Ideas on fighting colds & flu.
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Focus on Your Health:
In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.
Today's post: Tuesday, 10-10-2006
Ideas on fighting colds & flu.
Ouch !!
Since I did my last post on Thursday last week I came down with -- & am now about 80 percent recovered from -- one of the worst colds I’ve had in years. (I tend to not get colds usually but had been exposed to it the previous week & had been badly stressed on Thursday afternoon.)
But, I did get rid of it without complications somewhat quickly & avoided the lasting chest congestion the people had who gave it to me.
Doctors say to drink plenty of fluids or water when you have a cold or flu or other kind of fever producing illness.
But they TOTALLY undersell it.
When you do drink a lot of water, you still feel sick & need to take it easy; but you AVOID being light headed or dangerously dehydrated –
& you tend to avoid having the mucus in your nose & chest get too thick to get rid of easily, which helps you avoid secondary bacterial infections & to recover faster.
It’s also been found that hot spices with capsicum -- like in red pepper, jalapenos, Louisiana Hot Sauce, & Tabasco Sauce tend to have a similar effect.
People who normally eat a lot of those virtually never develop bronchitis & secondary chest infections from colds.
It worked well for me. I had hot sauce on my tomato sauce & lentils & extra virgin olive oil. And, in the early stages I even put a decent serving of red pepper in a small glass of water & drank that also.
Believe me, you can feel it work. Soon afterwards your eyes run a bit; your nose loosens up & runs a bit; & any chest congestion you have tends to loosen up & become easy to cough up. We’re talking maybe two minutes afterwards tops. So it’s very quick.
I also drank a large glass of water just before I went to bed & every time I got up to go to the bathroom from the extra water I’d have another glass.
It worked. Instead of waking up dry & feeling the inside of my nose & chest feeling like they’d been in a blast furnace, even though I still felt very sick, they were close to normal.
The other thing I did was to make up & drink two kinds of Echinacea tea from the Traditional Medicinals company. (Whole Foods Market sells those. And, I got mine from another local health foods & supplement store as I happened to be there the Friday evening I came down sick.)
Their Echinacea Elderberry has both of those ingredients. Echinacea has had a bit of a mixed review; but it may help. And, if your cold is really the flu, Elderberry has been effective, so I like the combination; & I find the taste is decent.
Even better, I got their Echinacea Lemon Throat Coat tea.
In the early stages when my throat was still sore, it really helped.
I even combined the two in one large cup of hot water.
It may have been just the help of the hot water & the slippery elm & other similar herbs in the throat coat; but I felt a lot better almost as soon as I drank one.
And, I already take over 1000 mg a day of vitamin C; 30 mg a day of zinc (plus a balancing 2 mg of Copper that creates a need for); two Cat’s Claw capsules; & one capsule of Panax Ginseng.
Not only does this tend to keep me from getting colds; I think it helped me to throw off this one.
The other thing I do is, each fall as soon as the flu vaccine is available & I’m not sick with a cold like I was this past weekend, I get my flu shot.
Not only do I hardly ever get the flu each shot protects me against, I hardly ever get the flu at all anymore.
And, I think that’s because the flu strains that show up now that weren’t in this year’s shot I probably am partially immune to them because in a previous year or two I did get a shot that gave me immunity against one or more of its cousins.
All these things aren’t perfect. But if you do similar things you’ll get colds & flu much less often & will get over them more quickly.
Lastly, something I’ve not yet tried is the mushroom extracts & astragalus supplements that Dr Andrew Weill says protect him from ever getting colds.
I do know that the one cold & flu season I tried the astragalus, I never got a cold or the flu.
Focus on Your Health:
In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.
Today's post: Tuesday, 10-10-2006
Ideas on fighting colds & flu.
Ouch !!
Since I did my last post on Thursday last week I came down with -- & am now about 80 percent recovered from -- one of the worst colds I’ve had in years. (I tend to not get colds usually but had been exposed to it the previous week & had been badly stressed on Thursday afternoon.)
But, I did get rid of it without complications somewhat quickly & avoided the lasting chest congestion the people had who gave it to me.
Doctors say to drink plenty of fluids or water when you have a cold or flu or other kind of fever producing illness.
But they TOTALLY undersell it.
When you do drink a lot of water, you still feel sick & need to take it easy; but you AVOID being light headed or dangerously dehydrated –
& you tend to avoid having the mucus in your nose & chest get too thick to get rid of easily, which helps you avoid secondary bacterial infections & to recover faster.
It’s also been found that hot spices with capsicum -- like in red pepper, jalapenos, Louisiana Hot Sauce, & Tabasco Sauce tend to have a similar effect.
People who normally eat a lot of those virtually never develop bronchitis & secondary chest infections from colds.
It worked well for me. I had hot sauce on my tomato sauce & lentils & extra virgin olive oil. And, in the early stages I even put a decent serving of red pepper in a small glass of water & drank that also.
Believe me, you can feel it work. Soon afterwards your eyes run a bit; your nose loosens up & runs a bit; & any chest congestion you have tends to loosen up & become easy to cough up. We’re talking maybe two minutes afterwards tops. So it’s very quick.
I also drank a large glass of water just before I went to bed & every time I got up to go to the bathroom from the extra water I’d have another glass.
It worked. Instead of waking up dry & feeling the inside of my nose & chest feeling like they’d been in a blast furnace, even though I still felt very sick, they were close to normal.
The other thing I did was to make up & drink two kinds of Echinacea tea from the Traditional Medicinals company. (Whole Foods Market sells those. And, I got mine from another local health foods & supplement store as I happened to be there the Friday evening I came down sick.)
Their Echinacea Elderberry has both of those ingredients. Echinacea has had a bit of a mixed review; but it may help. And, if your cold is really the flu, Elderberry has been effective, so I like the combination; & I find the taste is decent.
Even better, I got their Echinacea Lemon Throat Coat tea.
In the early stages when my throat was still sore, it really helped.
I even combined the two in one large cup of hot water.
It may have been just the help of the hot water & the slippery elm & other similar herbs in the throat coat; but I felt a lot better almost as soon as I drank one.
And, I already take over 1000 mg a day of vitamin C; 30 mg a day of zinc (plus a balancing 2 mg of Copper that creates a need for); two Cat’s Claw capsules; & one capsule of Panax Ginseng.
Not only does this tend to keep me from getting colds; I think it helped me to throw off this one.
The other thing I do is, each fall as soon as the flu vaccine is available & I’m not sick with a cold like I was this past weekend, I get my flu shot.
Not only do I hardly ever get the flu each shot protects me against, I hardly ever get the flu at all anymore.
And, I think that’s because the flu strains that show up now that weren’t in this year’s shot I probably am partially immune to them because in a previous year or two I did get a shot that gave me immunity against one or more of its cousins.
All these things aren’t perfect. But if you do similar things you’ll get colds & flu much less often & will get over them more quickly.
Lastly, something I’ve not yet tried is the mushroom extracts & astragalus supplements that Dr Andrew Weill says protect him from ever getting colds.
I do know that the one cold & flu season I tried the astragalus, I never got a cold or the flu.
posted by David at 1:28 PM
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