Heme Review is my new podcast.
If you want to learn more about the early 2020 outbreak, check it out in the link in
description below.
CB is a 35 year old man, presenting to the emergency room, unconscious.
His mom tells the admitting nurse that she found him on the floor, with an empty bottle
of rubbing alcohol in his hand.
CB had read on the internet that alcohol disinfects the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Afraid that he had been infected after touching his face at the grocery store, CB found a
bottle of 91% rubbing alcohol, and started drinking it.
Immediately after drinking the entire bottle, CB felt confident.
He wasn’t going to be infected this time.
Someone on the internet said it’ll burn a little on the way down, but in his mind,
the benefits of disinfecting himself, outweighed that burn.
As the minutes passed, CB started feeling dizzy.
The floor started spinning.
He collapsed.
His mom heard the noise and found him unconscious on the floor.
She called for 911, as he’s brought to the emergency room where we are now.
Rubbing alcohol’s real name is isopropyl alcohol.
Iso meaning equal.
Propyl from propan, which is a prefix denoting the quantity of 3, and referring to the number
of carbons.
And alcohol meaning a chemical moiety of 1 Oxygen bound to 1 hydrogen.
3 carbons, balanced, relative to the position of an alcohol Long chains of carbon, are oil.
Oil doesn’t mix with water at all.
But ALCOHOL GROUPS interact with water, because water is also made of hydrogen and oxygen.
Both the name isopropyl alcohol, and its structure, not only tells us everything we need to know
about what’s happening to DM, but it also tells us why drinking disinfectant isn’t
gonna cure anyone of any virus.
So how do alcohols disinfect?
Well, they disturb proteins.
On the surface of the SARS2 virus, are crown shaped spikes.
The word corona, means crown.
Crown virus.
These spikes are how SARS2 virus infects people, AND they’re made of protein.
So if alcohols interfere with proteins, and SARS2 infects people using a protein, then
rubbing alcohol SHOULD disinfect SARS2 virus.
— 70% rubbing alcohol is a better disinfectant on surfaces than 91%.
More doesn’t appear to be better here.
If 70% is alcohol, then the other 30% is water.
Extra water helps target proteins.
But while 70% isopropanol disinfects viruses on surfaces, it’s not going to disinfect
viruses inside the body.
And here’s why:
Anything you swallow, goes into your stomach, then absorbs into your liver.
The liver breaks things down into forms that the body can handle.
This is called metabolism.
Humans evolved a very specific way of metabolizing alcohols.
In the liver, there’s something called alcohol dehydrogenase.
De meaning the removal of, hydrogen, and ase describing an enzyme, which is a protein that
does chemical reactions.
-Ase is like lactase, which is an enzyme that breaks down milk sugar.
The body has no use for rubbing alcohol.
It wants to get rid of it.
To do that, it needs to make it easier to react with, in the hopes that the final product
easily dissolves in water and is collected by the kidneys to be urinated out.
When alcohol dehydrogenase processes isopropanol, it becomes acetone, which is the chemical
name for nail polish remover.
OK, so if someone is exposed to SARS2 virus and they get infected, it ends up in both
their lungs.
We’ve already established that drinking rubbing alcohol is going to pass it into the
liver where it’s broken down to acetone.
Acetone is a disinfectant too, so why wouldn’t it end up in the lungs to fight the virus?
Well, this brings us to a concept called distribution.
Once something is broken down by the liver, it enters the circulation.
Human body has a large volume of water and blood, so that acetone is going to get diluted
in that huge volume.
Drinking a bottle of 91% rubbing alcohol will overload the alcohol dehydrogenase in the
liver, and the acetone floating around will cause temporary brain problems, but it won’t
be concentrated enough to hit any virus in the lungs.
OK, so that’s rubbing alcohol.
How about, 60% liquor, like vodka or rum?
Well, the alcohol that humans drink for fun, is different.
It’s named ethanol.
Ethan means two.
The CDC says that 120 proof, or 60% alcohol can disinfect SARS2 virus.
But that disinfection happens outside the body not inside.
Ethanol is broken down by alcohol dehydrogenase in the liver.
Anything with an alcohol group, gets processed by this ENZYME.
The result is acetaldehyde.
This is what causes someone to become red when they drink, and it causes hang overs.
Acetaldehyde isn’t a disinfectant.
But it’s also not very water soluble, and the body wants to get rid of it.
So acetaldehyde is broken down again into acetate, which is a very weak vinegar, and
also not a disinfectant.
Vinegar can be a disinfectant, but when it’s weakened like this, it isn’t.
Drinking 60% liquor, won’t cure anyone of COVID-19 if SARS2 virus is already in the
body.
Inhaling it, won’t cure the disease either.
It would bypass the liver.
It would bring a first pass of alcohol right to the brain.
We don’t have good data on this, but at 60%, that’s going to negatively impact your
brain, provided it doesn’t damage the mucous membranes and lungs in the first place.
Alcohol inhalation misuse can cause Acute Respiratory Distress syndrome, which is what
happens in severe COVID19 disease.
The only analogy I have for inhaling really concentrated ethanol in the hopes of disinfecting
SARS2 virus in your lungs is that it’s like lopping off your leg to clip a toenail.
No benefit, and all risk, so don’t do it.
And the final alcohol.
There were news reports of people in Iran drinking industrial strength alcohol.
A prominent one being Methanol.
Methan being the prefix meaning one.
In the body, alcohol dehydrogenase turns methanol into formaldehyde.
This was the chemical used to embalm mummies.
Formaldehyde is a disinfectant, but it’s a poison.
And instead of a weak vinegar, formaldehyde gets broken down a second time to become methanoic
acid, which causes blindness.
The acid part spills into the blood, causing acidemia, acid presence in blood.
In high enough amounts in blood, acids can cause the heart to stop beating, meaning no
alcohols are good enough for curing COVID-19 inside humans.
They should be good enough to disinfect surfaces outside the body, in the right concentrations,
which brings us back to CB.
Acetone, nail polish remover, causes mild nervous system effects.
The body can’t break it down any further because of the balance part from the word
ISO.
The chemistry says these bonds are too hard to break, in humans.
So it’s a matter of time for CB’s body to work to eliminate it in his urine.
With supportive care, he came out of his coma, and was sent home a day later.
It’s good that he ended up being ok.
But it’s not good that the hospital had to use those resources during this pandemic.
There’s other patients who come in critically ill, and then there’s CB who came in because
he drank rubbing alcohol.
Don’t be like CB.
But how about another common disinfectant?
AC is a 40 year old man, presenting to the emergency room, with drooling and vomiting.
He tried to speak, but couldn’t.
An exam of his mouth and his throat found swelling, redness, and ulcers inside.
In the operating room, doctors immediately stick a tube with a camera down his throat.
Swelling and inflammation were so bad, that they couldn’t find his vocal cords.
A longer tube was stuck down his throat to look at his stomach.
Burns and dead tissue were found in the inner lining of his esophagus confirming that AC
is suffering from caustic burn injury because he accidentally swallowed industrial strength
bleach thinking that it would cure him of virus.
He later claimed he thought it was dilute and watered down before drinking it, which
is plausible, and here’s why.
Bleach is a really good disinfectant.
Household bleach is sodium hypochlorite.
If you take away the hypo, sodium chlorite is industrial strength bleach.
This brings us to a concept called equilibrium.
Household bleach is around 6% sodium hypochlorite, the rest is mostly water.
In this mixture, water interacts with the sodium and the hypochlorite.
If we break it down, bleach is multiple chemicals living together in a balanced state called
equilibrium.
These chemicals are Sodium hydroxide, which is a base.
A base is something that takes hydrogens.
This is opposite to an acid, which gives hydrogens.
And this balance is complete because, bleach has hypochlorous acid.
These quickly kill bacteria and viruses, but they’re not the only thing bleach kills.
Human cells are enclosed by a layer of molecules that have long chains of fats.
Sodium hydroxide from the bleach, doesn’t just take a hydrogen from these fats, it strips
off long chains of it.
Doing this, actually makes soap.
Immediately on contact, bleach rips open cells, spilling their contents out.
But it’s not done here.
Proteins live on the surface of cells, meaning they are freed once the fat layer is stripped
off.
Sodium hydroxide and Hypochlorous acid from bleach neutralize these proteins.
All of this immediately consuming the bleach solution.
By the time it gets to the stomach, it’s not really bleach anymore, it’s a mix of
soap, salt, and dead liquefied tissue.
And this is why it doesn’t cure COVID19.
It consumes itself on the way down because it reacts with everything it touches.
It never gets to the lungs.
If it did because someone inhaled it somehow, it’ll strip off the cells in your windpipe
and lungs causing burns there too.
Again, lopping off your leg, to clip a toenail.
AC developed a narrowing in his esophagus because scar tissue grew over time.
He had to undergo multiple procedures where a balloon was put into his esophagus and inflated,
to keep it open and was maintained on a liquid diet because there were permanent scars.
Alcohol and bleach are surface disinfectants.
They don’t disinfect inside the body.
They cause only harm, without any benefit at all.
So how about other things?
Some people say eating garlic will help fight SARS2 virus.
Well, it’s probably not going to.
Garlic probably has some antimicrobial properties, and this could be because of a chemical named
allicin.
There could be more chemicals, and that’s fine.
When you see something like this in a chemical, you can assume it’ll interact with sulfur
in the body.
Where’s sulfur?
It’s in proteins.
Just like the SARS2 virus spike.
But inside the body, it’s going to get broken down when you eat it.
You might say that garlic can boost the immune system.
Ok, suppose that’s real, maybe it is.
How are you gonna measure that?
And it has no role in treating a critically ill patient today.
I don’t need to wash my hands because I ate garlic today?
No, stop.
The only documented case of garlic doing anything for COVID19 is a report from Zhejiang province
in China, where a woman ate 3 pounds of garlic in 3 weeks.
This is what happened to her throat: she couldn’t speak because it was inflamed.
That’s it.
Don’t get me wrong, I like my garlic.
But if I have a fever, and im starting to become short of breath right now in March
2020, im not gonna be eating more garlic hoping that it all goes away, and neither should
you.
There’s also talk about ginger.
Look, SARS2 virus broke out in China.
Chinese people today, still practice traditional Chinese medicine, mixed with variations on
Western standards of care.
If ginger worked, they would have used it.
And SARS2 virus wouldn’t have spread like this.
But it did spread like this.
And finally, essential oils.
These have become the butt of jokes.
And I know people want me to rag on them, but they actually have compounds in them that
have demonstrated some antimicrobial activity.
But the game changes once these things are inside the body.
That’s the overarching theme for everything im talking about in this video.
The scientific phrase for this is in vivo, from latin meaning “inside life.”
These things are broken down into things that don’t disinfect, and if they do, they’re
not in the right amounts to disinfect.
They end up causing more harm than good in the body.
And for essential oils, the reality is the manufacturers of these oils have wide variability
in how much of the active chemicals are in their formulation.
One manufacturer might have more of one thing than other, one may have less than the other.
It’s not reliable, and it’s not enough to cure COVID19 disease and it could do harm
in falsely elevating your confidence that it has eliminated a virus when it hasn’t.
Oh and I can’t say the name of this in a YouTube video.
But there’s nothing disinfectant about this.
There’s nothing disinfectant about any of its metabolites.
The ending of it’s name -caine actually refers to anesthetics, meaning they usually
function on nerves to numb an area.
And vitamin C.
There isn’t great evidence for it on cold and flu.
If you’re gonna take it, follow the directions on the label.
Don’t double up.
So the general consensus is this.
Lots of things can kill SARS2 virus outside the body.
They don’t kill the virus inside the body, because the game changes in vivo.
At best, they don’t mess with COVID19 disease like garlic and ginger, and at worst, they
cause blindness and someone’s heart to stop beating like methanol.
At worst, it liquefies and strips off the inner lining of your throat and stomach, like
bleach.
Or at worst, it does nothing and gives someone self confidence that they’re clear of the
infection, when they’re actually not.
And they go out and spread it around the community because they think they’re virus free.
Don’t be that person.
Wash your hands after you come back home.
Wash them after you touch anything that came from outside your house.
When you wash, keep the soap on your hands for 20 seconds while rubbing them together
thoroughly.
It’s even better if you wash them a second time again for another 20 seconds right after
and then dry your hands with a clean towel.
That’s all benefit for prevention and little risk.
But if you feel fever, and cough, and body aches, then get that checked out.
Don’t pretend nothing is wrong if you feel sick, it doesn’t matter what age you are.
This is very important.
#Alertnotanxious.
Check out Heme Review.
Take care of yourself.
And Be Well.