 Benefits of floating for health and immune system in the time of COVID, which is definitely affecting us all now, through all the world. That's why we have, I guess, this virtual conference. And I just want to start with one minute short. I think it might be interesting for you what I'm doing and how I'm connected with floating in Moscow. So I have two centers in Moscow, and we do not just floating, but we have some integrative medicine and wellness approach. And as you can see below, we have two centers with quite a lot of different services. We have six little rooms, 14 treatment rooms for massage, osteopathy, acupuncture, and so on. And we have also here a small, about 65 square meters room for group, for yoga, for daichi, et cetera. So just short to say, perhaps somebody doesn't know what integrative medicine is about. It's like floating, by the way. So it's about something holistic. It's about the holistic approach. I think what is important is a special cooperation between doctor and patients. So a bit different irony, I would say. It uses usually traditional plus alternative practices. What is important, it usually takes the situation whole holistically and tries to use all sides of issues and problems. We use critical evaluation for results. Usually we try to base it on science. And the approach is mainly natural and non-invasive. That's I think the key issues for integrative medical approach. Okay. I would like to start. So basically this is the, I added a graph from today, since of September. So I guess you know the figures and perhaps you are as tired of them as I am. I'm actually not watching that anymore since long time. But anyhow we have to get along with this issue because it has severe consequences. And just as a reminder, I would like to talk just a minute about it. That basically, as we know, this COVID issue is a virus. And what is important, as you see below, I will not read everything as what you see here. But the important is that we have to take steps to boost our immune system in case we actually come in contact with the virus so that our bodies can effectively fight back. And I will talk about the immune system in my first part of the presentation. I will try to not do it too theoretically, but still as a reminder, why it is such an important topic and how it is connected with loading. So to come back to coronavirus, as you know, it's an upper respiratory illness. It's quite similar to pneumonia and it's a highly contagious disease. So which is spread, can be spread from person to person contact. And what we can see below is that 80% according to a WHO report on China cases is that usually the symptoms are quite mild. But the danger for severe infection is higher in those areas when people are over 65. And especially those who are immunosuppressed or have pre-existing health conditions like heart disease, lung disease, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, et cetera, et cetera. Also smokers, by the way. So and I think most of us have people we know or even relatives who have been affected by COVID. And we really know by now that it's not just theory that usually people get severe ill if the pre-existing health conditions are just not right. So let's talk about the immune system. It was just told below, I come back that there is a topic about age over 65. We see in countries like Italy, for example, where a lot of elderly people were affected when the virus began. And then we see the topic of immunosuppression. So let's go further to the topic of immune system. So the immune system is designed to fight off infection and diseases. And basically it has a number of ways how to detect and destroy anything it recognizes as a foreign to our body. So it could be bacteria which are not positive for us because they can be viruses, fungi, parasites or unhealthy cells, for example, cancer cells. And we have to see that the viruses, they need the cell machinery in order to produce their own proteins. So they are intercellular parasites that basically can only replicate inside the cells. And which is one of the reasons they are not considered to be alive. And the most effective mechanism of the innate response against viral infections are mediated by interferon and by the activation of natural killer cells. If we go to Wikipedia, you will see that basically it states in a different way what I just stated that the immune system is a host defense system. It's like our police departments or fire alarm, something like this, which basically compromise biological structures and processes within an organism that protect us against diseases. So we can say actually from the top view that we die either from an accident or from one way or another from diseases that the elder we become, the less our host immune system works. So to function properly an immune system must detect a wide variety of agents known as petrogens from viruses to parasitic worms and distinguish them from the organisms on healthy tissue. So it's like a huge laboratory, each immune system of us is like a huge scientific field because it has to know this and has to distinguish all this information. And that's why it has been evolving for millions of years. And we can use the wisdom of this immune system we all. So in many species there are two major subsystems, sorry, of the immune system. Basically it's the innate immune system or the adaptive. And both subsystems use humoral immunity and some mediated immunity to perform their functions. So we can see that petrogens can rapidly evolve and adapt and thereby avoid detection in neutralization by the immune system. However, multiple defense mechanisms have also evolved to recognize and neutralize petrogens. That's what I was talking before. So we have two classes basically of defense system. And we have to know that even simple unicellular organisms such as bacteria, they also possess a very rudimentary immune system. It's just in the form of enzymes and they protect them from bacterial ph infections. The core you can see on the picture on the left, the core of the immune system is our thymus just above our heart. I come perhaps a bit late through it, but you can see basically what is interesting about the immune system, it's not something we usually know that good. It's not something you know which can, where we can feel pain or we can really understand. It's something really behind and before we don't see the police or the fire department as I put it as an example, we usually even forget they exist. We see that something is wrong when we see them in action. So basically immune system is something we can understand that works when something happens. And as I stated below, you can see here on the left this picture that we have two defense lines. And one is the innate immunity and the second line defense is the adaptive immunity. Basically all Jode vertebrates including humans, we have very sophisticated immune mechanism. We have the ability to adapt over time to recognize the specific pathogens more efficiently and adaptive or acquired immunity. It creates a new logical memory after an initial response to a specific pathogen. This is by the way more or less the process of vaccination. I'm sure you know the discussion about vaccination. Now it's even a core political issue for example in the elections, in the future elections in the US. But it's not only a political issue for the US. I guess for all countries which have to do something about the corona crisis. So basically when we get vaccines, our immune system adapts, it gets an initial response and later on it leads to enhanced response to subsequent encounters with that same pathogen. The counter problem of that issue and I'm sure you know it is that for example in the influenza mutates and that's also one of the discussions about the corona virus that it will and it is already mutating around the world and has different aspects how we adapt to it. So I will not go too far, more deeper into it basically you can read even Wikipedia about the immune system to remember what I'm talking about. So what disorders can we have? We can have disorders which can result in autoimmune diseases, inflammatory diseases and cancer. And what is important for us I think for this discussion is the topic of immunodeficiency. So it occurs, I hope I spelled it correctly, when the immune system is less active than normal and basically when it doesn't work, how it should work in a healthy state, in a good homeostasis, it results in occurring life threatening infections and for example that the COVID begins to become more and more severe or more dangerous for us. And in humans the immunodeficiency can either be the result of genetic disease such as severe combined immunodeficiency or acquired conditions such as HIV or the use of immunosuppressive medication. I just said the word homeostasis which is so important for us, I think when we talk about the holistic approach, when we talk also about floating in what happens to people there and we have to understand there is this very important and well studied nowadays already, the immune brain connection. We have to understand that we have basically three key systems with which we can get information to adjust and to evolve and to survive biologically. That's what we are for. And these three main operation systems who communicate with each other are the nervous system, the immune system and the endocrine system. These are basically the main operational system of how we work, how we interact and how we manage the information. So as you see the immune system is more or less the main, the core topic, but we can't take it, cut it aside from all the other functions of the body and of who we are because it just doesn't work like this. So we have to understand that the human body maintains in homeostasis when we can regulate, when we really can regulate internally and externally what affects us. And we have different stress conditions for sure. And our central nervous system with the two neurotransmitters, our endocrine system through hormones and immune system based mainly through antibodies and specialized cells. This is the way we cope with these issues. And these three major systems that work in synchrony, they regulate the body function smoothly under all diverse situations, even of fight or flight. And the hormones and neurotransmitters, they are the two separate chemical messengers with some similarities. It's very interesting, by the way, as some molecules can act as both hormones and neurotransmitters as well. So there are a lot of similarities. And one example of this overlap is the norepinephrine, which can be released into the bloodstream by the adrenal glands as a hormone or can be released by sympathetic nerve endings as a neurotransmitter. What is also interesting is because we always talk about endorphins, which are produced when we float, that the functions of the endorphins is to regulate the cell growth, is to decrease inflammation, if we have it, is to decrease vascular permeability, to stabilize toll-like receptors, decrease necrolia activation, and thus to reduce pain. To decrease cytokine release, cytokines are this immune system, excuse me, I forgot the word, it's a part of the immune system, how it operates. They shift from THZ to TH1 immunity and mutility effects. So even when we talk about endorphins, we can really go deep into it, dive into this topic and see how it affects our functioning in our immune system. So just to stop the talk about immune system, I hope I didn't give it too much about it and didn't dive too deeply into it, but just as an understanding what's the core immune system is about, why it's so important nowadays. So when we read the articles nowadays, what we can do about the COVID, besides all the measures of preventive measures like taking masks, for example, or cleaning the hands, we can usually see the following things. You can see, as far as possible, people tell us the journalists or the doctors maintain healthy habits, eat healthy, get good sleep quality and quantity, manage your stress, and stay physically active. And yes, I would like to stay here because for sure there are other things to do, for example, activity social network or avoiding raw or undercooked animal products, etc. But let's stay here and particularly I would like to start with the stress. So with all the daily headlines slowing doom and gloom about our coronavirus, I think we all went through it or somebody is still going through it, it's really easy to stress over it. And we see a lot of people who are panicked, they began stockpiling basic goods and foods and so on and so on. And it's a good idea to be prepared for any major emergency. And now it's viral outbreak. But we always have to remember that the stress hormones, what I was talking before, they tax the immune system. So they make their response to viral infections less and less effective. The more stress we have, the less we have power and resource for our tech for our immune system. So in short supply of the stress hormone cortisol, it can boost immunity, but limiting inflammation. But once it crosses a certain threshold, too much cortisol in the blood, it opens the door for more and more inflammation. But it also negatively affects the production of lymphocytes. So the white blood cells that are the body's first line of defense against infection, putting you at risk of viral disease. So during this particular stressful period, try not to panic. This is what we have also to tell our clients. Because it makes the things only worse. And we have to remember that the effects of stress are accumulated. So meaning that even ordinary day to day activities can eventually lead to more serious health issues. I have some figures here about mental illness in the US as an example. And we see that particularly these groups of people are extremely vulnerable now. The second core issue if we talk about increasing the potential and sometimes it's not even increasing. Sometimes I'm not so sure about really boosting the immune system that it's really about that. It's more bringing the immune system back to its potential operation. So it's not really this biohacking increase but it's more just giving it the space to work comfortably. And I think the second or comparably the same important issue for a good immune system and good nervous and endocrine system, working system, is the topic of sleeping. So when we don't get quality sleep, when we don't sleep enough, we know that people are likely to get sick after being exposed to a virus. So when we sleep the body releases proteins called cytokines, what I was talking about before. And while sleep depuration decreases their production. So cytokines are paramount during times of infection and inflammation. Because more than production of antibodies and immune cells is reduced when you don't get enough sleep. So the optimal amount of sleep for most adults is between 7 and 8 hours. We have to remember that the school age, children and teenagers, they might actually need up to 10 hours of sleep. And just because we have so much stress and just because we leave the way we leave especially in the big cities, it's just one more argument now in the air of COVID. Why we should use flotation, we should use flotation just to restore our sleep amount which is and we should restore the potential of our immune system. So the sleep and rest, the immune system is affected by sleep and rest. As I said, and we get more or less complex feedback loops involving cytokines produced in response to infection. And they appear to also play a role in the regulation of non-repid eye movement sleep. So also the way we sleep has an important aspect because not the deep sleep but this short time sleeping is much better for the immune system and this is by the way what is happening during deflotation. So the immune response to infection results in changes to the sleep cycle including an increase in slow wave sleep relative to REM sleep. And this means that when we have sleep deprivation, when we suffer from it, the active immunization may have a diminished effect, it may result in low antibody production and a low immune response, then we'll be noted in the well rested individual. And just to finish my short presentation, when we talk about floating, okay I guess this you know anyway, we have to remember that what is happening is really what happens to us in deflotation is really unique because of the weightlessness, because of the absence salt and because of the sensory deprivation. One of the issues we have also to remember is that the toxic amounts which the immune system fights with has to go out with our lymphatic system. And this is what is also strengthened and pushed up when we float because of magnesium, because of the absence salt. And so it's not just the rest or the stress reduction, there are really a lot of issues with which work here when we have sensory deprivation, when we float, when we feel this weightlessness, the stillness, when the endocrine system, the immune system and the nervous system, when the synchrone even better and thus increase the resource for our homestieses. Yeah we can see the physiological effects which we know anyway even without the COVID and we see one of the functions below is the increased immune function. It's very important stuff, support for healing processes, for rehabilitation also after, for example, COVID and after hospitalization, problems with lungs, with respiratory problems in general and we have the issue of increased immune function. For sure we have also some psychological and cognitive effects I will not go deeper into. And just to complete my presentation I think I have my last minute. My last slide is an excerpt from Lao Zi from Dao De Jing. So attain complete emptiness, hold fast to stillness, the 10,000 things to hear about I only watch for the going back, things grow and grow but each goes back to its root and going back to the root is stillness and this means returning to what is and from my perspective is also to returning to the potential to the initial biometrics of who we are on our health level and this is what helps us, this is how flotation helps us also to stay over, to stay healthy and to have a good immune system and not to get the virus in a way that it will affect us. Thank you very much for attention.