Enjoy the first installment of Dr. Lowell Keppel’s “Good to Know” series for practitioners.
Don’t let summertime fool you! Your patients need to be moving calcium and other minerals now more than ever. We need calcium to move our muscles and for our nerves to carry messages between the brain and every part of the human body. We also use calcium to help blood vessels move blood throughout the body and to help release hormones and enzymes that affect almost every bodily function. And, as you will see, it is needed for a strong immune response.
Understanding the relationship between calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin F (polyunsaturated fatty acids) is a major key to keeping your patients healthy and happy.
Many of the viruses in the enterovirus group love to show themselves during the summer months. These include the polio virus, coxsackie A and B, and echovirus. Some of the symptoms of these viruses include mild respiratory illness (the common cold), hand, foot and mouth disease, acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis, aseptic meningitis, myocarditis, severe neonatal sepsis-like disease, acute flaccid paralysis, and the related acute flaccid myelitis. Polio outbreaks of the past often occurred towards the end of summertime. Rates of other viral infections such as HPV, herpes, and shingles also increase toward the end of summer.
In his 1951 booklet Diet Prevents Polio, Dr. Benjamin Sandler discusses the dramatic role that diet played during a polio outbreak in the summer of 1948. The complete booklet is available at the Selene River Press Historical Archives, along with the following summary of Dr. Sandler’s work:
“Dr. Benjamin Sandler pokes holes in conventional ideas about polio and argues that the best way to have avoided the infectious disease was to eat a low-carbohydrate diet. He presents the evidence that led him to his conclusion and explains why, of all the countries in the world, the United States got hit hardest by the polio epidemic. He also details one of the most intriguing public health experiments in nutrition history, when in the summer of 1948 he convinced newspapers in the polio-ravaged state of North Carolina to publicize his low-carb diet as a means of prevention. Though the experiment was a success—the rate of polio in North Carolina changed from one of the highest in the country to one of the lowest—health officials categorically ignored Dr. Sandler’s work, and, shockingly, his book was later banned by the government.”
It is important to note that Dr. Sandler’s conclusion about the role of proper nutrition in fighting off infection is not exclusive to polio—it is true of any and all viruses. 
The principal nutrient needed for building a strong immune response is the mineral calcium. The body needs ionized calcium (calcium 2+, calcium bicarbonate) to signal the white cells of the immune response to attack the viruses and bacteria that can cause illness, a process known as phagocytosis.
There is abundant research regarding ionized calcium and viruses. As a matter of fact, studies show that low ionized calcium levels are a predictor for the severity and hospitalization of COVID.
Understanding calcium movement in the body is vital for optimal protection of the immune response. In his 1959 article “Heart Disease—America’s Leading Cause of Death,” originally published in Dr. Royal Lee’s Applied Trophology newsletter, Dr. Lee discusses results from what we know today as the Heart Sound Recorder. I strongly recommend reading the article in full, but the following quote is a great synopsis of the relationship between calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin F:
“The cause of a missing second sound in some area of the heart muscle is the lack of ionized calcium in the bloodstream, often due to overexposure to sun, with consequent excess of vitamin D in the blood. This causes retention of calcium and requires vitamin F to restore the level of ionized (diffusible) blood calcium—the only kind we can get into the muscle. We normally get our diffusible calcium from hard water, or it may be supplied with Calcium Lactate. It is not supplied by calcium phosphate (bone calcium). Recovery is prompt after the administration of vitamin F [as Cataplex F] and Calcium Lactate. Ten minutes is often time enough to see the restoration of the second sound.”
The same principal outlined by Dr. Lee above is also vital to the immune response.
To sum it up, Calcium Lactate and Cataplex F from Standard Process are both essential for your patients in the summer. Good to know!
Images from iStock/Francesco Scatena (main), Aamulya (post).
Dr. Keppel received a Doctor of Chiropractic degree from Logan College of Chiropractic in 1983, following an associate degree in science from Southwestern Michigan Community College. He became certified in Neuro-Emotional Technique in 1999, having studied directly under the program’s founder, Dr. Scott Walker. He has undertaken a variety of further training, including herbology, spinal rehabilitation, and ongoing nutritional education.
Dr. Keppel knows there is always some seminar, book or journal that might deepen his knowledge or contribute one more bit of information that he can directly translate into an effective treatment. He gives sound advice from the perspective of clinical experience and years of practice.
More recently, Dr. Keppel has been teaching seminars for Standard Process West. He has become their in-house chiropractor and is recognized as a mentor for other practitioners throughout the greater Denver area.
For more information, visit his website at DoctorKeppel.com, check out his YouTube channel, or contact him directly at drkeppel@gmail.com.
Products by Dr. Lowell Keppel
Dr. Lowell Keppel
