While many general practitioners shuttered their doors in early 2020 amid spreading lockdowns, leaving those with COVID-19 to seek treatments at emergency rooms, Dr. David Brownstein, a family physician, and medical director of the Center for Holistic Medicine in West Bloomfield, Michigan, and his colleagues, remained steadfast in their commitment and oath as doctors—to keep their doors open and do what they did best—treat sick patients.
“I said to my staff, patients are going to be scared and if they get sick, they're going to need a place to go—we're going to be there for them and help them out,” said Dr. Brownstein in a recent interview on Discovering True Health, a YouTube channel and podcast dedicated to health and wellness.
“We've been treating viral infections and other flu-like infections using a holistic approach for close to 30 years, and we're pretty damn good at what we do,” he noted.
Early Days of the Pandemic
It was the beginning of March when COVID-19 hit Michigan. Intent on protecting his staff and their healthy patients, Dr. Brownstein and his team bundled up and set up an outdoor COVID-19 treatment assembly line—despite snow on the ground and temperatures frequently below 30 degrees. IVs hanging from standing poles flapped in the frigid wind as Dr. Brownstein and his staff treated patients in their cars.
As the weeks went by Dr. Brownstein recounts, “There were some days when cars were 10 deep in the parking lot and we were working until nine or ten at night using flashlights on our phones to see the veins for IVs.”
What stood out to Dr. Brownstein was the respiratory issues he was witnessing. “These people couldn't breathe. I've heard the lungs of many patients with respiratory viruses but this was a different sound, the air was there, but the air was not being utilized,” he said.
Because Dr. Brownstein had been employing a nutritional and oxidative protocol for treating a variety of viral illnesses during flu seasons for over three decades he felt that although SARS-CoV-2 was a new virus, it was still part of the coronavirus family.
Dr. Brownstein felt that since up to one-third of all flu-like infections come from the coronavirus family, his protocol had a good chance of being successful. “For nearly 30 years, we have had good success treating viral illnesses, why should this be any different?” Dr. Brownstein asked.
Every year between 12,000 to 52,000 Americans die during flu season from influenza. “None of my partners or myself could recall any of our patients dying from the flu over the last 30 years, and none of us can recall the last time we had a patient hospitalized from the flu,” said Dr. Brownstein.
“Think about it—let's say 25,000 Americans die every year due to flu-like illnesses. Multiply that by 30 years and that is a lot of patients dying. I think we haven’t seen our patients dying because of the support we were providing to their immune systems,” he said.
One of the treatments Dr. Brownstein used for those with respiratory issues was a dilute solution of hydrogen peroxide and iodine—administered via nebulizer—every hour until they felt better.
“We’ve used this treatment for nearly three decades for lung problems. And the consistent theme I heard from people was after the second dose of that nebulizer solution they could breathe, and they felt like they were moving forward towards recovery,” said Dr. Brownstein.
Dr. Brownstein would call his COVID-19 patients daily until they were no longer at risk from the virus, and as treatments continued, reports were coming in that patients with even severe respiratory issues were feeling better.
Dr. Brownstein outlined his treatments in a peer-reviewed study titled, “A Novel Approach to Treating COVID-19 Using Nutritional and Oxidative Therapies,” published in Science, Public Health Policy & the Law in July 2020.
His study reported his treatment of 107 patients at the time diagnosed with COVID-19. Three were hospitalized (3 percent) with two of the three hospitalized before instituting his treatment protocol and only one requiring hospitalization after beginning his treatment protocol. There were no deaths.
Based on the case fatality rate at that time, two to 10 deaths as well as at least eight hospitalizations would have been expected
