How to Avoid the Flu (or a Cold) This Year!

Flu/influenza can be prevented. Four valent vaccine, active cilia, good probiotic, and smiling are effective. Sanitizers must remain on for 20 seconds.

You don’t want to catch influenza/ flu this year. You can get an influenza shot, and that is best. These injections raise your immunity to specific types of the flu viruses. Trivalent Flu vaccines protect against two kinds of Type A and one Type B flu virus. Quadrivalent Vaccine protects against two of A and B each. That means protection against four types of the flu virus.
Even when the influenza vaccine doesn’t give 100% protection, it can significantly reduce symptoms and complications

What Other Measures Help
Prevent flu with good sleep and yogurt/ probiotic. The better your sleep the better your immunity to most illnesses.

If you have been on antibiotics, you should take yogurt or probiotic preparations for three months to restore your good bacteria.

Why Do You Get a Cold or Flu in the Winter?
In the winter there is more close contact with other persons.
During the winter, you go outside in the bitter cold, and then come into the overheated store, where people sneeze and cough. Each sneeze from an infected person showers the air with viruses.
Normally, your good nasal cilia work to wash those bugs out of your nose before they can enter your body. However, in cold weather you nasal cilia slow down. The colder the nose, the slower the cilia become. Therefore, when you step from the cold and enter the packed elevator, your cilia beat too slowly to move the invaders out. The virus remains on the surface of the nasal membranes and has time to enter your body. To prevent this from happening, try to warm up before entering the classroom. When you come in from the cold, try to walk around where people are scarce. When your outside nose is warm again, then enter the elevator. If possible, drink hot tea first; that stimulates you chest and nasal cilia.

You see slow nasal cilia in postnasal drip and chronic sinus condition. The yellow green thick drainage indicates that your cilia are moving too slow. This means you are more susceptible to infections.

Washing your hands is important. Here’s why: The flu virus lands on a door handle. It remains viable for about eight hours. You touch the handle and get the virus on your hands. When you rub your eyes or pick your nose, you then transfer the virus to your body and can get the flu infection. This is why during the flu season the more you wash your hands, the less probability of getting the flu. Especially wash your hands when you get home from work. Note: soap and disinfectants need to remain on the hands 20 seconds to be effective.

Typical flu symptoms are body aching, fatigue, dry cough and fever. In the flu, the aching is all over, not just in the sinus area.

Is It Cold or Flu?
In the common cold, there is nasal congestion, sneezing, sore throat and sometimes pain in the sinus/nose. Unfortunately the symptoms may overlap. When there is a flu epidemic, what you have is probably the flu.

Rapid Flu Test
There are at least ten kits for rapid flu testing. These come with nasal or throat swabs; the information is available in about fifteen minutes. These tests are particularly useful for seniors and children when there isn’t a flu epidemic. When everyone in town has the flu, you don’t need to do the test to make a diagnosis.

Should You Get Antiviral medication?
For seniors, especially with a history of chest problems, starting an antiviral medication at the start of the flu can be significantly helpful in reducing symptoms and complications. The common medication recommended is Tamiflu.(Oseltamivir) ww Usually it is taken for a week.
For healthy adults, and a mild flu, medications like Tylenol and Aleve work for symptoms and fever. Bed rest and lots of fluids are important.
Wives always complain that the husband doesn’t take enough liquids – and it’s true. When you drink enough liquids so that your urine turns light, that is the best indicator. If the wife threatens to check her husband’s urine, that works well! The more the liquid, the more any virus is diluted. The more the liquid, the easier it is for natural healing elements to get to the virus. The increase in liquid intake thins surface mucus to help with good cilia movement of the nose and chest.

Stop Coughing
Many of the over the counter cough medications help. The cough may be due to the cilia of the chest not moving well; when the chest cilia don’t move particles out of the lungs, then the body will cough; therefore adequate liquid intake is important. Cough lozenges are great for throat irritation that causes a cough. Steam inhalation with the tongue out helps too. Winter air is generally dry; try to moisten the air with steam, shallow pans for evaporation, etc.

What If You Have Postnasal Drip or Chronic Sinusitis?
A persistent sinus condition makes you more susceptible to the flu. The sooner you get your nose back to its normal function of guarding you from infection, the better.

Pulsatile Irrigation for the Sinuses:
Doctors recommend pulsatile irrigation for nasal symptoms that persist in order to restore the nasal cilia defense. The pulse rate of the Hydro Pulse™ nasal/ sinus irrigator is at a rate for restoring good cilia movement. A simple cold/coryza or a persistent allergy may turn into a sinus problem because cilia slow down; restoring the cilia by pulsed irrigation avoids this complication.
Once the bacteria from the nose and throat are cleared, the full defenses of the nose are now available to avoid a flu infection. Because you have removed the bacteria from the nose and sinuses, and restored the normal cilia movement, you now have the very best defense against any invaders.

Once free of infection you still need to keep good nasal cilia action, because cilia slow down in cold exposure.
a. drink hot tea with lemon and honey. Tea, green or black, contains L Theonine, which stimulates cilia movement.
b. add lemon or lime to your water intake.
c. get good sleep.
d. smile. It has been proven that smiling has reduced the incidence of the common cold during cold season. Smiling helps the immune response against invaders.
e. Chicken soup. This contains elements that stimulate nasal and bronchial cilia. Actually chicken soup has significant healing elements; Dr. Jordan Josephson, ENT specialist, has devoted a whole section of his book, Sinus Relief Now, to his grandmother’s chicken soup recipe!