In this episode of Functional Medicine Research, I interview Dr. Sam Yanuck in a discussion about his latest paper on COVID-19, written with co-authors Drs. Joseph Pizzorno, ND, Helen Messier, MD, PhD, and Kara Fitzgerald, ND.  Their excellent paper outlines a phased approach to COVID-19 with specific strategies on prevention, management throughout the infection, and into the recovery period.  Dr. Yanuck has an erudite understanding of the immune system which you'll find to be extremely useful in navigating this virus.

DisclaimerNone of the information contained in this podcast and transcript should be construed as medical advice. This information is for educational purposes only. Please consult your licensed medical professional about everything related to this topic.

Below is a transcript of the interview with Dr. Yanuck on a phased approach to COVID-19

Dr. Hedberg: Well, welcome, everyone, to Functional Medicine Research. I'm Dr. Hedberg. And I'm really looking forward to my conversation today with Dr. Sam Yanuck. And Dr. Yanuck is the CEO and Director of Education for cogenceimmunology.com. It's an online functional immunology course whose growing community includes nearly 5,000 clinician participants from more than 60 countries around the world. He's an adjunct assistant professor in the program on integrative medicine in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine where he teaches topics in functional immunology. Dr. Yanuck is clinical director of the Yanuck Center for Life and Health, a functional medicine clinic in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where he sees patients with complex autoimmune disorders and other immunologically challenging cases. Dr. Yanuck has been seeing patients from everywhere since 1992. He also provides online consultations to clinicians around the world. And you can connect with the Yanuck Center at yanuckcenter.com. And today, we're gonna be talking about Dr. Yanuck's paper and his colleagues. They recently published a functional medicine perspective on COVID-19. And that paper is entitled "Evidence Supporting a Phased Immuno-Physiological Approach to COVID-19 From Prevention Through Recovery." Dr. Yanuck, welcome to the show.

Dr. Yanuck: Thanks, Dr. Hedberg. It's a pleasure to be here.

Dr. Hedberg: Great. So, this is an excellent paper outlining four phases of approach to COVID-19. Before we jump into those phases, why don't we just talk a little bit about who is at the greatest risk of developing COVID-19? And what would make someone at a greater risk for contracting the virus and having a difficult time with this particular virus?

Dr. Yanuck: Sure. Well, this is really a moving multifactorial equation. There are ways that a person can be surprisingly predisposed to having a severe case of the illness that may not be obvious. Those are kind of wild cards that relate to things like antibodies against interferon, and so on. And so the challenge here is that we can come up with a sensible sort of view of who is and is not at higher risk, and yet, it's important to understand that those views, those descriptions are going to be inherently imperfect because of this wildcard effect where there are cases that have been characterized where the idiosyncrasies of a person's own diminished capacity to kill this kind of virus may only become apparent when the person is in the ICU, when the person gets the virus. And despite the fact that there are, you know, 22 or something, they may nonetheless have a terrible time of it and end up dying of COVID-19, surprisingly, despite not meeting the usual profiles. So, that's kind of a caveat to any such attempt to describe or profile who is or is not at risk. And I can tell you just personally that I'm personally connected to someone, you know, by about a two-steps level of separation, a person who was, you know, feeling flu-like on a Friday.