Get rid of colds and flu faster....

 Today's Post:  Tuesday, 10-4-2015

 (This is an adapted re-run of the post I did last year, but new as the one from last year wasn’t available.)

*This is an important topic at this time of year because school aged kids go back to school where they are quite often exposed to cold and flu viruses that they then give their teachers and bring home.

 *Secondly, it’s at this time of year that in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in Canada, the Northern US, and Europe, begin to have too little sunlight to enable people to have enough vitamin D3.

 (Because, vitamin D3 powers the immune system to recognize and kill cold and flu viruses, having low levels can cause you to get colds and flu your immune system would have killed with more robust vitamin D3 levels.)

 *Third, in the Northern Hemisphere, air temperatures begin to fall to levels where cold and flu viruses tend to survive better in the air and on surfaces than they do at warmer temperatures.

 *And, fourth, it is at this time of year, literally this week, that this year’s flu shots become available.

1.  If you do get a flu shot every year and keep up or increase your vitamin D3 to at least 10,000 iu a day, you will be less likely to get colds and flu.

If you get a cold or flu anyway, it will likely be milder and you’ll get over it sooner.

2.  But once you have the flu or a cold, perhaps the most important thing to know is NOT well known and between its two parts, if you do them, you will remain more functional and less likely to get complications. So being sick is less harsh AND you will get over it sooner!

Drink quite a bit more water than you normally do or are thirsty for. 

And, short of a fever of over 105 or 106, do NOT take the OTC drugs that turn it down.

a) To take the second one first here’s the two part reason for it.

When you get sick, the fever is a messenger your immune system sends to do to things for you.

It’s to let you know you are sick and likely to need more rest and to cut back on doing exhausting things.  And the most important message is to your body’s killer cells to attack on a large scale.

So, if you turn it down with the OTC drugs, you may overdo. 

But most importantly, your body will turn out fewer killer cells.  THAT is a very bad idea!  It means you will be sick longer and may get sicker than you would have otherwise!

So if you get a fever, don’t try to cool your body or take OTC fever reducers.  It’s actually counter-productive!

(Then too, the OTC fever reducing drugs, aspirin and the various kinds of NSAIDs we are beginning to find out have more and worse side effects than was once known.  Acetaminophen for pain is quite a bit more dangerous for your liver than was once known as well.)

b)  But what can you do to protect yourself from the fever effects and stay more functional?

The doctors mostly say to do it.  But few say or dramatize how important and effective it is!

Drink a good bit more water than usual off and on every hour of the day.

When you are sick, you are less likely to notice you are thirsty.  When you have a fever or mouth breathe, you lose more water from sweating and evaporation from your mouth and lungs than you normally do.

But that can mildly or strongly dehydrate you.  That’s both disabling and dangerous!

You feel faint; you don’t think well or can even be a bit confused.  You are more likely to fall. And you surely should NOT drive.  Worse, this can make a follow on case of pneumonia or bacterial bronchitis more likely.

But if you drink water when you first get up, and then right after you urinate EVERY time to replace the water you just lost plus sip on coffee or tea or chicken broth off and on through the day, ALL that goes away.

You may still feel dreadful and sick. BUT you can drive much more safely.  You can think straight and can even work from home on your computer if you need to.  And when you walk or drive you will be dramatically safer!

So if you do BOTH of those things, being sick will set you back less and be less likely to harm you AND you will likely get well faster too!

4.  There are a number of supplements that can help to get over colds and flu faster.

A bit of extra zinc, 50 to 90 mg on the first day or two can help.  But then take 30 or less after that.  Because if you keep taking extra the effect reverses and makes you sicker.

Some people do well taking extra vitamin C as in over 2,000 mg a day in divided doses.

Astragalus and olive leaf extract and elderberry extract can also help.

But extra vitamin D3 we now know is the most effective. 

The real optimum intake of vitamin D3 many researchers have found is 7,000 to 10,000 iu a day.

Taking just that much boosts the killer cells in your immune system enough you are less likely to get a cold or the flu AND research also shows they are less likely to harm you.

If you get sick with a cold or flu turning up this effect by taking an extra 20,000 to 30,000 iu a day for the first few days can help.

That much D3 plus NOT turning down a fever kicks the dickens out of flu viruses!

It can also get rid of a case of cold or flu that seems to last too long!

I had a personal experience with this. 

I was taking 8200 iu a day of D3 and all the other supplements I just listed.  But when my wife came back from out of town with a very bad flu and I caught it despite taking all those. And even with drinking extra water I was still sicker than I expected to be over two weeks later. 

The health food store owner where I went at that time was taking 50,000 iu a day of D3 and never got colds or the flu.  That struck me as a bit too high.  (It’s more than the 20,000 iu a day we know is safe because lifeguards and surfers often get over 20,000 iu a day from sun exposure in the summer with no ill effects.)

But I decided to add 30,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 for two weeks to see what it would do.

I’ve been sick since and not gotten such a dramatic effect.  But this time, it was dramatic!

Within a few hours of taking the first dose of the extra 30,000 iu of D3, I stopped feeling sick AND I also got a fast increase in my fever.  Needless to say I drank a lot of extra water.

Feeling well but with a toasty feeling from the fever was a weird sensation.  But when after about ten days when the fever stopped, I was completely well.

How about getting colds?

Instead of suddenly feeling quite sick or having physical pains as you do with a case of the flu, you get a burning sensation inside your nose with colds.

All the things that help you get over the flu also work to help get over colds.  They can make it shorter and milder when you have it.

But a man local to me, David Williams of  San Carlos discovered something very useful.

It can stop colds in 24 hours, particularly if you use it when you first get a cold!

Cold viruses do fine at the temperature normally inside your nose close to 96 to 98 degrees.

But they are less hardy than flu viruses much above that.

What David discovered was that by holding his nose closed while he was awake for the first day of a cold, the temperature of the inside of his nose was too high for the cold viruses and they died.

He hated colds enough to work that hard to get rid of one.  But he realized he might get a cold when he had to do other things and most people wouldn’t work that hard.

So he invented and had made a kind of metal clip out of metal similar to a paper clip.  It can hold your nose closed enough to do the job without being too uncomfortable. He called it a Kold Klip.

He was selling them for a bit but I think has stopped.

I use this principle to help avoid colds.  When I make my morning tea, I use a bit more water in the pot than needed and breathe the hot steamy air into my nose on both sides.

And between that and the vitamin D3 etc that I take, and the colds I’m now immune to after many years of exposure, I rarely get colds.

Based on David’s work, doing this once or twice an hour when you first get a cold may help you get rid of one faster.