Cold and flu season is upon us. Are you prepared?
For a minimum, have GSE (Grapefruit Seed Extract) and GAIA Quick Defense capsules in your house, so if it hits you, you can start taking something fast (they don’t pay me – I say this from many years of experience!).
By the way, the main difference between a cold and the flu is that a cold is more slowly in the making, getting worse from day to day. The flu hits you like lightning: Fine in the morning, half dead in the afternoon.
Take GSE in much warm fluid - it's caustic! 16 drops - four times a day.
"Quick Defense" by GAIA (a phyto-capsule of an extract different herbs - just follow directions – usually nibs any cold in the bud.
And do deep breathing: Three deep breaths every hour on the hour - you don't want to end up with pneumonia! And get a lot of sleep! People who are run down, get sick.
And, something not on the point: Last night we walked the Pacific beach here in La Jolla. New with each new wave, the ocean never bores. It was full moon. We were playing escaping the waves - just like kids - and had fun for nearly two hours. Nobody else was there – what a waste of a wonderful full moon!
Hopefully, tomorrow more about invasive plants!
P.S. I just caught a lizard – or something like a lizard, with four legs and a long tail – in my bathroom and set him free. - Glad I found him before Otto did. Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
What’s the Difference Between a Cold and the Flu?
February 11, 2011
This is the question I am asked most often around this time of a year. How can one discern between the one and the other. Not that the treatment is very different – they are both viral and respond to similar measures. Only the flu lasts longer, and can lead to more complications. Sometimes, it it hard to tell which is which - but here are some guidelines.
A cold and the flu - both make you feel lousy. The flu makes you feel even lousier, but that is hard to figure out when you are in bed with something, your nose is stuffed, you can’t breathe right, your head hurts, and you are miserable.
Whereas a cold often starts slowly, with a little scratching in the throat over several days or bouts of sneezing, a flu often starts with a bang: One moment you feel fine – and an hour later you realize you are coming down with something really bad. Sometimes it even starts with queasiness in your belly, and you wonder what you are hatching. But very soon, all your limbs hurt, your muscles hurt, your skin hurts, your scalp hurts, your head hurts, and you develop a fever (most of the time): That’s the flu.
Complications of a cold include sinusitis (especially if you reach for over-the-counter cold medicine that tends to dry out the nasal mucosa and clog the system, instead of letting the phlegm flow out), and earaches.
A flu does often not present as an enormously running nose; a flu might have some stuffiness that doesn’t go away. Fever is rare in a cold, and prominent in the flu: When the fever mounts, you feel chills and want to be covered with a dozen duvets; when the fever falls, you are soaked in sweat and have to change pajamas and sheets.
A flu differs in that you are usually much more incapacitated. Sinus headaches in a cold can be bad, but flu headache feel like a minor meningitis – and it is just that: the virus is affecting your meninges (the outer lining of your brain): It hurts to move your eyes, it hurts to move your head, and light that shines into your eyes bothers you (photophobia). And a flu leaves you weak and seemingly unable to recover. A flu may make it impossible to get out of bed for a week or two, sometimes even three – you feel like you will never recover.
In a flu, all your strength seems to be sapped out of you, and you feel unable to do exercise. While you are still bedridden, it is not a good idea to push through because this is the time your heart can be affected too – and you need rest, not tough determination to get it over with. And let me say this out loud: This is not a time for cold showers or other heroic measures. Just lie back in your cushions and rest. A cold never leads to this kind of utter exhaustion.
I say rest because you might not be able to sleep – that has to do with the irritation of meninges, too. On the other hand, some people do nothing but sleep. Both is fine, and part of the picture.
What is not part of the picture: If you get delirious, if you get bronchitis and/or pneumonia, if your fever lasts longer than three, four days, maximally a week - then it is time to consult a physician. Because nearly nobody dies of a cold, but many people – especially the elderly and diseased – die of flu and its consequences every year.
The most common cause for cough is phlegm that comes down from the sinus and tickles your throat. The best way to deal with it is to rinse your nose with saltwater (which I have described somewhere here – look it up in the index). The cough of bronchitis comes from deep within the lungs, sounds like trumpeting, and your chest might hurt severely – that is a sign you should see your doctor. Read More
Is It January – Or Is It Me?
January 15, 2011
We had a whopper of a snowstorm, and since then we haven’t gotten out of the freezing numbers. Tonight they predict single-digit numbers (Fahrenheit, that is; to those who believe in Celsius, as I do, it is supposed more than ten degrees below zero).
Still, in the morning I am doing my cold sitzbath. Now the water is so cold that when I count to twenty-one for my leg moving to swish the water over my thighs, I feel pins and needles, and not much more. When I get out of the tub, my lower half feels like non-existent, it is so cold.
But within a minute of toweling off and walking on tiptoes, I get nice, tingling warmth’s flooding all over, my toes are all pink, and I am ready for the day.
Do I push the cold too much – to an extent that it becomes unhealthy?
I don’t think so. Around holiday time, I had a period where I felt cold all the time. Even if the heat was higher than normal, I felt that deep chill inside. Not sure if I was breeding a virus that never came out because I usually nip a stuffy nose and a bit of a sore throat in the bud with herbs. Or if it was the not-so-healthy food we all succumb to around the holidays – even me. My cookies are gluten-free – but they are still cookies, loaded with sugar and butter (I know because I baked them).
When I felt so cold for a few days, I decided it was not wise to continue my cold sitzbaths; I just wasn’t sure what I was hatching. Instead I did quick cold washs in the bathtub.
Why I tell the story? Because in Natural Medicine we believe that not every body is the same, not even every body is the same every day, and one should heed the body’s warning signs. Not getting warm anymore certainly is such a sign - and pushing through it would be foolish.
Some people can do cold exposure like sitzbath or cold shower only in the early afternoon – because that’s the body’s “hottest” time. The very elderly and the frail should not tough it out at all with cold showers. And never, ever try winter swimming! But everybody probably benefits from a very fast cold wash-down.
A few years ago, for my patients, I put together a pamphlet about how to get warm; constant cold hands and feet was a complaint I heard quite often. What do you do to get warmer?
Bundling up is the first that comes to mind – and important to get warm NOW. But in the long run, it is counterproductive: The warmer you dress, the more you heat your rooms, the less your body generates heat – it loses the ability.
A cold wash or even a very short cold shower (not more than a few seconds) will acclimatize the body to colder temperatures. In the long run, it will also reduce colds. Besides it is good against high blood pressure, and good for skin, lungs, glands and mood (don’t take a cold shower with uncontrolled high blood pressure though, or with Raynaud’s or other arterial diseases!). – But if you haven’t started your cold shower yet, it might be wiser to wait until the three coldest months (January, February, March) are over. Try cold washs until then: With a face cloth wash yourself down quickly with cold water (change face cloths daily!) – unless you live in Florida or so.
Other methods to get warm: A hot green tea or a hot herbal tea. Or try a warm soup.
Certain herbs produce heat in the body: Interestingly, the spices we often use in Christmas cookies produce warmth - like cinnamon, vanilla, ginger, coriander seeds, cloves – they warm up the cold season (as does brown sugar, by the way. Go light on the sweets because you’ll feel warmer, but also heavier). Spices we call “hot” like paprika, curry, cayenne, coriander leaves (also called cilantro) have a cooling effect – as does white sugar.
If you are cold, you can put a hot water bottle in your bed in the evening – we sleep with window open even at these temperatures – and our bedroom is an ice cellar at this time of the year. You can also use an electric pad – but never when you are in bed. Heat it up about half an hour before retiring. Some people like the warmth at their feet. I like it at the small of my back – because that’s where my center is – and the qi-producing adrenal glands.
Ah, here we are at the Chinese qi – and the bad news. Having cold hands and feet (or worse, a cold core like I had around the holidays) is a sign of too little life energy. The Chinese content that the foods we have can help a bit with qi. But what really generates qi is: movement.
When I was cold all the time, I realized that I had slacked off in my exercises – no wonder during holiday stress. I revamped. Since I am still no friend of a gym I do more of the little things I can do at home, between spurts of writing: Pulling myself up the bar (we have one installed in the doorway to the basement – mostly for the guys in the family), rolling around on my yoga ball, doing little exercises with a small, heavy ball, jumping rope, and making sure I will go for a walk at least once a day. Better twice: One for filling up my vitamin D needs during the day, and once in the dark after dinner with my husband, filling up my need for connection with my spouse.
Cold hands and feet all the time? I learned it the hard way: Only movement really helps. Without movement, we are creeping faster toward the final coldness. Read More