Observations have shown that COVID disease worsens with the following factors: advancing age, higher blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and inflammation. The common link in all these is inflammation. There are also reports that when one’s glutathione levels drop, he/she is more likely to get serious issues with many viruses, from HIV, to hepatitis, and more recently, to SARS-CoV-2. This disease is largely quite benign, and instead of attempting to protect the truly vulnerable, for the first time in history, the healthy, or non-infected are treated as criminals. Children have an extraordinarily low risk of transmission and disease manifestation, yet are being punished by school lock outs.

There is another angle to this that deserves attention. I learned some 25 years ago that many people with chronic infection, like Lyme disease, carry genetic factors related to coagulation that place them at higher risk.

Look at a cotton ball. That is my analogy of a clot. Now, take some of the individual strands of the white cotton and pull them out. They don’t constitute a clot, but if such small fibrin (I call it sticky cotton candy s*#t) molecules are floating around in your blood, it gets thick, the vessels get lined with goo, and transmit far less oxygen to needy tissues. Generalized oxygen deprivation has been seen with COVID and coagulopathy as well. Inflammation can promote said coagulation challenges.

I believe that it is important to look at this in all chronic illness patients. I believe that if medicine were to look at this possibility, it would find genetic predisposition to severe COVID illness via the coagulation pathways, and we might know in advance who is at significantly elevated risk. Due to severe government limitations on “commercial” speech, especially as related to COVID, I cannot address specifics here. But I’ll comment on a few known conditions that increase coagulation risk. High Lp(a), often found in African Americans. Factor V Leiden. “Anti-phospholipid syndrome). And, a myriad of other genetically controlled clotting alterations. Hypertension, a risk for COVID, may be related to thick blood, requiring a higher pressure to move the blood through your vessels. Cancer increases risk of coagulation disorders. A good integrative/functional medicine provider might be able to help you identify and address these matters, reducing your risk for a variety of health problems. Maintaining high levels of glutathione may be crucial in limiting inflammation and its risks.

I was taught that inflammation and coagulopathy go hand in hand in increasing morbidity. Coronavirus, and other viruses, seem to be bearing it out. Perhaps it would explain some of the severe coronavirus cases we see in young people who appear to be healthy. Could they be walking around with bodies at high but unknown risk?