3 ways to fight flu AND protect your heart....

Today's Post: Friday, 11-13-2009

Recently I found three ways to fight flu and protect your heart at the same time.

1. On Wednesday this week, health writer Frank Mangano sent out an email with a study that described that French scientists fed three groups of mice the same control diet for 16 weeks.

One group got the standard food for mice; a second group also got some bilberry extract; & a third group got more bilberry extract.

The mice getting some bilberry extract had 25% less plaque build up in their blood vessels than
the mice that got none while the group that got more bilberry extract had 36% less plaque build up in their blood vessels.

Of course, findings in mice don’t always hold true in people. These are likely to I think. There are several reasons for this. All berries tend to increase your beneficial HDL when you eat them; & if you eat them instead of sugar which tends to LOWER your HDL, that’s even more beneficial. And that effect directly explains the French scientist’s findings. When your HDL goes up the amount of the small particle LDL that creates plaque in the walls of your blood vessels goes DOWN. Further, eating bilberries or taking bilberry extract is known to improve the circulation to your optic nerves and has improved vision and night vision from that effect.
And, eating blueberries tends to reverse vascular dementia, particularly in its early stages, by improving circulation in your brain – and, bilberries are a kind of blueberry.

This may help your immune system too. But that’s not the method that also fights flu.

There is a combination supplement that contains both bilberry extract AND a known flu fighter that apparently has antiviral effects on flu viruses.

Nature’s way once sold a bilberry extract that had only bilberry extract. They changed their formulas since then and added elderberry extract also. Elderberries may have heart protective effects but are best known for cutting the intensity of flu symptoms and the duration of the illness.

So, if you do as I’ve done and take three a day of Nature’s Way Bilberry extract supplement – which also contains elderberries you’ll protect your heart AND the antiviral effects of the elderberries will protect you to some degree against severe flu symptoms. Even better, those effects may help your immune system fight flu viruses enough, you may also be less likely to get the flu in the first place.

2. Health experts used to think that 400 iu a day of vitamin D was enough to ensure the best results for your health. As we’ve posted, it isn’t we now know.

Our bodies will use at least 3,000 iu of vitamin D3 a day if it’s available. Our bodies will make over 10,000 iu of vitamin D3 with moderate sun exposure on your skin during the summer with no ill effects. And, studies that found health benefits from taking vitamin D3 found that it took at least 1700 iu of vitamin D3 daily to get the best results.

So, if you take at least 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3, your health will be far better than if you take less than 1,000.

And, we now know that vitamin D3 tends to prevent calcium from being deposited in the plaque in your blood vessels. That tends to prevent high blood pressure since it prevents your arteries from getting calcified, stiff, and inflexible. But it also, according to some studies I heard about, is extremely protective against getting heart attacks.

But vitamin D may be even more valuable as it seems to greatly strengthen your immune system and as a result tends to help your immune system destroy many kinds of cancer in their earliest stages, prevent bacterial infection, AND prevent viral infections, including flu.

I take 3200 iu a day of vitamin D3; & I’ve heard the people who have been researching its health effects often take 5,000 or 10,000 iu a day of vitamin D3.

Taking an extra 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 may well help you prevent a heart attack or getting the flu at all. And, it’s surprisingly inexpensive to do so.

3. Many people who die from getting the flu are actually killed by bacterial pneumonia they get after their lungs and immune system are weakened by the flu. Recently it was in the news that this is likely also true for swine flu. But if you teach your immune system how to clobber pneumonia in advance, even when weakened by the flu, you won’t get bacterial pneumonia.

And THAT is quite doable. You can get the pneumonia vaccine that prevents 80 to 90 % of all the kinds of bacterial pneumonia. Unlike the flu vaccine that you have to get every year, the pneumonia vaccine is good for at least 10 years and possibly longer.

Even better, there is now a new version of pneumonia vaccine that instead of preventing the 8 most common forms of bacterial pneumonia, it is designed to prevent the 13 most common forms. If it tests out well, instead of preventing 80 to 90 % of bacterial pneumonia, it may prevent over 95%.

So, by all means get the older version now that is available. And later when the new version becomes better known and available get that one too.

But there is even better news. There is one of the kinds of bacteria that is a major cause of bacterial pneumonia. And, that kind apparently harms your heart of the health of the inner surface of your blood vessels. People who show that they have been infected by it are a good bit more likely to get heart attacks.

So, by getting the pneumonia vaccine, it looks to me that you’ll also eliminate a cause of you ever getting a heart attack.

The name I’d seen for this bacteria was: Chlamydia pneumoniae. That apparently has been changed as Wikipedia had this:

“Chlamydophila pneumoniae is a species of Chlamydophila bacteria that infects humans and is a major cause of pneumonia. Until recently it was known as "Chlamydia pneumoniae", and that name is used as an alternate in some sources.”

The Wikipedia entry says that this bacteria tends to produce chronic inflammation. And since such chronic inflammation is a cause of heart disease, that may be how it boosts heart attack risk.

But you can prevent it from harming you either by pneumonia when your body is weakened from the flu or from getting a heart attack by getting the pneumonia vaccine.

So, you CAN fight the flu and protect your heart in at least these 3 ways.

1. Take Nature’s way Bilberry Extract (that includes Elderberry extract.)

2. Take at least 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3.

3. And, get the pneumonia vaccine.