Prevent swine flu....

Today's post: Tuesday, 4-28-2009

A. Three ways that work are to

1. Make some effort to avoid people who are sick and mostly postpone going to activities that are done in large groups such as going to the movies and other group entertainments. Call or text or email friends and family instead of going to see them in person if you possibly can.

2. Wash your hands before you eat, when you first get home from being out, and as soon as possible after going grocery shopping if you use a shopping cart or plastic carrier box because so many people handle those that they tend to carry more bacteria and viruses than almost anything else you touch; and this is a good idea to do even if you only pick up one or two items since so many people touch the different surfaces in a grocery store.

3. Carry a clean handkerchief and have a roll of clean toilet paper at your desk. Then if you need to touch the corner of your eyes or blow your nose you can ONLY touch those mucous membrane parts of you with one of those clean surfaces and NOT with your fingers which may well have swine flu viruses on them.

Each of those things make it far less likely you’ll get the virus inside you. If you succeed, it can’t make you sick.

B. If you make coffee or tea and boil water to do so, to the extent you can, take a few seconds to breathe in the steam from the water in each nostril before you pour it to make the tea or coffee. If you don’t boil water for that, boil it just to breathe the steam for a few seconds in each nostril.

That way if you get the swine flu virus in your nose, you may well kill all of it or kill enough your immune system can kill the rest at a very early stage before it takes hold and makes you sick.

C. Make sure you do the things that keep your immune system strong. Many times if you do that, your immune system will kill most viruses at a very early stage before they take hold and make you sick. (This also makes it less likely for you to get colds, regular flu, and all cancers.)

1. Taking a daily multivitamin plus minerals and eating a wide variety of organic fruits and vegetables tends to keep your immune system strong.

And also take an extra 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3, calciferol, which is the active form.

We now know that many people have been and are low in vitamin D because they now work inside more and get less sun exposure. But getting the 2,000 to 3,000 iu a day your body prefers to have by taking at least 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 has been studied and apparently it both makes your immune system less likely to cause autoimmune disease by attacking things it should not AND MORE likely to attack and kill bacteria, viruses, and cancer cells of any kind. So taking that much vitamin D helps ensure you have enough to enable your immune system to kill off flu viruses in their earliest stages.

You tend to get fewer infections of all kinds if you get enough vitamin C. It apparently acts as an immune system booster. So if you get between 500 mg & 2,000 mg a day, your immune system will be stronger.

Oranges, bananas, berries, kiwi fruit, & other fruits also have many other valuable micronutrients besides vitamin C, so eating many whole fruits or drinking some real fruit juice each week is protective. They also have fiber which has many other health benefits. Lastly, they taste good !!

I personally eat two or three servings of fruit a day & drink grape juice. AND I take 1,050 mg of vitamin C each day. (My vitamin C supplement has 500; my B Complex Plus C Stress Formula from Solgar has 500; & my multivitamin- mineral tablet has 50.)

Since my vitamin C from what I eat & drink is less than 500 mg a day, I think taking this extra vitamin C is important.

Lastly, taking 30 mg a day of zinc tends to keep your immune system strong. Oddly, taking more, particularly a lot more, such as over 60 mg for more than a day or two seems to depress your immune system.

2. Make sure to contact friends and relatives you are on speaking terms with a bit extra. (This works even if you have to phone or email them instead of meeting them in person for a while.) People who have good social support and often contact the people they know and get along with have stronger immune systems.

Similarly, practice wishing good things for the people you know or praying for them and put some love or warm feelings into it. (This also boosts your immune system.)

3. There are a variety of mushroom extracts known to boost your immune system. But they are quite expensive most of them. So I was quite interested to read lately that common button mushrooms you can buy inexpensively in bulk at the grocery store may work almost as well. Just wash them thoroughly and eat them straight or add them to a salad.

Or, if you already take a mushroom extract supplement, be sure to keep taking it until they know the swine flu has run its course.

4. Consider adding crushed, fresh garlic to your salads. It has heart protective properties and is said to be both antibacterial and antiviral.

5. Do what you can to get a bit of extra rest and avoid shorting yourself on sleep or pushing yourself to the limit to the extent you can for now.

If you do vigorous exercise, by all means continue but hold off trying to set new personal records for now. Or do that in one or two exercises instead of each one.

If you do a lot of long aerobic exercise such as training for a Marathon by running 10 miles several times a week, you might do better to run 2 miles to keep in decent shape and focus on an extremely smooth and efficient form until it’s clear the danger has passed. This is NOT a good time to overtrain.

D. If you do get the flu, no matter what else you do, make sure to drink water to the point that you often need to go pee. And as soon as you do and every time you do, drink another glass of water or juice.

Doctors usually say to drink plenty of fluids.

But what they usually leave out is that doing so keeps you from about 80 % of the potential harm of getting the flu since by drinking that much water you avoid weakening yourself by becoming dehydrated and weakened from doing so without realizing it from the fever as you otherwise would do. You’ll be very sick instead of horribly sick, weak, and debilitated—or worse. That’s a huge difference.

None of these is guaranteed to work.

But if you do them all, you will load the dice in your favor and by quite a lot. And your chances of recovering if you do get the flu go up even more.

Keep reading this blog as we may be able to post more advanced things you can do later in addition to the ones in today’s post.