Boosting your bifidobacteria is the easiest and safest way to protect you from getting COVID and other viruses
A new paper published in the BMJ by my friend Dr. Sabine Hazan argues it works. The p-value is very strong. I was skeptical too when she first told me.
Consider this paper published by researchers in Hong Kong in Gut in January 2021: Gut microbiota composition reflects disease severity and dysfunctional immune responses in patients with COVID-19 which noticed that levels of faecalibacterium and bifidobacteria were significantly lower in patients who suffered from COVID-19.
Basically, it makes the observation that there is a connection between the bacteria composition of your gut and whether you will suffer from severe disease if you get infected with SARS-CoV-2.
Now, a new paper, published in BMJ Open Gastroenterology in April by Dr. Sabine Hazan, connects more of the dots, arguing that the following were protective
High gut diversity of bacteria type
Abundance of bifidobacteria (p<0.0001 which means the effect was “highly statistically significant” and unlikely to have happened “by chance”)
In spite of these two papers, WebMD claims there is no evidence of this:
They're also used for preventing the common cold or flu, and lots of other conditions, but there is no good scientific evidence to support many of these uses. There is also no good evidence to support using bifidobacteria for COVID-19.
So someone isn’t telling the truth here.
In the most optimistic scenario, it appears that boosting your bifidobacteria can result in:
Less likely to get COVID
Less likely to suffer from severe symptoms if you do get COVID
Less likely to suffer from long-haul COVID symptoms if you do get COVID
As a special reward for my paying subscribers, I’m going to tell you ways you can boost your bifidobacteria.