Flu Season 2016. Prevention, Symptoms, and Treatments
Flu Season is here and it has come on hard and is fairly contagious. Once a person gets sick, it’s taking a week or two to shake and can even turn into pneumonia. The best thing you can do is to prevent it in the first place.
Following are some prevention tips:
- Exercise regularly to increase circulation and keep the body resilient
- Stay hydrated with high nutrient fluids such as herbal teas, lemon water, and coconut oil in warm water.
- Avoid using antibacterial soaps, as these destroy your friendly bacteria that protect your skin from invasion
The early symptoms of an immune system that is battling an invader are fatigue, decreased appetite, and increased mucus. It is imperative to recognize and act on these early on symptoms to avoid being down and out which will cost you money and time. Do not take decongestants that push the invader deeper inside. You will end up getting sick sooner or later if you have a decent immune system. If not, you are putting yourself at risk for a viral caused chronic degenerative disease later in life. ALLOW YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM TO WORK FOR YOU.
So If you’re tired, turn down social invites for a few days, skip your exercise routine for the day and increase your sleep to 10 hours per night. The increased sleep alone for one or two nights can facilitate the immune system enough to finish the job. In order to reserve vital energy, eat digestible foods such as fruits and vegetables and decrease hard to digest foods such as breads, meats, cheese etc. Digestion directly takes energy away from the immune system. Fasting during the nights by avoiding supper is extremely helpful to the immune system. Juicing increases your nutrient load and eliminates the need for digestion , thereby granting more energy to the immune system. A great way to increase your nutrient load dramatically is to get a vitamin C IV. The IV contains up to 10,000 mg of vitamin C which your colon cannot tolerate. It also contains calcium and magnesium and is a great way to hydrate.
Hydrogen Peroxide IVs are very effective early on when you are just getting symptoms or when you are ill. The IV has antimicrobial properties due to its ability to highly oxygenate your blood. It’s safe and does not suppress the immune system in any way. If you are struggling to make the lifestyle adjustments in order to facilitate the immune system, I strongly recommend both the hydrogen peroxide IV’s and the Vitamin C IV’s.
Once you’ve become ill, or it’s coming on aggressively but still early on, take high doses of GoldenSeal and/or Echinacea. I feel that GoldenSeal is more powerful. Take these in liquid form in very high doses on an empty stomach. 3 dropper fulls 3x/day is a good start. These remedies are medicinal and meant to be used for short term. There are food grade herbs that one can eat daily to nourish the immune system to keep it strong. I tell all my patients complement their grocery store diet with these herbal food formulas instead of isolated supplements.
Of course as you are ill, it is best to stay away from exercise except for gentle stretching at home. Get as much sleep as possible. This will continue throughout the entire time that you are down and up to 3 days after you feel better to give the immune system a chance to build up again. If you bounce back into your normal routine too quickly, you will get sick again.
As you can see there are lots of naturopathic options to prevent the flu and aid in healing so that you will not get sick again and may even skip next year’s flu season with your stronger immune system. By not suppressing acute illnesses, you are in fact building up a more powerful military to fight future invaders and even self created ones such as cancer cells.
For those that will not make the lifestyle adjustments necessary to facilitate the immune system, the Vitamin C IV’s and hydrogen peroxide IV’s provide lots of nutrients and oxygen to aid in healing and also build up the immune system. Of course in the long term, nothing can beat a clean diet and regular exercise.
Be Well!