Episode 10: Inflammation and Ibuprofen- Are they Really a Good Match?
There is a lot of chatter and controversy for claiming that ibuprofen, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, can worsen the effects of the coronavirus. What effect do NSAIDs like ibuprofen have on our inflammatory response (the first line of defense against possible infections)? Joined by her friend Mike, Haylie Pomroy explains the physiology behind the inflammatory response, how chronic inflammation affects it and how drugs like ibuprofen can potentially affect it. It turns out that you don’t really need to take ibuprofen in the first place! Listen in for more.
---
Listen to the Podcast here:
Inflammation and Ibuprofen- Are they Really a Good Match?
We're going to keep doing these recordings as long as there is important information that's out there and proactive things that we can do. I've been having a conversation with a dear friend of mine, Mike, who you all know by now. Welcome to the show, Mike .
Haylie, thanks for having me again.
The conversation is a good one and it's one that we need to keep having which is how can we during this time support our bodies? How can we support our community? What is the information that’s being put out there that we can maybe distill down a little bit and turn it into some proactive steps so that we can get through this together and thrive in this environment? That's a struggle. My kids have an amazing question for me and I said, “If you have time, please jump and ask these questions because I know there are many other people out there that have the same exact question, but also would love the practice steps that you and I have been talking about.” I'm yours. Ask me anything. What's on your mind now with all this that's going on?
I’m super grateful. I know everybody else is grateful, too. Thank you for taking the time. Thanks for answering my text messages. There has been a lot of different speculation. The French health minister made that tweet regarding ibuprofen. My daughter comes out of her room with her supplements that she's got in one of the bottles when she’s on her cycle that she takes ibuprofen. When I saw that bottle, my heart sank because even the possibility of this being a contributing factor to COVID-19 affects being worsened.
I thought, “I can't feed into that fear. I need to know the facts.” That's when I texted you. The European medicines agency said there's no scientific evidence for that and the French health minister should have never said that and other people are saying that he shouldn't have said that. At the same time, I think we have a responsibility to look at each of these concerns with a scientific mind and then make a well-educated decision. Why do you think the French health minister made that tweet? What direction do you think you might be going to?
I can only hypothesize about where they were coming from. The thing that we do know is that all of us want to have a strong immune response. We want to have a strong immune response to appropriate things. For example, viruses, bacteria or parasitic stress. We want to have an appropriate immune response when there's something that we're exposed to that can cause harm to our bodies. One of the things that are happening with chronic disease and chronic issues in our body, whether we're talking about cardiovascular disease, autoimmune neurological disease, or arthritis, when we see chronic inflammation, our body seems to dysregulate some of our immune response.
Specifically, ibuprofen and the mechanism in which it works is it does reduce some of the receptivity of inflammation to get to some of the nerve sites where we have pain recognition. It doesn't seem to create a positive balance in how we regulate our immune response as it correlates with inflammation. Our immune system is dependent on having a healthy inflammatory response. Our inflammatory response in the body is our first line of defense.
If you will slam the doors and windows shut so that something that's pathogenic in nature like this virus or parasitic or something from a bacterial perspective so that it does not have the capacity to get in. We need to have that first immune response and it's pro-inflammatory related. When we have chronic inflammation, our body becomes dull or muted in its first line of an immune response. What they're finding is when you take some of the anti-inflammatories and a lot of studies have been done specifically on ibuprofen, it seems to disrupt some of the mechanisms that allow our bodies to have one, a quick first line of response and a sustained healthy line of response when it comes to inflammation.
One of the reasons why people get relief from these medications is because they do disrupt that pathway when you're having chronic inflammation. My suggestion is to go at the root of inflammation whether it's from food, a nutrient perspective and herbal perspective and reduce that chronic inflammation so that our bodies can have a strong and healthy response. Even if it's an acute injury, be diligent about icing. Anything that can give your body and nurture your body and give your body support is important.
It helps a lot. I'm going to summarize it in different words. If I slammed my finger in the door, all of a sudden, my fingers going to swell up. That's the body protecting the rest of my body from potentially blood loss as other things of that nature. I would normally take something, however, in this current environment, the possibility of the possibility exists that taking ibuprofen, which might be let's say, that's my go-to because I have a problem with my liver and acetaminophen is not possible like it is for my wife.
We have ample supplies of ibuprofen. Normally, she would go right to that but in this environment, what I'm hearing you say is if you were to do that, there is the possibility that ibuprofen could end up causing that muted response and you want that full-blown response. You're not trying to give medical advice here but you're giving your own distillation. You want the full inflammatory response, that first line of defense.
The mechanism that would take you out of pain is the same mechanism that would alert your body to increase the immune response to any viral invasion. We don't want that muted. There are natural things that you can do like Boswellia, quercetin, bioflavonoids, a piece of grapefruit or icing. Those are good. All of those natural types of therapies that nurture the metabolic pathway back to stability and that's what we're looking at.
We've got to have stability in our bodies so that we can be adaptive. We can respond when we're stressed. We can respond when we're exposed. It looks like a lot of us are going to have exposure. The goal here is to have this robust, positive response within our body because all of those responses are micronutrient dependent. When we talk about swelling, that's a nutrient-dependent action in the body. When we talk about the reduction of swelling, that's a nutrient-dependent action in the body.
I know I'm always saying my kitchen is my pharmacy. I want you in the kitchen. I want you to cooking food. I want you using the grocery list, the shopping list that I've provided for you on the page and then if you are taking natural therapies, I want you to look at the ingredients of the ones that we recommend and make sure that you're getting those clean, natural phytonutrients that can help nurture your body's adaptability.
Some of those things that you mentioned are I am unfamiliar with. Where would someone find bioflavonoids and some of those other items that you mentioned? Are there specific foods that would be helpful in the anti-inflammatory process?
I've provided that food list. A piece of grapefruit, lemons, limes and all of your citruses would be important. All of the adaptogenics, if you can tolerate nuts and seeds, are a good form of adaptogenic healthy fats. I was always for a long time the person in our family having an autoimmune disorder. We would consider my immune-compromised. As my community knows, my husband got a brain infection.
We've been going through that and he's doing good. My dad was diabetic and what they call a brittle diabetic. I was concerned about those of them having a chronic inflammatory issue. The metabolism of Free Radicals is the one that I've been talking to everybody about a lot. It has an extract from what they call a white willow bark, and that's the compound that they reduced down to create aspirin. Aspirin now in itself has got like a Xerox copy of this herb. They've created it in a synthetic form, but the mechanism when they studied white willow bark and they looked at how it could support vasodilation and inflammation and the immune system, that's an important piece in the Free Radicals. The metabolism of histamine has all of the bioflavonoids in it. A lot of our community uses it for things like food allergies, inhalant allergies or bee stings.
We use the great one that we all have in our camping kit and our first aid kit. One thing during this time is that histamine response in our bodies allows permeability or allows things to permeate that mucosal lining that we have in our lungs and our nose and our throat. It allows things to permeate that normally would pass through the body. The bioflavonoids are in that and the natural inflammatory balancing micronutrients are in the Free Radicals.
We're using a lot of that in our family. My husband has been on those when we've gone through brain infection. It was affecting the brain, there was much inflammation and swelling. We doubled down on that at that time because it was an infectious base. It was an inflammatory base with the encephalopathy. It was profound about what we saw. I'm wanting to share some of that clinical experience that I've had and some of what we're seeing with our families, with our clients and I thought it was a great question.
I try to do everything outside of taking what would they would call a synthetic anti-inflammatory. I’m pro balancing inflammation through nutrition and lifestyle modification. I understand the concern with the liver. I understand the concern of the stomach and the kidney with ibuprofen. There’re all of those risk factors that I'm not trying to make those not as you have as much gravitas as they have. I know that with acetaminophen in the liver, that can be critical so be careful about that. Where my perspective came from is with it is the true reason to have that as a last line of defense is that it doesn't help get the natural anti-inflammatory and inflammatory hormones balance. That's where the immune system is the most profound. When you can strike that balance, that's when you become more resilient and healthier. That's what we're always striving for with our community.
I'm grateful to you.
I appreciate you asking me these questions. I have been struggling with how can I help and what can I do. You've been a tremendous catalyst for our community and I appreciate it.
No problem. Thank you. I want to repeat what you said. My preference is no drugs, always food. That's our mantra. Go to your website, HayliePomroy.com, check out the food list. If nothing else, do the food list that in and of itself, if you can still get those good foods, hopefully always organic as we talked about before. If you can also add the Free Radicals and the histamine as a supplement, or replay this and write down some of the other ingredients that you want to purchase them for yourself from a quality source.
That's an important part. This is the reason why I take your supplements daily is that I know you always focus on quality sources. I don't want this to be just about supplements, but at the same time, if you're going to be supplementing your diet, please make sure that you trust and believe in the person who created those supplements. If you don't know who it is, do your due diligence because there's no time. This is a good time.
We were all self-quarantining here and my son's girlfriend has been with us because she got stuck here in California. She was talking about coming into our family and she said, “You guys were probably the biggest consumer of our own product.” Which I've always said to you, I didn't intend on this. I found myself in the natural health world coming up against some disturbing stuff in bottles in the name of supplements.
I knew for myself as you, I'm conservative from a pharmacological perspective. I did the prednisone. I did the anti-rejection drugs. I know what a body feels like to be on 60 milligrams of prednisone. I lost part of my right kidney function because of it but I needed to create things and source things that I felt confident in making an actual change in my own body. That's where this all came from. We're sold out of the probiotics. We're doing everything we can do. We are one of those unique companies from a probiotic perspective where we utilize a technique and it's hard to get it. It's hard to source it.
A technique where each one's blister sealed. We're looking for the strains that are reinoculated. There are a lot of great strains out there that are what they call for the transient benefit, which means as long as they're in the system, they provide that immune support, but they don't have the reinoculation. I've always been hardcore on that. We’ve been through a lot from a health perspective. I'm always thinking of that person out there that needs that, that client out there that needs that, and my family that needs it. We're working hard to get those back in. In the meantime, we have a lot of prebiotics recipes on the website. Take your Free Radicals, do your Shake.
I want to say, thank you. You are a mommy to us all because you're making sure that your family is taken care of first and we all get the benefit of taking the stuff that you've created for yourself and your family. Thank you for the time, I appreciate it. Thanks for the explanation and thanks for making it not too scientific for me.
Anytime, Mike. We appreciate it. We appreciate you. Talk to you soon, Mike.
Thank you. Talk to you later. Bye.
---
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There is a lot of chatter and controversy for claiming that ibuprofen, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, can worsen the effects of the coronavirus. What effect do NSAIDs like ibuprofen have on our inflammatory response (the first line of defense against possible infections)? Joined by her friend Mike, Haylie Pomroy explains the physiology behind the inflammatory response, how chronic inflammation affects it and how drugs like ibuprofen can potentially affect it. It turns out that you don’t really need to take ibuprofen in the first place! Listen in for more.
---
Listen to the Podcast here:
Inflammation and Ibuprofen- Are they Really a Good Match?
We're going to keep doing these recordings as long as there is important information that's out there and proactive things that we can do. I've been having a conversation with a dear friend of mine, Mike, who you all know by now. Welcome to the show, Mike .
Haylie, thanks for having me again.
The conversation is a good one and it's one that we need to keep having which is how can we during this time support our bodies? How can we support our community? What is the information that’s being put out there that we can maybe distill down a little bit and turn it into some proactive steps so that we can get through this together and thrive in this environment? That's a struggle. My kids have an amazing question for me and I said, “If you have time, please jump and ask these questions because I know there are many other people out there that have the same exact question, but also would love the practice steps that you and I have been talking about.” I'm yours. Ask me anything. What's on your mind now with all this that's going on?
I’m super grateful. I know everybody else is grateful, too. Thank you for taking the time. Thanks for answering my text messages. There has been a lot of different speculation. The French health minister made that tweet regarding ibuprofen. My daughter comes out of her room with her supplements that she's got in one of the bottles when she’s on her cycle that she takes ibuprofen. When I saw that bottle, my heart sank because even the possibility of this being a contributing factor to COVID-19 affects being worsened.
I thought, “I can't feed into that fear. I need to know the facts.” That's when I texted you. The European medicines agency said there's no scientific evidence for that and the French health minister should have never said that and other people are saying that he shouldn't have said that. At the same time, I think we have a responsibility to look at each of these concerns with a scientific mind and then make a well-educated decision. Why do you think the French health minister made that tweet? What direction do you think you might be going to?
I can only hypothesize about where they were coming from. The thing that we do know is that all of us want to have a strong immune response. We want to have a strong immune response to appropriate things. For example, viruses, bacteria or parasitic stress. We want to have an appropriate immune response when there's something that we're exposed to that can cause harm to our bodies. One of the things that are happening with chronic disease and chronic issues in our body, whether we're talking about cardiovascular disease, autoimmune neurological disease, or arthritis, when we see chronic inflammation, our body seems to dysregulate some of our immune response.
Specifically, ibuprofen and the mechanism in which it works is it does reduce some of the receptivity of inflammation to get to some of the nerve sites where we have pain recognition. It doesn't seem to create a positive balance in how we regulate our immune response as it correlates with inflammation. Our immune system is dependent on having a healthy inflammatory response. Our inflammatory response in the body is our first line of defense.
If you will slam the doors and windows shut so that something that's pathogenic in nature like this virus or parasitic or something from a bacterial perspective so that it does not have the capacity to get in. We need to have that first immune response and it's pro-inflammatory related. When we have chronic inflammation, our body becomes dull or muted in its first line of an immune response. What they're finding is when you take some of the anti-inflammatories and a lot of studies have been done specifically on ibuprofen, it seems to disrupt some of the mechanisms that allow our bodies to have one, a quick first line of response and a sustained healthy line of response when it comes to inflammation.
One of the reasons why people get relief from these medications is because they do disrupt that pathway when you're having chronic inflammation. My suggestion is to go at the root of inflammation whether it's from food, a nutrient perspective and herbal perspective and reduce that chronic inflammation so that our bodies can have a strong and healthy response. Even if it's an acute injury, be diligent about icing. Anything that can give your body and nurture your body and give your body support is important.
It helps a lot. I'm going to summarize it in different words. If I slammed my finger in the door, all of a sudden, my fingers going to swell up. That's the body protecting the rest of my body from potentially blood loss as other things of that nature. I would normally take something, however, in this current environment, the possibility of the possibility exists that taking ibuprofen, which might be let's say, that's my go-to because I have a problem with my liver and acetaminophen is not possible like it is for my wife.
We have ample supplies of ibuprofen. Normally, she would go right to that but in this environment, what I'm hearing you say is if you were to do that, there is the possibility that ibuprofen could end up causing that muted response and you want that full-blown response. You're not trying to give medical advice here but you're giving your own distillation. You want the full inflammatory response, that first line of defense.
The mechanism that would take you out of pain is the same mechanism that would alert your body to increase the immune response to any viral invasion. We don't want that muted. There are natural things that you can do like Boswellia, quercetin, bioflavonoids, a piece of grapefruit or icing. Those are good. All of those natural types of therapies that nurture the metabolic pathway back to stability and that's what we're looking at.
We've got to have stability in our bodies so that we can be adaptive. We can respond when we're stressed. We can respond when we're exposed. It looks like a lot of us are going to have exposure. The goal here is to have this robust, positive response within our body because all of those responses are micronutrient dependent. When we talk about swelling, that's a nutrient-dependent action in the body. When we talk about the reduction of swelling, that's a nutrient-dependent action in the body.
I know I'm always saying my kitchen is my pharmacy. I want you in the kitchen. I want you to cooking food. I want you using the grocery list, the shopping list that I've provided for you on the page and then if you are taking natural therapies, I want you to look at the ingredients of the ones that we recommend and make sure that you're getting those clean, natural phytonutrients that can help nurture your body's adaptability.
Some of those things that you mentioned are I am unfamiliar with. Where would someone find bioflavonoids and some of those other items that you mentioned? Are there specific foods that would be helpful in the anti-inflammatory process?
I've provided that food list. A piece of grapefruit, lemons, limes and all of your citruses would be important. All of the adaptogenics, if you can tolerate nuts and seeds, are a good form of adaptogenic healthy fats. I was always for a long time the person in our family having an autoimmune disorder. We would consider my immune-compromised. As my community knows, my husband got a brain infection.
We've been going through that and he's doing good. My dad was diabetic and what they call a brittle diabetic. I was concerned about those of them having a chronic inflammatory issue. The metabolism of Free Radicals is the one that I've been talking to everybody about a lot. It has an extract from what they call a white willow bark, and that's the compound that they reduced down to create aspirin. Aspirin now in itself has got like a Xerox copy of this herb. They've created it in a synthetic form, but the mechanism when they studied white willow bark and they looked at how it could support vasodilation and inflammation and the immune system, that's an important piece in the Free Radicals. The metabolism of histamine has all of the bioflavonoids in it. A lot of our community uses it for things like food allergies, inhalant allergies or bee stings.
We use the great one that we all have in our camping kit and our first aid kit. One thing during this time is that histamine response in our bodies allows permeability or allows things to permeate that mucosal lining that we have in our lungs and our nose and our throat. It allows things to permeate that normally would pass through the body. The bioflavonoids are in that and the natural inflammatory balancing micronutrients are in the Free Radicals.
We're using a lot of that in our family. My husband has been on those when we've gone through brain infection. It was affecting the brain, there was much inflammation and swelling. We doubled down on that at that time because it was an infectious base. It was an inflammatory base with the encephalopathy. It was profound about what we saw. I'm wanting to share some of that clinical experience that I've had and some of what we're seeing with our families, with our clients and I thought it was a great question.
I try to do everything outside of taking what would they would call a synthetic anti-inflammatory. I’m pro balancing inflammation through nutrition and lifestyle modification. I understand the concern with the liver. I understand the concern of the stomach and the kidney with ibuprofen. There’re all of those risk factors that I'm not trying to make those not as you have as much gravitas as they have. I know that with acetaminophen in the liver, that can be critical so be careful about that. Where my perspective came from is with it is the true reason to have that as a last line of defense is that it doesn't help get the natural anti-inflammatory and inflammatory hormones balance. That's where the immune system is the most profound. When you can strike that balance, that's when you become more resilient and healthier. That's what we're always striving for with our community.
I'm grateful to you.
I appreciate you asking me these questions. I have been struggling with how can I help and what can I do. You've been a tremendous catalyst for our community and I appreciate it.
No problem. Thank you. I want to repeat what you said. My preference is no drugs, always food. That's our mantra. Go to your website, HayliePomroy.com, check out the food list. If nothing else, do the food list that in and of itself, if you can still get those good foods, hopefully always organic as we talked about before. If you can also add the Free Radicals and the histamine as a supplement, or replay this and write down some of the other ingredients that you want to purchase them for yourself from a quality source.
That's an important part. This is the reason why I take your supplements daily is that I know you always focus on quality sources. I don't want this to be just about supplements, but at the same time, if you're going to be supplementing your diet, please make sure that you trust and believe in the person who created those supplements. If you don't know who it is, do your due diligence because there's no time. This is a good time.
We were all self-quarantining here and my son's girlfriend has been with us because she got stuck here in California. She was talking about coming into our family and she said, “You guys were probably the biggest consumer of our own product.” Which I've always said to you, I didn't intend on this. I found myself in the natural health world coming up against some disturbing stuff in bottles in the name of supplements.
I knew for myself as you, I'm conservative from a pharmacological perspective. I did the prednisone. I did the anti-rejection drugs. I know what a body feels like to be on 60 milligrams of prednisone. I lost part of my right kidney function because of it but I needed to create things and source things that I felt confident in making an actual change in my own body. That's where this all came from. We're sold out of the probiotics. We're doing everything we can do. We are one of those unique companies from a probiotic perspective where we utilize a technique and it's hard to get it. It's hard to source it.
A technique where each one's blister sealed. We're looking for the strains that are reinoculated. There are a lot of great strains out there that are what they call for the transient benefit, which means as long as they're in the system, they provide that immune support, but they don't have the reinoculation. I've always been hardcore on that. We’ve been through a lot from a health perspective. I'm always thinking of that person out there that needs that, that client out there that needs that, and my family that needs it. We're working hard to get those back in. In the meantime, we have a lot of prebiotics recipes on the website. Take your Free Radicals, do your Shake.
I want to say, thank you. You are a mommy to us all because you're making sure that your family is taken care of first and we all get the benefit of taking the stuff that you've created for yourself and your family. Thank you for the time, I appreciate it. Thanks for the explanation and thanks for making it not too scientific for me.
Anytime, Mike. We appreciate it. We appreciate you. Talk to you soon, Mike.
Thank you. Talk to you later. Bye.
---
Legal Disclaimer:
By signing up via text, you agree to receive recurring automated promotional and personalized marketing text messages (e.g. cart reminders) from Haylie Pomroy at the cell number used when signing up. Consent is not a condition of any purchase. Reply HELP for help and STOP to cancel. Msg frequency varies. Msg & data rates may apply. View Terms & Privacy
Sign up for Podcast Alerts : Text PODCAST to 18338341850