Preventing Colds and Flu

PREVENTING COLDS AND FLU

Our immune system has two lines of defense.  The first line of defense are white blood cells called Natural Killer Cells.  They do exactly what they say.  They search out foreign invaders and kill them on contact.  The day you felt a scratchy throat, went to bed early, and woke up fine the next day the virus was destroyed by your Natural Killer cells.  The day you had a scratchy throat, but woke up late feeling over tired the virus survived resulting in being full blown sick the next day.  The Natural Killer cells could not fight off the virus.  

The second phase of the immune system is how our bodies memorize and learn how to fight off a virus.  This is why small children get sick so often and they have such high fevers. Their immune system is learning and it takes several colds and flus to get a memory system in place.  Once the memory system is in place the colds become less frequent and less severe.  A mild fever is not a bad thing, it is how the memory system learns.

With all that said none of us want to be sick.  For children it is a mix of keeping them built up with enough vitamin C to have a fully active immune system.  It is also important to make sure they are getting enough sleep to not get exhausted.

For us adults, it is mostly exhaustion and stress management.  I will cover some exposure issues but by and large we have a memory system to fight off viruses.  We get in trouble by letting ourselves get run down by not taking supplements on a regular basis and by exhaustion from stress loads and our immune system is not fully active.

Suggestions for Children

When they are taking their night time bath, wash their hair more often than you would naturally do.  The hair collects all kinds of coughs and sneezes especially at their height.

Vitamin C daily

A Multivitamin daily, chewable ones are fine.  Base the dose on their size.

Vitamin D daily

Probiotic or Yogurt daily to prevent intestinal viruses.

If the cousins came over with a cough then give them Echinacea and Zinc Lozenges afterwards to build up their immune system response.  We are stimulating the production of their Natural Killer Cells with these nutrients.

Suggestions for Adults

Wash your hair frequently.  Men every night, women as often as you come in contact with sick people.

Vitamin C on a daily basis and we need more than we think.  The Adrenal Glands will hold four times the volume of vitamin C as the blood stream.  The Adrenal Glands use vitamin C to make hormones to manage stress.  The more stress you are under the more vitamin C you need.

A Multivitamin one to two a day is needed.

Vitamin D.  Your vitamin D needs to be tested.  We need it to be between 50 and 80 to have the immune system active.

Probiotic and or Yogurt daily helps keep the intestinal viruses away.

Stress loads.  The more stress you are under the more likely it is that you will get sick.  The vitamin C levels drop as the Adrenals gets exhausted and the Natural Killer cells cannot show up with enough numbers to fight off a virus.

I like the reflex technique, Neurovascular Dynamics.  This technique stimulates blood flow through the organs and helps drain the lymphatic system. This really works to relax the whole body from stress and is much faster acting than Acupuncture.

Adjustments help, especially adjusting the upper neck to get nerve stimulation to relax the whole body.  This works for some people, the reflex technique for others.

When you are feeling overwhelmed these are good things to try.

When you do get sick

Neurovascular Dynamics reflex technique, acupressure points, and the adjustment help with boost the immune system activity to help recover faster.

Vitamin C in large amounts.

Echinacea

Zinc

These items boost the immune system response.

There are several herbs and homeopathic formulas to help with bronchitis and the lungs.

Elderberry and homeopathic products help recover from the intestinal flu.

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Brian McGuckin