortunately going to be a lot more chronic disease and chronic illnesses stemming from 2020 and 2021 and what we're dealing with inside the pandemic – on many fronts. Actually people who've had COVID, actually people are going to deal with some impacts of the vaccine, and then a whole bunch of other things that have been impacted because of the way we've had to live this last two years.
Kendra Vicken: Sorry. Yeah. I mean, that, that makes a lot of sense. And that's where some of those like long-COVID and post-COVID symptoms and issues come in then too, right? It's not always just a two-week issue. That when you're, when you're through it, you're through it.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Unfortunately not.
Kendra Vicken: And so what, what does that – what does that look like?
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah, what’s the difference?
Kendra Vicken: What do we know about that? Yeah.
Sarah Marshall, ND: So one thing that I even noticed, I had to get the definition clear in my head – because we just kind of throw those terms around – “long haulers” is the phrase that has been thrown around and u- (thrown around), it has been utilized for people who get COVID and they still have COVID and they still have COVID and they still have COVID and they still have COVID.
And it, the actual definition is “an active COVID infection lasting longer than three weeks”. So, my Sister technically qualifies for having had long-COVID cause it was more like five to six weeks – it was very, it took five weeks for her fever to break. And then she still had another good month of lung symptoms and fatigue and brain fog, and then there was some other things.
And now there's stuff though, that we're questioning, then it's – and this is that big giant “we won't know” – and there's research being done actively, but we can only get so much data because we only have had it for so long. But you know, some people have talked about increased levels of anxiety and depression after having a COVID infection that's not just about the pandemic.
And we're seeing now the connections to the neuroinflammation that happens, the brain inflammation that happens, and that there could actually be some specific alterations that happen there. So, long-COVID is really about the actual disease itself continuing on non-stop. Then there's post-COVID syndrome, which if you're a little confused about post-COVID syndrome it's cause we're all a little confused about post-COVID syndrome, and exactly how do we define it? And where's that line?
And it's like, well, if you had COVID for two weeks, and then you have nothing and then you have a new symptom and we can trace it back to being related to COVID then is that post-COVID? Or what if you had long-COVID and it becomes something new – is that now post-COVID? Are you still in long-COVID world?
This is where it's like… (questioning squeak)
And one of the challenging things to the research right now, and it, it makes sense that we're doing this, so this isn't a slam, it's just what we're dealing with is… most people, to be entered into a study, have to have been hospitalized. It's the like defining feature we’re utilizing in a lot of things is “were they hospitalized?”
But then people who are hospitalized are in a very specific category of disease, because there's a lot of people who didn't have a very severe COVID infection. They maybe even never had a fever, but are dealing with substantial – like to the point of being disabled cannot like, like as in qualified for disability and cannot work right now – impacts on their lives months after.
And these are people that historically with other viruses and other circumstances, cause this can happen with cytomegalovirus, this can happen with shingles, this can happen with all kinds of other viral infections (and probably bacterial and whatnot) diseases – but we haven't – these are a lot of people we used to say are… I almost said canoodling, that is not the right word! (laughter)
There is a medical term for people who just kind of like… malinger in their symptoms. And I kid you not, there were actual definitions in my medical lexicon about hypochondriacs, people who are faking severe disease, and then there's the whole world of, you know, somatic diseases where they're just… causing themselves to have an unreal disease because of their emotions.
And then there was this word… that I'm going to think of... that's not canoodling malingeling, malingering… I don't know, I'm totally not coming up with it! But my own chronic fatigue brain’s speaking now, but it's basically like people who just sort of laze about in the end of their disease and they're not really getting over it.
But, it's all of these terms, when I learned them, even in naturopathic medical school, there is an unspoken conversation underneath called “it's your fault and you don't have a real disease”. Like you should somehow be able to get over it. You should somehow be able to just knock it off. And there was – that was an attitude that's still, unfortunately, an attitude that exists in certain circles in the medical community, and how we interact with patients.
And so the good news about how many people are going to have post-COVID syndrome and deal with long-term impacts is we may actually finally break through this conversation of acknowledging how impactful, you know, a chronic viral infection can actually be, and, how mysterious it seemingly can be – although, we're figuring the science out on that!
Like why some people are having clots and other people are having nervous system pain. And that's the main thing – is fluctuating pain that comes and goes, like the symptoms are very broad because of the way viruses can impact different systems in the body really easily.
So that answer your question? Or did I just muddy up the waters even more? But at least we're talking now!
Kendra Vicken: No, I think that is – that definitely clears it up for me. I know, you know Tik-Tok’s not a reliable place to get medical information – but! It’s entertaining. And I've seen a lot on there about people who kind of what you were describing.
There was a user on there who talked about how she had like a pretty mild case of COVID like six months ago at this point, and now is having like major respiratory issues. And it has affected like her job – because she had a job, I believe, like waitressing, where she was on her feet, you know, but she gets too taxed. It's too hard for her to breathe.
And so then you hear stories like this, and then you'll hear terminology floating around like long-COVID versus post-COVID versus like what's real or not real. Right? Like you were kind of talking about and it's, it's good to get clarification on those things and that, you know, these are things that are really happening and these are, are very real considerations and something to be prepared for in certain circumstances.
And to validate that that's part of this experience.
Sarah Marshall, ND: And to validate the people around you, you know, if this isn't happening to you or there's somebody that you know… you know I've had a client who had a very mild experience with the actual quote unquote “acute phase” of COVID. And it's been almost five months, four months, and they're still not back to work yet.
And it's been a battle with their employer about, like, validating this ‘cause they never went to the hospital ‘cause they never, it didn't, it didn't even warrant it. Now on the flip-side of that, where our hospitals were at, I had another client who had very severe COVID. We couldn't get them into the hospital.
They wouldn't take him because he was “too healthy of a person overall”. And he had a very severe case, which we will get to is – make a note of this question – which is why to some people who are seemingly totally healthy or they're they have no co-morbidities or anything like that, have severe cases of COVID – if not even die of COVID? We can talk more about that too.
But what I wanted to also say about long-COVID and post-COVID and people who – we have it like the severity of the initial disease should dictate the severity of the length. You know, like that that's, that's some linear relationship, but here's something to know about the immune system that can bend this inside out.
So, I can't say that this is exactly what's happening in COVID ‘cause we don't actually have the research yet to say it, but this is, in general, in other immune system issues, fighting diseases and especially infectious diseases, is something that happens, which is: we actually need a strong immune system to have a strong immune response to a virus or bacteria or a parasite.
And what we actually see, like when I have a client who comes into my office with auto-immune disease, say lupus, and they tell me all about their lupus – and this is nothing against that person – but then they proudly tell me, “it's really weird though, I have this crazy chronic disease, but I haven't been sick in eight years.”
That's a red flag to me.
Kendra Vicken: Interesting…
Sarah Marshall, ND: Because what it's actually telling me is their immune system is out of whack. It's dysfunctioning in such a way that they're not able to mount a proper response to viruses and bacteria. Because in the world we live in, you can't escape them! You're going to be exposed.
Kendra Vicken: And a lot of what we think of as being sick is really, correct me if I'm wrong, are our body fighting it? Right? Like our fever is because our body's fighting off certain viruses, or…
Sarah Marshall, ND: Interleukin 6 produces the fever, which is a cytokine produced by T-cells, which is one of the types of white blood cells in our body. And then there's a whole bunch – and cytokine is another word that's been thrown around a lot, because what we're hearing is when people die of COVID, they die of the cytokine storm, but not everyone. Because you can also die of an over-reaction of the inflammatory response in the body.
And cytokines are, this is where it gets the, the, the lexicon and the specific science start to overlap with each other. There are actually some cytokines that are pro-inflammatory. They cause inflammation in our body. There's other cytokines that don't, and they – they’re working from a different mechanism.
And then there's antibodies, which are not the same thing. So – this is where if you're an immunologist, you can send us a post to correct the places in this that I don't quite get it right. Because I will do the best of my memory and my revisiting of immunology recently. But we have white blood cells, which are from our immune system and they're mostly made in the bone marrow.
And then they go up into our lymph nodes and in our lymph nodes is where they actually hang out with other white blood cells and they talk! And they're like, oh, there's a nasty fungus down on the big toe! And the other one's like, oh my God, I saw a bacteria in the vagina! And they all talk to each other and they're like… oh yeah, and then there's this cold virus that came into the throat… and they tell each other about the bad bugs that are in the body. And they swap information. So when your lymph nodes are swollen, what that is, is all of your white blood cells talking to each other and creating more and puffing themselves up and building themselves up.
And they're like having a big party in there so they can go out and attack. So swollen lymph nodes is one of those things we think of as being sick, but that's actually our body doing its job. And so then the white blood cells can fall into kind of two categories. There's actually way more, but we're going to just leave it here, which is B cells and T cells.
There's also macrophages and dendrites and natural killer cells and T helper cells and all kinds of fun things. And my immunology professor, who was Heather Zwickey, who taught that seminar on vaccines, I, she made us hand write all of her notes. Because she knows how we learn and she would draw this all out on a chalkboard.
She could write way faster than me, and she had all these cartoon characters. So I still have these images of like the big macrophages that are the garbage collectors. And I kind of had this image, like a macrophage was like Oscar the Grouch of the body, and would like run around and it, like – yeah it… but you know, it worked! It stuck with me 15 years later.
So, your T cells produce cytokines and your B cells produce antibodies. And there's another question you can earmark, which is – How can I be immune to COVID if I don't have antibodies? – and come back to that one. And so, with this is where the cytokines come from, and so in all of that, your body can have different kinds of responses depending on which cytokines are high.
Now, if we got to the place where individualized medicine was the norm, we would be doing blood tests on everybody who comes into an emergency room. And we would be testing all their cytokines because you could literally say which direction their immune system was reacting or overreacting based on this.
But it would be really expensive. Right now, just to even be able to do a standard blood count on every single person who walks in the door, to know, do they have a high level of white blood cells? Is their body fighting an infection, period? We don't even barely – we have eosinophils, basophils, monocytes, you'll see those on your blood test, but we don't get into the details of what are each of those cell types actually doing in the body. And just the cell count, it doesn't really tell you about the reactions they're having.
So then it's not always that more cytokines means more white blood cells – you could have a normal white blood cell count and you could have really high cytokines cause they’re busy! They’re active doing things.
Kendra Vicken: Right, right.
Sarah Marshall, ND: So that's where some of like, I'm not going to get into the details of which cytokine does what, but, that can help you understand why one person's having lung fibrosis and somebody else is having pain and tingling in their nervous system and somebody else is having depression and somebody else is having severe diarrhea and somebody else is having POTS, which is a common one that's coming up. Which is a postural tachycardia – like when you change position, suddenly your heart is racing really bad and people have been dealing with that.
And then there's also some issues around blood clotting that's coming up with the vaccines, which there's all this milieu of different immune system type reactions that starts to underst- explain why one thing is happening to one person, not another. And so, if you don't have a strong immune system, or, only one category of cytokines is working in another category is suppressed you could be very sick and never get a fever.
Kendra Vicken: Right.
Sarah Marshall, ND: But you don't experience being very sick because you're not having those outward symptoms. And that- those people in my assessment from what I know as naturopathic medicine are more likely to end up with a long-term condition because their immune system wasn't able to properly fight off COVID in the first place. But, you can then also have people that have a very severe reaction to COVID and they also have long-term.
So like, this is where there's no one answer.
Kendra Vicken: Yeah. And, and, and maybe this is a question for later, or maybe this is a good segue. I had heard somewhere on the internet probably, that you can kind of tell about that based on your response to the vaccine. Now, knowing that this vaccine’s an mRNA vaccine and not like one with the virus in it, does that still apply?
Like, are people who are having really strong immune responses to the vaccine? Is that a sign that they have a higher functioning immune system? And then people who don't have, you know, severe reactions to the vaccine, it, it means they don't. And, and – I’m kind of asking for selfish reasons…
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yup, yup, right – good!
Kendra Vicken: Because I did get the vaccine and I had like almost no response, I had like some injection site soreness for both doses and like no other symptoms at all. And so then it kind of alerted me when I was like, oh, that could be a sign that my immune system's not functioning well. So – Is that the case with the vaccine too?
Sarah Marshall, ND: So, nope! (laughter) And here's, here's the thing. Again, welcome to the soup. And what I mean by the soup is each individual person has different genetics. They have a different microbiome and you never know what's going on in somebody's gut ecology, even by looking at their health on the outside. It's very difficult to tell.
You can have somebody with a very sick or imbalanced microbiome that looked very healthy on the outside, and they may not even have any co-morbidities because your microbiome is going to change first. And a disease could come 10 years later, and you'll never even know what's going on at the beginning.
So, follow up question for you in-particular, which is, were you pregnant when you got the vaccine?
Kendra Vicken: I was, yeah. I was about 18 weeks pregnant when I got the first dose.
Sarah Marshall, ND: So, your immune system is completely different than everybody else's. The immune system of a pregnant woman is shifted so you don't reject the fetus.
Now in some places, the immune system of a pregnant woman is higher and in other places it's lower. So, we can't really say exactly, but, but that would be one component and that's not even all the components. So, let's pretend, and I'm making this up for the example, but I got to give something to stick this to let's pretend there are five ways your body can respond to COVID.
And that means COVID the vacc-, the virus, and also the vaccine and the point of the vaccine is to cause your body to be immune, to have cellular immunity and memory. If you had been exposed to COVID previously, and, you never actually got the disease – now here's another thing I want to create as a distinction for people:
You can have exposure to a bug, and your body can clear it, and fight it so fast that you never actually have a disease. So, there's the actual bug itself and then there's the actual infectious process that causes pathogenesis, which is the actual disease part. So, you could have had that. And again, there were, well, there you go. And what you don't know is with that exposure, was it enough to start to trigger some cellular memory, which would mean then when you got the vaccine, you would have less of a response because your body already could detect it.
Kendra Vicken: Right.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Then there's the part where again, still for that reason, your genetics and microbiome have to do with whether or not you ever had a severe reaction to the virus. Then there's the amount of particles you have to be exposed to, to get sick. So, I have the data here. Let's see if I can pull it up really quick.
It's 10 million particles, I think.
Kendra Vicken: (Laughter) It sounds like such a hard high number.
Sarah Marshall, ND: What we've discovered is I'll see if I can find it and make sure I correct myself if that's not the right one, but what we've discovered is in those 10 million particles, that pretty much means being in close proximity, talking to somebody for 15 minutes.
Kendra Vicken: Right.
Sarah Marshall, ND: The infectiousness of the bug doesn't change, the exposure to how many bug particles did you get exposed to is part of it, and, is it enough to actually cause disease and infection into your body?
So that would be another question is what, what, what was the type of exposure that you had?
Kendra Vicken: Oh, so mine, my best friend had coronavirus, in a shift that she got from work – she was a bartender – and at the time she was planning her wedding. So, she came over and we looked at some venues online and then I helped her try on her dress, again, you know, just to make sure things are fitting well. And then she got a call a couple hours later that there had been an exposure at her work and to go get tested. And so she did, and then it came back that she was COVID positive.
Sarah Marshall, ND: So you would say you definitely probably could have gotten those 10 million viral particles and I did look it up. That is correct.
Kendra Vicken: Yeah. I mean, it's definitely possible enough, you know, we've kind of troubleshooted that because it's like, I wonder, you know, like everyone at her work got it. And, yeah, you know I hung out with her for at least like 20, 30 minutes.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Right.
Kendra Vicken: Now, we're we weren't talking face to face and we've talked about like, maybe that was like enough of the difference. You know, we were sitting side by side looking at the computer and then I was zipping up her dress from behind her, so like maybe…
Sarah Marshall, ND: I love the way you’ve analyzed it, right?
Kendra Vicken: So maybe that's enough to maybe not have those 10 million particles, even though the amount of time was enough time, and we were in different seats...
Sarah Marshall, ND: Right. Yup. And when that's where there's different factors. Yep. And so what we do know from the data, and this is backed up by the research we've seen is: singing, salivating, and spitting – cause it's it's we, we say it gets transmitted in respiratory droplets, but like literally what that means is spit. That's where that's coming from. I mean, it is respiratory coming from the lungs, but it's going to come up through and be in your saliva. So places that have been really more concerning where people can actually have more likelihood of getting that 10 million vital viral particles exposure is in churches where there's a lot of singing and then bars and restaurants cause we're eating.
And as soon as we're eating and drinking, we're salivating more. And then the mother of them all is karaoke bars, because people are eating and drinking and singing all in the same place – and they've been seeing that a lot in Asia.
Interestingly to note though, and this might be where you fall into the category with your best friend is – we’re not seeing it spread in gyms, which is interesting because heavy breathing isn't the same thing as excess salivation. And you actually don't tend to salivate more in the gym, most of us don't, and so we're not really seeing it as much there. But then like prison system it's rampant because you are almost always next to somebody for longer than 15 minutes. It's very difficult to have people separated by six feet and all the things that come with that.
So, this goes back to the question, which is, did, does me having, you know, no symptoms to the virus mean that I had lower immune response. So, one thing is you're pregnant. Another thing is you have been previously exposed and your immune system might have learned something. Then there's these other components too, which is – it’s a coronavirus.
And we've had coronavirus around in the human system for a long time. And so, there are… the way the body creates specific immunity and, and there is, there's – there's specific immunity is learned about a very specific virus or parasite or bacteria, and we now know it can also be their own human tissue and it can be to specific foods – but what that is, is we're actually have a code of amino acids that are part of a protein or a peptide. And that coding of those amino acids actually register with part of the immune system as like the “flag” that we recognize is that’s the bad guy, we can't see the whole thing.
Our immune system actually doesn't memorize the entire monster, it only memorizes one little part of the monster. So your body could have memorized the part of a previous coronavirus that is similar to COVID.
Kendra Vicken: Interesting.
Sarah Marshall, ND: And then you're going to have some of that. And then there's also just the part where you're the system just didn't respond much with much of a fever or anything like that.
Now, generically, very generically speaking, if someone has a fever response to a virus at all, we consider that actually a good, strong immune response. But then, you know, it depends on the person and do they have auto immune disease? And do they have a history of cancer? And what else is going on in their immune system? Because all of that will skew different directions. Better or more confused yet? (laughter)
Kendra Vicken: Yeah – I think it's, I think it's really helpful to have this introduction, you know, and we can maybe just transition from here to talking about the vaccine in general. And you know, I'll just ask you right out – I, you've talked about it a little bit, but here's a chance to talk about it again.
Are you vaccinated? Did you get the vaccine? And you know, what went into making your decision?
Sarah Marshall, ND: So, so I did get the vaccine and I got the Moderna. That was what was available and I didn't worry in my particular case about which type I was getting. Although we now have some good science that's coming out, that if you have considerations – and what considerations? Some of the things I've already mentioned; immune disorders, auto-immune disease, cancer, whether you're in chemo, post chemo, or not doing chemo, your immune system operates very differently when you have cancer and there's, there's many other conditions that would be in those categories.
So this is an absolute go to your physician and talk to them about it. Granted the world we're in right now, there's a bit of towing the party line happening, where pretty much all physicians are going to say categorically, get vaccinated under all circumstances. But this is where I'm probably about to open my mouth and stick my foot in it, is to talk a little bit about – we should think about it.
And that people should be able to actually ask the questions and really evaluate the pros and cons, which the big thing is the answer to everything is, well, we don't know yet – but it doesn't mean then we're all safe and we shouldn't even worry about it. Just because we don't have the information or we can't stand on a specific result does not mean that we're perfectly safe and we should ignore any consequences.
So, it's like, again, we've got to talk about it. So, me personally, I did choose to vaccinate now to be completely honest, if I had taken the vaccine seminar before I'd been vaccinated, I would have probably come to the same conclusion, but I would have thought about it a little bit more in detail. So, I got the information after the fact… here we are.
Because I've dealt with chronic fatigue syndrome this last year and I did actually have auto- er um, antibody titers for cytomegalovirus and for Epstein-Barr virus. I probably should have rechecked those titers, taken a look at how my immune system was functioning as a whole. I might have even personally paid the money to get cytokines checked, which you can do through Lab Quest, Lab Corp or Qwest diagnostics. You'd have to probably strong arm your physician to get it done and you may have to pay out of pocket because it may not be deemed “medically necessary”, but those are some things I could have done to evaluate.
Now the tricky part about measuring cytokines is because we haven't done a lot of research with them yet we don't have known threshold values of what is high and what is low. And the reality is, it probably depends on the person. Which is another reason why measuring the cytokines might not be so great of an idea because – what are you comparing it to? If we don't know what normal values are, what too much or too little is, that's a very tricky part that is new science. Now you've heard it here first, in 10 years this may become standard practice that we actually do work that out and we do have measurements for those things. So, I chose to vaccinate and to be honest, a very large part of my rationale personally was less about me.
This was one of those where I knew that there could be a risk to it impacting my chronic fatigue syndrome, potentially making things just, at minimum, just harder on my immune system to function. I am aware of that there are things that happen where people are “never better since they've had a vaccine” that does happen and there's a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of controversy around the vaccine – to vaccinate, to not vaccinate – and I am not here talking about every vaccine under the sun, under every condition. I'm literally specifically talking about in this moment in time, in a global pandemic, and where we're standing in it, and who I am, quite frankly, as a physician, and as an American in the Western world, and somebody who can afford to be vaccinated, who can afford to deal with the consequences, if there are consequences from them, and I'm a naturopath so if I do have consequences from the vaccination I feel very empowered that I have this, this community and the people and the knowledge around me to do it. And I will transmit less virus if I'm vaccinated. There will be the likelihood of slowing down transmission and not having it pass on to other people.
So there was a big part of my decision that came from a public health stance. And you heard it here first because normally I am not about that at all, but I just, that's what came through. And then now looking back to be honest, there's just an enjoyment of life factor that I'm having, because I don't even have to think about it.
I mean, I got together with a group of friends last weekend and everybody was vaccinated. I bought a table off of Craigslist for my new house, and when I walked in the door, I could tell the person I'm vaccinated. They said, I'm vaccinated too. There's a peace of mind that is coming with that. Caveat though, just ‘cause you're vaccinated does not, it's not a hundred percent, it's not foolproof.
And that's some of where the debate is coming from, is, are we feeling too overly protected? Are we having a bit of like superhero syndrome around vaccination that we shouldn't? Because it's not foolproof, but I have counters to counters…
Kendra Vicken: It’s like birth control!
Sarah Marshall, ND: (laughter) It is like birth control!
Kendra Vicken: It’s like birth control – it works a lot of the time, but not going to work every time. Yeah. I mean, that's definitely went into, especially being pregnant, it was a hard decision for me. And it's something that I've spent a lot of time meditating on and kind of, for me, honestly, I think a little bit of it was like an, like a trusting my gut scenario.
You know, the other part of it, I have a cousin who is a pharmacist, so kind of like almost the opposite side of medicine from where you're at, but she's also pregnant. Well, she was, she just had her baby and she got vaccinated. And so I just kind of followed her example, I guess, in this case. And, and for me, a big part of that was learning that babies whose mothers were vaccinated while the baby was in utero or being born with immunity to COVID-19.
And I have a lot of family members who don't want to get vaccinated. And like you said, that's a highly personal decision, and I respect that. But I, I didn't want to put myself in a position to like tell people that are important to me that they couldn't meet my baby. And so my thought was, you know, I'm fairly healthy, and like you've said, I'm lucky enough to be able to be in a position where, you know, if it was hard on me, I, you know, can afford to take time off. I can afford to deal with those consequences had there been any. So that, you know, I can, I can let those family members like see my baby because my baby will likely be immune.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah.
Kendra Vicken: What a complicated decision.
Sarah Marshall, ND: It is – now… and here's the thing I'm going to flip it around and play devil's advocate on the other side, which is: part of my decision also though was, okay, so I don't get vaccinated. One: I'm going to have to be responsible for that in my communities, around certain people, including my parents and how I choose to participate in life.
And then I looked at, what if I get COVID? Now, I still could get COVID… and I still could, and we could. We could all be sitting here with everyone laughing at us in a year when a different viral strain shows up and these vaccines are null and void. Now the likelihood of that happening is low. Will there be other strains of, of COVID? Yes.
I mean, it's already happening. It's mutating and this is what we already know about coronaviruses and compared to other coronaviruses, which the common cold is one of them, our bodies don't clear this virus and becoming a hundred percent immune. We learn to live in concert with it. There are other viruses like this Epstein-Barr virus being one, herpes being another, chicken pox, which is actually a type of herpes is var- varicella.
These are viruses that our bodies never fully clear. They stay in our body and we learn to live with them in part. There's a very important part of our immune system that actually keeps those viruses latent. It keeps them from causing the disease. This is that thing of you can have the virus, but not have the disease.
And so, you know, you can have herpes simplex one, herpes simplex two, you can have, you know, we, all, most of us had the chicken pox. Some people have the chicken pox vaccine, but if your immune system gets out of balance and there's this particular way, it can happen, we will then have the disease come and create a pathogenic process like shingles from chickenpox.
And here's the kicker about this, where this actually comes from is a cytokine, which we've been talking about, interferon gamma. And interferon gamma actually helps keep these viruses latent. It keeps them suppressed. It's like a wet blanket to a big old hot campfire. We only have enough interferon gamma around when our body is continually exposed to other bacteria and viruses.
So, something interesting has happened in this last year (not interesting to the people that this happened to) but when we socially distanced and we wore masks and we weren't around other people, we didn't get colds. We didn't get upper respiratory infections. We didn't get the flu. We didn't get these other everyday run of the mill things…
Shingles has gone through the roof. Herpes outbreaks have increased dramatically. Epstein-Barr virus (me) that's gone up. So, we're actually seeing that th- our interferon gamma was not able to be tended to.
So here's a stat for you straight out of the research – which is for healthy adult humans we need to have about four infections per year to keep our immune system running properly.
Kendra Vicken: Wow.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that you're actually going to have a full-blown illness, but it might be that, “God, I feel like I'm coming down with something” and then 24 hours later it's gone, or, something kind of came in and over the weekend you kicked it out and it's done.
That is like exercise for the immune system. You're priming the pump, you're turning up all the right cytokines. You're keeping all of the joints oiled up and working, and it helps keep the rest of your immune system in balance. We could do a whole second podcast about how we've eradicated parasites from the Western world and there is a correlative increase in auto-immune disease.
And in other countries, they're actually using some types of parasites to intentionally create a balance in the body and it can actually make a difference in auto-immune disease.
Kendra Vicken: That’s so interesting.
Sarah Marshall, ND: And so, it's very radical to think about actually intentionally causing a parasitic infection, but this is an area that, that we don't do well, eradicating all microbes.
We, we evolved in a very microbe, rich environment. We need them on the outside of our body. So, this goes back to the other thing, which is, this is my understanding and I – I'm willing to be wrong about it – but my understanding about the way the immune system works is, it's not that your baby will be immune, you'll have the antibodies and if you breastfeed, you'll pass them on to your baby and she will have acquired immunity from you.
It's considered passive immunity because she's not actually the one making the antibodies, but as long as you do that… here's the catch; if you're not breastfeeding, she's not going to get it.
Kendra Vicken: Yeah, interesting.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Because the way that her immune system works, she doesn't even have the ability to make her own antibodies predominantly until she's about 12 months old.
That's something that comes online and that's the whole big controversy, one of the things around childhood vaccinations is – are we actually even working with the way the immune system works when we vaccinate kids at very young ages? Not going into that at this point, but she will get antibodies from you through your breast milk.
And what we do know from some really cool research is those antibodies can stay in her system for between three and five days. So even as she gets older and for kiddo- er, for mamas who are still breastfeeding, their kids, like once a day or once every couple of days, they're continuing to get that acquired passive immunity from you, from your antibodies through that breast milk, even if it's not their predominant source of calories and food.
Kendra Vicken: That's interesting. And, and this is, you know, I can share too, in the show notes, the article that kind of is talking about what you were talking about – it’s from Harvard, uh- University, but about the vaccine protecting mothers.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Here's the thing is we're actually, we are learning new stuff and we're studying a lot more.
So, when I, you know, posed this question to the panel members in the vaccine seminar about, do we vaccinate when we're pregnant or not? Is that safe? The big question was – we can't say yes or no, because we've been very unwilling to do double blind placebo-controlled studies with pregnant women.
Kendra Vicken: Right, right.
Sarah Marshall, ND: “You 30,000 women are going to get something they could potentially be toxic for you and kill your baby, and you 30,000 women are not!” Nobody would sign up for that study! But what's interesting is because of the state of affairs and where we're at, people are actually, we have, there's a big study that's going on right now with like, I think almost over 15 or 20,000 pregnant women who are getting the vaccine, we're actually going to learn a lot from this.
We're going to get a lot of data from women who were willing to get the COVID vaccine, that in other different circumstances, they would never have been willing to do it. And we're going to be able to learn more about that passive and acquired immunity and how does it affect our babies because of it.
So, thanks? (nervous compassionate laughter)
Kendra Vicken: Yeah, yeah! The other thing, and you can let me know your thoughts on including this, but the other thing that helped make my decision was actually a Netflix documentary called I think it's called Human Nature. I'll put it in the show notes too. But it's about the science of mRNA vaccines and how that works.
And it was something I was not familiar with at all. And, you know, the idea of taking any sort of like, live virus vaccine would have been like completely off the table, you know? I wouldn't have been willing to do that while I was pregnant. And even, you know, a dead virus vaccine would have been a little concerning.
mRNA, as far as like my exposure to that term, it was brand spanking new. But for me, I mean, not that this affects – the documentary is not about the vaccine at all actually…
Sarah Marshall, ND: They just had that in there
Kendra Vicken: It's about, it's about mRNA technology and the way that we can do genetic editing. And that concept was, I mean, it's wildly fascinating in general, it's a fantastic documentary if you haven't watched it.
But it was intriguing enough to me and alleviated enough of like, my fears about it, that like, that felt like the right decision for me. Again, I'll state that like a lot of my decisions felt for me more like a gut or like intuitive decision, you know, that I, you know, for prayer and meditation felt like this was the right decision for me.
But like you said, we'll find out a few years, in a few years we'll learn if that was a good or bad idea. (laughter)
Sarah Marshall, ND: You know, this has been like, like, there – I mean, there's no way to bottom line this. And it really does come down to a personal decision, and I am going to put the plug in – a personal decision in the context of this pandemic in the world right now, with like, the conditions across the planet.
It, you know, it was personal to me to consider the lives of everyone on the planet, but it was still, you know, it was both! But here's the thing – people have gotten COVID, and people are gonna be sick from the impact of that virus for a very long time, not everyone, but there will be people that did. And people have gotten vaccinated and we have strong data that shows, like, correlations between vaccinations and MS, correlation between vaccinations and autism, correlation between vaccinations...
And this is the thing, and I mean, I don't know why this could potentially be such a like, “oh my God, I can't believe I'm going to say this” because it should be basic; there isn't a drug in history or a medical procedure in history – ever – that hasn't had a downside. Of course, vaccines have a downside!
So do antibiotics, so do antidepressants, so do birth control, so does surgery…so does all of it! But that also doesn't mean it has no upside and it doesn't mean we should never do it. And it doesn't mean we should always do it. And so, there are, and here's the thing that I'm going to soap box about is – don’t vaccine shame, because you have no idea what that person is dealing with.
It is just as personal as an abortion. It is just as personal – probably should not have just said that – but it's just as personal of a decision as any medical treatment or procedure, which is: it's none of your business. And there are people that it is in their best interest to not be vaccinated because of the risk analysis and their circumstances and their genetics and what they know about their family and the state of their health.
So, the good news is, is for those of us who can take that risk and are willing, we can help protect them by having more of us vaccinated. And this is an imperfect medical world. Hey guys, guess what? Spoiler alert: the medical industry isn't perfect! It doesn't work perfectly. It never has. In fact, our medical industry is massively broken and totally failing in so many areas.
So then to hold this one thing up to such high status and criticism is totally throwing out the issue with the bath water. And it's, it is a hot button topic, and I would like to drill it down into the science where it doesn't have to be. And it really is about facts, and it's about choice, and it's about, you know, what we're… cause, cause that, that was a bit of what I looked at, as like…
I'm a good candidate for having post-COVID syndrome. So, my risk was, I might have something with a vaccine, I might have something from the actual virus itself and, you know, we don't have any data to say which one is more statistically likely than the other.
And then, you know, there's, anyways, I've said all that – I’m starting to repeat myself!
But one thing I would like to, you know, cause let's slip in the end and what can we do about some of this? Cause we should totally wrap it up. There are some things you can do if you haven't been vaccinated yet, and you're going to get vaccinated to actually strengthen your immune system and have your body be even more ready.
For an even a few days, but like a month would be awesome, which is you can alter your microbiome and you can do it in 30 days. And so, one of my favorite things about altering the microbiome is let yourself be exposed to antigens.
Antigens are all the little stuff in the world that cause us to actually react to stuff. And one of my favorite quotes of Dr. Heather Zwickey is, “You want to change your antigen profile? Lick the dog!” (laughter) So it's actually known that households that have kids that have dealt with a lot of ear infections, if you get a dog or a cat, the ear infections can drop by up to 40% because you're stimulating their immune system by exposure to antigens. Your kiddos have kits, you've got chickens, you've got bees, you dig around in the garden.
Gardening is another great way to change your microbiome – take up gardening. Then, for sure, altering your diet. And so even if it's just doing the Whole 30 for 30 days, that would be an excellent thing to do before you are going to get vaccinated. It also is going to be supportive to preventing actually getting COVID in the first place, is to help your body with lots of healthy vegetables and, you know, healthy proteins and minimize processed food.
That's a huge culprit to messing up the microbiome is sugar, processed, grains, processed, dairy, things like that. Then there's a few that we've talked about actually in Episode 13 of Season 3, when we talked about what can you just do in general to support your body? Well, there's some known things out there like Zinc, Vitamin A, that actually are supportive to your immune system and fish oil or other essential fatty acids that are supportive to decreasing your inflammation.
And even if you're just trying to prevent the inflammatory response your body has after getting the vaccine, I actually recommend: A, do nothing. Let your body run its course and have the symptoms it's going to have, knowing – guess what? It's going to be temporary. You mostly going to get through it in probably 36 hours. That's the best way to let your body respond to the vaccine.
Otherwise, what I did was I actually took a homeopathic remedy 24 hours after my first vaccine. And there are a whole bunch of different ones that are out there that are specific. There was one that came up – it actually felt a lot like a big giant spider bite or bug bite.
And so, my first thought was Apis or Ledum because those are both known for being really good for bee stings and for spider bites. But then I started thinking about it more for me personally, it hurt more when I was still, and if I moved around the pain started to get less and that was Bryonia and there's a handful of others. Sulfur has come up for some people.
So, there's some homeopathic remedies. Or good old Cannabis is a great anti-inflammatory, if it's legal in your state, that's it could be just CBD. You could do CBD THC with like a 1:20 or 1:4. I'm not prescribing that. I have no rights to prescribe that you need to talk to your practitioners and your healthcare providers about any of that.
But that's a known, very natural, anti-inflammatory. Turmeric is a known natural anti-inflammatory that the likelihood of Turmeric or Cannabis or fish oil or Vitamin A, they're not going to suppress your body's ability to respond naturally to the vaccine.
The only tricky thing with Vitamin A is if you take too much of it, it can cause a headache. And one of the responses to the vaccine can be a headache. And you won't know whether it was the vaccine or the Vitamin A, so don't do high dose Vitamin A, just do a standard dose of it. But those are all things that you can actually do to prepare yourself if you're not already vaccinated, to manage it the best way you can.
And then if you have any problems after – hire a naturopath. That's my shameless plug! Not me – I’m almost full! (laughter) You could hire somebody else. No, but the really, like there's tons of integrative practitioners and there's tons of chiropractors and there's tons of functional medicine doctors, and there's tons of functional medicine coaches who can support your body around any sort of long-term viral impacts you're having no matter what the source of it is.
Kendra Vicken: Great. Is there anything else? Is there anything else we need to know?
Sarah Marshall, ND: Well, we have to stop because, I mean, ya no, there's, there's so many more facets to this, but I'm really glad we did this episode and yeah, I said at the beginning…
Kendra Vicken: Yeah - the show notes will be robust.
Sarah Marshall, ND: And you guys really like, if you're listening to this and you're like, that's not true, or I read this, or whatever, like, we'll take corrections! I'll be happy to put corrections in because I wanted to give you the best that I have from what I've learned and what I've experienced in my own practice.
And it's a moving target and there's a lot of stuff that's happening, you know, in the research world minute by minute. And we're not going to know for 5 – 10 years. And then the tricky part is we'll never be able to say it was the COVID vaccine because there's so many other factors; increased pollution, increased issues with organophosphates that, oh, you know, what, what I can guarantee is: there will be a massive increase in auto-immune disease over the next 10 years, but it's not going to be just COVID.
There's going to be so many other sources. It's the world we live in. That's the other half of this episode I would like to do that we're not going to do right now is: the environment, our farming practices, our food practices, the fishing industry, I mean – I could go on! But we'll have to do it some other time.
Kendra Vicken: Maybe, maybe we put a pin in that idea and take note of it for Season 5, Episode 13.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah.
Kendra Vicken: And take our, you know, what we're doing to our microbiome out into the world and how we're affecting the world's biome.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah, exactly.
Kendra Vicken: This has been awesome, Sarah. I definitely am excited to do the show notes for this episode.
It's going to be probably one of our longer shows, which is good, because people should be doing their research and, you know, they should read some of these articles and it's a great place to start, especially if you're struggling to make decisions for, for yourself, for your family. And I'm glad, you know, you mentioned that it's a very personal decision and gave us a lot of good information to help us make that decision.
And man – what a powerful way to wrap up an awesome season.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Right? And an awesome year.
Kendra Vicken: Oh, the best year!
Sarah Marshall, ND: This was as far as. we could see into the future of HEAL, it was to this point, but now we've got, I mean, I have so many awesome guests I've got lined up for Season 5. I almost have all of Season 5, like scheduled, like booked out I know who we're interviewing.
And then more for Season 6. And I mean, I put this in most of the exits, but really you guys, if you have ideas for the show, if you have topics that you want us to explore, or if you have yourself, you want to share your story of the healing journey, your path, what you've discovered, you know, you can contact me and Kendra through the website at sarahmarshallnd.com under Connect.
And you know, if you want it, there's actually a place where you can fill out a form and request to be a guest on HEAL. I have now updated that. It's pretty awesome. And so, you know, whatever is there for you guys too – we want to co-create this with you. You- we would not still be here looking down Season 2 without you the listeners, and who's been tuning in and who's been actually, you know, whoever made it to the end of this episode to, to hear this really, we appreciate you.
So, so, so, so, so, so much. Thank you guys. Let's just do it for another awesome year.
Kendra Vicken: Yup. I am so excited to be along for the ride. And with that, I think that's a wrap. Thanks Sarah.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Thanks Kendra.
(music)
Kendra Vicken: Inspired by YOU, our community of over 4,500 incredible listeners, Dr. Marshall will be launching some courses and workshops in 2021. Be the first to know about them and other great tidbits of wisdom by joining our mailing list at SarahMarshallND.com. Thank you to Dr. Sarah Marshall for always showing up for us and creating a space where we can learn and heal together. For a full transcript and all the resources for today’s show, visit SarahMarshallND.com/podcast. Special thanks to our music composer, Roddy Nikpour, and as always, thank YOU for being here. We’ll see you in Season 5.