More on preventing and getting rid of colds and flu....

Today's Post: Monday, 11-14-2011

This has turned into a four part series to add some more helpful and effective information in today's post.

a) See the post last Tuesday, 11-8-2011 also. It was on ways to prevent colds and flu. By far the best solution is not have them & have them last zero time by simply NOT getting them at all!

b) The post on Thursday, 11-10, had the most important strategy to protect you from being limited and debilitated or harmed if you get a fever.

c) On Friday, 11-11, our post had some effective information on minimizing how bad chest colds get.

It had some information that added ways to kill off viruses in your nose and keep it from being stuffed up.

And, it added some supplements and foods that can also help.

This post has two ways that each help you prevent most colds and flu and make them milder and shorter if you get them anyway. Each of them cuts your chances of getting sick about in half. And when you do get sick, it’s less severe and leaves a day or two sooner.

a) People who take a probiotics supplement daily get fewer colds and may get fewer cases of the flu. In fact, it may prevent up to half of them.

I’ve not seen research showing why this effect exists; but there are 3 reasons I think this is so. Your immune system is tuned up from checking on the probiotic bacteria when -- without them to check each day, it might be half asleep when a cold or flu virus shows up. It also has the probiotic bacteria as a comparison that’s fresh, so when an upper respiratory bacteria or a cold virus or a flu virus shows up, your immune system will see it as different sooner. That likely enables it to attack sooner too.

But that’s not all. Your probiotic bacteria likely also attack them directly! And, that attack may be quite effective. The first strong antibiotic, penicillin, was a substance produced for just such an attack. This may even mean that your probiotic bacteria might have or develop a way to kill bacteria that are resistant to many antibiotic drugs!

b) Just since last year, I found out that people who take the supplement astragalus each day also get fewer colds and may get fewer cases of the flu. It too, may prevent up to half of them!

In fact, this has been known and well supported by research for years I found out on the website, www.wholehealthmd.com . But I only learned it and began taking astragalus myself a few months ago.

c) Does that mean that taking both probiotics and astragalus can help you avoid as much as 75% of colds and flu by cutting your chances in half twice? It’s possible though I do not know of any direct test. Since my wife and I now take both, I certainly hope so!

d) There are two times that you can get a scratchy throat that can cause you some discomfort, cause a dry cough, or make it hard to speak.

The first time is when you first get sick.

For that I like to empty out a 30 mg zinc capsule and put it into my mouth to try to get it to my throat AFTER getting a glass of water. There’s some chance that if a virus is a cause and it has only attacked your throat so far, that might kill it off. In fact, this has seemed to work for me a few times.

(However, it turns out spraying zinc into your nose is harmful to your mucous membranes. So do NOT do that! Use the steaming we describe in an earlier post in this series for that purpose. Unlike using zinc, the steam does NOT cause pain that sticks around and damage but it does kill viruses.)

But if you tried getting the zinc on the back of your throat and are definitely getting sicker anyway, what can be done to relieve that scratchy feeling or the dry cough or enable you to speak normally?

I once tried several kinds of cough lozenges. I found them all completely useless.

But there is now something called Thayer’s lozenges. Instead of being a hard candy with a flavor or having a numbing agent, Thayer’s lozenges use a soothing herbal called slippery elm that coats over the area that feels scratchy and directly stops the irritation.

I found the effect astounding in comparison to the normal cough drops. I chewed up two and swallowed them. (I’m a bit too impatient to suck on them for a long time.) The first few seconds I felt no effect. But within a few more seconds, there was no more feeling of irritation! It was all gone. It was as if I’d hit it with a 20 pound sledge hammer. No drama. The irritation just was no longer there!

That was nice!!

So, what I do now is always have some with me. If I get that kind of irritation, I give it a few minutes first because most of the time, it will go away by itself since I wasn’t coming down sick. But if after a few minutes, the irritation is still there or a bit worse, I chew up two of the Thayer’s. I talk on the phone in my job, so having something that effective in reserve when I need it is very nice indeed.

It helps mild sore throats a bit; but for bad ones, the pain is underneath the area the Thayer’s protects and too strong. So, if you have strep throat, you will still have the pain.

The second time you get a scratchy throat that causes you some discomfort, or a dry cough, or makes it hard to speak is when you have had a chest cold. You’ve coughed a lot and irritated your throat. BUT you no longer are coughing anything up. All you have is the left over irritation.

The Thayer’s lozenges work great for that!

The key is to wait until you no longer bring up anything when you cough. If you do, even just a bit, your body will cough until you get rid of it. For stopping that the Thayer’s won’t work. And you are better off getting rid of what you cough up anyway.

But if the irritation gets tiresome, you can use the Thayer’s for that. You will still cough. It will just be easier to take.