Attack the Flu
Attack the Cold and Flu Season Before it Gets to You. The cold and flu season is right around the corner and now is the time to take action to boost your immune system. A few simple steps can take you a long way in preventing colds and flu this winter season….
Did you know:
- One teaspoon of sugar can suppress the immune system for up to 5 hours.
- One coca cola has 8.2 tsp of sugar
- Laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens the immune system. Six-year-olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day.
Cold vs. Flu:
Cold
Onset: fatigue, sneezing, coughing, runny nose
Fever: absent or mild
Symptoms: muscle aches, sore throat, watery eyes, headache
Progression: nasal mucus changes from clear and thin to yellow and thick
Duration: 3-10 days
Invading agent: usually bacteria
Occurrence: winter
Flu
Onset: sudden and strong
Fever: high (40 C or 105 F)
Symptoms: weak and tired, chills, dry cough, severe headache, muscle aches
Progression: fever may last for 3 – 5 days
Duration: up to three weeks
Invading agent: virus
Occurrence: winter or early spring
10 simple steps to prevent colds and flu:
#1 Wash Your Hands: Most cold and flu viruses are spread by direct contact. Someone who has the flu sneezes onto their hand, and then touches the telephone, the keyboard, a kitchen glass. The germs can live for hours -- in some cases weeks -- only to be picked up by the next person who touches the same object. So wash your hands often. If no sink is available, rub your hands together very hard for a minute or so. That also helps break up most of the cold germs. Or rub an alcohol-based hand sanitizer onto your hands.
#2 Don't Cover Your Sneezes and Coughs With Your Hands: Because germs and viruses cling to your bare hands, muffling coughs and sneezes with your hands results in passing along your germs to others. When you feel a sneeze or cough coming, use a tissue, and then throw it away immediately. If you don't have a tissue, turn your head away from people near you and cough into the air.
#3 Don't Touch Your Face: Cold and flu viruses enter your body through the eyes, nose, or mouth. Touching their faces is the major way children catch colds, and a key way they pass colds on to their parents.
#4 Drink Plenty of Fluids: Water flushes your system, washing out the poisons as it rehydrates you. A typical, healthy adult needs eight 8-ounce glasses of fluids each day. How can you tell if you're getting enough liquid? If the color of your urine runs close to clear, you're getting enough. If it's deep yellow, you need more fluids.
#5 Take a Sauna: Researchers aren't clear about the exact role saunas play in prevention, but one 1989 German study found that people who steamed twice a week got half as many colds as those who didn't. One theory: When you take a sauna you inhale air hotter than 80 degrees, a temperature too hot for cold and flu viruses to survive.
#6 Get Fresh Air: A regular dose of fresh air is important, especially in cold weather when central heating dries you out and makes your body more vulnerable to cold and flu viruses. Also, during cold weather more people stay indoors, which means more germs are circulating in crowded, dry rooms.
#7 Do Aerobic Exercise Regularly: Aerobic exercise speeds up the heart to pump larger quantities of blood; makes you breathe faster to help transfer oxygen from your lungs to your blood; and makes you sweat once your body heats up. These exercises help increase the body's natural virus-killing cells.
#8 Eat a Healthy Diet: A diet rich in high nutrient foods such as phytochemicals will help strengthen and support your immune system. "Phyto" means plants, and the natural chemicals in plants give the vitamins in food an extra boost of nutritional value. Phytonurtients are especially high in dark green, red, and yellow vegetables and fruits. Also, avoid refined carbohydrates, sugar and processed food. Not only are they now in nutritional value but they actually act to suppress the immune system.
#9 Avoid Smoke: Statistics show that heavy smokers get more severe colds and more frequent ones. Even being around smoke profoundly zaps the immune system. Smoke dries out your nasal passages and paralyzes cilia. These are the delicate hairs that line the mucous membranes in your nose and lungs, and with their wavy movements, sweep cold and flu viruses out of the nasal passages. Experts contend that one cigarette can paralyze cilia for as long as 30 to 40 minutes.
#10 Relax: If you can teach yourself to relax, you can activate your immune system on demand. There's evidence that when you put your relaxation skills into action, your interleukins -- leaders in the immune system response against cold and flu viruses -- increase in the bloodstream. Train yourself to picture an image you find pleasant or calming. Do this 30 minutes a day for several months. Keep in mind, relaxation is a learnable skill, but it is not doing nothing. People who try to relax, but are in fact bored, show no changes in blood chemicals.
10 simple steps to boost your immune system:
1. Nutrition – think variety. Eat a wide range of different fruit and vegetables as the different colours indicate different compounds. A typical immune-boosting diet will include the following per day: five servings of fruit and vegetables, seeds, cold pressed oils, garlic, rich protein foods and whole grains. Make sure you include enough fish in your diet as it contains high quality protein necessary for cell growth and repair. Saltwater fish provide not only protein, but also omega-3 fatty acids. Sardines, trout, herring, tuna, butterfish and yellowtail are good sources. Research indicates that fish oil reduces inflammatory reactions and thereby regulates immune function. The strength of your immune system depends on the quality of your food. Eating small meals every few hours minimizes excessive intake and will boost your energy levels. Many herbs and spices such as turmeric, oregano, coriander, basil, mint, rosemary and cayenne pepper have antioxidant properties.
2. Exercise and light – exercise supports the immune system by decreasing stress hormone production. You can start by walking for 30 minutes a day. Exercising outdoors increases your exposure to natural light. Natural light is also important because it makes vitamin D.
3. Sleep – a good night’s sleep is an elixir and helps one cope with a stressful lifestyle. Quality sleep helps us cognitively and emotionally.
4. Drink water – without it your system becomes sluggish to say the least!
5. Avoid – certain environmental hazards can trigger autoimmune diseases. Toxins can either suppress the immune system, or cause it to overreact. Asthma and allergies are signs of an overactive immune system. As far as possible choose organically grown foods, and read the labels on the rest!
6. Mind-body connection – the mind influences the body in mysterious ways. Laugh, meditate, play music, dance and make love (not all at the same time!)
7. Brush your teeth and floss – dental health is essential for a strong immune system. Keep your gums healthy as oral bacteria may enter your bloodstream through small ulcers that develop in the gum tissue.
8. Take antibiotics wisely – and supplement with probiotics and/or eat lots of yoghurt with live bacteria. Look on the label for ‘live’ or ‘active’ yoghurt cultures. Antibiotics will not cure viral infections. Colds and flu are seldom bacterial. Minor infections provide a chance for the immune system to get a good workout.
9. Watch your weight – every extra kilogram translates to one kilogram of tissue that the immune cells must constantly patrol and defend. Obesity is linked to reduced immune activity.
10. Find the right remedies – multivitamins are no substitute for a healthy varied diet. Food is not just made up of cells, but contains a vital life force. The best manufacturers cannot create pills that capture this life force to give us all the benefits our immune system demands. Ensure you take the basic supplements including vitamin A, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, vitamin D, folic acid, magnesium and selenium. Make sure your multivitamin contains the following minerals: selenium, zinc, chromium, copper and iron. Some other immune-boosting supplements include: olive leaf, astragalus, high doses of vitamin C, vitamin E, rhodiola rosea, cats claw, aloe vera, garlic, zinc, echinacea, elderberry, medicinal mushrooms such as reishi, maitake, cordyceps and shiitake, grapeseed extract, phytosterols, and some Chinese herbal remedies.
My personal favorite is a whole food supplement like barley green. Try and get an organic product. Barley green contains almost everything we need and because nutrients work synergistically, this is a great way of supplementing. Because the universe is made up of mostly light, all life forms are photo receptive. Barley grass has one of the highest, natural, rich chlorophyll contents of all green vegetables.
