PRINTFlu prevention
How to beat the flu this season
With winter knocking Columbia on its rear end, a little bit of prevention can go miles in keeping illness at bay.
January 18, 2010 | 1:21 p.m. CST
With winter knocking Columbia on its rear end, a little bit of prevention can go miles in keeping illness at bay. Even if it's not the dreaded H1N1, the common flu or cold are enough to keep you out of the game for a week. In the U.S., an estimated 25 to 50 Million cases of the flu are reported each year, leading to about 150,000 hospitalizations.
Here are a few tips to keep you from being a statistic:
A little dab will do ya
When bees take nectar from flowers, they swirl it around with chemicals in their saliva and later barf it back up. Don't get grossed out – it's just honey, one of the world's oldest natural sweeteners, long known as a cure-all by old wives, but recently defended by science.
In a recent study by Dr. Shona Blair from The University of Sydney, Australia, honey was found as an effective resistant to common microorganisms and fungi. As you well may know, honey is made using nectar and pollen. When you buy generic honey from the grocery store, it comes from god-knows-where. Local honey from local farms, however, is full of all the pollens one encounters every day. Dr. Blair's research states that, by building your tolerance to these common allergens, you reinforce your body's immune system and make it less likely for you to get sick. A teaspoon of honey every morning can keep you on your toes.
And, on top of that, it tastes way better than Dimetapp.
“Honey is one of the best sweeteners in the world,” says Art Gelder, co-owner of Walkabout Acres, a local honey farm. “It's even got natural antiseptic properties.”
If all else fails and you fall ill, heaven forbid, honey makes a great medicine. “Honey with lemon and tea is like chicken soup,” said Gelder, referring to its mollifying properties. “It's good for your cough, helps you sleep better and calms your stomach.”
Sounds sweet to me.
C you later
Back in the days of pirates and month-long transcontinental voyages, passengers had to worry about scurvy, a Vitamin C deficiency causing rotted gums, open sores, death and other nasty symptoms. Even though sailing the seas for C is unnecessary in our age of fresh, available produce, Kilgore’s Medical Pharmacy Pharmacist Bill Morrissey isn’t so sure about C's preventative qualities.
“The results of studies of Vitamin C’s effectiveness against illness have been very varied,” says Morrissey. “Some studies show a small benefit, some show no benefit at all.”
Although Vitamin C might seem like a popular choice due to its prevalence as an inexpensive cold fighter in products such as EmergenC and Cold-Eeze, Morrissey asserts that at best, its benefits are “iffy.” Overdosing on Vitamin C can lead to stomach aches, diarrhea and nausea.
Other over-the-counter cures such as Zycam originally contained hefty amounts of Vitamin C as well as Zinc, another cheap, marginally effective cold-fighter. However, Zycam was pulled off the market by the FDA in June due to reports of Zinc damaging senses of smell.
Walk it out
When you're home sick with the flu, the last thing you want to do is get out of bed, let alone get on that treadmill or go for a bike ride. While being entombed in your Snuggie for days sounds succulent, some exercise could clear your sickness right up.
A 2006 study by The American Journal of Medicine showed that low to moderate doses of exercise increased resistance to upper-respiratory infections, such as the common cold and flu. However, large amounts of exercise – exercising more than what is physically beneficial for you - can lead to increased susceptibility to illness. It's hard to know what's excessive, since “excessive” is different for everyone, but if you're in pain, stop.
“Too much exercise can be a bad thing,” says Jeremy Phillips, Director of Fitness and Nutrition at Wilson's Fitness. “It's a bad thing to overextend yourself when you have a cold.”
Phillips explains that exercise and nutrition are the duality of a healthy lifestyle, and those who are consistently exercising are less prone to illness.
Dangerous digits
Think of all the gross stuff you touch every day. The handle of a shopping cart at the supermarket. The keypad of the ATM. Your roommate’s socks left on the coffee table. Do you think all those germs will come off with just a bit of cold water and wishful thinking? Hardly.
According to Kilgore’s Pharmacist Bill Morrissey, there’s no underestimating the power of a good hand-washing. “The number one thing that we can do to prevent the cold or flu is hand washing,” says Morrissey.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, the best way to wash your paws is with warm water, a healthy lather of soap, and 15-20 seconds of heavy-duty scrubbing. The best time to do it is, well, all the time -- before eating, after eating, after using the restroom, after changing a diaper, even before you take out your contacts.
Morrissey also recommends, in tandem with frequent hand washing, keeping those dirty digits away from your nose and mouth and using hand sanitizer.
Turning the (vege)tables against the cold
Just like Grandma said, “You are what you eat.” Fill up on doughnuts, your immune system will go nuts. If you eat your veggies and fruits, you'll give the flu the boot.
Natalie Suntrup, Manager at Main Squeeze Natural Foods Café, can vouch for the healing nature of a good diet. “Diet has a large impact on one's overall immunity,” Suntrup says. “Vegetables, especially leafy greens, are great for you.” Main Squeeze serves a number of local mixed greens, such as chard, kale and spinach, which are high in folic acid, potassium and magnesium. Though it's pretty obvious that eating vegetables rather than, say, Triple Bacon Coronary Burgers every day is healthful, even a little bit each day helps. A diet rich in veggies helps prevent maladies from kidney stones to stroke, and every little bit of broccoli helps.
For those a little apprehensive about changing their diets around drastically, Suntrup also recommends vegetable juice.
“Juicing takes all the nutrients of vegetables and puts them into a cup,” Suntrup says. She also touts elderberry juice, which helps with sore throat and cough if you end up getting ill.
Let me sleep on it
Maybe you stayed up watching Roseanne reruns and shotgunning cans of Redbull. Or maybe you accepted your friend's offer to catch the late-late night showing of Rocky Horror. In Chicago. Fun graph.
Either way, you've gotten five hours of sleep the past three days, and you're starting to get that little tickle in the back of your throat telling you you're getting a cold. Crap.
Augustine Accurso knows how you feel. A resident of Columbia, Accurso has suffered from a circadian rhythm sleep disorder for years, throwing off her internal clock and cheating her out of quality pillow time.
“I just don't feel tired when I should,” said Accurso, adding that her “weird, inconsistent” sleep schedule causes her to get sick more easily in the winter months.
Accurso's not alone with this problem; in a January 2009 study by The Archives of Internal Medicine, scientists determined that people who sleep less than seven hours per night are three times more likely to get sick than those who sleep an average of eight hours.
That's reason enough to hit the snooze button and get back under the covers.
So, in retrospect, maybe that spur-of-the-moment ten-hour drive to the World's Largest Ball of Twine wasn't such a good idea. Nor was that detour to Bill's Steak-o-Rama to gorge on what appeared to be roughly one-third of a cow.
Regardless, you'll be up for it, again and again, if you stick to these easy tips. (Well, maybe you'll think twice about the extra horseradish.)
Twitter
Facebook
