How to treat a cold or flu

I am not using quotes or references as I am writing this from my heart.

One of my aims in life is to help guide people to make a smoother ride for themselves by keeping in balance with their surroundings.

Minimal damage during a fever / flu is a key part of my herbal training.

It’s a key part of naturopathic lifestyle. Unfortunately naturopathic lifestyle cannot be taken in a pill, bought at a shop or given as a gift. It has to be our choice to undertake healthy choices.

We can choose what we eat, think and possibly what we do.

We can’t choose a lot else.

Pre flu protocol
It’s best to reduce food quality and density. Minimise or stop eating things that create mucus. Everyone works differently as to what makes them mucusy. The normal mucus producers are dairy products, cheese rating very high; cream; butter lots of bread; lots of sugar; cake; biscuits; chocolate; pasta; potatoes; chips; meat. Keep to eating things easy to digest. I call them light foods rather than heavy foods which include meat, eggs and dairy products.

So basically a vegan diet with smaller portions.

So eat vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds and beans.

I eat grains and vegetables(not fried) twice a day. Breakfast is soaked oats with stewed apples and molasses for breakfast.

Wild garlic will keep people and bugs at bay. Eat a few raw leaves, flowers or stalks a day. It keeps in a bag in the fridge for a few days. Cook it and it’s like spinach, lovely but not very medicinal.

Nettles are a wonderfully healthy fresh vegetable freely available until they flower in june.
Onions and garlic are always helpful.

Horseradish sauce loosens mucus. At least in teaspoonful doses.

So do nasturtium leaves. Eat 5-10 leaves, flowers or seedheads a day.

And ginger, boiled, peeled root tea or crystalised. Powder is ok. Add a pinch to water with honey and lemon.

Honey and propolis are strengtheners.

Lemon juice should not be underestimated, I like it in a glass of water. Medicinal amounts is 1/2 to 1 lemon’s juice per glass of water. Drink 4-8 glasses a day. This can be substituted by cider vinegar. 1-3 teaspoons per glass. It thins mucus making it easier for the body to remove.
Cayenne / chilli pepper is also helpful. It is best uncooked on food or in water. A match heads worth is a good starting dose.

Elder leaf (Sambucus nigra) decoction.

This helps to stop viruses adhering to cells.( references in https://www.stephenharrodbuhner.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/coronavirus.txt.pdf see below Stephen Harrod Buhner section)
Well, it’s not too technical to describe how to make it yourself. It’s leaves from the common elder bush plant. The leaves are just opening here in edinburgh so it will be freely available to most people now.

30g fresh sambucus nigra leaves or 60g dried in 4 pints/2+ litres of water. Boil for half to 1 hour to reduce liquid by half. Once cool, freeze in ice cube dishes and drink one to two a day. You can add a bit of boiling water to melt the cubes or add the same quality of glycerol or reduce the strained liquid by another half and add the same volume of 40% alcohol. 1 -2 tablespoons 2 -4 times daily.

Flu management foods and available herbs

However with a high fever, we usually loose our appetites. Then it’s water with lemon juice/ cider vinegar, herb tea, vegetable broth and fruit juice not from concentrate or mixed half with water to reduce the high fructose levels.

Vegetable broth is great for sustenance when the digestion is weakened by illness.
Straining the digestion takes up time and energy that could be saved for getting better / overcoming a virus. Eat light foods or liquids.

Potassium Broth
is highly nutritious while being easy to digest.

Make it by roughly chopping up a choice from onions, leeks, cabbage/ broccoli, potatoes, carrots and any other vegetables too. Half fill a pot with veg, comfortably fill the pot with boiling water, bring to the boil and simmer for half an hour. Strain out the veg and compost them. Save the water and drink this through the day as your food during fever. You can add marmite for extra flavour. Or Engevita yeast and spirulina if you are still hungry.

On recovery, this is a great convalescence food. I add barley to the mix when needing more substantial food. Barley is soothing on the stomach and the kidneys so very supportive. Barley water is another flu time drink. 2 dessertspoons of barley simmered for half hour in 1 litre of water. Leave to cool then strain out barley and drink the barley water with added honey and lemon or marmite.

Other easy to digest liquid nutrients are fruit smoothies.

However if you are ill, and want to put as little strain on the digestion as possible, it is best to not mix fruit types. Have one fruit for each ‘meal’. Eat as much of the one fruit you have chosen for that meal as you like. Or make it in to a smoothie. Homemade fruit juice is far more nutritious than shop bought juice as it is so fresh and still full of healthy enzymes that break down quickly in a few hours after being juiced.

Minimise as much as possible dairy products and sugar during flu.

Clean air

Eucalyptus and Cassia cinnamon are essential oils that can give certain viruses a hard time. I sprinkled them on a tissue and leave the (unused ! ) tissue on a radiator to keep a room fresh. Add more drops of oil every few hours or daily depending on the microbe load.

Cleaning the air is traditionally done by leaving a cut open onion in the room. Re cut it again on day 2, then throw it away. Day 3 start a new onion. Or use the other half that’s been wrapped up in the fridge.

Rose water sprayed in to the air is refreshing and cleansing. Great for the bed bound.
My long living Mother insisted on sleeping with the window a little open, whatever the weather to provide fresh air with plenty of oxygen and less airborne antigens. (ouch, maybe not, with hayfever sufferers, city centre dwellers etc).

Probiotics

Probiotics have recently been recognised as a really important part of the immune system. Garlic supports probiotics, sauerkraut provides beneficial bacteria. Yogurt isn’t appropriate during flu so it might be a time to use a bought supplement.

Vitamins

On the subject of bought supplements for flu prevention,- the best known is Vitamin C, add Zinc, Selenium and Vitamin A for maximum help. Echinacea is helpful as a prevention. As is Yogi tea ( use 2-3 bags per cup 2 times a day).
However once the flu/ fever has come Echinacea doesn’t stop it. The fever has to run it’s course.

Water
Water is always good. Make sure you drink enough water.
During flu and fevers it’s very important to keep hydrated. All the sweating and less eating means we need a lot more fluid. This is another thing less easily dealt with by older people. They don’t want to drink lots more fluid. It would probably strain the kidneys to over do it. Older people have to be more gentle about everything.

Bathing

So another way to help maintain hydration especially good for young and old, but everyone else too. This is having a bath or shower. Not too hot. If you are shivering a warm bath is good. If you are burning up a cooler bath is good.
High fevers can be reduce by paracetamol, but also mint tea, again 2-3 bags per cup, and wiping skin with cool water.

Saunas

Hydrotherapy is another thing, hot and cold water therapy / saunas. Great for cleansing, but be gentle or avoid during fevers if you aren’t feeling very strong. It can increase the intensity of the fever.

Exercise
The lymph system is entirely circulated by muscle movement. It has no heart to pump it. So all movement helps the immunity too. For those less mobile this can be assisted by adapted exercise.
Prof Janet Lord talks of 10,000 steps daily and exercise to breathlessness (caution with cardio vascular disease)daily. This level of exercise throughout our lives maintains the thymus activity which among many immune tasks it matures new immune cells responding to new pathogens. This is another reason older people cope less well with this new flu.
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/inflammation-ageing/lord-janet.aspx

Skin Brushing
Another way to help move lymph around is skin brushing. Use natural bristle brush and brush all over like you would a dog, with long sweeping strokes towards the heart. More details on my blogspot. Do for 5-10 minutes and that gives the lymph a ride around. Elderly people tend to love it too. It’s relaxing.

Emotions
Feeling good. There’s nothing more healthy for us. Feeling bad can hugely interfere with a healthy immune response. Every body function is influenced by feelings and thoughts. However feeling bad when something bad happens is normal. I believe it’s holding on to the sadness that can create deeper damage than letting the sadness and grief out.

Obviously infectious diseases are infectious however you are feeling.

Mindfulness. Counting one’s blessings. Breathing clean air, smokers are far more vulnerable to lung damage.

After a personal shock I am recovering from my fourth consecutive cold/flu/virus. I have followed the immune building advice; eating smaller portions of vegan food; drunk a lot of lemon juice; echinacea; vitamin C; CBD; onions and garlic; essential oils.

Anyway, one cough and cold finishes and another starts. However I haven’t got a chest infection or feel exhausted. It feels like a way of forcing me to slow down and excreting all the stress toxins I’m making.

This is general health advice and may help maintain health during flu even leaving you feeling light, energetic and undamaged afterwards.

Stephen Harrod Buhner’s corona protocol.

His description of corona’s actions on human cells, and the virus’ affinity to destroy cilia and epithelium cells in the lungs and the ways certain herbs can help to restrict the damage is very interesting for herbalists / naturopaths. Stephen’s article has cited research on herbs which have a variety of actions to reduce the damage caused by SARS virus, which is genetically very similar to covid19 ( infection by covid 19 is called SARS-cov-2 ). Cordyceps, Licorice, Scutellaria Baicalensis, Lycoris radiata (extremely potent) are among the potentially useful herbs. Britain’s immune modulators which are growing somewhere near you are Turkey tail(Trametes versicolor) fungus(in photo), Japanese Knotweed(Polygonum multiflorum) root, and Elder leaves (detailed under Elder leaf decoction above).

Covid-19 by Stephen Harrod Buhner
After reading the Stephen Buhner link below this is my very simplified understanding of the covid-19 virus and the SARS-cov-2 infection it causes.

https://www.stephenharrodbuhner.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/coronavirus.txt.pdf
I see covid-19 as a toxic, slippery, penetrating virus.

When someone develops a SARS-cov-2 infection, there can be a cascade effect. Corona starts sticking to and then invading the epithelium cells in the air sacs inside the lungs where oxygen is absorbed and carbon dioxides and wastes are excreted. Damage to cells leads to less efficient gas exchange. Some of the epithelium cells have cilia hairs that normally remove mucus and waste by the escalator action of the hairs. When cilia hairs are lost, mucus, waste and fluid build up. Once the virus has made use of the epithelium cell to replicate itself many times, the host epithelium cell can collapse creating more waste. This is the conditions for pneumonia. Meanwhile the newly created viruses set off to do invade more cells.

The body mounts an emergency anti inflammatory response which involves cytokines and white blood cells rushing to the rescue and flooding the area. There’s a general jam up with 1000s more protein sacs filled with wild, slippery, toxic covid-19 DNA that head deeper into the lung tissue next targeting the dendritic cells. This leaves the carnage of more dead cells; more log jamming with 1000s more white blood cells coming to the rescue; inflammation response bringing extra fluid; more debris from more damaged cells but 1000s more virus sacs. The dendritic cells clean up immune system waste and debris, but they are disabled. No wonder the lungs get quickly filled with fluid and don’t work properly. Damaged or less flexible/ older tissue is going to really struggle.

In a healthy, (young) person the immune system thymus quickly makes new T cells to kill the new virus, more cytokines makes new epithelium cells with active cilia hairs and reactivates the dendritic cells to clean up. Loads of cells have to be replaced but a new antibody has been made to fight the virus. Now our bodies can deter viruses from sticking to epithelium cells and can reactivate clean up. Soon health will return with a new vigour to be part of life.

Conclusion
It seems that with viruses the early symptom of a sore throat is worth responding to.
The throat can be seen as the gateway to the lungs.

With a sore throat activate the pre flu advice. Load up with Vitamin C, Echinacea, boiled Elder water, boiled spicy tea, garlic, vegan food, exercise to sweating. This can throw off virus symptoms. Until there are tests we won’t know if we have gained immunity with only minor symptoms or thrown off the virus without gaining immunity.

It goes back to prevention. Live your life with low impact to yourself, family, community, environment and the world. Keep safe, keep fit.