There is pressure on the NHS like never before.
The advice on the NHS website for flu prevention is good hygiene and the flu vaccine. There are fears the current vaccines won’t hold off the viruses and a Cochrane review of the use of the flu vaccine in healthy adults found that influenza vaccination “shows no appreciable effect on working days lost or hospitalization.”
You can read more here on the flu vaccine.
Prevention is better than cure and if like me you choose not to have the flu vaccine, that at best has a modest effect in reducing influenza symptoms, there are other alternatives.
The best way to avoid the flu or to lessen the severity is by arming your body, keeping it strong and vital.
“We are the custodians of our bodies. We must take action to employ healthy lifestyle habits to prevent, reduce, and/or manage disease and illness.”
― Bridgette L. Collins
10 Ways to Avoid Colds and the Flu
- Test your vitamin D levels. Vitamin D is important for overall healthy immune function and Vitamin D is a preventative strategy against influenza. If you are found to be deficient you may want to supplement with vitamin D.
- If you have a virus take Andrographis. Studies are showing its efficacy in treating viruses and reducing the length of time of the illness. It also can prevent a virus.
- Get a good night’s sleep. Just one night of poor sleep lowers immunity, increases inflammation and raises your risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
- Take a probiotic and include fermented food in your diet. Probiotic supplementation can reduce the severity and duration of colds and upper-respiratory infections in college students, researchers have found.
- Drink black tea, enjoy occasional red wine and eat blueberries or add blueberry powder to drinks and food. Mouse study reveals how gut microbes fight influenza.
- Stay active! Studies show that exercise slashes your risk of catching a cold or virus by nearly 50% and failing that made the virus less severe.
- Prevent the cold or flu with an allicin-containing garlic supplement. Garlic can also counteract virulent bacteria. Each AllicinMax capsule is equivalent to 40 cloves of garlic.
- Prevent and treat influenza with elderberry, a most potent anti-viral. Symptoms were relieved on average 4 days earlier and use of rescue medication was significantly less in those receiving elderberry extract compared with placebo.
- Make my Winter Warming Hot Toddy. Including cinnamon and star anise this wonderfully warming, anti-inflammatory, antiviral hot toddy is perfect for the season of winter ailments. The drug company Roche bought up 90% of the worlds supply of star anise to make Tamiflu the antiviral medication.
- Manage your stress. Support yourself with Ashwagandha and ReMag liquid magnesium.
- Granny was right! Wear a scarf (even cover your nose) and keep cosy. A health study at Yale University has shown that viruses reproduce more efficiently in cooler temperatures found inside the nose. The lower the temperature, the lower the innate immune response to viruses.
Our best selling Thyme syrup is just the remedy to turn to if you experience a chesty cough. Thyme acts as an expectorant and helps thin and reduce the mucus that lines and blocks the air pipes leading to the lungs.
