Prevention of Viral Respiratory Infection; colds, flu, SARS, H5N1, v. pneumonia

[smokey]

totally agree with you anthro, we kill too many bugs in our pursuit to be bacteria free, how on earth did the human race survive let alone evolve before antibacterial products?

bugs can be good they can build immunity, thats why you should let your kids play in the mud! not like some people i know that god forbid thier kids should get a speck of dirt on them.

although in certain circumstances killing the little blighters(i mean bugs not kids) can be a good thing.

[itchychick]

Well, unfortunately, I am nursing a very minor cold...  started with a very slight sore throat, and has now progressed to sneezing and nasal/sinus congestion (but not too severe).  I must admit I've had one or two days when I didn't have enough time in the morning and I skipped my swabbing

[anthropositor]

Hi Itchy,
If you have no elevation in temperature, in this season it is more likely that you are responding to an airborne allergen.  I would swab three times a day for a week or so.  Of course, if your children have come home with the sniffles and are not generally bothered by pollen, dust, or other allergens, particularly if you have an elevation in temperature of half a degree F or so, it could be a rhinovirus.  Just in case, chew on a lemon or lime when you think of it, don't rinse your mouth for ten or fifteen minutes afterwards, and swab two or three times a day for a few days.  How many substances are you allergic to that you know of?
Anthropositor

[itchychick]

Hi Anthro,

I have not had an elevated temperature (at least, not high enough to take note of), and I suspect that it is some type of virus as my little one has also been complaining of a sore throat, and there is that "phlegmy" feeling (sorry if that's too graphic).  Is there often an increase in mucosal secretions associated with airborne allergies?

As to what I'm allergic to, I've never been tested for airborne allergens, and there are no food allergies that have shown up on skin tests.  I do think, though, that I react to something environmental, as my skin seems to get itchier at the change of seasons.

[anthropositor]

I think, Itchy, that the most likely thing in this season is probably an airborne mold or fungus.  They can frequently hit two or three people in a household at the same time.  Along with the standard procedure, you can finish up with a few drops of the oil in the mouth before going out into the world.  This will coat the throat for an hour or so, providing some additional barrier.  This element is not of great importance to most people, so it is not included in the standard instructions at the beginning of this thread.  People in general are a bit put off by the texture of the oil in their mouths.  It is a bit unfamiliar and makes you feel like you need to brush your teeth, but that is an illusion. 

It does have some relevance to a dental procedure I'm working on but that is not proven sufficiently to go into at this point anyway.
Anthropositor

[anthropositor]

Hi again Itchy,
As to the itchiness of your skin going through some changes with the seasons, I think this is less likely to be due to allergic responses to airborne allergens than to changes in humidity.  To test this idea, you might try wiping the affected area with a damp cloth and immediately applying a thin coat of coconut oil before the surface moisture has evaporated completely away.  My bet is that the itchiness will be substantially reduced.
Anthro

[itchychick]

I had considered this anthro, and have done just that, my first efforts to this regard having begun last spring. I feel wonderful while in the shower or bath, but soon after getting out, applying coconut oil while my skin is damp, the itchies return with a vengance.  The intense, "reactive" itching (which results in tiny hives after I scrach) seems to be unrelated to whether my skin is moist or not.  Having said that, drier skin worsens the sensation of discomfort once the "rash" has taken hold.

It's the nature of the itch that makes me suspect a reaction.  It is very unlike the itch caused by the dishydrotic eczema which I get on my palms and soles of feet.  It comes on abruptly and fiercly, and can last anywhere from a few hours to a few days.  The longer it lasts, the more damage I do by scratching, which seems to precipitate the hives, which I subsequently scratch off.

[Bamawing]

Ugh, Itchy, it sounds horrable!

I've been swabbing my schnoz and I like it. I just feel cleaner... and if I forget for a day, I feel naked. NO problems so far... I really hope your nasal ickies go away with a swiftness!

[anthropositor]

Hi Bama,
I think Itchy is talking about the rest of her skin in general.  I wish I had some more answers or ideas but at the moment I don't.  I have some notion how Itchy feels though.  When I was having those several years of trouble with the skin on my hands and arms, there were times when my skin just seemed determined to be illogical.  If there are essential pieces of information missing, and we do not know what they are, the results of our attempts to put things right sometimes don't seem to make much sense.  Very frustrating.

Maybe I am not giving luck the credit it deserves, but I still think that logic and reason play the largest role, in spite of the sometimes paradoxical results that seem to show up.

Remember this.  Luck sometimes shows up in costume.  I recently went to a dentist, a man totally unknown to me.  He looked at a single bite-wing X-ray, pushed for a moment on one tooth and pronounced his verdict that I needed to spend over $2100 on top of the nearly $100 I paid for this brief exam and X-ray.  Seems like bad luck, particularly after being told roughly the same thing by another dentist years ago.

This new dentist also left me twisting in the wind when I needed some pain medication to get through the weekend, effectively leaving me to deal with the pain as best I could.  Do I hold it against him?  Yes I do.  But I did deal with the pain, and in the process, tried some more new methods to perhaps repair the damaged nerve.  Not kill it or remove it with a root-canal.  Just stop the bacterial attack and even try to repair the nerve itself.  As far as I know, no dentist tries this sort of thing. 

As a matter of fact, I told this dentest that I was receptive to any creative ideas he might have that were not mainstream in the dental industry. and that I would sign a waiver if he had any ideas of this sort.  He came back with one single "solution."  He posed it as my only option.  Frankly, there are three solutions which are not experimental.  They are entirely mainstream dentistry.  Why did he not present these alternative options?  One of them would have put perhaps $500 additionally in his pocket, and I would have gotten a much more durable final result. 

The other "bad luck" was that the dentist's office manager gave me only one payment option; half down and half on completion.  My counter-proposal was $500 down and $100 a month.  My credit is blemish-free in spite of the fact that I mostly pay cash for my major purchases. 

Can I get another couple of years or even five or six, out of this permanent bridge before it has to be removed?  I don't know.  A month ago, I was betting against it.  Now the pain is becoming more manageable, as I learn more about nerve-function and the possibility of repair.  I am prepared, once again, to bet on myself rather than this dental merchant.
Anthropositor

[Alohamora]

Sorry to hear of your dental problem Anthro.

I distrust and dislike dentists even more so than I do doctors. I haven't been to a dentist in about 17 years and I hope I can keep that streak going.

It seems like there could be 3 things going wrong with a painful tooth, infection, inflammation or nerve damage.  Then, there's also the tie in of how our emothions can keep us from healing naturally and, dare I say it, maybe even cause our illnesses in the first place?  I've had some degree of success going after some of my issues with a type of energy therapy, meant to release negative emotions and balance our internal energy systems. 

Many people say the lauric acid in cocnut oil is good for fighting viruses. I don't know. I have come to love the taste of coconut oil on my popcorn. I've given up my prejudices against saturated fats and I now believe cocnut oil is one of the healthiest alternatives for cooking and seasoning. 

B vitamins are supposed to be important for nerve function and B12, in particular for allowing damged nerves to regenerate.
The Methylcobalamin form of B12 is much more bioavailalble than the more common cyanocobalamin and is especially recommended for neuropathies, particularly diabetic neuropathy.  A friend of mine started getting pain from trigeminal neuralgia earlier this year. Her doctor could only offer pharmaceuticals with horrendous potential side effects, so serious that my friend decline to even try them. After I showed her some articles on B12 she started taking B12 methycobalamin and a B complex daily and this combination almost immediately stopped the debilitating facial pains.

[anthropositor]

Thanks Aloha, particularly for your comment on methylcobalamin.  On rare occasions I take 5mg NADH (the disodium salt of B-nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, sometimes referred to as Coenzyme 1) This is of course one of the B vitamin family, a cousin of niacin.  But I don't recall using methylcobalamin.  About 25 years ago I  had a B-12 shot which seemed quite effective in reversing the paralyzing effects of Bell's Palsy.  That shot could have been the methyl form.  I don't know.  In any case, I will be keeping my eye out for it in tablet or sublingual form.

In any case, I am currently using a multifaceted approach designed to first kill the offending bacteria while doing as little collateral damage as possible.  Next, I make it exceedingly unpleasant for any new colonists who try to set up shop.  The last step, which I'm still working on, is to regenerate the damaged nerve-sheath as best I can.  At least, for now, I am still chewing my food.  Lose this tooth and the bridge that it is a part of, and I will be biting instead of chewing and gnawing, which as a carnivore, I really like to do.  So far, I have knocked the pain down by 80% or so.  A good sign I think.

As fanatical as I have become with coconut oil, I have not yet put it on my popcorn.  Next time I will use it to replace HALF of the butter.
Anthro

[anthropositor]

Confirmed cases of influenza are now occurring in my state according to the news.  In previous years, I have used Halloween as the date I reccommend people begin to use the procedure because usually the first solid confirmed reports aren't in until two to four weeks after Halloween.  If you haven't started to protect yourselves yet folks, now is the time.  The season is earlier than usual this year.  Do yourselves a favor.  Do it!
Anthropositor

[Bamawing]

Interesting that you notice the Halloween date, Anthro.

I asked Mama why all my kids have been so dadgummed wild lately. She replied that it was due to Halloween coming up. Mind you, this was a few weeks ago... I was surprised. Then she added "And after Halloween, they'll all get sick... too much candy. And then they'll get you sick. Then, when you're finally all healthy, it'll be time for the holidays and they'll be wild again. You've got all the teaching in you're going to teach this semester."

Mama taught for years.

While I doubt that too-much-candy tummyaches are contageous, it doesn't come as a surprise that the poor nutrition causes the immune system to lower its defenses.

Also, when I related this to one of my colleges, she laughed and said it was all true, but that the sicknesses were coming early this year.

[anthropositor]

Yes Bama,
American children are now breaking records in increases in obesity, with Australian youngsters running a close second.  Not only are more kids fat, they are fatter, and fatter younger.  This is a bit of an enigma to me because, as far as I know, they do not celebrate Halloween in Australia.  They may well have analogous holidays that I don't know about in Australia though.  If so, I don't know what or when they are.  In the US, we have several other holidays with sharply increased candy consumption.  Valentines day and Easter come to mind.

There is such an array of causes of obesity that it is hard to sort out which of them are of greatest importance.  Valentines Day occurs at the tail end of US flu season.  Even without a clear new spike of illness after the holiday, it could easily be extending flu season a few weeks longer.  Thanksgiving too is hard to assess.  It occurs within our flu season.  While less candy is consumed during Thanksgiving, it is very likely our biggest "gorging" holiday, and a great many simple carbohydrates are involved. 

It is also hard to sort such contributers as high amounts of fat.  Adding animal fats and deliberately modified fats in our food supply like hydrogenated oils, the so-called trans-fats, certainly play a big role in both obesity and the vascular diseases.

My interest over on the Kombucha - Kefir thread is to discover the impact that conversion of sugars and fats, by micro-organisms has on health in general.  Both the issues of sugars and fats may be distracting us from other issues.  Most of our food is dead, and has been industrially denatured.  This is done, ostensibly to protect our health but that may not be the result.

Consider "pasteurization."  Certainly, it prevents disease.  But it may be preventing health as well.  I used to be able to buy raw milk.  Now I can't.  Government said no.  Much too dangerous for us to decide for ourselves.  ...Relax Ichabod.  Our so-called fresh orange juice and other fruit juices from the market are pasteurized as well.  Presumably to make them safer.  But I believe the increase in shelf-life is the biggest reason.  ...No Ichabod, a glass of wine will be sufficient.  Don't get your tux in a bunch.  I'm talking about industry at the moment.   ...Yes the pomegranate will be fine.

Anyway, where was I?  Oh yes.  We won't be able to get away from industrially processed foods.  The will be even more prevalent in the future if that is possible.  Dead food.

Everything I am doing and talking about on the kombucha thread has to do with bringing dead food back to life.  Yogurt, kefir, kombucha, hard cider, wine, cheese.  I am starting with dead stuff I get from the market.  Except the yeast, fungi and bacteria I am using, my raw materials are from the industrial food supply.  I am bringing these materials back to life as it were.  What all the benefits are and how important they are remains to be seen.  I am cross threading here, and Ick is breathing down my neck.  ...Yes, I know Ichabod.  No more wine thank you.  A cup of coffee will do.  ...and no little dribbles of shrinking violet.  I AM behaving myself.    ....Mau mau weasel quizling spy...  No, I didn't say anything!  But bring me a slab of that jerky I made yesterday too.

I think I'll finish up.  Yeast.  Yeasts are the only things that I am using that are not coming from the industrial supply.  There are a few reasons for that, which I will take up over on the other thread later.

The jury is still out when it comes to exactly how much health value there is in these re-modifications or unmodifications of our processed foods.  A few more thoughts later on that as well, over in kombucha.
Anthropositor

[itchychick]

No raw milk cheeses allowed in the US?  is that state-specific or a federal regulation?  What about importing some of the wonderful raw milk cheeses from Quebec?  I'm sure some of the producers would ship on-line...

What I was really going to add was a commentary on the insidious nature of manufactured fats.  Saturday night is movie night at our house, and as the popcorn was popping, my older son asked for some hot chocolate.  Someone had given us a box of hot chocolate mix, and as I had boiled the kettle for tea, I grabbed a packet and mixed up his hot chocolate.  As I was stirring, I read the ingredients on the packet:  Sugar was first, followed by hydrogenated canola oil.  Why does hot chocolate require hydrogenated canola oil?  (It's a rhetorical question, as I know why it's in there... but still.  How hard can it be to use real chocolate with cocoa butter?  Or even non-hydrogenated vegetable oil if you want to be cheap about it?).  I tossed it and made him some cocoa with REAL milk and one teaspoon of sugar.  And yes, I put butter on the air popped popcorn, or sometimes I pop it in olive oil, but at least I can control the quantity fat!

[Bamawing]

I remember reading an article dissing one of my favorite foods: sashimi. Bama loves her some sashimi. But the magazine said it's bad for you: it hasn't been cooked, so you might can find worms in there!

Interestingly, they did thier darndest but still found no parasites in any of the raw tuna. Take that, freakyinspectors! But that didn't stop them from announcing their bottom line: don't eat too much of this or it'll hurt you.

After years of searching, I finally found non-pasturized apple cider. It's illegal in Georgia, more's the pity. And speaking of apples, My dear departed Grandmeme always said that they were the best when eaten right off the tree... although sometimes you found a worm in there.

[anthropositor]

When I was a very young lad, I used to climb a neighbors apple tree for the unripe, green apples.  The large people were all agreed that eating these apples would give me a tummy ache, as would unripe, very sour concord grapes.  I tested that premise on numerous occasions, both with unripe apples and grapes.  Even gorging on both at the same time, I was unable to give myself a tummy ache.  For a while I tried very hard to understand why they would all lie to me like that.  I was still trying to get over the Santa Claus conspiracy.

But these lies that big ones tell to very little ones may have a very valuable purpose.  It familiarizes us with the prospect that we will regularly be lied to by powerful people, and the lies will very often make no sense at all.  And not believing the lies (and saying so) will, more often than not, get us spanked.  And of course, my persistence in eating unripe apples and grapes did cause me frequent pain on the bottom.  It just wasn't the unripe fruits that inflicted it. 

Today the world is much smaller and the pressure of the intractable problems we must deal with is even greater that it was then.  We are told that we must be protected against such things as raw milk, parasites in our sashimi, and the occasional worm in our apples.  If we could just get rid of the worms in the body politic... I'm going to change the subject.  Ichabod approaches.

About raw, unpasteurized cider.  The only way I can get it in my neighborhood is to crush the apples myself.  Here are some label contradictions for you:  Apple Cider, pure and fresh.  This is immediately followed by 100% pasteurized (which means it was cooked at high heat).  So much for fresh.  Then they say "less than 1/10% potassium sorbate added to assure FRESHNESS.  So much for pure.  Caveat Emptor.

I think I will go swab my nose with coconut oil.  I'm going to go stand in line for a few hours to use a voting machine which may or may not accurately register my vote to get rid of some old weasels and replace them with hungrier but less experienced new weasels.
Anthropositor

[Wooley]

Oh Anthro you do make me laugh 

But you and Bama do have a good point. I ordered some apples with my groceries, and then my husbands parents cut some off a tree in their garden. They not only looked different (less "uniform") but they tasted so much sweeter.  Same type of apple, totally different result.

Wooley

[mnm mom]

Hello I read that some of you have trouble buying unpasteuized cider. Where I live you can get it with no trouble. It is sold in a number of stores.
I like it when it is just turning and it tickles your nose. If anyone wants to know where I get it just E:mail me.
mnm mom

[itchychick]

Ah, yes, it's voting day in the US.  Have fun!

I recall there was a big thing about a bunch of children getting ill with e coli after a birthday party.  Eventually the source was traced to unpasturized apple cider that had become contaminated.  The producer had used ground apples which had come into contact with fecal matter from the wildlife....