41 - Joachim Gerlach - Vedicinals-9

Episode 41 of the Long Covid Podcast is a chat with Joachim Gerlach about Vedicinals-9 - a nutraceutical developed to help Covid and Long Covid. We chat about how this differs to pharmaceuticals and a bit about how it was developed.

We also chat a little about the Long Covid Foundation (link below) and what it is hoping to achieve.

Vedicinals Website  (can be ordered from here - also lots of info about Vedicinals & link to clinical trial)  

Long Covid Foundation

3rd Long Covid Coalition Conference (Thrombosis & Coagulation)


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(music credit - Brock Hewitt, Rule of Life)

Transcript

Jackie Baxter  0:00  
Hello, and welcome to this episode of the long COVID podcast. Just a quick note to apologize for a wee bit of the recording quality just in the first 10 minutes of this episode. Unfortunately, there was a thunderstorm passing over Germany during the beginning of the recording. And it seems I have about as much control over the weather as I do over long COVID. So I have edited it as best I can, just forgive the few seconds where the quality is not as good as I would have hoped. 

So without further ado, I am really excited to introduce my guest today, Joachim Gerlach, who is here to talk about Vedicinals and what it can do for people with long COVID. And I'm sure we'll talk about loads of other things, too. So welcome to the podcast.

Joachim Gerlach  0:48  
Thank you so much for having me on. And it's a pleasure to help bring clarity to that field from our side.

Jackie Baxter  0:55  
Thank you so much. So to start with, would you mind just introducing yourself a little bit and what it is that you do?

Joachim Gerlach  1:02  
I was a retired businessman. 10 years ago, I sold my company and moved to Spain. But I was already at that time involved into finding out why so many people get so terribly, chronically ill, it's such a large percentage of the population. And then connected and financed projects, scientists that look into that. And so as a result of that we started to work in organic agriculture, a lot of projects, special greenhouses, desert greening, saving ancestral grains and starting from the food chain to get healthy soils, healthy plants and hopefully healthy people. But as more people cannot restrict only to organic food, transition so difficult, we were also working on compensating - projects also in the tropics with restoring biodiversity, farming and reforestation projects. So that's how I spent my leisure time. 

And then when COVID came around the corner in January, we looked at that information from China, and we knew that this would be serious. And so all the resources luckily, we had a lot of ethno botanist and experts on nutraceuticals, a lot of scientists already on board, biologists, and asked them all to drop everything and just concentrate on that upcoming threat there. And that's how we started to work on creating a some sort of intervention, we wanted to just, we thought that they will, they will take too long for the pharmaceutical industry to react. And it wasn't sure that they can repurpose drugs that will adequately tackle this problem.

Jackie Baxter  2:39  
Yeah, amazing. And would you be able to explain just a little bit about what a nutraceutical is, and sort of what it aims to do? And how are they different from pharmaceuticals?

Joachim Gerlach  2:50  
Yeah, so there's actually several classes in this direction. I'm also not myself the expert on that. Extracts like that you can derive from from plants with medicinal properties. And so you have dietary supplements, you have nutraceuticals, then you have functional foods, or as we also have food for special medical purpose. Then you have phyto pharmaceuticals, which are pharmaceuticals based on plant extracts. And then you have also pharmaceuticals, classical ones, as you know, like for like a beta blocker or blood thinner, which actually synthetic molecules being designed to cover a certain drug target pathway. So a dietary supplement or a nutraceutical, as we are using it is actually the lowest class in that chain of how can you say, classifications and compliance. And nonetheless, you can also then do clinical trials on nutraceuticals, as well or even on vitamins exist, you see a lot of studies now on Vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc, and so on. So there is not such a huge difference actually, between the pharmaceutical and the dietary supplement or a nutraceutical is actually a molecule that will do a certain job or have a certain impact on everybody dysregulation or malfunction. 

The biggest difference that I can observe between pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals, or dietary supplements is that by using molecules that have been around in nature for billions of years, these molecules are not strange, not a stranger to our organism and to ourselves. And so our organism can handle them better than a synthetic molecule, because that's something new to him. And so, you can observe actually in nutraceuticals, or dietary supplements, observe several phenomenon, like one is called the escalation. That means, for example, if there was a study with quercetin arthritis, so you there's even a clinical trial and you see that the serum levels are not really showing such a high concentration, of quercetin after intake, but after several weeks when you take a biopsy of the arthritis cells or the region in the body, then you see that quercetin is accumulating there. So the body brings these substances to the area where they are needed. So there must be one type of communication between your organism and these molecules. And so I think that is already in nature everywhere, having practice. So we're just like helping that a little bit, pushing it by providing the body higher concentration of that. 

And the second phenomena that can be observed is that it also depends on this dysregulation, or homeostasis in the cell or in an organ. If the body uses that molecule or not, then you can even do opposite things according to the state of the cell. If the cell is really badly damaged, and there's no hope for repair, they can, for example, can trigger an apoptosis process or have that the cell kind of flags to be removed. And if the cell is repairable, then this molecule will start repairing process as good as possible, and tries to save that cell and bring it back to health so to speak. So nobody can really explain why this is happening. Hypothetically, there is some molecular communication going on between the cell and the molecule. And so we don't know who is telling whom what to do. But it's, it's fantastic. And it's amazing, fascinating to see that. 

And then when you look at now a pharmaceutical that that will not be so much, it's more like a tank, you know, you're going to bring down blood pressure and depending on the dosage you are applying with the pharmaceutical it will really do their job, but it will not really get a feedback from the body when to stop. So you have to be a little bit more careful. But pharmaceutical can be of course very targeted, and very efficient, without any doubt. 

So we think there is no discussion is a nutraceutical or a supplement better than a pharmaceutical, I think it's always the choice of weaponry is for the battle you want to go into. So if you have a very, very dysregulated mechanism in the body, and you want to tackle that, or you want to really get rid of some pathogens, and you need a strong antibiotic, then of course, that makes a lot of sense. So the interventions with pharmaceuticals are much more specific, they even talk about precision medicine, which is fine. And with that you can target specific dysregulations or problems. And maybe what we are seeing now in the treatment protocols is after you did a pharmaceutical targeted intervention, then you can use a broadband, nutraceutical or dietary supplement protocol to finish the job and maintain what you have achieved already. 

It's better not to mix those because the mixing dietary supplements nutraceuticals and pharmaceutical drugs can be dangerous because within you can elevate some enzymes and they might either decrease or the pharmaceutical product is not being degraded not being metabolized enough fast enough. So if you stay on the normal dosage, you will sooner or later start overdosing, for example. So it is in general, not not so easy to mix nutraceuticals and or dietary supplements with pharmaceuticals, I would strongly advise to do that together with a medical professional. Because you can get yourself into some real trouble. We prefer from our side, if we go have clients or patients that go for a nutraceutical intake that, as far as possible, stop pharmaceuticals if it can be done. Or maybe first get themselves so much better with the pharmaceuticals that then they can get on a on a regime with dietary supplements and nutraceuticals.

Jackie Baxter  8:51  
Yeah, that's absolutely fascinating. I had no idea about all the sort of different kinds of tiers almost of different things that you can use and how they interact or don't. But yeah, and then nutraceuticals seem to work with what the body is doing as well. You hear about people having quite negative reactions to certain medications, does that make it less likely to have a nasty reaction with a nutraceutical? Because it's more natural based?

Joachim Gerlach  9:19  
because they might have a mast cell activation and cause syndrome which in Britain now is discarded as non existent. They need to look at their science there - and histamine problems, so you have to be careful. There is also supplements or there are probiotics that can trigger these kinds of reactions, hypersensitivity reaction, so it is always to be taken with caution, even taking vitamin d3 and zinc without checking your serum levels is also not a good idea. So there are many things - so let's put it very simple. That something is natural doesn't mean at all that it cannot have severe side effects. contrary effects also on your on your body, and that you cannot overdose it. 

Especially when I see when I get the lists from many long haulers, what they are all taking at the same time. Yeah, I'm flabbergasted to say the least. And I caution them to, to take much doesn't mean that it will help much. They're desperate, I know, but you should be more selective and more clear in your approach. And then I see they take a lot of supplements or dietary supplements and or nutraceuticals, that do pretty much the same job. So it doesn't doesn't make sense to then add on the same. So what you want to do is you want to say, Okay, we have an anti inflammatory part, we have a anti allergic part, we have a, let's say, an anti pathogenic part, like going for bacteria, or bacterial co infections, or retroviruses, herpes, EBV, and these kinds of things. So you're starting to cover the fields. And then you become much more targeted in your nutraceuticals intervention as well - glutacin, all these things that are disrupted. But better is, of course, if you have a real good panel, we are still not clear on which kind of biomarker panels can be used in the diagnostics. The Intel dx from Bruce Patterson is actually a very, very good beginning. And it's been widely used already. But we keep finding, or my colleagues and other scientists keep finding, a lot of interesting other pathways where we should have a closer look, if we don't want to include those as well. And to get a better picture.

Jackie Baxter  11:32  
Yeah, that's very interesting. I think you've touched on, you know, people taking basically anything that they can think of, because they think it might help and like you say, people are increasingly desperate as time goes on. But I think it's probably quite a good warning to be a little bit careful about just taking things for the sake of it.

Joachim Gerlach  11:54  
Yes, I mean, the it has to be more targeted. The problem is to speak about targeting things and having such a broad band illness as long COVID, sounds kind of kind of weird. But so you have to, you have to kind of address each section, each condition accordingly. And it can be also like things like we've seen now Apheresis or pharmaceutical intervention, like maraviroc. And statins for a while, yes, and then alternating, so the toolbox has to be completed. The tool box is now very basically there, but it's not enough, we are still not not happy with what we see. 

So there is now a new drug coming out in Germany that we are going to invite the producer of that drug to be present at the conferences. And there are other findings on hypertension on why the thrombosses are built. What could be done about that. So the each field now gets better research. And so little by little is can be solved. But it can only be solved in a larger group. Because no company alone and not one expert alone can do that - is impossible. No it's way too complicated.

Jackie Baxter  13:04  
Yes. Yeah. No, that's that's very, very true. So let's go back to Vedicinals. Because this is something I mean, I've heard about it quite a bit recently. And could you maybe just go through a little bit about what it is maybe, and what it does?

Joachim Gerlach  13:21  
Yeah. So the the product itself is actually a result of a selection process. So we started very early in the pandemic. And of course, the first thing that comes to mind is you need to stop the viral replication in the organism, so it to be an antiviral. And so very early, like on January 26, already, we we were in contact with some people from Harvard Medical, and they had access to the genome of that novel Coronavirus, as it was called them. And so I asked them, I said it was bugging them. I said, Come on, can you please compare them to the SARS one and verse and other coronaviruses and tell me what has not changed? I don't want to hear what has mutated. That's for us. Because we don't want a moving target. We want to have the part of the virus that is kind of the backbone and of course, that's the sweetie protease now that is commonly known, but at that time, that was a very exotic target as actually to say the least. 

And then we looked at other studies that came out on how the virus behaves, what kind of host cell receptors does it use, what kind of enzymes it uses for cleavage, why because it does behave very different than previous Coronavirus. And then we looked at the pathways of how does the trigger hypersensitivity, what happened with muscle activation? What happened with inflammation? What happened with myocardial infarct and myocardial damage and neuronal damage etc. So the list of pathways was growing by the day, making it more difficult because theoretically, you have a database of 1000 different molecules that you can choose from that are known to have some medical properties, and so you start to make something like a grid, you have your molecules on the horizontal and you have in the vertical, you have your drug target pathways, and then you try to match the pathways with the different... It's like a funneling process. Pretty complicated. 

So as you can imagine, the first 3-4 months, we did not get much sleep, trying to figure that out. And so it is actually a very clear scientific rationale how we started, that it's not like we just ripped some plants out of the ground and threw them at the virus, it was really like a methodical process. And then sooner or later, we we ended up with more or less like 20 molecules, and then everybody told me that you cannot take 20 molecules, that is too much. And so I had to let go, and they were already my children, I had to let go of a lot. And then we ended up with nine. And these nine molecules actually, well, it's so well chosen that in the last two years, each one of these molecules has multiple times being each by itself, confirmed as being extremely efficient against SARS covid 2 infection and or the resulting conditions that we can observe. So it was a very lucky strike, because it was at that time, not clear they could be combined that for daily dosage, all of the nine.

And so from there on, once we had the formulation theoretically done, we went into in silico modeling and computational modeling studies, that means more than 500 with it, that means that all these molecules were run in a 3d simulation against the proteases of the virus, the host cell receptors, and different under other targeted regions in the body where we wanted to use these molecules. And that already looked very, very good. And then we took that into petri dish testing on cell cultures. But we found out soon that it's not the same, because these molecules are not arriving in the same shape as you get them as a powder or suspension, they get metabolized in our body. So most of these flavonoids, or phenolic compounds, how they are called, are going through the digestive system. And our bacteria is breaking them down into so called metabolites. And these metabolites then diffuse to the gut lining into the serum and do the job, for example. 

So it is much more complicated then, so we had to then switch over to animal trials. And there we did them first combination between epigallocatechin and quercetin and piperine and curcumin, with bacoline and so on. And so we kind of had to double, triple combination see, to the enhance each other's effects, the two that disturb each other, does the toxicity rise? So really carefully, slowly working our way through the whole nine molecule formulation, in animal trials. 

Then we did the next work was then the formulation development, to really give it the full efficacy, we call, people call that bioavailability, which is the biggest problem with supplements and nutraceuticals. The molecules are known that they can do really good, but you have to either to go exceed the dosage by far. And even then you don't get it to arrive really in the body region where you want to have the function. And so we did something to it, which we keep as our proprietary knowledge, what we did to it, it has to do with the water. And so all of a sudden, the efficacy in some biomarkers was significantly enhanced, like up to 22 times. And that is what you could measure on the serum markers and what you could observe, for example, in heart muscle damage, so we did an animal trial, where we induced an artificial infarction with the chemical and then some animals got got our Vedicinals. And some animals didn't get anything, like a control group. And then you had Vedicinals, the better, the new version. And I was really like we could send observe how well does it work in general, how well does it protect them the heart muscle, and the levels of troponin were also like, reduced by orders of magnitude, and so on. 

So we went through all these trials until we were getting to the toxicity trials, that means like the animals got a very, very high dosage, like 1000 milligram per kg over a period of 28 days, and then also a much higher dosage also for acute toxicity testing. And then some animals were even what was an autopsy to look at the organs, at the liver, the kidney, and other organs to see if there's anything as damage resulting from that, and it turned out that the animals were healthier after the 28 toxicity test than before. And so we were classified now class five that means it's an LD 50 which is lethal dose 50 per cent would be at 5000 milligram per kilo of body weight. So that is 60 times the dosage that we have right now on the market. So you would have to drink 60 bottles in one go to get there. So that is, I don't think that anybody will do that. So I'm very confident, it is pretty safe.

Jackie Baxter  20:19  
Yeah, that's amazing. And you were talking earlier about being targeted with what you're taking. And it sounds like that's kind of the process that you've gone through while you've been making this. And trying to work out all your different things to target. And then the idea of, of having all of the magic nine things, and then finding that actually, they might not work together, and then trying to find a way to make them work. It's amazing.

Joachim Gerlach  20:47  
It was quite risky. Yes, they could have also gone wrong. So you spend a lot of money on that. And then after that then started to real. Let's say you started to be really serious, because in the meantime, we had to set up the company itself, get everything from raw material suppliers, quality checking, heavy metal testing, HPLC, the older ingredients were checked and double checked and triple checked, have a very, very big contract manufacturer. It's one of the biggest in India, and a billion dollar company, so they are not small. And so just for everybody's peace of mind, this Vedicinals-9 is not is not being produced in some jungle shack, it is being produced in a very, very sophisticated, up to date, good manufacturing plant. And the boss is a real fan of ours and he loves the project. So we have this personal priority for anything that needs to be done with Vedicinals, so I'm very glad and happy about all the support we also got on the way - it was not as alone, we had many, many, many collaborators, paid or unpaid, doesn't matter. They doing a great job. 

And then this all went into the clinical trials, phase two clinical trial with 124 patients. 62 patients were getting Vedicinals. And all patients actually would be treated by and so called normal COVID-19 outpatient or patient treatment protocol that is in place in India, it's a little bit different than in our countries. They do believe in early patient treatment. And so they do have some medications that they use. And so we were co-administered with that, because they deemed it unethical to have a placebo group and not treat these patients, which I think is okay. And so we also thought we are building the bridge for some pharmaceuticals at least that can be taken together - it was hydroxychloroquine. Some antibiotics to which we come a little bit later. And also paracetamol. dexamethasone was was given. And some patients also received in general oxygen, whenever they were had COVID. And they were hospitalized, even mild, they would already receive oxygen. And so I really liked the care that they gave to their patients and the attention from so early on. 

And then we went through that clinical trials, they dragged on for a while because it was at the height of the pandemic and there was not enough resources from the personnel side, from the left side. So we had to go slow, and it took until the beginning of last year. Like maybe one year ago, more or less in early 2021. We were finished with the clinical trials. And then we got certified even not only as a nutraceutical, but also as a food for special medical purpose which is kind of like a therapeutic, based on nutraceutical molecules. So that is in India. So in India, within India, we can even be prescribed by doctors for COVID-19 treatment. And what else we did in that very extensive clinical trial where we took so many biomarkers as we could, we also did a not only the 14 day acute COVID treatment, we also then did a 45 day after intervention survey. That means all patients were surveyed one more time to see if they would develop any long term damage symptoms or if any of these markers or lung X rays or MRIs would show some consequences. And actually, there was nothing to be reported that the contrary. 

And the clinical trial results are also very, very encouraging, be it on the antiviral so the speed of viral clearance. That means if you have a PCR test, and you watch your Ct value, for example, if you're infected and you have a pretty high viral load, you might be around 20 Your Ct value, and that's the cycle threshold. And then as fast as your cycle threshold value goes up, that means the virus is decreasing. So they have to run it through more cycles to find viruses. And so we could end up at an average in our treatment group. The average Ct value per day was elevated by 1.76 - that is very good. And because it's a very clear marker on how fast is viral clearance of Sars Covid 2. And so I think that until today, we are pretty much in the global benchmark on just that alone. 

And then we could observe that many of the patients with, of course, a lot of clinical observations, or shortness of breath, hypoxia, fatigue, and all these observations were strongly reduced. And the most significant results were, of course, in the anti inflammatory, bringing down the anti inflammatory - cytokine markers like interleukin 6 TNF alpha, and other markers that was very significant and very quick and very strong. All went in the right direction. Thrombotic markers went in the right direction. And the most remarkable result was actually in the lung X rays, because every patient would go on admission, would have an x ray done for an MRI, and then they look at ground glass opacities, or lung abnormalities. And even though it was a randomized trial, we still had more sicker patients in our group - ask me why, but it happened. And so they had like a 95% around had abnormal lung X ray findings. And after 12 days, that was reduced by 75%. And that was really like, we got some calls from the from the doctors from that. Hospitals, believe me,

It was interesting. And they said, What is this i but we have not really observed anything like that before. I say, Yeah, let's be happy. That's a good good result. And everybody was really pleased with that, especially the patients, as you can imagine. So that is actually one of the strongest sides of the business is breathlessness, which we also get reported now on a daily basis that people say, Well, finally, I can leave my inhaler at home. Before I couldn't even walk 1000 steps without being breathlessness. And now I'm back on the beach and with my paddleboard. So this is really interesting to watch. 

And, yeah, and so the other results were really encouraging. And so then we could go to market in the late summer, last year. Since then, we've been on the market, mainly in India, and now we are shipping the product out to more than 27 countries. So patients are ordering it. It's a online purchase. In some countries, you have to pay duty, especially Britain, for example, it's her majesty's customs, so I don't have a hot line to the Buckingham Palace. I would love to, but we can't do anything about it. So we reduce our prices to a degree so that it is possible to take one box and try it. Because it will not work on everybody. So it is kind of a risk anything you try. Now, if you buy some other vitamins or nutraceuticals, or even a medicine, it's so complicated with long COVID that you can never say, Oh, this is going to work with all long haulers, that wouldn't be correct to say but it helps in the majority. And in many, many different conditions. So it's worth a try. And so we want to get the threshold down so that it's not too expensive. And even though we have we had it just happened in US, somebody was so sick already from previous vaccine damage and whatever, he couldn't take it. And so with that we said, okay, then you give your money back and you send it to somebody else wants to try it now. So even now the long haulers amoungst themselves are sending it back and forth. And reporting. It's really nice to see that. And for us. Very nice experience to have so many people give us such good feedback.

Jackie Baxter  28:36  
Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, and the fact that it does seem to be getting some good results - I don't think you're going to find anybody arguing with that. You've kind of just touched on it there, you know, with how we know long COVID to be multi system, with all sorts of various symptoms and all sorts of different people and, you know, one day is different to another. The unpredictability and all of that. So do you think it would be appropriate for any one with long COVID to try using it? You're obviously saying you're not promising it's going to work. But you think it would be appropriate for anybody to try it?

Joachim Gerlach  29:15  
It would be unethical in each way to promise anything like that. So we are not snake oil salesmen. We have done a good job on identifying what might work and it is a damn good therapeutic. So it will help a lot of people but not it cannot help everybody because we're not all the same. That's one thing. Then we do have clients or patients and even through doctors we get they get introduced to us that are having so complicated conditions and are taking so much of medications and they are so weak. You know it breaks my heart, we want to help them and you know you don't know what to say because they're they're reporting really symptoms, sitting in the wheelchair and taking strong medications and they're just barely alive and So there is a certain limit to what such a nutraceutical can do. It's not, it's not a wonder drug, it's really doing a lot of good things, especially helping your own body to heal itself. And to come back into balance. And it does not indiscriminately work on all these pathways, it's really very strange to watch, it takes the dysregulated parts and brings those back into into order. And we get a lot of feedback, which we haven't really been able to sort out - I mean, high blood pressure, for example, seems to be very prevalent in many long haulers, and the spike protein seems to elevate that. And then people take blood pressure medicine, medication, it works to a degree, but then sometimes they try Vedicinals, and their blood pressure goes goes back to normal very soon. So we're watching a lot of strange things. And many of them, we cannot really explain yet. Why is that happening? So even for us, it's a big mystery. And, and to be honest, I think for all of long COVID research, there still are a lot of mysteries. We better keep researching and do our homework, and not stop now and not settle for this at all.

Jackie Baxter  31:11  
Yeah, so I think maybe the message there is if people aren't sure, maybe to check with their doctors before trying Vedicinals. 

Joachim Gerlach  31:18  
Best thing is that they tell their doctor to contact us, so that our scientists can speak directly to the medical doctor, look at things and to keep it safe. That is the best thing we can do. Because nobody will be able to really understand all the drug interactions and the condition of the patient better than the medical practitioner he's with in the first place. And that is the best experience we have done so far. Don't just go for it. If you are more or less Okay condition, you don't have really any strong medication, beta blocks or blood thinners you're on, and you are more or less than in the condition that you can try something like that. You're just dealing with maybe some symptoms, like fatigue and breathlessness and overall unwell being. Yes, then I think it's a good idea. Yeah.

Jackie Baxter  32:04  
Perfect. So in terms of getting hold of it, I will put a link to your website in the show notes for this episode. So anybody wanting to can check that out. And I think there's a way to contact you guys on the website as well, isn't there?

Joachim Gerlach  32:19  
Yes, I mean, there is, there are several ways to do that. There's even a whatsapp call button. So that is the easiest way because they are all our groups are all working through the messengers, that goes faster, we have, I don't know, several hundred groups. So that is the the most efficient way to communicate if it's only just some information you want to share, or some questions you have that goes fastest. And also on the website, I can, I can, I can send you also the presentation that we have, where is the scientific rationale behind Vedicinals, the clinical trial results, some of them at least and the animal trial results and the drug target pathways - that is interesting for people that are more interested in the science behind it. And we have a lot of scientists that look at that, and even some of the doctors that do find time to do science, I appreciate that. So I can send you a link to that. And you can just add that underneath. 

And maybe also the long COVID coalition would be good for all of you to keep an eye on. I've been the co-founder of that where we are now trying to assemble scientists from all fields that can cover certain conditions in Long COVID. And always have the same kind of modus operandi, that means we first want the best description of the problem, what is ongoing, from experts that are experts in that field. And that is already ongoing - our third conference now. The next step that we need in order to connect that to the long hauler communities and to the doctors, who need to know what kind of diagnostics can be used to find out if these conditions are in play. And then of course, therapeutic interventions. And there we are absolutely not jealous as the business at all, we doing exactly the contrary, we are inviting any other company that can contribute or even like for research or mechanical interventions, or oxygen treatment, just whatever has a good chance to work and all should be discussed in an open forum. Scientifically neutral, because we don't like politics. So whenever politics meets science, science will lose, so we just say look, forget about politics, we just look at the facts, what we can find, listen to the experts, and then the doctors can decide what they can want to do and whatever we can contribute to that. We will do that.

Jackie Baxter  34:38  
Yeah, that sounds fantastic. And this idea of bringing together experts sounds really good because I mean, there's a lot of really good research going on and you know, it's it's brilliant. I'm so happy that there is so much research going on. But I mean I find I can't keep up with it all. And it just it feels a little bit like it would be nice for someone to be able to get an overview of it, because I'm sure that actually there's probably some crossover with some of these studies. So it sounds like maybe you're trying to sort of join some of the dots that already exist as well.

Joachim Gerlach  35:13  
Yeah, it's like, okay, the process at the moment is we as Vedicinals have, because of the nature of our intervention, we have already documented more than 150 drug target pathways, we're getting to 200 now. And there are more. So I guess that there might be up to 300 dysregulated mechanisms in COVID, and Long COVID that should be each one of them, analyzed and documented and taken apart. And so what we can do now is that we throw out this list without now our molecules, take Vedicinals out of the equation, and complete that list for everybody to look at it. And so my idea is actually now to give that list of what needs to be covered to each person that is in long COVID research or therapy or in the industry, and ask them, Can you just do a blue tick box behind each pathway that you can cover? And then we'll see how they are related and what can be done and where we can collaborate and for which kind of patients. So we are just setting something in motion, the coalition is only a temporary alliance, that we can hopefully dissolve once we have reached the objective, maybe by the end of this year again, or that would be a dream now, we could dissolve it and say, Okay, guys, we we got most of it covered, and now everybody can go its own direction, that would be the best. That's what I'm hoping for.

Jackie Baxter  36:33  
Yes. And I think anybody listening will be agreeing with you on that. It would be lovely to solve it. But yeah, that does sound really, really interesting about trying to sort of map out the problem, almost,

Joachim Gerlach  36:46  
How can you provide a solution if you haven't mapped out the problem in the first place. And so many experts are good at that. But it like you said, there's overlapping points. And then many mechanisms play into two different conditions. For example, you have a some mechanisms, they go into Thrombosis formation and coagulation. But they can also go into inflammation or organ damage, on the other hand, so our bodies of course, so intertwined, actually, what comes to mind is that our health system will now be put to a challenge, where you can see the deficit really being clear, of compartmentalization. So because now you have such a multi systemic disease, and now where are you going to turn to it as a long hauler - your neurologist, to your cardiologist, to your medical practitioner. So there's, it is all compartmentalized, okay, that can stay, but you have to now connect these compartments, so that these people talk to each other at least, and find a comprehensive approach on how to do that. That will be interesting to watch. Let's see how long they will take to do that

Jackie Baxter  36:53  
That's so so right. I mean, I've described the health service, certainly in the UK, but I think from what you're saying other countries may not be too different. But - its being very "do it yourself." You know, you're chasing up so many different pathways, you know, so many different specialists. And nobody seems to be looking at the whole picture. And when you've got an illness that is so multi system, that's where that sort of healthcare kind of falls down a bit, isn't it?

Joachim Gerlach  38:28  
Yeah, let's let's find the people with the biggest brains that can digest this whole picture. The quest for the biggest brain. And then of course, there are so many things you can do. Like we talked before we did this recording - the nutrition itself, eat good food, if you can organic and eat fresh food, cook at home, don't eat all the junk stuff and stay away from  histamine loaded foods. And yeah, just everybody knows what healthy food is. We don't like it always. But we all know what is healthy, don't we? So do your body a favor and get back to more healthy food and drink good water. Sleep well, go out in the sun now it#s summer, sit and if you cannot move, then sit in the sun. Let your body get in contact with nature. So that is also important now after especially after the lockdown and these bad times. And so yeah, there's a lot of things that you can already start doing that are common sense that will help you.

Jackie Baxter  39:27  
Yes, yes, I've heard someone describe it as putting yourself in the best possible position. Maybe the scales will eventually tip back in the right direction, we hope, but yeah, by keeping yourself as healthy as you can, within the confines of long COVID of course.

Joachim Gerlach  39:45  
But hopefully now in the next few months, I think there will be coming more and more things, be it therapeutics, pharmaceuticals or nutraceuticals and some other enlightened people will come around the corner with with good solutions. And so that's what I'm hoping for.

Jackie Baxter  40:00  
Yes, I hope so too. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. It certainly shed a bit of light on Vedicinals and all sorts of other things for me, so hopefully it has for other people as well. And it's been fascinating to hear what you've been up to. So thank you so much.

Joachim Gerlach  40:17  
Thank you so much for having me and hopefully that most of your listeners will get well soon. I cross my fingers

Transcribed by https://otter.ai