Radio Naturopath Episode 273: COVID-19 and Variolation, Iodine and COVID-19, High Fiber Foods for Health

There have been more developments in COVID-19. This week, I talked about the concept of variolation. This is taking from hundreds of years ago where practitioners in the East either powdered dried smallpox scabs and blew powder with a pipe into people's noses, or took fluid from smallpox vesicles and rubbed it into the skin of patients, so that they developed a few small lesions on their skin. In both cases, patients would experience mild illness and then immunity. This is before the process of vaccination was discovered. This process is called "variolation" because smallpox is caused by the variola virus. Well, two physicians, Monica Gandhi, M.D., and George Rutherford, M.D., wrote a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine describing this process, and assert that mask-wearing contributes to variolation. They describe several settings, including factories and cruise ships, in which there was mandatory masking and the vast majority of people got asymptomatic or mild cases of COVID-19. This is very promising, because if there is finally universal mask wearing, more of society can be reopened.

I also talked about a UConn study in which it was found that if people gargle with a 0.5% solution of povidone-iodine for 15 seconds, any COVID-19 is inactivated. This makes it possible that gargling and nasal rinsing with this low concentration of povidone-iodine could significantly slow down rates and severity of infection. This was studied intentionally to help people in the dental industry, where aerosolization of oral fluids is a feature of that work. 

I also talked about some high fiber foods that are good for you!

Radio Naturopath Episode 157: Interview with Diane Dorfer of Cobblestone Farm, Know Your Farm Fair; and Celeste Kurz of Spring Valley Student Farm, A UConn Learning Experience!

Today, Diane Dorfer was one of our guests. She lives down the road from Ron and me with her lovely husband Bryan Connolly and their two awesome kids, William and Cordelia! Diane and Bryan have this great farm, Cobblestone Farm, on Bassetts Bridge Road in Mansfield. They run a CSA out of it, and also sell at the Storrs Farmers Market. I have eaten their food, and it's awesome, especially Bryan's special PSYCHEDELIC HYBRIDIZED TOMATOES! Bryan is a Seed Saver, and preserves great varieties of seeds for posterity. He is a professor of botany at Connecticut College in New London. Diane came on to talk about farming, and also to promote the Know Your Farm Fair in Willimantic on February 24, 2018, at Windham Town Hall! There will be many farmers there, workshops and talks, and good farm stuff. We also had Celeste Kurz, who is an agriculture student with a Spanish minor and the treasurer of the Spring Valley Student Farm, and she was promoting the Farm Day here at UConn where students can get to know the farm, on March 23 from 4-6 PM! Spring Valley Student Farm is about five miles from the main Storrs campus, and students can go there and work and learn all about farming!