How Nutrition Affects Your Immune System with Dr John Lewis Ph.D on The Healers Café with Manon Bolliger

experience. So, I ended up becoming a magnet for all of these, you know, like students all the way to postdoctoral fellows who needed some kind of research experience to take the next step in their life and they happen to have some interest in nutrition or exercise and so I got an army of people that I had helping me at that time, which I was very grateful for. But then meanwhile, like you said, you know, I look around the university, and I see just so many bureaucratic people. So, all these people sitting in these bureaucratic positions, making these incredible six figure salaries. And then meanwhile, I’m not even making, you know, half of what they’re making, let alone close to their salary. And it just so discouraging when you’re a clinical researcher, you know, in the grind, or in the trenches doing all this work. And then meanwhile, you have a bunch of paper pushers, making these enormous salaries. And it was very, very discouraging for me after a while, and then, you know, forget about it to your other point related to, you know, the kind of work I’m doing in the natural sciences and nutrition, dietary supplements. And then I’m trying to, you know, get into that NIH leg, or the Alzheimer’s Association clinic, or the American Heart Association, you know, one of these big foundations. And if you’re not doing stuff related to pharma, or genetics, man, you’ve got to really have like, some significant connection to even be able to just sniff their money, let alone get it for research.

 

Manon Bolliger 06:10

Yeah. Yeah, no, it seems to be more and more like I had, I used to have a little bit of faith in, you know, the NIH or, you know, departments like that. But certainly, in the last couple of years, with all the studies they’ve had to take out, because the conclusions weren’t even consistent with the data or the data was not done, right. And all these things got published in, you know, amazing journals. And it turns out that, you know, it looks like politics and money. And pharma, is the head of everything. That is the science, you know, it’s the science of making money in spite of people’s health, you know, or in some cases against people’s health. Yeah, think about all these politicians and bureaucrats that say, trust the science, what the heck does that even mean? Science is to be tested, not trusting you do testing, you develop a hypothesis, and then you test it, you don’t trust it, you test it. And now it’s, anyway, we in Canada here, where I’m calling from, we’re in the process of having the government needing to show us the science, you know, whether it was for the flying mandates or for all kinds of, you know, excuses that they had, and there is nothing. There is nothing. Like you know, they cannot come up with anything. It’s actually shocking, you know, as we’re seeing, you know, things are anyway, I don’t want to be a discussion about this, but just saying it really, it’s very hard, because people are now brainwashed to think, trust the science when it’s like trust and science shouldn’t be in the same sentence. And you know, and then if you don’t, if you have something that sounds like it, it works, it’s been tried with people that are safe, let’s say first and digestible. And it’s not some new, you know, genetic modifying technique. And we see clinical results and all that, and then you want to actually do a study on that. It’s near impossible. And yet now people are programmed to say where’s the science. You know? It’s like, it’s so crazy. Anyway, that’s enough. Let’s get to real content. So, tell us a little bit about all of the polysaccharides your research what, you know, I think your link with immunology is super important, especially today, because the immune system of people are being deeply challenged. So, we’re doing so yeah, you take over now.

 

Dr. John E. Lewis 09:22

Thank you. Well, prior to, you know, whatever you want to call it all this for the last two years, there was at least in the United States, and I think in Canada to a big emphasis on brain health. I mean, we’ve, we’ve had just an explosion in the last you know, several decades of people with either Alzheimer’s, MS, Parkinson’s, obviously the three big neurodegenerative disorders but then you have all these other things related to it, you know, anything from children with ADHD to, you know, athletes or military or veterans with TBI or other types of brain injuries. Even this notion of you know, I’m a high functioning over achiever and I want to be focused all the time, right? So, you got literally the whole spectrum of society from youth… from cradle to grave, basically, where there’s some issue related to brain health. I was even writing a blog today about mental health and depression, major depressive disorder being the second leading cause of disability today, just behind cardiovascular disease. But I got started in the student line of polysaccharide research almost 20 years ago, due to a patient here at our Cancer Center at the University mining pathologist who completely switched his life from running a pathology lab to practicing nutrition. But when I met both of those two, they rapidly started educating me about their own lives and their own journeys, and how these polysaccharides are so amazing. And I mean, I can tell you in grad school, I probably had one lecture in biochemistry about polysaccharides, that could, you know, you could have done in 10 minutes and didn’t know anything other than well, polysaccharides are for a fuel source for ourselves. And that’s about it. But what ended up transpiring for me is, you know, coming from somebody that already had an interest in nutrition and supplements, it totally shifted my career into this path down the polysaccharide road. And what I ended up doing was running, again, several clinical trials, I think, the two most significant ones related to Alzheimer’s disease, again, from a conventional medical perspective, what can be done for people with dementia or Alzheimer’s, virtually nothing. I mean, if you take one of the five FDA approved drugs for dementia, you’re lucky if it delays decline for a few months. And then after that, you just kind of keep falling off the cliff to death. So, when you look at it from the perspective of not only the person being afflicted with the disease, but then the primary caregiver who is also completely stressed out, and health compromised, and then the other ancillary family members and people that help care for that person, it’s an incredibly costly disease. It’s costing the United States, about $500 billion per year. And that’s only with 6 million people with Alzheimer’s and another seven or 8 million people with other forms of dementia. So, we’re talking, you know, 14 million out of a 330 million population that’s costing us 500 billion per year in direct and indirect medical costs. I mean, that’s crazy. So, we ran this, this clinical trial and people with moderate to severe Alzheimer’s disease. And again, these are people that big pharma cares nothing about because they want to study either mild cognitive impairment, or people that are, you know, newly diagnosed with a very mild form of dementia, they’re not interested in really sick people. So, we ran this trial for 12 months, we looked at assessments at baseline 3, 6, 9, and 12 months, we did the neuro psych testing. At each of those time points, we drew blood at baseline and 12 months. And what we discovered was really nothing quite short of astounding. We showed at nine and 12 months clinically and statistically significant improvements in cognitive function. Now that…yes, we published three papers from that trial, that first one was published in 13. It’s hard to believe it’s been nine years ago, but I’ve not seen and I’m not trying to sound like I’m, you know, an egomaniac here. But I’m not seeing any other study, or any other articles showing that kind of improvement in people with such as severe disease. The other things we showed, for example, were improvements in TNF alpha. And VEGF. As you know, these are two markers classically looked at in heart disease and cancer, were probably our papers, probably one of the first ones showing that reduction in both of those markers. And in people with Alzheimer’s. We also showed a really nice improvement in CD4 to CD8 ratio over that one-year period, which is, you know, a very important marker, excuse me for overall immune function. And as we age, regardless of you know, if you have dementia or anything else, you want to keep that CD4 to CD8 ratio as high as possible. And then the other really fascinating thing we showed in our study was an improvement of just under 300% of CD 14 cells, which are a marker of adult stem cells. So, when you put all those things to…yes.

 

Manon Bolliger 14:20

Wow that’s impressive.

 

Dr. John E. Lewis 14:21

Thank you. So, when you put all those things together, when you have the improvement on the clinical side of the cognitive function, combined with lowering inflammation combined with modulating the immune system, and turning on the adult stem cell making process and by the way, I didn’t mention, the average age of these folks was 79.9 years. And they and they had had dementia for at least on average three years and a minimum of one year. So, these were really really sick people. So, when you when you give the body these concentrated polysaccharides that are very, very uncommon, if not completely out of the modern diet. You’re essentially giving the cells the things that they need to function properly. There are way many smarter people than me that are, you know, into biochemistry and physiology, looking at how these polysaccharides affect cellular function. But unfortunately, we just don’t get that many of them in the modern diet today. So, when you take them in a concentrated product, like what I’m now selling, based on some of this research, you get an amazing boost to your cells. So, it’s kind of like if you have a car, I use this very poor analogy, because I can’t think of a better one. But if your car has water in the gas tank, and it’s kind of sputtering along, it still runs, but it’s sputtering and doesn’t really drive that well. You get that water cleared out, and then you give it high test 93 grade gasoline. And now boom, suddenly, your car is running like its brand new again. That’s exactly what giving these polysaccharides does to ourselves. It’s just amazing. They’re so dynamic in terms of the coded information that they have to instruct our genes what to do to function properly. And it’s really the bio engineering of life.

 

Manon Bolliger 16:02

You’re clearly passionate about this, but I mean, it’s a huge, it’s a huge discovery, which obviously is being entirely neglected. Which is the problem. Yeah, well, welcome to the natural world. But in, and I appreciate that sometimes in supplement form, it’s the best way to take it one because it’s more concentrated, you can have exactly what you want. And these things may not be available easily and not in every country or place. But without, you know, trespassing on any, you know, proprietary rights or anything like what is in it? What are these things that, you know, because there’s some of our listeners might, you know, might be keen one to find out more. And so, we will have a link directly to you. But what in general, can you explain a little bit more what people could do? Who, you know, are now growing their own food, taking care of themselves a little bit more that way? Is there anything that you could recommend at this moment?

 

Dr. John E. Lewis 17:19

Absolutely. So, first of all this product they bring here that arose out of all of this research, not just the Alzheimer’s study, but the other trials as well. There are two key ingredients to consider when you’re thinking about polysaccharides. One is aloe vera. And the other one is rice brands. So with aloe vera, of course, as you know, humans have been using aloe vera for 1000s of years. But if you talk to the typical person on the street, he or she would think well aloe vera is great if you have a sunburn or a cut, or wound, you know something topical, but I can assure you, when you take out all of that water out of the gel, it’s about 98 and a half 99% water, you strip all that water out. Now you’re left mostly with polysaccharide there can be some other phytonutrients in there as well. But the one that I use is completely pure Acemannan or the aloe polysaccharide. Now you have the dynamic nutrient, the vital nutrient that you need to give to your cells and then the rice brand. Again, rice brand is not that common either, especially for people who eat white rice in reference to brown rice. Once you strip the bran off, man, you’ve really taken out all of mother nature’s goodies in the rice because now you’re just basically left with a simple carbohydrate, which you know, can be okay, but you really want to have that rice bran because that capsule is what contains all those different polysaccharides and other phytonutrients. So, the combination of those two things plus several other things that I have in here as well. Things like in acetyl cysteine tart cherry powder, flax seed, I have a very special type of clay. It’s a bentonite clay that’s actually been patented to be able to chelate out heavy metals and toxins and other things that it binds to and then just beautifully carries all that stuff out in our waist. All these things together create just a really biodynamic formula. And so, what I would tell people, and this is my own bias as you know now from us meeting is I’ve been eating a whole foods predominantly hoping plant based diet for the last 25 years. So, I would tell our listeners that even if you can’t take a product like mine, if you’re somewhere else in another part of the world, and you just don’t have access, you could still try to eat as many things as you can as long as they look good in nature. So, I mean, unless you’re blending something in a smoothie, that’s certainly one thing but you know, try to eat things with as little processing as possible, whether again, it’s rice, or, you know, apples potatoes, I mean there are so many different things that are good for us that have so much nutrition. But if you’re eating, you know, potato chips instead of a whole baked potato, well, you know, guess what, you’re going down the wrong path there.

 

Commercial Break 20:13

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Dr. John E. Lewis 20:55

Again, I like to tell people, you know, just in terms of general nutritional advice to eat things, the way they look as much as possible and in nature, and then try to eat them with as little processing as possible.

 

Manon Bolliger 21:07

Yeah, that makes that makes sense. As we’re talking, there’s a couple questions I have actually, about this. And because of our current situation, if it does help with Alzheimer’s, and we know now it looks like anyways, that it seems like an acceleration of in people have a whole bunch of conditions and diseases outside of the brand new one which is whatever this Sudden Adult Death Syndrome. But other people are getting more likely to get cancer or getting reoccurrence of cancers or rheumatoid arthritis, or any of the autoimmune diseases or MS. It seems like, you know, people with their sight problems, and so many things are coming so much faster now. It’s almost like it, it has accelerated that. And of course, they these things were…I mean, not the Pfizer documents they never actually officially tested on pregnant woman, though there are reports now that there were I think 28 out of the 29 woman who did develop pregnancies ended up with miscarriages. So, all this information has come out. We’re already…and this is very long question. I’m sorry. But a lot of people want to detox. They’re saying how to detox and when I was when I still had my license as a naturopath. You know, we would always say, well, Pregnancy is a time you cannot detox because it’s gonna go to your, to your fetus. And I’ve always had this question in the back of my mind is, yes, and like bentonite clay and other things like that you’re mentioning, it’s really…its foods, will the body do something negative to itself, like when you give the body everything it needs, and the mother’s health, let’s say improves, does is nature created that the fetus would get the negative effects or would the fetus improve? Like, do you know what I’m saying?

 

Dr. John E. Lewis 23:47

Yes, that’s I think that’s an outstanding question. And most of the work that I did well, in fact, no, I should let me rephrase that all the work that I did, we always excluded women who were pregnant or attempting to get pregnant just for the very, you know, ethical considerations of that state. So, we never really wanted to go down that road. My colleagues and I, but what I will tell you is, we have a two almost a two-and-a-half-year-old and she was born with my wife taking our formula daily. And when we started giving her solid food at six months, we started introducing her it was I mean, this is really my wife’s an optometrist. So, this is a whole different field for her, but I started giving our child our daughter, the polysaccharides at six months when we first started introducing her to solid food and I can tell you that the child again without sounding like an egomaniac is just amazing. I mean, this girl, she just comprehends so much. Her language skills are amazing every time a foreign, you know, some stranger meets her they think she’s like four or five based on her language skills. And so I’ve had other reports of women who were having difficulty getting pregnant, taking the polysaccharides. And then boom getting pregnant. My wife had a very healthy pregnancy, she did have a C section because he grew to be like, she was at, I think, 39 weeks, she was already 22 inches long. And like nine pounds, so here’s a big baby. And so, when it decided to have her, you know, is through a C section, right, rather than naturally. But I think what happens with these polysaccharides, in particular is that, again, it’s kind of going back to what I mentioned a little while ago, it’s giving the body the raw materials to function properly. So, through our own innate intelligence, our body knows what to do with these things, you know, it knows where to send these polysaccharides and vitamins and minerals, and all these other cofactors and elements that we get. And so, I don’t feel like our body is incapable of saying, okay, this bentonite clay is here. Now, let me attach this arsenic to it. So it will be, you know, excreted out the system as opposed to being deposited into an evolving or growing fetus. I really feel like our bodies are just so intelligent, that it knows how to do that.

 

Manon Bolliger 26:17

Yeah. That’s, that’s my supposition. Because we certainly haven’t seen any studies for the same ethical reasons that until, you know, more recently, you just don’t do studies, or you don’t say they for pregnancy, when there’s actually no studies to say that it is. That kind of insanity, as far as I’m concerned, it’s criminal. But I do find that there must be a difference because our body is innately intelligence. So, you know, if it does take things out of the mother, or in like you gave the example if they’re taking it before pregnancy, they get pregnant. Well, I’d be wondering whether I should stop that supplement. It doesn’t quite make sense. Yeah. And then you can look at all things, you know. Yeah. So, it’s, it’s anyway, that’s why I wanted to ask your opinion, because I don’t think I’m actually ever asked out loud that question.

 

Dr. John E. Lewis 27:26

But I think, I think related to all of that, you know, what, again, this particular formula that has been in, you know, evolution, if you will open up, actually, before I started, Dr. McDaniel was the one again, who really introduced me all this and then he and I had worked together for all these years. But you know, related to what we’re going through as a society as a species today, I think, for anyone who’s concerned about, you know, after taking one or more of these injections, and now what’s going on, if you feel compromised, if you’re, you know, you feeling like you have this long, COVID syndrome that I think gets thrown around too much, I don’t think it’s really bad, I think it’s actually something else. But the key to me, the bottom line to this is you have to modulate the immune system as much as you can, meaning we need to optimize its functioning as much as possible. And I have yet to see, I mean, you know, maybe you could argue vitamin D, maybe you could argue for cumin, and I’m probably coming off as very biased here. But I have really seen so much amazing research published not just from our lab, but from others showing how these polysaccharides are so incredibly immunomodulatory and beneficial for the immune system. I find it hard to put anything else above how these polysaccharides affect the immune system. Again, I guess you could make an argument for vitamin D. or, you know, for cumin, obviously, both of those have a lot of research behind them, and how immunomodulatory they are but man pound for pound or you know, ounce rounds, milligram for milligram, these polysaccharides in my world are just so important. And so crucial to keeping our immune system functional. And as we know as immunology has progressed over the last several decades, we know that the immune system interacts with all of our other major organ systems to really kind of survey what’s going on and modulate and regulate inflammation and all these cytokines and growth factors. And so, if our immune system is crapping out on us, then that just involves every other major organ system. And then what happens? Your overall health is compromised.

 

Manon Bolliger 29:37

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So have you had or are you in a position to…I know, research wise, it’s impossible. So, I’m not asking from that level, but are there people reaching out? Or do you have access to people who are asking for solutions? As to help their immune systems where you could give them this to test that out?

 

Dr. John E. Lewis 30:09

Absolutely, all the time. I mean, I think, you know, even though my product is called Daily Brain Cure, I tell people that’s really for a marketing purpose based on the claims that I’m utilizing on a label on a brochure on the website, because of all the science that I have, that supports those claims. But in reality, I could call this product, virtually anything daily heart care, immune care, stomach care, bone care, you name it, I can focus on any major organ system. But in reality, you know, most people today, as what you were alluding to, whether it’s due to taking some of these injections getting viruses or other infections, people have immune issues or immune challenges that they need help. And so, I mean, again, I may sound biased, but I feel like that they rank here is one of your go to solutions for helping to improve the mean function.

 

Manon Bolliger 31:01

Yeah, well, maybe. Yeah, we’ll connect to because I am connected to people that might be able to have you talk on networks where the focus is actually to help these a lot of these people. Because, yeah, we just, you know, it’s not gonna come from another drug solution, right.

 

Dr. John E. Lewis 31:24

No. Definitely not

 

Manon Bolliger 31:25

It really has to come. And I think people are, that are seeing what has happened, are becoming more aware. That’s the good news, you know. And I also, you know, I think there is a lot of hope, because that’s the other thing too, a lot of the unbelievably well meaning, and, you know, whistleblowers that have spoken out, but who have pure medical training, are not educated to understand the healing capacity of the body. So, often, their statements are so dire, like, you know, if I listened to I’m not gonna name any names, but it’s, I feel like, Oh, my God, you know, do we really need to lose hope is like, you know, can people actually recover from this, you know, and even people who don’t have symptoms, but it’s still, you know, a factory within producing things that are, you know, some people say, ticking time bombs. I don’t like that word. But you know, the thing is, if you hear that there’s no medical solution, from people who acknowledged that there’s a problem. It leaves people in a really dark place. And so, I really think that this is the time for all these natural ways to come out and give hope, because people need to see that they’re not alone. There is there are things that work, and you know, and there are solutions, even though we can’t get grants or all of that.

 

Dr. John E. Lewis 33:10

Absolutely. I along those lines, I have a very good friend who took two of the messenger RNA injections. And when he developed, and I don’t remember, I’d have to ask him, exactly. It was not like immediate, but within several months, he ended up developing cardiomyopathy to the point where he actually spent three days in the ICU at the hospital, he thought he had had a heart attack. And they catheterized him and everything. I mean, he literally thought he was dying. And then, you know, he got out of the hospital, he contacted me, he told me what happened. I said, you know, look, you really should be taking these polysaccharides I mean, he had done it on and off for several years but never really got very consistent with it not because he didn’t believe in what I was doing. It was just kind of like for him it didn’t really never really associated the true value of it, but I got him to take it. I got him on a very high dose. And this was after seeing, you know, multiple cardiologists trying to get more information about what the infection in his heart was doing. Or you know what it meant to him. I mean, he couldn’t even work out anymore. He was so weak and so out of breath, he couldn’t do anything, but I got him on a very very big dose of the polysaccharides and now here we are several months later he’s feeling much better. Is he totally out of the woods? I don’t know that but at least he’s you know functional again and exercising again and feeling like he can no actually walk across his house with not being short of breath and feeling like he needs to go lie down so there are definitely solutions but you know, like you’re alluding to we have such an inertia against nutrition and supplements with this you know, gigantic pharma thing that just how hovers over all of us. And then, you know, even what’s really sad to me is, you have all the people who are really highly educated in the medical world who unless they’ve gone out of their way, like you’re a natural person, you’re obviously a different professional. But you know, for like the medically conventionally trained people, unless they go out of their way to learn more about nutrition, they just look at things through the world of drugs, they don’t even think of nutrition as being a solution. So, imagine those are the really educated people. Now imagine the guy just walking down the street who has a high school education and wouldn’t know anything about nutrition if he wasn’t reading it from maybe a magazine, or, you know, his favorite website. So, wow, like, we have such incredible, enormous resistance to, you know, the message that I’m trying to promote to people and I’m sure you have in your career, as well. Sometimes I just feel like it’s overwhelming to even try to resist this, but I just know, the work that I’ve done, I’ve got good science, I help people with my products. And I’m gonna continue doing this to my last breath. I mean, that’s mine.

 

Manon Bolliger

Okay, well, I think that sounds really good. And I’ve got to admit that I was not as aware as I am now, about the role of polysaccharides I, you know, I know they’re important. But it’s like, oh, there’s so many things important, right. And so, I’m going to go digging a little deeper here. And what is the website we’re gonna put the link obviously, publish, but, and I’m on rumble and, you know, I still am still on YouTube. Strangely.

 

Dr. John E. Lewis

It’s, it’s simply DrLewisNutrition.com. And there’s no period after the Dr. It’s DrLewisnutrition.com

 

Manon Bolliger 37:00

Okay, and people could find that product, the name

 

Dr. John E. Lewis 37:05

Daily Brain Care. Yes, it’s the products there. My email address is there my phone numbers there, anybody can contact me I’m happy. I mean, I don’t really do a lot of one-on-one consultation or coaching with people but I you know, if people are interested in that, I do that occasionally. But I’m really focused on you know, distributing my product and hopefully at some point in the future if I have more funding, do more research that’s not really my focus now. There’s so much to be done particularly in things like Alzheimer’s, and I didn’t even talk about the multiple sclerosis study, but I can share with you the articles

 

Manon Bolliger 37:43

I would love that actually, because in them in what I’m setting up here. I’m reaching out also to people who are either contributors, inventors or have had a clinical experience because I am making a real point of not practicing medicine so I’m now a coordinator and facilitator yeah, to find out more and also put you in touch with already existing things I mean, I don’t think we have to worry about…there’s enough people in need.

 

Dr. John E. Lewis 38:24

Exactly right.

 

Manon Bolliger 38:25

And help people no matter what.

 

Dr. John E. Lewis 38:28

I would be happy to support you any way you would like educational if you’d like to, you know continue working together I like to you know, totally seeing you approved I can be completely non promotional with my company or my product. I can dispute strictly educational lectures, no problem if you’re interested in anything like that, I’m happy to.

 

Manon Bolliger 38:50

Okay, well, we’ll be in touch. Okay. Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

 

Dr. John E. Lewis 38:56

My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

 

ENDING: 41:33

Thank you for joining us at the Healers Café with Manon Bolliger. Continue your healing journey by visiting TheHealersCafe.com and her website and discover how to listen to your body and reboot optimal health or DrManonBolliger.com/tips.