It’s mid-winter and the height of the cold and flu season. During this time of year, my patients often ask me about over-the-counter cold and flu remedies. I start by reminding them that these medications only ease symptoms. They do nothing for the underlying viral infection.
In today’s Health Alert, I’ll tell you why some flu treatments only add side effects to your cold and flu symptoms. I’ll also tell you when to use an antibiotic and how to fight the flu naturally.
What’s the Best Approach?
A few years ago, the FDA banned all products containing phenylpropanolamine. After years of allowing it in cold formulas, they discovered that it was dangerous to your heart. Some people died from taking it.
Still today, cold and flu medications come with a host of side effects:
• Nausea
• Drowsiness
• Rapid Heart Beat
• Nervousness
• Dizziness
• Hives
• Difficulty Breathing
• Serious Drug Interactions
Since they have no chance of curing the underlying problem, your symptoms have to be very bad to make the risks of side effects worth it.
To know how to treat the underlying cause of a cold or flu, it’s important to know if your dealing with a bacteria or viruses. Antibiotics effectively kill bacteria but can have no effect on viruses. If you have a fever that will not go down with aspirin or Tylenol – or have thick, colored mucus, you probably have a bacterial infection.
Many in alternative medicine will tell you to avoid antibiotics. But antibiotics are uniquely effective – and they save many lives every day. I do have some concerns about the rise of resistant bacteria from the overuse of antibiotics. But if you become infected, you need effective therapy. For millennia bacterial infections were the leading cause of death. For bacterial infections, antibiotics are the treatment, period.
In contrast to bacteria, viruses produce thin, clear, whitish or yellowish mucus. Viruses also often produce sneezing, a runny nose and itchy eyes while bacteria don’t. Viruses, not bacteria, cause colds and the flu. Antibiotics will never cure a cold or flu.
Beat Viruses Naturally
Boosting your body’s immune system is the best way to avoid the flu. But if you do get it, here’s your best defense:
• Vitamin C intake at higher than RDA values was also common. Vitamin C is one of your body’s best defenders. It is a potent antioxidant. Vitamin C also rockets your immune system into action. Your immune defense kills invading bugs quickly when Vitamin C is in your system.
I recommend 500 mg a day on a regular basis. If you have an increase chance of catching a virus, take 1000 mg.
• Echinacea has become more popular in recent years. Yet Native Americans have been using echinacea as an immune-system stimulator for hundreds of years. It works by promoting the immune system in fighting infection.
Alternative Medical Review published a study of 50 healthy volunteers who took either echinacea or a placebo for 4 weeks. The volunteers who took echinacea had fewer viral illnesses than those taking the placebo did.
Only take echinacea when you are exposed to infection. The jury is still out on how immune boosting herbs work long-term. You can easily find echinacea in health food stores. I use 500 mg. twice a day.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD