UNDERSTANDING FLU AND COLDS

"Disease is an effort of nature to free the system from conditions that result from a violation of the laws of health. In case of sickness, the cause should be ascertained. Unhealthful conditions should be changed, wrong habits corrected. Then nature is to be assisted in her effort to expel impurities and to re-establish right conditions in the system." Counsels on Health 90.

It is important to realize that most of us have been taught from childhood and are still being bombarded today by those who profit by our lack of understanding. We have been taught that these viral miseries are only caused because at a certain time of year certain ‘germs’ come around and if you are exposed to them–you ‘catch’ a cold or flu. We think of it as an enemy alien invader, and ourselves as the victims. We are taught we have to ‘fight’ a flu or cold, and most of us think that to do this we must rush to the drug store or doctor for a chemical arsenal with which to do this 'fighting’.

We see the symptoms, runny nose, congestion, fever, cough, tiredness, aches and pains, as ‘attacks’ instead of understanding that your body is trying to deal in the very wise way God designed it to, with the situation. Often when we think we are ‘fighting’ a cold or flu, we are actually stopping the body’s immune system from defending us!

There is much not fully understood about flus and colds. The medical explanation, based on the ‘Pasteur’ theory, just doesn’t explain things totally by any means. Weak, sickly people often don’t get colds at all, even when ’exposed’, while hearty robust persons will. There can be a group and some will get the cold, others won’t. Some people could dine on flu virus and never get sick. By the way, various ‘disease causing germs’ are always resident in our bodies and most of the time we don’t get sick from them.

Whatever the reason, you find yourself feverish, stuffy, congested, coughing, aching, and so on. What is going on? There is a cleansing process going on. If we think of it in this way it will help us understand how to help.

The first thing you should realize is that most of these symptoms are caused or aggravated by a desperate need for–WATER! Yes, don’t knock it! Most people never drink even a fraction of what the body needs in water to function healthily. And those who use beverage tea and coffee and /or alcohol, coke, pop etc. actually force the body to throw off what little water is has to try and flush these poisons out. 1 cup of coffee would take the body 3 days to completely flush out–the water it contains is useless to the cells. The hot irritated congested feeling can often be relieved by using lots of pure water and fresh fruit juices–at least 1 cup per waking hour. Headache–ditto.

The secretions dilute and the tightness will relax–the best expectorant is hot water. It is OK to take extra Vit. C but make sure it is a natural source and don’t let that take the place of having lots of citrus and other raw fruits. The juice of one lemon is more effective than a high dose of commercial Vit. C.

Keeping evenly warm all over to balance circulation; avoiding chilling and drafts, taking frequent baths and changing cloths all helps to aid the body’s cleansing and speed your recovery. A raw fruit, and juice diet can be easily digested and used by the body to help balance itself and give easy energy to do the work. Making the body face heavy, cooked foods at this time will interfere with the body’s efforts and by fermenting and rotting in the stomach–create more toxins. A few days of very light diet and lots of water inside and out will greatly pay off in your future well being!

Handled properly, your health will be better following a cold–those who get cold upon cold or have ones that hang on and on will be greatly helped by using the ‘assist’ method instead of the ‘fight’ method.

What about fever? That is what scares most people to the chemical warfare. Fever is best relieved by water. Fruit juices and raw fruits have a cooling effect. Cold cloths to the head and back of neck also help–but remember–don’t stop the fever–it is part of your body’s defense system. There is nothing healing or cleansing in Tylenol–it’s just another toxin your body will have to deal with, if you dump it in! Tepid sponge baths or warm tub baths will reduce high fevers and the BIGGEST key especially in children is colon cleansing!

Most fevers are there because of a congested colon. If a high fever occurs–do your best to provide a tepid enema by syringe for a child or enema bag for adult. Glycerin suppositories made specially for babies are safer for under 1 year, and should be used in fretful, feverish states. A good clear-out of bowels will lower most fevers faster than Tempra, and will help the body do what it needs and not hinder it. With children it has to be seen to be believed how quickly a feverish, sick child will sometimes recover following a bowel cleansing induced by a gently done syringe enema! Our old grannies weren’t as stupid as modern medicine would have us believe–they would run for the enema syringe at the first sign of illness in the child or resort to the 'dose of salts’ thing. Not as nice, but it still used to work.

Chemical drugs– When you really understand what is happening in your body, you want to assist it to get its work done, not block its way every step. Picture this–your body needs to throw out some toxins either from 'all the stuff you et' or what is produced by ‘germs’ so it starts dumping out the colon, you run to the Dr. or store and get something to ‘stop it’; it tries to flush out through the sinuses–you get something to stop that; It dumps into your lungs and triggers a cough response so you can cough it out–you get something to stop that; it tries vomiting–and gets stopped again! Finally it has so much chemical toxins added to the load it had already that it just quits for the moment. A few weeks later it tries again–"Oh," you say, "I’ve ‘caught’ another cold." Likely your body is still just trying to deal with the last one.

People do this for years, then often they don’t get any more ‘colds’. You will often hear people who get cancer or some serious illness tell you, "I don’t understand it, I haven’t even had a cold in years."

If you think of a flu or cold as a cleansing crisis in your body, instead of an ‘attack’ you must fight, you will be wiser in how you deal with it.

1-Rest and sleep as much as possible–the body can only ‘clean house’ and deal with damages when we sleep. It is not an accident that you often feel sleepy why experiencing viral episodes.

2-Make sure you have good air circulating in your sick-room. Germs thrive in low oxygen environment while your body thrives in high. Keep bedding clean and fresh. Change your underwear and PJs etc. daily.

3-Drink lots of fluids–this aids the body’s cleansing processes and helps clear breathing passages. The fluids are best hot unless the fever is very high and then should be warm or cool but NOT cold or iced!

4-Make sure to get at least 6-8 large glasses of water–(distilled or reverse osmosis) Small amounts of fresh lemon juice and honey can be added.

Juices are best fresh squeezed–Orange, Grapefruit, any citrus is good and can be mixed with hot water. Frozen or process juices are not as energy giving. Make sure NOT to use any drinks containing sugar, artificial sweeteners, dairy products, coffee, tea, chocolate or alcohol–your body won’t benefit from other toxins when you are already sick!

If you have no choice but to use store juices–you can get orange, apple, pineapple or grape juice that is unsweetened–read labels well! These juices should always be diluted with one to two parts water.

3-4 large cups of juice should be used in, or in addition to the water and should be warm or cool, never iced.

5-Diet should be very light and ‘alive’ Even if illness makes you crave otherwise, a little discipline in this can save you many days of misery. In acute stages avoid all grains and flour products, Dairy, meat, fatty or fried foods also sugar. Use Raw fruit, fresh juices. Simple vegetable soups and vegetable broth is helpful especially if made fresh. Unfortunately, canned or packaged soups tend to contain many chemicals and can aggravate the situation. One easy stand-by that many like is canned tomatoes served hot with a piece of dry toast. See recipe section for hot drink and fruit serving ideas.

6-Illness will be greatly shortened if you take some sort of colon cleansing as soon as 1st symptoms of a virus start. Get an old fashioned enema bag and do a couple bags of nice extra warm water enema daily until well. If this is impossible, get a herbal laxative tea or capsules and take twice the regular dose until the bowels are moving 3 or 4 times a day. Pneumonia won’t happen with a really clear colon! Even if you have diarrhea, an enema is great because if there is no block-up and irritation in the bowel, diarrhea won’t happen.

7-It is important to cleanse the skin often in a severe cold or flu–much toxins will be sweated out and need to be removed from the skin. Nice hot water and scrubbing off with a soft bath brush and mild soap is helpful. Hot baths are good daily, but make sure you rest in bed for at least an hour following a hot bath–if you get a chill when hot and sweaty, your virus could get much worse.

8-Clothing has a bearing also–the body needs to be kept warm evenly all over. Cotton, which absorbs well is best for night clothes and t-shirts and other undergarments. Avoid wearing anything that is tight around the body especially the chest. Wear t-shirts instead of bras, ladies. This will help the lungs to deal with the illness better. Your germ-eating blood cells need a good circulation!

9- Keeping feet warm is important! Wear cotton socks to bed if there is any chilliness of feet. Don’t walk on cold floors in bare feet when sick, wear those fluffy slippers your Mom gave you.

10- A quiet environment with soft music, no ‘beat’ music, TV or noisy stress is best to speed recovery in the natural way.

Have faith in your body’s design and support its efforts to cleanse.

Once past the acute stage, dressing appropriately for the weather and taking short strolls out doors (If the environment is healthy) will aid convalescence.

All of us feel so bad to see our little ones suffer so we like to give them whatever they ask for and allow them to refuse to do what is best. In the long run, this is not being kind at all. If you stick to this assist program, your child will likely recover much more quickly and stay well, while allowing unwise choices at this stage can lead to much suffering and even serious illness.

A good point is don’t ask sick kids what they want, just bring them fresh made, diluted juices and little dishes of bite sized raw fruit pieces and put it in their reach. Don’t force, just leave it close–they usually take to it better than you would believe. Don’t offer or eat foods not advisable for them when sick, in front of them and if clamoring for unwise foods occurs, explain that these foods will only make them feel worse so they will have the fruits and juices and get better quicker that way. Children understand much more than we think, and if the disease process is explained and they are told how to help themselves get well and why you are doing what you are doing, even quite little ones will co-operate.

Give no Dairy products and nothing made with sugar, no ice-cream, pop, candy or chocolate drinks! These things are wonderful germ food and a virus will thrive on them while the body will be hindered by them.

Keep the sick child cozy and warm and resting in a quiet area. Don’t let well children ‘play rowdy’ with them. Encourage rest and sleep in acute stages. They will often be irritable, so deal gently with them, but firmness is needed not to let the child feel that illness is an excuse to disobey and be nasty. Provide extra soothing and love–but not unwise indulgence .

Soaking feet in a hot container of water relieves congestion and chills. Combining it with a cold cloth to the head or back of the neck helps fever and headache. This works for migraines too.

1 cup of Epsom salts in a hot bath–add a pint of 3% Hydrogen peroxide, (The ordinary cheap kind) and soak for 1/2 an hour before settling for the night. This relieves a lot of aches and pain and helps the cleansing process. The patient should dry quickly, avoid drafts and climb into fresh cotton PJs and into bed. A hot cup of chamomile or catnip tea is a good addition to promote sleep.

This is a simple but effective relief in chest congestion. Take a cotton T-shirt and soak it with cool water, ring it so it’s not drippy. Put it on the patient‘s bare chest–it will feel shocking especially if feverish but it quickly warms up. Place a dry, thick woolen or heavy cotton sweat shirt over the wet T-shirt. The patient sleeps with this on, by morning it is dry. It relieves inflammation and congestion, and reduces fevers.

Fevered infants or small children can be wrapped in a wet flannelette then swaddled overtop with a warm towel or blanket and cuddled in arms. This seems to quiet the most distressed child but they will fuss as it is being applied–the soothing effect follows quickly and they sleep.

For severe sore throat–do a ‘Neck-Wrap’ (Not for small children!) Take a piece of flannelette or a light towel–get it wet and wring it out. Wrap around neck comfortably, then top with a dry woolen scarf or dry towel. Go to bed with this on and usually in a few hours the sore throat is relieved.

These therapies can be even better using 1 cup of hydrogen peroxide to 2 quarts of cold water to dip the wrap in.

This can also be used with sprains or painful joints–it has many uses.

For congestion of lungs or sinuses–use a vaporizer or sit with head over a bowl of hot water and a towel draped over your head. This is to sooth mucous membranes and loosen secretions.

COUGH- Best helped by lots of fluids, hot drinks and lemon and honey. Herbal formulas are available. Avoid chemical preparations esp. with "DM" in them. Help the body flush out–don’t bottle it up!

Tips: To prevent a child having sore nose from being wiped so much–use a soft moist cloth instead of dry tissues. Sore eyes can be wiped with a solution of boiled water with 1 teaspoon salt to 1 cup water. Use soft cotton balls dipped in this warm solution to gently bathe secretions from eyes.

1-2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice– 2 –4 teaspoons honey– 1 pint hot water– just a pinch of powdered ginger. Mix and sip hot. Can be taken every couple hours.

The key to these is ripe bananas; they have to have spots. You can put a banana in the blender and add any frozen fruit, strawberries, blueberries, (thaw first) or cut up fresh fruit. 1/2 cup fresh orange juice and whiz it smooth. To have it even more creamy and nourishing for after the acute stage, add 1/2 the fruit of a ripe avocado. Delicious! Don’t knock it until you try it. I has ice-cream all beat!

Peel and core raw apples and drop pieces into blender in 1/2 cup fresh orange juice or apples juice. Blend until smooth and eat immediately. Tasty!

When fresh fruit is out of season, then soak dry apricots in water in the fridge overnight–these make great finger food items or can be blended with the banana drink above.

Make a small display of any of these–apple pieces, pear slices, orange sections, banana slices, fresh berries or fruit, soaked apricots or raisins, grapes, pineapple cubes. Place in patients reach and replace as required. It is natural for children to thrive on fruit–they love it once they get used to it. For tiny tots make sure it is cut small to avoid choking.

Pineapple Juice is very good added to 3-4 part hot water as a helpful drink for congestion and colds. Fresh Grapefruit juice in hot water is good also or mix it with orange.

In hot weather, if a child wants ‘Popsicles’ freeze pineapple juice in Popsicle trays and let them enjoy them–(Icy things not recommended in cold weather.)

Chamomile, lemon balm, lemon tea (no caffeine) , hibiscus tea, Catnip tea, herbal tea sleep formulas, herbal cough formulas. Serve hot with small amounts lemon and/or honey added.

Echinacea drops and cough syrups are good as it increases the immune response. There are formulas for adults and children.

Cough candies are not wise as they are full of sugar and feed the germ as well as lowering your immune system. Sugar can paralyze the white cells that eat the germs!

From infancy, we are educated to look upon disease and health according to the prevailing medical outlook of our culture. Mark Twain once wrote; "It is not what we don’t know that is a problem, it is what we know–that isn’t so!" There are many things that we are taught in our culture that ‘are not so.’ Notice this quote from health-educator and natural-living pioneer, Norman Walker:

"We look on sickness and disease as something mysterious and dreadful and we blame germs and bacteria.

"As a matter of fact germs and bacteria are the scavengers of nature and are everywhere. When we breath, we inhale millions of these little natural scavengers and it is their function to keep the debris in our body neutralized and to stir it up so that it can be eliminated from the body. It is our job, however, to keep our body in such condition that this elimination can be completed to perfection.

"Due to the excessive quantity of inorganic food that we eat, food in which the life principal has been destroyed by cooking, canning, and other processes, this debris, or end-product of the digestion of this food, in the body, accumulates faster than we and these natural scavengers can remove it. The result is that germs and bacteria find a feeding ground within us in which to propagate. In this process of their propagation the sewage of their colonies is added to the debris and the result is what we call sickness or disease.

"Whenever germs and bacteria enter a body which is thoroughly clean and healthy, within and without, they find no feeding ground of waste or morbid matter therein on which to colonize and therefore pass out of the system in the natural course of events.

"Likewise, when all debris and accumulated morbid matter is removed from a sick or diseased body, then only is established the first step toward a recovery to a normal chemical balance."

Dr. Norman Walker.