David, could you discuss speculations that the COVIN vaccination is causing heart attacks in young people and how this can be addressed herbally? Could you also discuss the alleged potential health problems from “spike proteins” from the vaccination and how we could address these for patients? I am getting many questions regarding spike proteins and the vaccination and am reading a lot of conflicting data. Many people I know are looking for some type of nutritional/herbal protocol to address the perceived health challenges from the mRNA vaccines. Would love to hear your insights. Thanks.

While some vaccines are associated with rare myocarditis in young men, the risk of myocarditis from COVID is much higher. Here is a overview from JAMA on cardiovascular risks of MI and stroke in vaccinated and unvaccinated people. The risk in unvaccinated people are dramatically higher Of 592 719 patients with COVID-19 during the study period, 231 037 patients were included, of whom 62 727 were never vaccinated and 168 310 were fully vaccinated. Patients who were fully vaccinated were older and had more comorbidities (Table 1). In contrast, severe or critical COVID-19 was less common in the fully vaccinated group. The differences in age and comorbidities were reduced after weighting, while the severity of COVID-19 became less balanced. The median follow-up duration starting 30 days after COVID-19 was 90 days in the unvaccinated group and 84 days in the fully vaccinated group. The composite outcome occurred in 31 unvaccinated patients and 74 fully vaccinated patients, with an incidence of 6.18 vs 5.49 per 1 000 000 person-days (Table 2). The adjusted risk was significantly lower in the fully vaccinated group (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 0.42; 95% CI, 0.29-0.62). The adjusted risk was significantly lower in fully vaccinated patients for both AMI (aHR, 0.48; 95% CI, 0.25-0.94) and ischemic stroke (aHR, 0.40; 95% CI, 0.26-0.63). A lower risk for outcome events in fully vaccinated patients was observed in all subgroups, although some did not reach statistical significance, including those with severe or critical infection (Table 2). Discussion This study found that full vaccination against COVID-19 was associated with a reduced risk of AMI and ischemic stroke after COVID-19. The findings support vaccination, especially for those with risk factors for cardiovascular diseases. Study limitations include that diagnosis codes for reimbursement were used to capture outcome events. Although the operational definition in this study has been widely used, some diagnostic inaccuracies may exist. Also, there were imbalances in patient characteristics by vaccination status. The decision to be vaccinated is affected by multiple factors that may also be associated with cardiovascular risk. A robust model was applied to mitigate the effect of such imbalances, but the possibility of unobserved bias remains. Section Editors: Jody W. Zylke, MD, Deputy Editor; Kristin Walter, MD, Senior Editor. There is another article which suggests that in a small number of people the spike proteins can cause myocarditis (not heart attacks). The underlying pathophysiology is not entirely clear but inflammation seems to be a root cause, so systemic anti-inflammatories and cardio protective herbs - Turmeric, Hawthorn, Amla, Dan Shen, Boswellia may help prevent damage. All the evidence I have seen so far and I have read a great deal of it, suggests getting COVID(without vaccination) is worse than getting vaccinated and while the vaccines are not harmless, they seem to produce relatively rare serious adverse effects.

Thank-you David. This was helpful. Pine Needle tea has become the go-to herb for the anti-vax crowd, most likely for it anti-inflammatory properties. There appears to be a lot of emotionality on both sides regarding spike proteins and the actual cause of the myocarditis.

Pine needle tea is a nice mild anti-inflammatory but hardly specific or effective for antidoting a vaccine. I do not think there is any place for emotionality in the discussion for vaccines, science is the only tool that gives real evidence of efficacy, benefits or harm. No one in the medical field says vaccines are 100% safe, they look at the benefit vs risk and then make a judgement. Sadly the anti-vax crowd uses pseudo-science, feelings, conspiracy theories, cherry picked negative research to come to their conclusions. Can vaccines cause myocarditis in a small number of mostly young men, absolutely, but the research also shows the risk of developing myocarditis is 5-10 times higher in people who get COVID.