Fighting Back Against the Flu

Published November 9, 2005 in the North Island MidWeek

Influenza regularly kills one million people a year worldwide.  Statistics Canada says the number of deaths from pneumonia and influenza has increased from approximately 4200 in 1979 to 8030 in 1997. With the emergence of Avian Flu H5N1 strain over the last 8 years there has been over 60 deaths in humans when it jumped species (which is very difficult for it to do). Most human cases have been linked to direct contact with sick birds. This strain is very deadly when it attacks the human lung and makes it even tricky to use ventilators without destroying lung tissue.

The Public Health Agency of Canada estimates that a pandemic strain of influenza could leave as many as 10.6 million people in this country too sick to work. As many as 138,000 could need hospitalization and between 11,000 to 54,000 Canadians could die as a result of an outbreak.

These are a lot of numbers to make sense in your brain but what does make the most sense is to try and prevent this flu virus from taking a strong hold in your body. If you can improve your immune system then at most you might miss work and be sick for a few weeks, but it doesn’t have to kill you. Here are few suggestions:

1.    Take selenium. You have heard me many times talk about selenium for the prevention of prostate and other cancers. The studies clearly show that selenium reduces oxidative stress in the host and thus changes the viral genome to make it less virulent. According to Melinda Beck in her research: The nutritional status of the host can have a profound influence on a virus, so that a normally avirulent virus becomes virulent because of changes in the viral genome. Our studies suggest that outbreaks of disease attributed to nutritional deficiency may actually result from infection by a virus that has become pathogenic by replicating in a nutritionally deficient host. So make it so that your body isn’t the one the virus is using to become more virulent by loading it with anti-oxidants such as vitamin C and vitamin E both of also which spare the activity of selenium.

2.   Vitamin D and A are two fat soluble vitamins that are also important: Vitamin A for the health of all mucous membranes in the body including tissues of the mouth to the anus  and Vitamin D for its’ anti-inflammatory effect. Both are most easily obtained by taking a tablespoon of purified cod liver oil daily.

3.   Lower inflammation in your body: Most of us have what we call “diet induced pro-inflammatory state”. This means that your body is in a constant low level of inflammation which could be felt as general aches and pains and fatigue. When a flu virus hits a state like this it has the potential of setting off the inflammatory state in an explosive manner. The daily consumption of essential fats found in cod liver oil is important in controlling this inflammation.

4.    Keep your gut healthy: 60% of your immune system is found in your intestinal tract. If it is healthy then you are too! Take probiotics such as bifidus regularly to replace the bad bacteria with good bacteria.

5.    Boost your innate immune system with homeopathic flu protection programs such as Influenzinum, created by Dolisos, every year based on the current flu floating around. Although these remedies are not proven to replace the flu vaccine nor to treat the bird flu specifically, the patients of naturopathic physicians respond very well to this yearly protocol.

These are just a few of the ways you can boost your innate immune system so that any virus hitting your body says” I can’t replicate here. I am outa here!”