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our immune system does not have the capability of
surveying this entire system that we have inside us that is
covered in microbes and effectively respond to things that
are infecting the body.
So the microbiome plays such an important role, and
if our microbiome is working against us, meaning you’ve
got a microbiome that is predominantly pathogenic,
you’ve got so many inflammatory microbes in there who
are, themselves, producing toxins and inflammation, all of
that works against this neighborhood watch function, and
your immune system then suffers because it cannot
monitor the system.
IMCJ: Very interesting, to wrap up, what would be the
short primary message you would tell a functional
medicine practitioner about COVID-19?
Mr Krishnan: What I would say is that everything that
they’ve been practicing and everything that they have
been trying to get their patients to do to reduce risk for
chronic illness, illnesses like heart disease, diabetes, cancer,
autoimmune disease and so on, those are exactly the
things that are going to be the most protective for us
against COVID-19.
It still goes back to the basics. It’s the gut health,
stopping the chronic low-grade inflammation, stopping
that intestinal permeability, improving diet, reducing
stress, all of those things are still, to me, the most powerful
tools we have in combating COVID-19 because what
happens, and here’s the other thing that we’ve realized with
COVID-19, is not everybody can spread the virus in the
same way. Everybody is susceptible to picking it up. We
can all get infected by it because we all have some degree
of ACE2 receptors being expressed in our body, but most
of the spread comes from something called super spreaders.
Super spreaders are people who are susceptible to the
virus, where the virus replicates much faster and in much
larger volumes compared to other people, and because it
replicates much faster and at higher volumes, they actually
spill out and put out more viral particles than another
person would. So those people who have high susceptibility,
become the bigger driver of the spread of the virus. There
are so many cases that have been followed and documented
where a single person has infected upwards of 400 people
through a chain of events.
So we can bring this thing under control by reducing
the risk of your patients becoming super spreaders, and
the way you do that is by practicing everything that you’ve
been practicing to reduce their risk for chronic illness
because it’s those same risk factors that drive us to become
susceptible to severe COVID-19. So, to me, functional
medicine is really going to be the big answer to this
pandemic.

IMCJ: Thank your time today. For more information
regarding this interview please visit www.imjournal.com.

Krishnan—Viewpoints Integrative Medicine • Vol. 19, No. S1 71