Lesson 14: Recognize The Symptoms and Causes of Escalating Inflammation

The Symptoms and Causes of Escalating Inflammation

Mild and moderate COVID-19 symptoms can quickly escalate to serious, possibly life threatening symptoms. 

As I outline in the COVID-19 Symptoms document, you should call your doctor if you have Moderate symptoms, you should get examined should you have Severe symptoms, and hospitalized if you develop Severe or Critical symptoms.

Here we’re concerned with Severe and Critical symptoms that typically go hand-in-hand with hyperinflammation, which begs the question, 

Why do I bother explaining a protocol for alleviating severe or critical COVID-19 symptoms when you should be in a hospital at this point under the care of medical experts?

Three reasons:

1. I want you to get so concerned about the possibility of getting severely ill that you’ll do what’s necessary to avoid it by focusing on accomplishing the prevention and infection minimizing protocols.

2. Even though you’d be under a doctor’s care at this point, you could still help yourself get better by taking the nutraceuticals I’ll cover in the next lesson.

3. In the unlikely and unfortunate event that you would not be under a doctor’s care if experiencing hyperinflammation, given that you’d be in no shape to help yourself, a friend or family member might be able to review this protocol to understand what challenges your immune system is facing and how you may be assisted.

Severe and Critical COVID-19 Symptoms

Let’s begin with reviewing the attributes of severe and critical COVID-19 symptoms.

Severe COVID-19 Symptoms:

• Noticeably breathless and you can do very little.
• Breathless, even when sitting still.
• Unable to complete a sentence when speaking.
• Have to work hard to breathe.
• Chest, belly or back hurts when you breathe.
• Temperature is high.
• Chest is tight, as if you can't expand it properly.
• Can't keep up with your breathing, as if you had just sprinted hard (except you haven't).
• Not eating or drinking normally.
• Can't read or watch TV because you are too focused on breathing or feel too unwell.
• Others think you’re confused.

Critical COVID-19 Symptoms:

• You may have pneumonia and/or ARDS.
• You may have sepsis.
• You should be hospitalized.

When we covered Mild and Moderate symptoms, I made the point that without a reliable test, you can’t be sure if these symptoms are Covid related or are happening for some other reason.

But now we’re in different territory. If you experience any of the Severe or Critical symptoms I just reviewed, assume they’re from Covid and get to a hospital.

With this disease, some people with mild symptoms recover in a couple of days, or a week, and do well after that. But other people recover completely, or recover slightly, then get seriously ill seven to ten days later. 

And then there’s the risk that you’ll take a really long time to heal. People who experience this are referred to as “Long Haulers”. NBC News reports that Long Haulers can have COVID-19 symptoms that linger for weeks and months after a diagnosis -- Everything from joint pain and fevers, to hair loss and double vision.

More than a quarter of 1,500 survivors of Covid said they experienced ongoing pain, such as body aches, nerve pain and joint pain. In total, they reported experiencing 98 different symptoms. [1]

It’s likely that these illnesses and lingering health issues result from insufficient immune dysregulation and the cytokine storm.

So, let’s review how this happens. Batten down the hatches for some stormy jargon. We’re going to cover how to help downregulate hyperinflammation by inhibiting the NLRP3 inflammasome, and Nuclear factor kappa ? (beta)

NLRP3

Yes, I know that I’m throwing more sciency terms at you, but as I said earlier, some of the protocols I ask you to do are aimed at specific immune system functions that need to be supported at specific times during an escalating Covid infection and disease situation. So, although the Protocols will not miraculously heal you, they may help counteract specific Covid issues. 

In the case of hyperinflammation, those two issues are the NLRP3 inflammasome and Nuclear factor kappa ?. These are the key targets for inhibiting excessive inflammation. Like everything that has to do with the immune system, these are extraordinarily complicated. I’ll try to simplify it. 

NLRP3 ("NLR family pyrin domain containing 3") is part of the inflammasome complex; it drives lung inflammation and acute respiratory disease syndrome fatality risk in COVID-19. 

The inflammasome is a group of these small molecules of the innate immune system that are responsible for activating inflammatory responses. This happens by enabling the maturation and secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines.

The NLRP3 inflammasome, specifically, is the inflammatory response that occurs when macrophages and Th-1 immune cells release proinflammatory cytokines that dictate the inflammation responsible for the virulence and symptoms of Covid-19.

As mentioned, NLRP3 inflammasome is the inflammasome currently hypothesized to drive lung inflammation and some of the fatality risk with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in COVID-19. [2]

That said, people react differently to this cascade of inflammation in somewhat unpredictable ways, in terms of how pervasive the inflammation is, and what type of damage it does. 

Although those with comorbidities and older folks are more likely to experience this hyperinflammation if infected, sometimes seemingly healthy and young people do as well.

Not being able to properly downregulate NLRP3 inflammasome activation relates to the fitness of the immune system of the individual challenged by the virus. Those with a reduced immune fitness can demonstrate a dysregulated NLRP3 inflammasome activity resulting in severe COVID-19 with tissue damage and a cytokine storm.

So, let’s look at five scenarios that capture what your immune response could be to hyperinflammation. For this we are relying on an excellent study entitled, Severe COVID-19: NLRP3 Inflammasome Dysregulated. [3]