The Virus and the Host: Protect Yourself from Infectious Disease by Reducing Toxicity, Improving Immunity, and Minimizing Chronic Illness

By Doctor Chris Chlebowski

*2022 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award Finalist for Health

Learn how to take control of your health—and decrease susceptibility to infectious viral disease before it strikes.

There will almost certainly be more pandemics in our future. Yet, during the coronavirus crisis, not a single major public health official took the simple step of telling Americans what we all need to hear:

Robust good health—healthy immunity, low inflammation, low toxic burden, and freedom from stealth infection and chronic disease—is our best defense against infectious viral disease.

Of course, it’s not that simple. The way our bodies interact with infectious disease is complicated—both a function of the “germ” and the “terrain”—the virus and the host. In The Virus and the Host, Dr. Chlebowski succinctly describes emerging science on the virome and how toxic exposure, chronic inflammation, infections, and chronic diseases interact and predispose us to poor outcomes from acute viral infection. He then clearly outlines the tools needed for better health, including:

• How to eat like your life depends on it
• The best nutrients to supercharge your immunity
• How to harness the power of botanical medicine
• How to detoxify simply and safely at home
• Valuable information on simple treatment and recommended diagnostic tests for given conditions

 

As we move forward from the tragedy of COVID-19, it is essential that we come together to learn from our mistakes, and work hard—and work together—to prevent a similar crisis in the future. When the next pandemic hits, we need to be better prepared. Now is the time to do something, and it is the best investment we can make so that when—not if—the next “big one” hits we can keep our loved ones and ourselves safe and healthy.

"A gem of a book at a timely moment in history."—Stephanie Seneff, author of Toxic Legacy

"This book left me feeling optimistic and empowered, and gave me greater knowledge about the history of viruses, as well as their future.”—Erin Elizabeth, author; public speaker; founder, Health Nut News

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
• Release date: Sep 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781645020929

Doctor Chris Chlebowski

Dr. Chris Chlebowski is naturopath, chiropractor, clinical herbalist, and homeopath with a medical practice, Ashland Natural Medicine, in southern Oregon. At the clinic, Dr. Chlebowski and his staff use cutting-edge technology blended with traditional therapies, with particular specialty in the treatment of chronic Lyme disease, mold illness, cancer, neurological disorders, and—most commonly—“mystery” diseases that other doctors have been unable to even diagnose. Dr. Chlebowski lectures regularly on holism and the root causes of illness and his articles have appeared in Naturopathic Doctor News and Review, Townsend Letter, and Simillimum, a publication of the Homeopathic Academy of Naturopathic Physicians. He holds doctorates from Western States Chiropractic College and the National College of Natural Medicine. When he isn’t working up a difficult case, staring into his microscope, or spending time with his wife and their two children, you can find Dr. Chlebowski climbing up the rocks or skiing down the mountains of southern Oregon and northern California.

Book preview

Cover: The Virus and the Host, Protect Yourself from Infectious Disease by Reducing Toxicity, Improving Immunity, and Minimizing Chronic Illness by Chris Chlebowski

Praise for The Virus and the Host

"The Virus and the Host is a practical and empowering guide to developing resilience against viral infections like COVID-19. By giving readers simple ways to improve nutrition, reduce inflammation, tackle toxicity, and even harness the power of botanical medicine, Dr. Chlebowski steps in to the do the job that our public health officials have not: educating the public that, while we can’t always avoid viral infection, we have immense power to improve our outcomes from it. Dr. Chlebowski is a sympathetic and supportive guide whose main goal is to help his patients—and his readers—live vibrant, healthy, and fulfilling lives. A must-read."

—Dr. Mark Hyman, MD, New York Times best-selling author of The Pegan Diet, Food Fix, and Eat Fat, Get Thin

"The Virus and the Host shows us that we cannot understand how viruses affect the human body without also looking at the terrain they inhabit. Dr. Chris Chlebowski unlocks the key to survival in a world full of microorganisms—in a way that keeps our bodies, local ecosystems, and the larger world, in a healthy balance. I highly recommend The Virus and the Host. It is one of the most important books of our time."

—Dr. Henning Saupe, author of Holistic Cancer Medicine

Dr. Chlebowski has written a gem of a book at a timely moment in history. He coins the term ‘Biological Equilibrium Theory,’ blending the germ and terrain theories of disease into a unified whole. The book has a wealth of specific information on herbal remedies, detox programs, healthy food choices, and much more—a how-to manual on staying well in a toxic world.

—Dr. Stephanie Seneff, senior research scientist, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; author of Toxic Legacy

"Dr. Chris Chlebowski’s perspective on mitigating body burden and supporting innate immunity is the most balanced and sensible I’ve seen. A compelling historical account as well as an unapologetic challenge to redesign our future via the science of epigenetics, The Virus and the Host is the obvious path forward, whether you’re looking to prepare for the next outbreak of disease or prevent autoimmunity."

—Jill McLaughlin Grunewald, Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach, autoimmunity specialist, and best-selling author of The Essential Thyroid Cookbook

A valuable read, full of practical information about how to stay healthy in the age of pandemics.

—Jennifer Margulis, award-winning science journalist, and coauthor of The Vaccine-Friendly Plan

"In The Virus and the Host, Dr. Cheblowski has distilled his in-depth research into a compelling read about how to treat a virus, where our healthcare system has gone wrong, and how it can be improved upon. This book left me feeling optimistic and empowered, and gave me greater knowledge about the history of viruses, as well as their future."

—Erin Elizabeth, author; public speaker; founder, Health Nut News

Dr. Chris breaks down complex topics into clear, usable, and helpful information. He not only discusses viruses but also how to avoid the other ‘big ones’—cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. This book is for anyone who wants to know how to truly get well and stay that way.

—Kelly Moeggenborg, a.k.a. Kelly the Kitchen Kop, author of Real Food for Rookies

The Virus and the Host

Protect Yourself from Infectious Disease by Reducing Toxicity, Improving Immunity, and Minimizing Chronic Illness

Dr. Chris Chlebowski

Chelsea Green Publishing

White River Junction, Vermont

London, UK

Copyright © 2022 by Chris Chlebowski.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

Project Manager: Patricia Stone

Developmental Editor: Brianne Goodspeed

Copy Editor: Nancy A. Crompton

Proofreader: Diane Durrett

Indexer: Nancy A. Crompton

Designer: Melissa Jacobson

Page Layout: Abrah Griggs

Printed in the United States of America.

First printing August 2022.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 21 22 23 24 25

ISBN 978-1-64502-091-2 (paperback) | ISBN 978-1-64502-092-9 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-64502-093-6 (audio book)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

Chelsea Green Publishing

85 North Main Street, Suite 120

White River Junction, Vermont USA

Somerset House

London, UK

www.chelseagreen.com

This book is dedicated to the spirit of my dear friend Brook Tonneson Golling. Wu Wei, Brook. Wu Wei.

Contents

Introduction

Part I. Biological Equilibrium Theory

1. Paradigm Shift

2. The Vast—and Vastly Misunderstood—Virome

3. Toxicity Is Making Us Sick

4. All Roads Lead to the Same Disease

5. The Hidden Role of Chronic Stealth Infections

Part II. Back in Balance

6. Eliminate Lifestyle Toxins

7. Eat Like Your Life Depends on It—Because It Does

8. Supercharge Your Immunity

9. Harness the Power of Botanical Medicine

10. Detoxify Safely

11. The Past Will Take Us to the Future

Acknowledgments

Appendix A: Common Chronic Stealth Infections

Appendix B: Tests to Take Back Your Health

Resources

Notes

Introduction

The memories of my childhood Christmases are mostly a blur. In my mind’s eye I see a lot of red and green and I distinctly recall the scents of fir and cooking kielbasa. Of course, a few memories stand out as more distinct: the year I got my first Atari or the time an older cousin dressed my sister and me as reindeer with red construction paper noses and paraded us around for the grownups to see. Despite the hard work of my parents to create special memories for us, that’s all that’s left of that decade and a half of holidays.

The Christmases since my children were born are more defined in my memory, likely because of the countless hours my wife and I put into their planning and execution. Trips to snowy Idaho to visit with my aging parents, the joy on my son’s face when he opened a coveted Lego set, my secret forays into the kitchen to add an extra nip of whiskey to my sister’s homemade eggnog—these memories live closer to the surface for me. They still blend in my mind, but they’re easier to tease apart into recallable pieces.

But no Christmas stands out like the Christmas of 2019. I don’t know that any ever will. December 2019 will be forever etched in my mind as terrifyingly unique. And despite it taking the world by surprise, I knew it was coming. I didn’t know when, but the fact is, I had been waiting for this moment my whole career.

Doctors like me are where people go when they have lost hope. I am a naturopath, a chiropractor, and a homeopath with a thriving practice in Ashland, Oregon. The average patient who shows up at my clinic has typically already seen 10 other doctors, health coaches, and alternative practitioners—some have seen upward of 20—before they get to me. These are some of the most chronically ill people in our region of the country and they usually don’t know why. The reasons can be incredibly complex and incredibly varied, but one of the things almost every one of these patients has in common is chronic infections; you don’t stay sick without these. And you don’t learn to treat chronic infections without understanding acute infections—including the kind of acute infection that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

So, when an infectious disease engulfs the world, I pay attention.

In fact, throughout my career, I had been studying the historical records of pandemic diseases penned by the frontline doctors who helped patients survive. All of the large-scale pandemics occurred long before the current predominant system of medicine was in place—there were no vaccines, no antibiotics, and no steroids in the times of the cholera epidemics, the bubonic plague, and the Spanish flu pandemic. Available accounts are mostly from Chinese medicine doctors, classical homeopaths, and herbalists, because these practices represent the medicine the world had until a mere 80 years ago. The experiences of these doctors and practitioners prove that basic hygienic measures and individualized remedies can be extremely effective means for reducing the total mortality from pandemic infections.

For example, Dr. James Tyler Kent was an American physician, author, and teacher who treated smallpox and cholera throughout the Midwest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He taught at several medical schools and authored many books on the treatment of infectious disease. Dr. Kent was an early proponent of the idea that individualization was the key to success in the treatment of not only chronic but also acute disease.¹ He argued that even in a pandemic what matters most is the individual picture of disease in a patient.

Dr. Nicholas Culpeper was another author whose work fueled my fascination to find treatment options from an era long before the invention of modern medicine. Culpeper was a physician and herbalist in the seventeenth century who catalogued and categorized the plants to be used in the treatment of smallpox, influenza, and the other endemic viral plagues of his time. His works, especially Culpeper’s Complete Herbal, became favorites of mine as I expanded my knowledge of epidemic disease and its treatment in preparation of pandemics to come.

In England, Dr. Dorothy Shepherd was a physician who worked in the poorest children’s hospitals, treating cases of measles, mumps, and whooping cough in the early twentieth century, mostly prior to the advent of antibiotics and steroids.² When measles, mumps, and whooping cough showed up in my clinic, I turned to her remedies, as documented in the books she authored. As the years went by and I saw how well suited homeopathy and herbs were to treat infectious diseases, my knee-jerk reaction to reach for antibiotics and more suppressive medicines began to subside. Experience builds confidence and time is a great teacher.

Of course, I didn’t want to be a doctor who was stuck in the past, so I followed the research coming from the World Health Organization (WHO), Johns Hopkins University, and the Centers for Disease Control on various modern pandemics, too. When H1N1 hit in 2009, it hardened me to the reality that global pandemics were far from over and that I would certainly need to be adept at their treatment. As I dealt with patients in the smaller outbreaks of measles, whooping cough, and influenza that moved through the Pacific Northwest, I learned to recognize the value in using both classical treatments and modern-day advancements in diagnostics and therapies.

The more I learned, the more I realized that despite the incredible differences between the historical healers and the state-of-the art medical research and public health institutions of today, there was a point of commonality between the two: Both warned of the return of mass infections spreading rapidly around the planet. Big infections. Deadly infections. Difficult to control infections.

So, what did I do when I began seeing the first early reports of a novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China, in December 2019? I followed the developments assiduously, and I quietly prepared my home, my clinic, and myself. I had been, after all, waiting for this. But despite that expectation and preparation —or maybe even because of it—I was, I admit, terrified. Like most of us, I hadn’t lived through a pandemic before, but I’d absorbed from the literature how quickly and easily it can happen—and the death, destruction, misery, and social and personal upheaval that follows in its wake.

In early mornings of late December 2019, I would settle into a big comfy armchair at my dad’s home in Idaho, attempting to enjoy the rare moments of quiet before both the sun and my children were up. But as I sipped strong hot coffee, those quiet moments felt anything but peaceful: I was mesmerized by bright red dots on my phone from the Coronavirus Resource Center’s COVID-19 Dashboard at Johns Hopkins University. Each dot represented a cluster of infection in and around Wuhan, China. The larger the dot, the more people infected. Each day, as December came to a close, there were more red dots, and they kept getting larger. There were none in the United States, not yet … but they were coming.

By early January 2020 the infection had made it across the oceans. There were scattered red dots in Seattle, a few in California, some in Chicago. The Johns Hopkins Dashboard tallied the case count, deaths, and recoveries.³ I checked it several times a day. In between patients, I would peek. At night, after we tucked our son and daughter into bed, read them a chapter of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and kissed them goodnight, I would sneak a look. When I got up in the morning, I immediately grabbed my phone. It became a guilty, secret habit.

I didn’t tell my wife—a mom prone to worry whose own mother was a Holocaust survivor—about my growing concern. She has trauma in her bones, her epigenetics recognize its scent, and I didn’t want to scare her. Maybe the health authorities would get it under control, and she wouldn’t ever have to even know about it. Like most people, she had never even heard of a coronavirus. In late December and early January 2019, no one I knew was even paying attention to this, certainly not my wife. And most of the doctors I spoke with didn’t think this would end up being an infection of note.

Not me. I lay awake each night mentally inventorying the treatments we had in the clinic that might be useful: hyperbaric oxygen, intravenous ozone, high-dose vitamin C. I studied the emerging pathophysiology of the disease. I read treatment protocols and accounts of doctors in China late into the night, trying to assess what treatments were keeping patients alive, and which ones weren’t. And I worried. Would we have enough of the remedies that were emerging as useful for this infection to support the needs of all the patients in our practice?

I spent six lonely weeks staring at these dots every day, fretting over the reports I was hearing, getting more and more anxious imagining our clinic and the local hospital overrun without enough medicine. Every week, we ordered more oxygen tanks.

By the middle of March, the emails started pouring in and the phone was ringing off the hook with patients concerned about the virus from China they were hearing about on the news. I had also begun to treat COVID-19 sick patients. Early in the pandemic before anyone was talking about Ivermectin, monoclonal antibodies, or vaccines we were exclusively using herbs, homeopathy, and antioxidants. We designed protocols to calm down inflammation, reduce the risk of clotting, and keep the lungs and bowels open and free to remove any toxic byproducts from the infection. Every week more and more patients appeared, and we worked diligently with the simple goals of keeping them alive, out of the hospitals, and off the respirators.

Then, one day in May 2020, I woke up in the morning with a weight lifted off my chest. Collectively the world was still in a state of panic and lockdown but my own terror had dissipated. I stopped watching dots and numbers. I stopped ordering oxygen tanks. Why? How had I gone from Chicken Little, certain that the heavenly firmament was plummeting earthward, back to the mostly reasonable and rational doctor I had always been?

Because by May 2020, I had ample firsthand clinical experience with the virus. I had been treating the infection for months. We added the old antiparasitic drug Ivermectin, which worked by punching a hole in the virus’s shell, when available, but otherwise the protocols we developed were the same ones we had used from the beginning: zinc, vitamin D and C for immune function, glutathione and melatonin as antioxidants, quercetin to open up the outer coating of the virus, and herbs and specific homeopathy based on the individual picture of the patient.⁴ These protocols were still working brilliantly. And to date, since the pandemic began, we have had only two patients, both diabetic and obese, go to the hospital, and they were both there for less than two days.

Our clinic’s success in treating COVID-19 made me realize that despite the mounting panic overtaking the globe, it was not very different from any other acute viral infection. Our patients weren’t dying from COVID-19. By applying the principles we use in other acute viral infections, our patients survived. The principles are as follows: One, make sure the bowels and kidneys are moving; the bowels and the kidneys remove the toxins that drive a viral presentation and if they stop working, the infection cannot resolve. Two, as much as possible, avoid suppressing the fever with antipyretics; fever is the body’s best defense at slowing and eradicating pathogens and needs to be supported, not suppressed. Lastly, bring down inflammation—and this last bit will prove itself to be increasingly important throughout the course of the book—but not at the expense of the immune system. Steroids are overused in acute viral infections. Steroids dramatically shut down inflammation, but they suppress immunological function and are counterproductive to complete resolution from infection.

I had realized that when people succumbed to COVID-19, it was almost always for the same reason people succumb to most infections: They were already suffering from toxicity, inflammation, and chronic disease. A viral trigger then arrived in the form of SARS-CoV-2, overtook their system, and overwhelmed their detoxification pathways. They succumb either to the infection itself or a complication from treatment.

I was prepared after all.

Helping hundreds of patients beat COVID-19, surviving it myself, and seeing friends and family members weather the illness, I was no longer panicked about losing patients to this virus. If I treated patients early and aggressively with natural means, they stayed out of the hospital and they all survived. Unfortunately, this was the exact opposite messaging being put out by our government—the idea of early treatment was rebuffed and doctors like me who promoted it were attacked. I and my whole family contracted the Delta variant in October 2021 and, despite it being a very strong illness, I pulled through with the help of herbs, antioxidants, and constitutional homeopathy with no lasting symptoms.

On the other hand, a different sort of concern emerged, as I watched the reaction of governments around the world, and how politicians, business leaders, and even public health officials were politicizing this crisis and using it as an opportunity to push their agendas. Like many people, I was more worried about some of the conventional treatments than the disease, including the use of ventilators, remdesivir, and, of course, the vaccines. And I was shocked to see that not a single public health official seemed to take the obvious and sensible step of telling citizens what we may have trouble hearing: We need to take more responsibility for our own health by improving our diets, losing weight, exercising, and managing stress. Robust good health—minimal toxicity, minimal inflammation—is our best defense.

People did die from SARS-CoV-2—too many people. Perhaps you lost someone to this virus. None of that sits very well with me as a physician who took an oath to serve. That’s why it is so essential that as we move forward, we come together to learn from our mistakes, and work hard—and work together—to prevent a similar crisis, or worse, in the future. I predict we will see more pandemics in the next decade: other novel coronaviruses, a return of some form of smallpox, or perhaps something a lot worse, like Ebola or Marburg virus. Rising toxicity, worsening diets, chronic inflammation, and scientists’ and governments’ fascination with tampering with communicable pathogens in the laboratory make it practically inevitable. When we do, we need to be better prepared. I’m not talking about national defense; I’m talking about our own bodies—reducing toxicity, inflammation, and chronic disease, and increasing resilience and robust good health. Now is the time to do something, and it is the best investment we can make, so that when—not if—the next big one hits, we can keep our loved ones and ourselves safe and healthy.

Let me show you how.

PART I

Biological Equilibrium Theory

CHAPTER 1

Paradigm Shift

The predominant model of modern medicine has an underlying tenet that goes something like this: The world is covered in germs. There are viruses on your kitchen countertop, bacteria on the toilet seat, and tetanus in the soil at the playground. Germs are everywhere, and they’re out to get you. It’s a battle royal between you and them to see who will survive. The odds are not in your favor.

We can’t see it happening, but these maleficent, invisible germs know how to get inside us and wreak havoc. Because we don’t yet have a Star Trek scanner that can show us where they are, we should assume they’re everywhere. And viruses are the worst of the bunch. A stranger passing by on the street who gets closer than six feet to you could infect you with a deadly pathogen, which you could then spread to everyone you encounter, potentially killing them all, including your grandmother.

So, we must do everything we can to combat germs: wash our hands, disinfect our surfaces and sterilize, sterilize, sterilize. Our food must be pasteurized and homogenized, or it will make us sick. We must decontaminate surfaces with a disinfectant, preferably bleach. We can’t let food touch the floor for more than three seconds. Germs are beyond our control. If we have the right mix of genetics, luck, and hand sanitizer we might not get too sick. Even with all the right stuff, we will need a vaccine to protect us.

Sound familiar? This is the germ theory of disease.

This is the model taught in all the major medical schools of the world, the paradigm doctors are trained in, and the foundation upon which our understanding of infectious disease, and its treatment, is built. The COVID-19 pandemic has been no different. By the time the reported worldwide death toll crept toward six million, billions of dollars, most of it given by governments via taxpayers to pharmaceutical companies, had been invested in vaccine development, with additional research dollars poured into the search for an effective drug that can kill the virus.¹ At one point, many thousands of people were dying each day from the effects of this infection. Many more have died from the consequences of a global lockdown, and almost everyone has suffered in some way during the pandemic. The tragic thing is that it didn’t have to happen this way. Many of those patients didn’t need to die. We’ve been looking at it through the wrong lens.

A Dirty Old Idea

Where did the idea that germs are the sole factor in infectious disease originate? What discoveries, events, and ideas propelled germ theory to the forefront of the medical model? And how do viruses, which hadn’t even been discovered when the germ theory was formulated, figure in? Is it possible that this almost 200-year-old hypothesis is incorrect or, at least, incomplete? After all, there are many theories that were once—but are no longer—accepted as fact: the heliocentric universe, the flat Earth theory, the idea that sacrificing a virgin to the god in the volcano will yield a good crop. Could it be that we don’t yet really understand the role of pathogens, including viruses, in our bodies? Entrenched ideas often have a way of sticking around long after their usefulness has passed. Scientists, scientific journals, and institutions can be unwilling to accept new ideas—especially those that are inconvenient or complex—as I will show you in this book.

Science, thanks in part to developments in communication and technology, is evolving at an unprecedented speed. Every day we learn new information about the world we inhabit. This broadens our perspective and forces us to reconsider ideas we take for granted as facts; anyone who claims that science should light our way forward, must be willing to revisit the facts to see if they hold true as new information emerges. There is nothing scientific about unquestioningly trusting the science. Just as you would check the batteries in your flashlight before you head into the dark woods, we need to constantly check and recheck our assumptions before we use them as the basis of action. In this way, we discover new information about health and medicine, and drive science forward to improve human life.

Our understanding of pathogens and their role in infectious disease is in desperate need of such a reevaluation. Fortunately, our broad understanding of microorganisms—bacteria, in particular—has been evolving rapidly over the past 20 years, and almost everyone now knows that commensal gut bacteria, for example, are essential to human health. This revolution in science has dramatically changed our perspective on endogenous bacteria and its role in a vast number of physiological processes that are essential to our health and, indeed, our survival.

We are many decades overdue,