The Flu Fighting Arsenal : 5 Ways to Naturally Stop the Flu Dead In Its Tracks

[donnay]

The Flu Fighting Arsenal : 5 Ways to Naturally Stop the Flu Dead In Its Tracks

Tess Pennington
Ready Nutrition

Few people make it through the winter without coming down with a cold or flu. It is inevitable. Not getting enough sleep, natural vitamins, or when we inadvertently are around people with weakened immune systems can put our health at risk. Before you know it, you wake up with those tell-tale symptoms.

The CDC is reporting widespread flu activity in 29 states, primarily in the South and Midwest. That’s twice as many states as in the previous week. A reason for this onslaught is an inefficient flu vaccine. “The stuff [flu] that’s circulating out there is different than what they made the vaccine against,” said CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook. “Though unfortunately, as of today, it’s only about 30 percent well-matched.” We can prepare for this ahead of time by boosting our immune system and adding some natural flu preventatives to our flu arsenal.

The Best Defense is a Natural One

Boosting your immune system before a virus has had a chance to overtake your immune system is a far easier regimen than bringing your health back from a full on flu assault.

1. Keep Your Hands Clean

This is a no-brainer right? We all know the importance of washing your hands during heightened flu seasons, but it is easy to forget that we touch our faces an average of 3.6 times per hour. It is important to add that viruses can survive on non-porous surfaces for hours. Therefore, if our hands are not clean, then we make ourselves more susceptible to illness.

Having hand sanitizers in the rooms we are frequently in can ensure we keep our hands clean. I have found that store bought hand sanitizers are harsh on my skin and prefer to make my own. Check out this all-natural recipe for hand sanitizing lotion.

2. Use Herbals to Relieve Symptoms

Herbs and essential oils are considered mankind’s first medicine and it has been used throughout history for medical treatment. Using herbs can significantly reduce cold and flu-like symptoms.

In my home, we drink a lot of herbal teas with honey, lemon, ginger syrup added to it. As well, we include a lot of fresh vitamins from fruit and vegetables; and, if we are beginning to feel the onslaught of the flu, we begin taking a vitamin regimen of zinc and Vitamin D and spoonfuls of homemade elderberry syrup.

Using herbal teas and tinctures are great to get the most medicinal benefits. I buy herbs and organic raw unfiltered honey in bulk and have plenty leftover to make more syrup throughout the flu season. Here are some other great herbs to add to your natural medicine cabinet.

Sage
Echinacea
Elderberry
Licorice root
Horehound
Cinnamon bark
Slippery Elm

Essential oils can also be used for assisting in relieving a myriad of medical ailments associated with the flus. Some more popular ways of using essential oils are aromatherapy, herbal soaks, compresses, tinctures and salves.

There are two types of essential oils you should stock up on:

Antibacterial - Due to the increase of antibacterial resistant illnesses, many are turning to essential oils such as basil, cassia, cinnamon, clove, cypress, eucalyptus, geranium, lavender, lemon, marjoram, melaleuca, myrrh, orange, oregano, peppermint, rosemary, tea tree and thyme.

Antiviral - Oils that have been studied to help control viral infections include: basil, cassia, cinnamon, eucalyptus, frankincense, lemon, lemongrass, marjoram, Melaleuca, myrrh, oregano, and thyme.

This essential oil kit is great for beginners!

One of my favorite ways to use essential oils when one of my family members is ill is by making a steam bath and adding a few drops. The steam helps to loosen mucus, as well they also acts as a carrier to help the essential oil quickly alleviate flu-like symptoms.

Herb Infused Face Steam

This soothing face steam will help loosen congestion and kill viruses and bacteria in the lungs, bronchials and sinuses.

2 cup boiling water
2 drops thyme
2 drops rosemary
2 drops oregano

Cover pot for 5 minutes and then put face directly over pot with a towel covering your head. Breathe in the steam for up to 15 minutes.

Another way to create a soothing steam bath is by adding essential oils in bath blocks.

3. Diet Alterations

Although eating healthy during the holiday season can be difficult, by keeping your diet as clean as possible and not overloading it with excessive indulgences of sugar, carbohydrates and reducing dairy will boost your immunity system and lessen your chance of catching the flu. Some foods that will provide you with optimum health are:

Organic fruits and vegetables
Fermented foods such as kombucha, kefir, yogurt, kimchi, etc.
Organic, pastured meats and eggs (including 100% grass-fed beef)
Healthy fats, such as coconut oil, olive oil, avocados, nuts.
Avoid sugar, especially refined sugars. Sugar weakens the immune system. If you need sweeteners, use raw honey, maple syrup, & stevia.
Drinking teas high in antioxidants such as green tea can stimulate production of immune cells.
Raw honey has antibacterial, antifungal, & antiviral properties (LOCAL raw honey is best, especially for allergies).
1 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar per day.
Eating nuts such as almonds have an immune-strengthening antioxidant.

Mushrooms are an untapped medicinal source that could help fend off the flu due to their high antioxidant content, anti-viral and antibiotic properties. All of these mushrooms have high amounts of proteins present in them, as well. With their high protein sources, they can be used as meat alternatives which would be easier on the body’s system, specifically our nervous systems. Over time, these health enhancing properties synergize and build up in the body and improve health.

Bone broth is another way to boost your health and is one of the most healing of diet staples. This used to be a dietary staple with our ancestors as was fermented foods. It helped with digestion, contained easily absorbable minerals and was great for the immune system. Bone marrow helps the immune system by carrying oxygen to cells in the body.

Drink lots of water. Simply put, water helps to filter the impurities out of your body. Over time, this keeps your body functioning and in optimum health.

4. Take Your Vitamins

Vitamins A , B, C, D, and E has been shown to promote a healthy immune system. Take a high quality, organic multi-vitamin. (I like this one)

Although the sun is the best way to receive vitamin D, we cannot always absorb it in the dead of winter. Take at least 3000-5000 IUs of Vitamin D3 daily – research has shown a link between a Vitamin D deficit and susceptibility to the flu. (This one has 5000 IUs)

Other important immune-boosting vitamins are Vitamin C and Zinc. Since our bodies do not naturally make vitamin C, we need to ensure we take steps to get it in order to boost our bone, muscle, cartilage and vascular health. The best way to get vitamin C is right from the source. Rather than taking a GMO vitamin, make your own vitamin C powder.

These Zinc Lozenges are good tasting and high quality.

5. Get Plenty of Sleep

Your health depreciates when our bodies are run down. As a result, our immunity system has to work overtime if it is run down. You workaholics out there need to pay attention to this. Get a minimum of 7-8 hours per night. Further, if you feel your body coming down with an illness, stop pushing yourself and give your body what it needs: rest.

This is the season to nurture your immune system and give it what it needs to fight of the flu. These five immune boosting steps are the best way to naturally stave off this year’s flu.

http://readynutrition.com/resources/...acks_21122014/

[Zippyjuan]

Antibacterials won't work on viruses so they won't help with a cold. Hand sanitizers won't work for the same reason.

[Suzu]

If I get the flu this winter, I'll go nuts worrying that it's really ebola. I hear CDC has been keeping quiet about the spread of the disease in the USA.

[Zippyjuan]

I see they aren't reporting any suspected cases until they are confirmed. There have been so may false "potential" cases reported. Not exactly what I would consider "hiding" cases.

[James Madison]

I called CDC not long ago and I said how many cases are being monitored in the United States and they said 1,400.

There's being disingenuous, and then there's straight-out lying to gullible people on the internet. 1,400 people being monitored, as in, people returning from west Africa are being observed as a precaution.

[donnay]

If I get the flu this winter, I'll go nuts worrying that it's really ebola. I hear CDC has been keeping quiet about the spread of the disease in the USA.

A Promising Ebola Treatment
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/10/eb.html

Also some 10ppm colloidal silver.

[Suzu]

A Promising Ebola Treatment
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/10/eb.html

Also some 10ppm colloidal silver.

I'd be worried in any event, simply because I've had a 35-year run of bad luck that seems not to have finished playing itself out yet!

As to colloidal silver: I had a long conversation (by email) with Dr. Rima about the silver, and I was unsatisfied with her final response. The gist of my concern was that although 10ppm colloidal silver has indeed been found to be effective at neutralizing viruses in vitro and is therefore approved as a cleaning solution (for external use), there is no way, using a 10ppm solution, to saturate the bodily fluids so that they, too, contain 10ppm of silver. Indeed, the only way one could saturate the bodily fluids to that extent would be to drink several ounces of 10,000ppm solution over a long enough period (at least two weeks) and then use a slightly smaller maintenance dose. I have also spoken with other well-known alternative health practitioners who have claimed to be able to show me published, peer-reviewed double-blind clinical studies showing colloidal silver to be effective against viruses when taken internally in low doses of low-ppm solution. But then they couldn't show the studies.

My alternative has been to use the best natural methods I can to make my body inhospitable to viruses, so maybe I don't catch the flu in the first place.

[donnay]

I'd be worried in any event, simply because I've had a 35-year run of bad luck that seems not to have finished playing itself out yet!

As to colloidal silver: I had a long conversation (by email) with Dr. Rima about the silver, and I was unsatisfied with her final response. The gist of my concern was that although 10ppm colloidal silver has indeed been found to be effective at neutralizing viruses in vitro and is therefore approved as a cleaning solution (for external use), there is no way, using a 10ppm solution, to saturate the bodily fluids so that they, too, contain 10ppm of silver. Indeed, the only way one could saturate the bodily fluids to that extent would be to drink several ounces of 10,000ppm solution over a long enough period (at least two weeks) and then use a slightly smaller maintenance dose. I have also spoken with other well-known alternative health practitioners who have claimed to be able to show me published, peer-reviewed double-blind clinical studies showing colloidal silver to be effective against viruses when taken internally in low doses of low-ppm solution. But then they couldn't show the studies.

My alternative has been to use the best natural methods I can to make my body inhospitable to viruses, so maybe I don't catch the flu in the first place.

Silver Versus Ebola: A Medical Revolution?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-1...cal-revolution

U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA) Threatens to Arrest People Who Claim Natural Ebola Cures
http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-fed...-cures/5404215

Colloidal Silver Kills Ebola: US DOD Threat Reduction Agency and USAF Research Lab
http://www.survivalistboards.com/sho...d.php?t=368460

In 2009 the Department of Defense funded a study conducted by The Defense Threat Reduction Agency on Nano Silver (often aka colloidal silver) to see if it was effective on the Ebola virus. The findings of the study were: Nano Silver inhibits the Ebola virus at 10 PPM (parts per million). The study was done by the Applied Microbiology Branch, 711th Human Performance Air Force Research Laboratory.

http://www.demingheadlight.com/demin...-against-ebola

Should You Worry About an Ebola Outbreak in the US?
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/ar...-outbreak.aspx

There is also some good research done on Vitamin C and Ebola.

References:
http://naturalsociety.com/ebola-scar...ing-vitamin-c/
http://naturalsociety.com/high-doses...e-ebola-virus/
http://vitamincfoundation.org/www.or....com/ebola.htm
http://www.doctoryourself.com/levy.html
http://drsircus.com/medicine/ebola-s...athic-medicine

[donnay]

Can People Receiving Live Virus Vaccines Transmit Vaccine Strain Virus to Others?



By Dr. Mercola

There’s currently a great concern about Ebola, and this provides us an opportunity to investigate some basic vaccine questions. The first person diagnosed with Ebola in the US contracted it while visiting relatives in Africa. He recently died, and transmitted the disease to two nurses at a Dallas community hospital, who took care of him.

Both nurses have recovered and have been declared free of infection. That’s a good sign that tells us Ebola is in fact very survivable if caught and treated early.

But there’s still plenty of fear to go around, and it’s quite clear that this is something multinational drug companies are taking advantage of to fast-track an Ebola vaccine to licensure.

When pharmaceutical companies develop a new experimental drug, there’s the possibility it might kill people. When that happens, the families of those who die have the legal right to sue companies in civil court for damages.

But when drug companies develop bioterrorism and pandemic influenza vaccines, or vaccines that are recommended by the CDC for universal use by children or adults, that is not the case.

Congress in 1986 and the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 have banned all civil lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers when Americans are injured or die from federally recommended and state mandated vaccines.

After vaccine manufacturers were first indemnified against legal action by legislation Congress passed nearly 30 years ago, a huge incentive was created for the pharmaceutical industry to target vaccines as a market alternative to drugs. Today, new vaccine development is the fastest growing sector in the pharmaceutical industry.

There is tremendous market pressure on drug companies to produce a large number of new vaccines right now and there are experimental vaccines in the pipeline for Ebola, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), enterovirus, West Nile, dengue, cholera, and multiple types of influenza.

The Emerging Risks of Vaccines

Barbara Loe-Fisher is the co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), a non-profit charity dedicated to preventing vaccine injuries and deaths through public education and defending the legal right for everyone to make vaccine choices.

She explains how you can shed live virus in body fluids whether you have a viral infection or have gotten a live attenuated viral vaccine:

“Live attenuated viral vaccines (LAV) that use live viruses try to, in essence, fool your immune system into believing that you’ve come into contact with a real virus, thereby stimulating the antibody response that, theoretically, will protect you,” she says.

“When you get these live viral vaccines, you shed live virus in your body fluids. Just like when you get a viral infection, you shed live virus. That’s how viral infections are transmitted.

Because viruses, unlike bacteria, need a living host... in order to multiply. What these viruses do is they try to disable the immune system and evade immune responses.”

Ebola is a perfect example. Ebola is a very efficient disabler of the innate (cellular) immune system as well as the humoral (learned) immune system. That’s why it’s such an efficient killer. In Africa, the mortality rate is around 50-70 percent. (In sharp contrast, Ebola patients in the US have fared very well. All but one is either recovered or on their way to recovery.)

However, there are still many things we do not fully understand about viruses and how they spread. According to Barbara, Ebola has been detected in semen for 40 days after symptoms begin and during the convalescent period. It’s one of the ways it might be transmitted. As Barbara notes in a brand new report, “The Emerging Risks of Live Virus and Viral Vectored Vaccines:”

"There is an ongoing debate among scientists about where viruses came from and how they evolved and are still evolving.1 One virologist observed that replicating and mutating viruses are the ‘world’s leading source of genetic innovation…’2

Discussing the co-evolution of viruses with humans and other living organisms, another virologist wrote in 2012 that during epidemics viruses evolve. Genetic and environmental co-factors make some individuals more or less likely to die from or survive the infection, producing an increase of the numbers of resistant individuals in the population."3

One of the dangers of any viral disease outbreak is that people often fail to realize is that you can be an asymptomatic carrier of a viral infection; so while you show no symptoms or only mild symptoms, you may still be able to transmit the virus to others. Even fewer people understand that this is also true for live virus vaccines!

You Can Transmit Live Vaccine Strain Virus After Getting Vaccinated

Smallpox, for example, is transmitted via body fluids. And, when you get a live attenuated smallpox vaccine, which contains live attenuated vaccinia virus, you can develop vaccinia virus (VACV or VV) strain infection, which you can then transmit to others. The same is true for polio and the live oral polio vaccine (OPV).

“In the days before [polio] vaccines in this country, many people got poliovirus infection. Most did not show any symptom or only mild symptoms. Their bodies dealt with it and they were immune. During the time they had an infection, whether they were symptomatic or asymptomatic, they could transmit it.

A tiny number of people went on to have complications from poliovirus infections; they became paralyzed or died. But the majority of people got polio, went through the disease, became immune, and did not suffer an injury.

The live polio vaccine, the Sabin vaccine, which followed the inactivated Salk vaccine, was given orally [and] contains live attenuated polioviruses.

Those polioviruses, when you take that [live] vaccine, you shed them in your body fluids—your saliva, urine, and stool. Vaccine-strain viruses like disease viruses or infections can be found also sometimes in tears and vomit. This is true for the Ebola virus as well.

Whether you have the viral infection or you get the live attenuated vaccine, you shed live virus in your body fluids and you are able to transmit the virus to other people who come in contact with your body fluids. I think this is a very important thing for people to understand,” she said.

Continued...