← Dr. Osborne’s Zone
Dr. Osborne’s Zone
The Incredible Benefits of Quercetin - Fights Inflammation, Boosts Immunity, and More!
01:07:38
My go to source for quercetin supplementation: https://www.glutenfreesociety.org/shop/health-focus/immune-health/immune-protocol/ultra-q/ Discover why quercetin is one of the most powerful plant nutrients you can add to your life! In this deep dive,...
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:03]
A
This powerful nutrient may fight cancer, heart disease, diabetes, blood pressure, ladies, even pcos. And gentlemen, prostatitis. Stay tuned as we do a deep dive on the plant nutrient Quercetin. We'll be right back. You unlock this door with the key of compassion. Beyond it is another world. A world of science, a world of common sense, a world of sanity. You're moving into a land of both empathy and ethics, of nutritional knowledge and empowerment. You've just crossed over to Dr. Osborne's zone. Welcome to Dr. Osborne's zone. Today we're diving into quercetin, a very, very powerful plant nutrient that has a tremendous impact on your immune system, on the ability to fight inflammation, and so much more. Now, if you like information like this, make sure you hit that, like, button below and hit that. Subscribe and follow for more crash courses like this one. So let's dive in to quercetin. So what's quercetin? It's a flavanol, a plant substance or subclass. If you've heard this term flavonoids, that's quercetin. It's a plant polyphenol known for its antioxidant properties, discovered and isolated in the 1930s by the name vitamin P. Vitamin P. So technically, it's not a vitamin because it's not an essential requirement for human survival. But again, it was originally given that term, vitamin P. It was used to describe the flavonoid compounds thought to influence capillary permeability. Later, biochemical analysis identified quercetin as one of the key constituents responsible for these effects. Now, the name quercetin is derived from quercis, the Latin name for oak trees, which were among the first known sources of this compound. Let's take a look at some of its key functions and roles and benefits. So, number one, it has tremendous antioxidant capacity. It scavenges free radicals, helps to chelate metal ions. So we sometimes use it or see it in natural chelating products. It also helps to prevent lipid peroxidation, which is damage from that occurs as a result of damaged cell membranes as well as oxidative DNA damage. So antioxidant functions. It acts as an anti inflammatory. It blocks several key enzymes like lipid oxygenase and COX or cyclooxygenase. As a matter of fact, those of you who maybe have heard the term COX inhibitor, which is basically what NSAIDs do. Ibuprofen, aspirin, these all block this enzyme right here. Well, quercetin naturally blocks that enzyme without the potential side effects. It also down Regulates pro inflammatory chemicals like TNF alpha and interleukin 1 beta and interleukin 6. It has immune modulation functions. It stabilizes mast cells. And we'll talk more in depth about this. Those of you that maybe have histamine problems or hyperallergy problems or have been diagnosed with mast cell activation, you're going to want to really pay attention when we talk about the immune modulatory effects of quercetin. It has antiviral and antibacterial activities. So it actually is an antimicrobial, has cardiovascular protection. There are a number of research studies showing its effect on blood pressure and triglycerides and other key regulators that protect us from cardiovascular disease. We know it has tremendous cancer and anti cancer effects and we know it protects neurons and has neuroprotective impact. If we look at some of the research studies that have done a really good job of kind of breaking down the functionality of quercetin, you can see here on the upper left hand side, it says neurodegenerative disease. You've got protects brain cells, has anti inflammatory properties that protect brain cells. And it also has impacts on Mayo and comt, which are genetic components that play a role in neurotransmitter production in the brain. We know it affects diabetes through numerous mechanisms. We know it has anti inflammatory effects, predominantly inhibiting mast cell secretion. We know there are effects that it has on prostatitis and prostate potential for prostate cancer. And then we also see over here, gout. Gout is a deposition of a compound called uric acid, which are crystals that kind of form inside the joint. And you see this enzyme right here, xanthine oxidase. Well, quercetin has the ability to block that enzyme and reduce the potential for gout. We know it has antibacterial properties. We know it helps the bone because of its role in inhibiting or stopping osteoclasts, which are the cells that break your bone down. But we also know it promotes the growth of new bone for peptic ulcers. We know that quercetin can help promote mucus secretion. Remember, mucus is the stuff that lines the inside of the stomach, protecting those stomach cells so offers that protection. We know it has antiviral properties as well for eye. We know it helps with cataract and macular disorders because of its role as an antioxidant. And we also know its impact on the heart. Now, this study or this review of the mechanisms of potential medicinal benefits of using quercetin summarized a tremendous amount of Research, a lot of the research, we have multiple types of research on quercetin, some of that research being in cell lines, some of that research being in animals, particularly mice or rats. And also we've got a lot of human trials and studies on quercetin as well. You see in this summary the therapeutic potential and clinical effectiveness of quercetin as a supplement. Now, we don't just have to take the supplement. As you can see here, these items in this top blue box are foods that are high in quercetin. If you want to incorporate this into your diet, it's a great way to do that. But you can see multiple mechanisms of action on both sides. Quercetin helps with these mechanisms so that you can get to the benefit. Right, the things in green here, the decreased blood sugar, reduced starch hydrolysis, reduced cholesterol, improved renal function, reduced oxidative stress, and even helps to prevent pancreatic cells, beta cells in the pancreas, those are the cells that make insulin and so can help give those cells protection. And we know it reduces inflammation. And being the precursor to every known chronic degenerative disease, we like things that can help us with inflammation. Now there's also a lot of different anti cancer targets that have been isolated in studies. So again, this is cancer fighting mechanisms studied in cells. These are more studies based on cells as opposed to actual human trials. Unfortunately, there's not a tremendous amount of human research in clinical trials with quercetin, although I'll show you what we do have. But these are just some of the mechanisms of how quercetin helps to fight cancer. Many of these are anti inflammatory mechanisms, many of these are protective antioxidant mechanisms. If we kind of look at it at its core, some of these mechanisms help to stop tumor cell proliferation and some of these help with gene transcription, so reducing the potential for metastasis and cell invasion. Now if we look at this last diagram here, this is probably one of the better reviews, scoping reviews on all the potentials that quercetin has. As you can see here, a lot of this being redundant, but antioxidant, antibacterial, antifungal, anti inflammatory, anti Alzheimer, anti asthmatic, anti allergic, antihypertensive, that's blood pressure and that's protection from seasonal allergies, anti diabetic, anti obesity, antiviral and anti cancer. So a lot of potential there for this one very critical plant phenolic compound. Let's look at some of the human data. So these are studies done in humans showing the benefits of the use of Quercetin. And again, these are studies predominantly of taking supplemental quercetin, so using supplements. So you can see here in this one, this was an exercise study where they looked at healthy participants that were physically active to perform. This was a randomized single blind crossover study, everybody, this was a seven day study where they were giving 1,000 milligrams. So I'm talking about dosing here, 1,000 milligrams per day for seven days or a placebo. And what did they find? They found that seven day courses in supplementation significantly attenuated post exercise glucose induced insulin response. So it helped in that way, increased total antioxidant capacity. So it increased. There's an enzyme, a very powerful enzyme system in the body called sod, superoxide dismutase. So it improved upon that. It actually affected this byproduct of DNA damage called malandialdehyde during the recovery period and it increased the VO2 max. So this was again a study done, a small scale study only on 12 people, but showed improvement in insulin response, improvement in antioxidant capacity and a reduction of chemicals that are made that can cause damage while simultaneously improving VO2 max. So benefits to exercise induced inflammation. Now we've got human studies on quercetin supplementation in blood pressure. And this is actually a meta analysis of multiple studies. They looked at 10 different trials, 841 participants in these different 10 different trials. And so what did they find? Quercetin supplementation decreases blood pressure in normotensive and pre hypertensive patients. So it had blood pressure lowering effects overall. Now if you've watched any of my crash courses, I've talked about numerous other nutrients including magnesium and CoQ10 and arginine and vitamin B1, all affecting blood pressure, lowering blood pressure anywhere from three to five points. And this is systolically or diastolically. So when you have an additive effect, when you start combining these things, if you're jumping to blood pressure medication, keeping in mind that blood pressure medication comes at a cost, most of them deplete nutrients, especially CoQ10. Many of them deplete magnesium, many of them deplete B vitamins. And so when you take a medicine to lower your pressure that causes efficiency of nutrients that also help to regulate your pressure. Add that to quercetin. There's been a lot of debate in the literature and also online about people, you know, going carnivore versus plant based diets. And again, one of the, one of the things you're not going to get from a Carnivore diet is quercetin. This is why I'm a bigger and stronger believer. Not in just full carnivore or full plant based. I think we have a variety of foods because there's a variety of benefits to both sides. But at any rate, quercetin can lower blood pressure. Definitely been studied. We look at some of the other trials that have been done in humans. If you look at this diagram here, this is a summary of several. But you can see here on the left, T2DM stands for type 2 diabetes mellitus. So this is basically sugar diabetes. And they studied in this one, 72 women, 35 to 55, they gave them quercetin or placebo. The dose and this study was 500 milligrams of Quercetin one time a day for 10 weeks. And what did they find? It lowered systolic blood pressure. It also lowered Interleukin 6 and TNF Alpha. These are inflammatory chemicals. It improved total antioxidant capacity. And it lowered oxidized ldl, which is the type of LDL that's been damaged. And it lowered fasting glucose. So it had an impact and multiple effects in diabetics. We see another study here on type 2 diabetics. 24 patients, quercetin at 400 milligrams once a day lowered postprandial hyperglycemia. It's basically at lowered blood pressure very quickly after a meal. We see here in this study on hyperlipidemia, 400 patients, quercetin for two months, lowered triglycerides, increased HDL and lowered LDL. So there's very few things that can do all three. Fish oil is one of the things that can do that. Vitamin B3 can do that. But again, quercetin showing up in that trial to have those effects. Then we come down here. There's not a trial in non alcoholic fatty liver disease. 71 patients, 45 were healthy. They gave basically 40 milligrams, which is not a very high dose, 40 milligrams of quercetin three times a day. And this was done over a course of about two weeks. Look at the impact it had on parameters around the liver. It lowered. Ast, ALT and ggt, all liver enzymes, indicating potential for liver damage. It also lowered triglycerides and it lowered an inflammatory molecule called TNF alpha. So again, these are all human studies on the impact of quercetin. So if you're resonating with any of these problems, you know, you can always ask your doctor about, about taking it or you Could. You don't necessarily even have to ask your doctor because there's no real danger in taking quercetin, as I'll show you shortly. In this study, you can see here, type 2 diabetes, double blind, randomized controlled trial. Compared with placebo, quercetin intake decreased systolic blood pressure significantly in this study, almost nine points. You can see quercetin supplementation significantly reduced the serum concentration of tumor necrosis factor alpha, again an inflammatory marker, as well as Interleukin 6. Let's keep going. Lots of studies on quercetin, and in this one you can see 78 overweight women who were 25, BMI, body mass index or more with polycystic ovarian syndrome. So pcos. So these were women who were overweight with pcos. Generally, those of you that aren't familiar, pcos, one of the biggest side effects is that it creates fertility issues. But PCOS in essence is a form of diabetes. It's, you know, diabetes of the ovaries. And that's why quercetin is working, because we see the impact of quercetin on blood sugar. The primary treatment for PCOS medically is metformin, which is a blood sugar drug or a diabetic drug. Patients were randomized to receive 1000mg a day of quercetin or placebo. This trial went on for 12 weeks. What did they find? They found fasting blood glucose and insulin and homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance, or HOMA ir, which is a common marker on blood work. When you go see your doctor, all these decreased within the quercetin group. So quercetin lowered blood sugar, it lowered insulin and impacted insulin and impacted the homa ir. Here we have another one on cardiovascular disease. So this was effective quercetin after somebody had had a heart attack. So this is double blind, randomized controlled trial. And so what we got, we got 44 people receiving 500 milligrams a day of quercetin or placebo. This was done for eight weeks. And we saw a significant increased serum total antioxidant concentration compared to placebo. Lower TNF alpha, which again is an inflammatory chemical that affects the blood vessels in the heart. You see? So 500 milligrams of quercetin in post myocardial infarction patients for eight weeks significantly elevated antioxidants, but also improved the insecurity dimension of their quality of life. So this is basically a questionnaire that was given to these patients and they found improvement in their quality of life as a result of supplementation Here we have another one on quercetin impacting ovaries just with pcos, polycystic ovarian syndrome. So in this one as a review of studies, but what they found is that quercetin improves the quality of oocytes and embryos, it affects the proliferation and apoptosis and decreases oxidative stress in granulosa cells. All this important for fertility. Furthermore, quercetin can be used as a complementary and alternative therapy in ovarian cancer and it has beneficial effects in the treatment of PCOS patients. So again, several studies demonstrated our quercetin acts as an anti inflammatory, anti apoptotic and antioxidant and anti cancer agent. Now we come over here and we've got another one on quercetin. So 17 trials were reviewed in total. This is an analysis, a meta analysis of data. Quercetin intake resulted in significantly decreased blood pressure. Moreover, participants who consumed quercetin for eight weeks or more showed significantly changed levels of high density lipoprotein, cholesterol and triglycerides in trials with parallel design. So impact on many of the cardiovascular risk factors for heart attack, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, blood pressure, etc. Let's talk about quercetin's impact on autoimmunity. So look at this diagram here. This is a great review paper published in Frontiers in Immunology. And so in summary, here you see wide range of beneficial effects in biological activities, including anti inflammation, antioxidation, neuroprotection, several recent studies, quercetin has reportedly attenuated rheumatoid arthritis. So if you've got rheumatoid arthritis, pay attention. I'll share with you guys some of my clinical feedback in patients that we've seen with rheumatoid arthritis as well, but also inflammatory bowel disease. And that would be like Crohn's ulcerative colitis, celiac is an inflammatory bowel multiple sclerosis as well systemic lupus erythematosis in humans or animal models. So in other words, there are human and animal studies on quercetin in a variety of these diseases showing improvements. This review summarizes the evidence for the pharmacological application of quercetin for autoimmune disease, which supports the view that quercetin may be useful for their prevention and treatment. And if you look down here, I'll blow it up a little more. You see this diagram here? Quercetin taken by humans, right? We have a reduction in nervous system damage through number of different mechanisms that are oxidative in nature and Then on this right side here, you can see an anti inflammatory effect through many different mechanisms. And so these are what are oftentimes elucidated. These mechanisms are elucidated in cell line studies. And then once they have good data, they do human trials to see if it pans out in the body. And there's good data in using quercetin for several things. Let's talk about some of that. This particular study is another mechanistic study showing how quercetin helps to alleviate arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis. So they analyzed the therapeutic mechanism of quercetin for ra, showing that quercetin ameliorates inflammation by inhibiting neutrophil activity. So it slows down how aggressive neutrophils attack things. So quercetin inhibited neutrophil infiltration and reduced plasma levels of inflammatory cytokines and promoted apoptosis of activated neutrophils. So it got rid of those neutrophils that were aggressively hyper responding. These findings suggest that quercetin may be an alternative agent for the treatment of RA by inhibiting neutrophil activities. So that's one mechanism of action that's been elucidated. I want to show you. This is a human trial on RA females and women with rheumatoid arthritis. This is a double blind, randomized, controlled trial. And they were giving 500 milligrams a day or placebo. I want to say this. I'm really interested to see a lot of these researchers do more because 500 milligrams a day is a very low dose, clinically speaking. I mean, in my practice we go oftentimes 4,000 to 5,000 milligrams per day. And it's just been my own experience that if you're sitting around 500, there's a much lower effect than is if you get into this range here. But Nonetheless, they used 500 milligrams in this study and they had a significant reduction in early morning stiffness and morning pain as well as after activity pain. The number of patients with active disease significantly decreased in the quercetin group. So 500 milligrams of quercetin per day of supplementation for eight weeks resulted in significant improvements in clinical disease activity, including a reduction in TNF alpha and improvements in haq, which is a questionnaire. They ask about pain for these women with ra. So human double blind trial. I'd love to see that repeated with higher doses to see if effects or impacts were greater across a broader spectrum. In my Practice I can tell you they have been. Here's another study on some kind of mechanistically effects of supplementation with quercetin on plasma crp. Now C reactive protein, CRP is a common marker that's monitored in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. So if you've got ra, you've probably been to your rheumatologist and they're running this marker on a regular basis to kind of measure disease activity. And so in this, again this review published, what they found was that a significant effect of quercetin supplementation on C reactive protein, especially at doses above 500 milligrams a day and in patients with CRP of higher than 3. So if your CRP is higher than 3, Quercetin is helpful in that regard. Now what I was saying earlier about my experience, this is a study done with doses above 500mg. Again we go 4 to 5000 in a lot of these people and see significant changes as well, both in crp, but also in pain and in joint swelling and other disease markers and quality of life markers. Oh, let's hold on to that one. Let's look at this one next. So for those of you who are just biochemistry nerds and you want to just see more, so this is a mechanistic drawing, if you will of how quercetin impacts inflammation in the joint. And so you can see, here's a drawing, a blow up drawing of the joint. And over here we've got the immune effect of quercetin. So you see it helps to balance these different types of T cells in the immune system. So this is one aspect is it balance how the immune cells differentiate which helps with control of illness, but it also affects the antibody levels. So that's another mechanism, both immune mechanisms. Now these are more anti inflammatory mechanisms. And so through a number of different pathways, you see it reduces in ra, bone erosion, reduces cartilage degradation, reduces migration invasion, that that would be migration of white blood cells into the area, reduces oxidative stress, reduces the inflammatory response and increases apoptosis of immune cells that are creating the damage. So all the mechanistic aspects to improve the outcome in people with arthritis, these have all been elucidated in cell line studies and animal studies and have now been tested Again quercetin has been tested in human studies as well. Let's look at, let's move on a little bit from arthritis and look at another autoimmune condition which is autism spectrum. So asd. And so this study was done in children what they did is they used two flavonoids. They didn't just use quercetin, but they also used something called luteolin. So the combination of these two flavonoids they used in 50 children, 4 to 10 years of age, 42 boys, 8 girls were enrolled in this 26 week trial rather than. And so here was the conclusion. These results are encouraging in that the combination of the flavonoids, luteolin and quercetin seem to be effective in reducing autism spectrum disorder symptoms with no major adverse effects. Show me a medication that you can use that improves symptoms without side effects. You can't do it. They all come with side effects. Quercetin, in this case, improvement of outcomes without side effects. Okay, let's look a little bit more. I was talking earlier about pcos. Here's a couple of other studies. Again, human trials. And so we got 84 women with PCOS who were selected for this trial. They were given 1 gram of Quercetin for 12 weeks. And what was the outcome? Oral quercetin supplementation was effective in improving the adiponectin mediated insulin resistance. So it improved their insulin resistance and hormonal profile of women with pcos. Why is that important? Many women today struggle with fertility issues and they're diagnosed with pcos. What does the doctor do? Doctor puts them typically on metformin. The problem with that is it doesn't fix the actual blood sugar problem. It masks it, it doesn't fix it. But metformin also depletes CoQ10, it depletes vitamin B12 and it depletes folate. So here we are, you've got a woman trying to get pregnant. Doctor says, let's get you on metformin. We control your blood sugar better, we'll have better effect on your pcos, but simultaneously you're inducing these deficiency states. What does folate deficiency lead to in pregnancy? Something called a neural tube defect. It's one of the most common defects in babies being born. And again, if the goal is to get pregnant and have a healthy baby, we certainly don't want to induce nutritional deficiencies. B12 deficiency increases the risk of miscarriage. The reason I'm highlighting these things, and they don't have much to do with quercetin, but they do here, because you could use quercetin and increase pcos, as I've shown you, several human studies that validate that without these side effects. And then CoQ10 deficiency also increases fertility problems, especially in the antioxidant viability of the egg. So I'm telling you not to take your prescribed medication. But what I'm telling you is to understand mechanistically that when you do that, you cause this. And when you cause this, you increase the risk of the very thing you're trying to overcome. And me, you know, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Everybody gets to make their own decision. However, now you're informed. You see this one again, another study published not very long ago in molecules. Quercetin is a natural compound of flavonoids found in a variety of foods and medicinal plants. It can intervene with the pathological process of PCOS for multiple targets and channels and has few adverse reactions. Quercetin can improve ovulation disorder, relieve insulin resistance, reduce excess androgens. And this is one of the driving factors behind PCOs as well, regulate lipid metabolism, regulate gut microbiota and improve vascular endothelial function, which is this great significance in the treatment of pcos. So these are all just mechanistic in nature, but helping you understand that better. So let's move on to men. So this was a double blind, placebo controlled trial in men with chronic prostatitis. So they enrolled 30 men with category 3A and 3B chronic pelvic pain syndrome and prostatitis. They were given 500 milligrams of Quercetin twice daily for one month. So 1,000 milligrams for a month. What was the outcome? So there were two arms. In this study, 67% of patients taking quercetin had an improvement of symptoms, at least 25% improvement. Now, there was another group that gave a product called Prosta Q, which, which is a blend of quercetin and another ingredient. And in this study, 82% had at least 25% improvement in their symptom score. So conclusion? Therapy with the bioflavonoid quercetin is well tolerated and provides significant symptomatic improvement in most men with chronic pelvic pain syndrome. So if you've got prostatitis, chronic pelvic pain, you might just consider quercetin. Now stick with me. I'm going to be talking more about chronic pain directly with quercetin in just a moment. So it's not just prostatitis pain or pelvic pain syndromes. Okay, here's another one on benefits of quercetin, this one specifically after intensive exercise. And so in this study it was double blind. Three weeks of Quercetin, 1,000 milligrams or a placebo. And what they found is that quercetin Significantly reduced upper respiratory tract infection incidence in cyclists during the two week period after intensified exercise. So one of the side effects of super intense exercise is people get respiratory infections. They get sick because they push their body so hard. What this study is saying is that taking quercetin reduced the potential for their illness. Now let's go into more infectious disease. So let's just look at this chart. I told you earlier that quercetin's antibacterial, anti inflammatory, antifungal and antiviral. These are some of the mechanistic actions of quercetin. And these are studies done in cell lines and in animals. But you can see here quercetin antibacterial activity, you know, all the way down. And then we get into antifungal. Quercetin has antifungal activities, anti inflammatory activities, antiviral activities. We talked about diabetes and blood sugar a moment ago. So a lot of benefit in the microbial foundation or microbial realm of quercetin. And let's talk specifically about, you know, what they, what we used to say, the disease that shall not be named the COVID You know, God forbid you talk about anything other than, you know, getting pumped full of chemicals without getting censored. But nonetheless, here we are. The therapeutic potential of quercetin against Covid. So this isn't what you're looking at here is the mechanisms of what have been discovered. The great thing about COVID was that a lot of research got done on a lot of natural treatments because doctors all over the world were looking for ways to combat Covid. And so here you can see that one of the effects of quercetin is that it affects the expression of ACE2 receptors in the lung and in the GI tract, which is where Covid can basically come into play. Covid docks into those ACE2 receptors and that's how we become affected. But quercetin can help with that. We also know that as an anti inflammatory and antioxidant, it can reduce that cytokine storm that so many people dealt with. We also know that quercetin can help to block the proteins produced by the virus. We know that quercetin is also a zinc ionophore. What does that mean? Is that it helps get zinc into the cell and zinc has tremendous antiviral activity. I mean, one of the most effective natural antivirals in the world is zinc. And quercetin helps zinc get into the cells so that it can have that impact. So those are mechanisms. Now let's talk about human studies. And so I've got A summary of some of the some of the studies that have been done. So this particular one, 21 outpatients, 200 milligrams of Quercetin three times a day. What was the result? Shortened the recovery time and severity of COVID 19. Improvement in the blood parameters. So it improved something called ldh, which is lactate dehydrogenase, an enzyme that's released from damaged muscle and liver. Reduced ferritin. Ferritin. Elevated ferritin is a marker for inflammation. It also reduced CRP and D dimer, also markers of inflammation. D dimer is. We mentioned CRP earlier, but D dimer is a marker for micro clotting of the blood and so quercetin help with that. Again, a human trial. Here's another human trial. 153 COVID 19 outpatients, one gram a day. They found a decrease in the recovery time, improvements in oxygen and a reduction in hospitalization need. They also found that it had anti fatigue. So many people are struggling with the fatigue, especially after the illness. And they found it had a pro appetite. So it improved appetite in these patients. Then we have another trial down here. 250 milligrams twice a day. Again, these are really low doses folks. I want to iterate that too. Quercetin is showing tremendous benefit at low doses. Imagine studies being done with 1,000 to 5,000 milligrams of Quercetin. That's really what I'd like to see. But nonetheless, this is 250 milligrams two times a day. So 500 milligrams among 120 subjects. More protective effects against COVID 19 than the placebo. Okay, what else do we got? We got more Covid studies. 429 patients using a composition comprising of quercetin, vitamin C and bromelain. By the way, when you put these things together, it's like supercharged. It kicks it up a notch. So what did they find? Improves the recovery rate and the blood parameters. 43 patients as a possible treatment of COVID 19. It decreased the recovery time and it decreased the symptoms of fatigue and cough of COVID 19 patients. So improvements. Again, we're talking about something that doesn't have any side effects, something that doesn't have any negative downside. It just helps. In this study you can see here 200 milligrams three times a day. So 600 milligrams a day shortened recovery time and severity of disease. Improvement of the blood parameters. We've got down here again, improvement in recovery time, oxygen as well as anti Fatigue and increased appetite. So COVID 19 treatments with Quercetin shown to be very helpful. Now since we're talking about the immune system, let's talk about some additional elements here. So, anti cancer potential of quercetin. This was a review you see here. Quercetin is an outstanding antioxidant that has a well documented role in reducing different human cancers. Quercetin exhibits direct pro apoptotic effects on tumor cells. So basically it helps tumor cells kill themselves and thus can inhibit the progression of numerous human cancers. The anti cancer effect of quercetin has been documented in numerous in vitro and in vivo studies that involved several cell lines and animal models. On the other hand, the high toxic effect of quercetin against cancer cells is accompanied with little or no side effects. I mean that's all upside folks. So how do you lose? At the very least you could use it and you don't have a negative side effect. At the very most it may have potential impact of health. I showed you this diagram earlier on the molecular targets, the anti cancer effects of quercetin. So these chemicals here, NFKB and INOS, inducible, nitric oxide and COX2, these are all inflammatory chemicals. So quercetin has an impact on blocking those inflammatory pathways. Same thing here with these mechanisms over here. And then it also has, as I said earlier, gene transcription inhibition effects. So it stops or lowers the potential for metastasis of cancer to occur. These are all the mechanisms. Now one other thing that they're looking at quercetin to do, if you're being treated for cancer and you've got what they call drug resistance, because what happens oftentimes is chemos lose their effectiveness and a person's cancer develops a drug resistance to the chemotherapy. So MDR stands for multiple drug resistance. So what they're saying is that major in vitro and in vivo findings are summarized showing that quercetin is a multi drug resistant modulator and thus a potential chemosensitizer. In other words, it effectively improves in in vitro, in vivo studies, it improves the effectiveness of the chemotherapy and the treatment. So those of you that you know are going through treatment in that way, you may want to talk to your oncologist about using quercetin and reference that study. Now let's look at moving on away from cancer into other aspects of the immune system. So this is on a study done, double blind study done on patients with allergic symptoms. So you know we're talking about allergies to outside things, pollen and other things. So in this case randomized placebo controlled double blind. 66 subjects between the ages of 22 and 78 with allergic symptoms of pollenosis. Subjects were given the test product that contained 200 milligrams of Quercetin or the control product daily for four weeks. What was the outcome? They found improvement and a reduction in symptoms such as eye itching, sneezing, nasal discharge. Sleep disorders were significantly improved. Conclusion. The results indicate that oral intake of quercetin containing supplements might effectively reduce some allergy symptoms derived from pollen or pollenosis. I have found that to be extremely true, even anecdotally in my own family. My wife and son have tremendous fall allergies. And so we actually use, we use something called Histocyst, which is a product that it's a supplement product that has quercetin, but it also has nettle and vitamin C and bromelain. Because when you put these ingredients together, they work really, really effectively. Mechanistically to the mast cells that release histamine have a membrane around them. And what these ingredients do is they stabilize that membrane so that overall less histamine is being reduced. Which is why mechanistically, why you see reduction in eye itching, sneezing, nasal discharge and sleep problems, because you're not getting the level of histamine response because you're stabilizing that MAST cell membrane. Okay, moving on. I want to talk a little bit about pain. It's one area I've seen quercetin work tremendously well. And so if we look at this is a nice review paper on the mechanisms of how quercetin impacts pain. And so there's numerous different potential ways. Pain is a very complex topic, but one of the ways that it can impact pain is through the antioxidant effect. Remember, when you have tissue damage, there's a lot of free radicals that are produced. They cause neurological irritation. And so having extra antioxidant can help to mitigate some of that. We know too that there's an anti inflammatory effect created by quercetin. There's numerous mechanisms, interleukin inhibition or reduction, TNF alpha reduction, NLRP and nfkb, all reduced. And those are all again inflammatory chemicals. We know that quercetin can aid in GABAergic inhibition. Now if you've ever taken a drug like Gabapentin or Lyrica, this is where this is kind of a similar mechanism of action. Only those drugs come with consequences like severe constipation. Quercetin does not. We know that quercetin helps to regulate synaptic plasticity. So it helps Nerves recover much more effectively, so it activates the system, which can lead to reduction in pain perception as well. We know that there's an inhibition of glial cells that occurs, and glial cells are responsible for a lot of neurological inflammation, so nerve pain. So there's numerous mechanisms you can see here. Emerging evidence indicates that quercetin possesses antinociceptive effects in different rodent models of chronic pain, including inflammatory neuropathic pain and cancer pain. In this review, we summarize the mechanisms underlying these analgesic effects of quercetin in pre clinical studies. Now, it's been my experience with quercetin that it's extremely effective. We actually use it. I'm going to get into some of these studies in just a minute. But we use quercetin. A lot of times when people come to me and they've got rheumatological arthritis or even just osteoarthritis, just tremendous pain, we combine vitamin C and quercetin. And the mechanism is that when you combine these two, there's a synergistic effect. A lot of foods that you'll find in nature, they always come combined. The two vitamin C and quercetin are in a lot of your citrus and other foods. But that synergistic effect on mechanisms of pain, and one of the areas that they impact is they impact the cell membrane where different inflammatory chemicals are being released. And so a lot of drugs target multiple aspects of this as far as pain is concerned. But when you combine vitamin C and quercetin in high doses, we use this a lot of times to pull people off of corticosteroids, like if their doctor's got them on prednisone, for example, and the doctor doesn't want to keep them on prednisone, because any good doctor knows that high doses of prednisone over long periods of time causes bone loss, muscle loss, increases in blood sugar, and increases in blood pressure. So the goal is get the pain under control as quickly as you can and then get off of the steroid as quickly as you can. Well, this is one way to help with that. We use this combination right here to help people get off of their prednisone faster with less potential complication and side effect. So what, what kind of amounts are we using here? With vitamin c, we're using 5 to 10 grams a day. The dose is high. And same thing with quercetin. Typically with quercetin, we're using 4 to 5 grams per day. So the combination of those two things, in essence that's the experience that I have working with people to achieve better pain control. And a lot of times this is just as effective as the medicine. So not for everyone. But you know, again, it's non side effect prone, right? So you don't have the problems associated with other pain medications. And so if we look at, let's just talk about that for a minute. What are those? As I mentioned, if you're talking about steroids, you get increased blood pressure, increased blood sugar or glucose, you get bone loss, you get muscle loss. That's not all. Steroids also deplete vitamin C. Ironically that we use vitamin C for that pain. Right? Steroids are depleting that vitamin C. Steroids also deplete vitamin D, which has a major implication on pain as well. We know that steroids also reduce calcium, we know they reduce magnesium, we know steroids reduce zinc. So if you are on a steroid for a long period of time and you're not supplementing here, you should talk to your doctor about that because it's these deficiencies that can actually drive a lot of this on top of the other mechanisms of using the steroid. But steroids are an option for pain management and pain control. It's just that they come with a slurry of side effects. One other thing that we didn't even mention is that steroids cause damage the gut lining. So you know, think leaky gut. So that's your steroid list of common side effects, common problems. That's a lot of dangerous stuff. What are the side effects of vitamin C and quercetin at higher doses? Quercetin can sometimes cause upset stomach and a little bit of tingling in the fingers. Vitamin C at high doses, just loose bowels, gas and loose bowels, but generally doesn't cause lot of symptoms. Now if you're prone to throwing kidney stones or if you have a women, if you have a problem with oxalates, it can sometimes increase vaginal pain. But I mean it's such a rare thing. We don't see that very common at all even at these higher doses. So very low side effect profile at these higher doses, very high side effect profile here. Now if we look at some of the other pain options, I mean you could look at opiates, you know, the different types of opiates and those are all going to come with super huge addictive or addiction issues. But they also cause tremendous constipation which is going to affect you nutritionally as well. And then there's evidence too that these also do damage to the gut lining. And then your other options, and some of your other options are non steroidal anti inflammatories, things like naproxen, ibuprofen, even some of the COX2 inhibitors like Celebrex. These are all going to damage the gut lining, but they're also going to damage the kidneys. And NSAIDs deplete iron, so they cause anemias, they deplete folate and they also deplete vitamin C, so those don't come without consequence. And then beyond these mechanisms, you've got acetaminophen or brand name Tylenol and Tylenol or acetaminophen causes a reduction or depletes glutathione, which is very, very important to protect your liver. And this is one of the reasons why mechanistically, this stuff damages the liver. So if you're looking at pain options, there's always a side effect. It never comes without a cost. But when you're using quercetin and vitamin C, the potential for side effects is dramatically, dramatically reduced. Now, all that being said, let's come back to what we were talking about here. You see here the effect of quercetin supplements on selected markers of inflammation and oxidative stress. Here's what we know. Randomized double blind placebo controlled trial among subjects with systemic and regular or systematic and regular exercise for eight weeks in four groups, 15 individuals, 500 milligrams of quercetin as well as vitamin C as well. And what did they find? Eight week supplements with quercetin and vitamin C was effective in reducing oxidative stress, reducing inflammatory biomarkers, including reducing CRP and interleukin 6 with little to no effect on E selectin. So I showed you other studies on the pain reducing effects and rheumatological arthritis with quercetin. What I'm telling you is combine quercetin with vitamin C if you really want to try to push for less overall medication. I mean, we also know there are a number of research studies that show that the use of quercetin and vitamin C in combination with opiates, like post surgically, when people are going in, if you give quercetin vitamin C before the surgery, they need less pain medication, after the surgery, they have less pain. There's numerous studies in humans that show that. So, you know, this isn't information that I invented or I created. This is simply what the literature says. And clinically I've seen that play out time and time again for people. That's why if you look at my surgery protocols and those are available online pre and post surgery protocols that contain high doses of these things because they're effective. Now let's look at this here. So in this study, using vitamin C and quercetin against ibuprofen induced renal damage, as I mentioned earlier, NSAIDs can cause kidney damage, renal damage, and this is a rat study, not a human study. But here's what they found. You see, ibuprofen, commonly used in management of pain and inflammation, has been associated with renal damage. So what did they find? Significant increase in malandialdehyde, urea, creatinine and uric acid levels after ibuprofen administration. These are all markers of damage, by the way, kidney damage. Conversely, there was significant reduction in kidney parameters after administration of antioxidants with ibuprofen. So in other words, if you're going to take ibuprofen and you're going to apply what they learned in this rat study to yourself, what they found is that vitamin E, quercetin and vitamin C offer protection against ibuprofen induced renal damage. Again, this is a rat study, but I could just tell you from clinical experience the impact is there in my experience in patients as well. Okay, let's talk about food because we always want to eat the things, right? I mean, a lot of people want to supplement and that's great. But I think too aim for healthy, substantial sources of quercetin as well. And so here's a list of some of the higher quercetin containing foods as you can see here. Capers, red onions, kale, apples with the skin. That's where the quercetin is, is in that skin. A lot of people buy the apple because they coat them with soy and other garbage, especially this new Oedipeel nonsense that they're putting all over apples. So people are peeling the skin off. And when you do that, you're losing a lot of that quercetin potential. Green tea, if you like it, have some tremendous amount of quercetin. Blueberries, they're in season right now. My garden's blooming. Love it. And then broccoli. And notice that if you cook these foods, you can reduce quercetin content. So boiling or microwaving will reduce quercetin and fermenting. So if you're fermenting any of these things can actually increase quercetin. And chopping the food may enhance its bioavailability or improve your body's ability to absorb it. But I would argue that chopping is no different really than chewing. If you Chew your food really well, you're going to get better absorption. So here's another list of some high. This is coming from the journal Pharmaceuticals where they're looking at other foods. So again, capers on the list. Rocket dill, coriander, fennel. So if you like herbs and spices, learn how to use and cook with these things. Juniper berries as well as elderberries, corn, poppy, bee pollen and okra, all other great options. And these doses, by the way, are listed in milligrams per kilogram on both of these images. So high, high levels of quercetin found in all these foods. Now, I'd encourage you to eat organically. Why? If we're talking about quercetin in organic food, the thought is that non organic food has lower quantities of quercetin. And not every food has been studied in that regard, but tomatoes have. Specifically, if you look at this is a 10 year comparison of organic versus conventional crops and the content of flavonoids. In this case, it's in tomatoes. And so here's the thing. Comparison of analysis of archived samples from conventional and organic production systems demonstrated statistically higher levels of quercetin and kaempferol, which is a byproduct of quercetin in organic tomatoes. So they had higher levels of these. And you see here 10 year amine levels of quercetin and camphorol and organic tomatoes were 79 and 97% higher than conventional tomatoes. Now what they also found is that the longer the land was organic, meaning the longer they went without having pesticides on the land, the higher the level of quercetin went. Right. So it wasn't just, you know, because organic farming, there's, there's some oddball rules around it. But the longer the land sits and is, is basically has good regenerative agriculture practices, the stronger the amount of flavonoids show up in the produce. So the longer you're farming organically, the better is what you want to take away from that. So if you're trying to get quercetin from your food, know that organic is probably going to lend you toward higher levels quercetin if quercetin is what you're after. Okay, let's talk about supplementation. Supplementation has been shown to be safe in humans. Been a number of research studies looking at this. So doses ranging from 500 milligrams a day up to 5,000 milligrams a day with little to no side effects. You know, that being said, there's a caveat. Anyone can have a side effect. And so you know, pay attention. Is it smart to start at 5,000 if you've never done it before? Maybe start at a lower dose and work your way up so that you can pay attention. That just would be kind of intelligent thinking around how to go about it. Because no long term research has been done on humans at super high doses. We don't have five year studies going out. We've got shorter duration studies using up to 5,000 showing them to be side effect free for the most part, symptom prone or symptomatic free, and no parameters of oh my gosh, don't do that, it's super dangerous. So that being said, talk to your doctor about using quercetin if you're taking medicines or blood pressure for blood sugar. And there's some evidence on warfarin showing that when you add quercetin if you're on warfarin, that it makes warfarin work better. So your dose of warfarin might need to be looked at and reduced. So just be aware of that same thing here. If you're on a blood pressure medicine, you start taking higher doses of quercetin. I showed you earlier that it can drop your blood pressure almost 10 points. You know, so what happens when your blood pressure gets too low? You know, you get tired, you get lethargic, you don't want that either. So if you're, if you're on medicine and you're going to do it. So this is what I mean by talk to your doctor, like monitor your blood pressure so as it doesn't go too low, so it doesn't create side effects. Because what a lot of people do is they'll get on quercetin or other nutraceuticals, they'll start feeling bad as a result to start feeling more tired and they'll think, oh, this healthy, natural thing is making me tired, therefore I better stop doing it. But what in reality is happening is it's the combination of that healthy, natural thing plus your medicine that's too much, right? And so ideally you want to work with your doctor to reduce the medication and maybe continue using that natural, healthy thing to receive that benefit. But just be aware, blood sugar, blood pressure, blood thinner, you know, work with your doc in that regard to monitor your medicine and monitor your levels so that you don't overdo it. Here's safety of quercetin for clinical application. This was a review you see here in 1999. IARC concluded that. IARC is the, it's the international Agency for Research on Cancer. They concluded that Quercetin is not classified carcinogenic to humans in the US And Europe. Supplements, of course, attend commercially available and beneficial effects of quercetin supplements were reported in clinical trials. Overall, quercetin is genotoxic to Salmonella, which bacteria, but it is safe upon human application. So safe then we have this is a chapter out of a good book on it, you know, commenting on safety and studies on both animals and humans. Corsets in supplementation is regarded as medically safe and has not found to cause any adverse symptoms or harmful physiological effects. So quercetin's been around a while. It's rich in a lot of different foods as well. I want to talk about if you are supplementing with quercetin, I want to talk about some interactions with other nutrients. So one of the things that we know. So here's quercetin, the chemical formula of quercetin here. And quercetin, when your body uses it up, that process is called oxidation, meaning that quercetin basically donates its electron, it oxidizes to quelch or to quench free radicals that are contributing to damage. And so when quercetin is in its oxidized form, it can be repurposed. And the way that we repurpose quercetin is through vitamin C, ascorbate, In the way we can recycle quercetin. One of the ways we can recycle it is through the use of ascorbate, vitamin C. And so vitamin C regenerates quercetin and so it allows it to be reused again. So this is what I was telling you earlier. When you combine vitamin C with quercetin, you have a synergistic effect because they can basically they can regenerate each other. One of the other nutrients that can help to regenerate quercetin is NADH, which is just a fancy way of saying vitamin B3 or niacin. So donates an electron or hydrogen to the oxidized form of quercetin, basically to reduce it. So vitamin B3 and vitamin C can both help to regenerate quercetin and allow the body to continue to reuse it. Another mechanism is that we can take the end product, the end breakdown product of quercetin, and through the action of glutathione, your body can basically break it down so that it can be excreted from the body. And so we have mechanisms here at play. So if you're thinking about what can I do to synergize with quercetin, think vitamin C, think vitamin B3 and think glutathione these work in tandem with each other and so might not be a bad idea, especially if you're doing higher amounts. So if you're deciding, hey, I'm going to start taking 2 plus grams of quercetin, what could I do to prevent the byproduct of quercetin's metabolites that can turn into toxic compounds, what can I do to prevent that? I can take glutathione or I can eat more sulfur containing vegetables and foods that would help my body produce glutathione. I can eat more vitamin C or I can supplement more vitamin C or I can make sure that my vitamin B3 is not low. Again, these all work together with each other to reduce or regenerate quercetin and allow continued benefit. So those are some nutrient interactions with quercetin. So now you should have a really nice understanding of quercetin, not only its benefits but its benefits in humans. Right? And that's important delineation to make because a lot of supplements and a lot of nutrients don't come. Unfortunately with human clinical trials where we can make statements like it'll lower your blood pressure or it'll lower your pain levels or it'll improve your rheumatoid arthritis or guys, it'll improve your prostatitis pain or ladies, it can improve your PCOS outcomes. So very, very powerful nutrient. So thanks for tuning into this crash course today. If you'd like more information on nutrition, diet and lifestyle, how to overcome chronic inflammation using those as tools, make sure you hit that subscribe button and come visit me as well at Gluten Free Society. If you sign up there, you won't get censored first of all. And number two, we'll send you a bunch of free information that you can use that's actionable items that you can use in your everyday walk of your life to help you on your path to wellness. We'll be back again on Thursday for a live Q and A. So if you've got questions you'd like to ask me this week about quercetin, make sure you show up at 12:30 Central Standard Time this Thursday. We'll see you in the next show. Hope you have a fantastic day. Thanks for tuning in to the Dr. Osborne zone. Don't forget to share like and subscribe for more content like this and make sure you come back next next Tuesday at 6pm Central Standard Time and Thursday at noon 30 for more episodes. Sam.