Dr. Roger Seheult explains heat treatment protocol used during the influenza pandemic of 1918
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An investigation into how clinicians treated patients during the influenza pandemic of 1918 led Dr. Seheult to surmise that hydrotherapy involving heat may influence the innate immune system, perhaps impacting the course of COVID-19 disease. Modern-day physical therapists use heat hydrotherapy practices to treat a variety of muscular ailments. Dr. Seheult outlines a low-risk protocol involving hot and cold towels, followed by rest that anyone can use at home. In this clip, Dr. Roger Seheult discusses the biological plausibility of incorporating heat hydrotherapy into the treatment of COVID-19.
Dr. Seheult: the protocols are based on the historical protocols that have been published. And you can actually find his book. It's called "Rational Hydrotherapy." It's written by John Harvey Kellogg. It's about 1000 pages long. It's a massive book. I think it's in Google Scholar. You've got to, sort of, find the book. But there's a number of resources that people are interested in. And if you were to talk to me about a year ago, I wouldn't have known anything about it. I've researched it. But the body of information that has kept this alive are really the physiotherapist or the physical therapists, we call them in the United States, because of hydrotherapy helping in physical ailments, muscles, things of that nature. And so they're the ones that have kept this information for a long time.
And so the protocol that I'm going to tell you is based on what they have seen and what they have done and used. And typically, what is this is you basically have the patient lie down on a surface. And there's various ways of doing it. But you can use towels that are wet, and you can heat them up either in a microwave or in a stove. But that's basically boiling hot water with a towel. And you basically sandwich that between other towels, you place it on their back, and you place it on their chest. So they're basically being sandwiched. They're the meat, and the bread is two very hot towels. And you also place a very cold towel on their head and on their neck. And what you're trying to do there is you're trying to heat up the body as much as you possibly can, and not heat up the thermostat, which is in the brain, which is going to sweat and try to get rid of that heat as much as possible. So what you have here is you've got peripheral vasodilation that occurs trying to give off the heat. But actually what's happening is it's picking up the heat, heating up the core body temperature, and you do this for about 20 minutes. Now, those towels will not remain hot for 20 minutes. So sometimes you have to recycle them and have more ready to go. So you heat them up, you cover them up. And if they're sweating, then you know that you're doing what you need to be doing.
At the end of this 20 minutes of heat, something we do that's kind of paradoxical and it's also probably the most uncomfortable portion of this treatment is you then basically put a very ice-cold towel and replace the hot with an ice-cold towel and you do friction rub. Basically, friction is the best way to explain it. This is something that's come along for 100 years, they've done this. When we look at the data and we try to see why they would do this, we believe that this seems to work because the cold causes vasoconstriction and it locks the heat in. So after you're done, it's not easy for the heat to dissipate through those vasodilated vasculature. But the other thing that it does is, just like we know when you take a cold shower, that vasoconstriction causes demargination of leukocytes, and that causes the amount of leukocytes in the solution if you will, or in the vasculature to go through, find the viral particles and report to their lymph nodes through that increased circulation. And that sort of jumpstarts the innate immune system in finding those epitopes and presenting them to the antigen-presenting cells. After that's done, the protocol is for them to lie down and to really not move for the next hour and to just completely rest. Now this is a student population. So they're young. I wouldn't expect these patients to need to go to the hospital. And I don't believe that in any of our cohort they've progressed or gotten worse.
If there's something that has biological plausibility, and it has very little risk, you know, what's the risk of hydrotherapy? Well, number one, burning yourself, you have to be very careful that you don't burn yourself. And number two, if you've got a predilection for cardiac arrhythmias, or tachycardia, or atrial fibrillation, it's probably not a wise thing to be exposing yourself to temperature extremes. So barring that, I think this has got pretty low risk and may be beneficial.
A large group of various cell types that trigger the body's cellular immune response. Antigen-presenting cells engulf and digest pathogens to produce many antigen fragments. These fragments are transported to the cell surface, where they are exposed to T cells to promote adaptive immunity.
A type of heart arrhythmia. Atrial fibrillation, also known as A-fib, is characterized by a rapid, irregular heartbeat. It occurs when the electrical signals that regulate blood flow between the upper and lower chambers of the heart become dysregulated. It is the most common form of heart arrhythmia.
A broad class of conditions in which the heartbeat is too slow, too fast, or irregular.
A region on a viral protein that immune cells bind to in order to drive a targeted immune response. Most epitopes are approximately five or six amino acids in length. A typical full-length viral protein sequence may contain many different epitopes to which antibodies can bind.
The use of water of varying temperatures for health promotion or the treatment of disease. Examples include use of steam baths or hot tubs, or the application of hot, wet towels. Hot hydrotherapy has been proposed as a means to mimic fever to treat or reduce the risk of some illnesses, including COVID-19.
The body's non-specific defense system. The innate immune system relies on a group of proteins and phagocytic cells that recognize and quickly destroy pathogens. Some viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, suppress the activity of the innate immune system.
A type of white blood cell. Leukocytes are involved in protecting the body against foreign substances, microbes, and infectious diseases. They are produced or stored in various locations throughout the body, including the thymus, spleen, lymph nodes, and bone marrow, and comprise approximately 1 percent of the total blood volume in a healthy adult. Leukocytes are distinguished from other blood cells by the fact that they retain their nuclei. A cycle of prolonged fasting has been shown in animal research to reduce the number of white blood cells by nearly one-third, a phenomenon that is then fully reversed after refeeding.[1]
- ^ Cheng CW; Adams GB; Perin L; Wei M; Zhou X; Lam BS, et al. (2014). Prolonged fasting reduces IGF-1/PKA to promote hematopoietic-stem-cell-based regeneration and reverse immunosuppression. Cell Stem Cell 14, 6.
A chemical that causes Parkinson's disease-like symptoms. MPTP undergoes enzymatic modification in the brain to form MPP+, a neurotoxic compound that interrupts the electron transport system of dopaminergic neurons. MPTP is chemically related to rotenone and paraquat, pesticides that can produce parkinsonian features in animals.
A heart rate of more than 100 beats per minute. During a tachycardia episode, the heart pumps less efficiently, reducing blood flow to the rest of the body, including the heart and brain.
The highest level of intake of a given nutrient likely to pose no adverse health effects for nearly all healthy people. As intake increases above the upper intake level, the risk of adverse effects increases.
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