New way to survive swine flu & sepsis….

Today's Post: Tuesday, 8-4-2009

It seems that the way that flu, particularly flu that is a strain your body has never seen before, such as swine flu or the “Spanish flu” from World War I times or a new version of the bird flu that may show up tends to kill people is by sending your immune system into overdrive.

I’ve read that this process is called sepsis. It’s as if your immune system panics and produces so much inflammation and havoc it begins to harm you even more than the viruses it’s trying to kill.

This not only kills people outright, particularly by causing lung damage, the survivors often have a very low quality of life due because of the irreparable damage the process causes their internal organs.

But what if you get the immunization for swine flu? Won’t that protect you from this kind of damage by preventing the swine flu?

Maybe not. When vaccines are mass produced on short notice, they often are made with fewer weakened or killed flu viruses and a booster called an adjuvant is added. This is a compound that multiplies your body’s immune response. These compounds have caused severe autoimmune reactions by sending the immune systems of some people too far into overdrive.

So, if you don’t get the immunization and do get swine flu, you’ll possibly need a way to prevent sepsis or similar problems. And, if you do get the immunization, even if it prevents the swine flu, you way well also need a way to prevent sepsis or other autoimmune reactions.

A. Here are two ways that we already know may help with this.:

1. I had already read that having adequate vitamin D, which today only people who supplement vitamin D3 by 2,000 iu or more tend to have, both helps people simply not get flu whether older versions or newer ones -- and, such robust levels of vitamin D also tend to prevent autoimmune diseases and sepsis.

So, if you want to not get swine flu or other kinds of flu or have it kill you or permanently harm you, taking at least 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 may be a good idea. And, if you haven’t even been taking the 400 iu of vitamin D in a multivitamin yet and/or have been getting very little sunlight while you are outdoors, it might well pay you to take 5,000 iu of vitamin D3 a day for a month first before taking somewhat less.

2. Also, there is some evidence that turmeric (or the curcumin compounds in it) may also prevent inflammation and strengthen your immune system in other ways. So taking 500 to 600 mg a day of turmeric may also be protective against getting sepsis.

B. The exciting news this week is that resveratrol, that was initially discovered in red wine, may be even more effective in preventing sepsis (& possibly in treating it) than vitamin D3 and turmeric combined.

In research at the University of Glasgow that was reported by AFP online health news and elsewhere earlier this week it was found that mice purposely given a compound that causes severe inflammation developed sepsis. But they also tested mice that had been ingesting resveratrol before the test that were given the same compound that usually causes severe inflammation. The mice who had ingested the resveratrol ahead of time did NOT develop sepsis. The researchers found that the resveratrol blocked two of the more important proteins in the body that trigger inflammation.

Since resveratrol may slow aging and definitely slows aging or degenerative disease in people’s hearts and tends to prevent heart attacks, it may make excellent sense to take 100 mg a day or more of resveratrol. For purposes of surviving swine flu, that may make even more sense since some studies have found resveratrol to have anti-viral effects as well.

(Source Naturals sells capsules containing 100 mg of resveratrol. Of the two kinds of resveratrol, only the trans resveratrol has tested as effective. Source Naturals capsules have trans resveratrol. Other companies sell trans resveratrol also but tend to charge a good bit more for it.)

C. I’ve also read that nicotine has been found to turn off or turn down this kind of hyperinflammation. That might mean that over the counter nicotine patches might be a useful treatment for it.

But it would be very desirable to prevent it instead. So, taking these 3 supplements looks quite valuable.