When You Have the Flu

Knowing your body is serious business!

It's officially here - and it's early! What am I talking about? I'm referring to cold and flu season. It's rare that I get a full blown flu and even more rare that it lasts more than a day, but once in a while it happens.

Last week, it hit me. It started with a little tickle in the back of my throat. It progressed to a fever, body aches, the chills and then a bad cold. What did I do? Well, I did just what I wrote about in an earlier post!

After laughing at the irony of ending up very ill only after creating wellness blog, I got busy. I threw everything natural at this beast of a virus. I drank hot water with raw honey and chlorophyll several times a day! I took lysine and echinacea. I slept...a lot! and I ate very little so as not to tax my digestive system.

The full blown flu didn't even last a full day. The nasty cold is pretty much cleared up and my energy and strength is returning. Compared to most people around me, I did very well. My body fought long and hard to heal itself.

Here's a news tidbit for you: I often visit some forums about health and wellness. Yahoo is one I frequent a lot and one question I see a lot on there is "Do I have the flu?" or "How do I know if I have the flu?" Once again, I am not a health care professional so keep that in mind when you read my approach to all of this, but in my view a flu is a flu when it's accompanied by body aches, a fever or chills or both. A fever is the body's way of cooking off the virus or bacteria that invaded your body so that is a normal progression.

Obviously you don't want to let it get too high, which is why it's crucial to stay hydrated. Depending on pre-existing issues you may have, a fever over 100.1 may be "too high." I let mine go as high as 102 before I resort to taking anything that's going to bring it down.

Echinacea coneflower kicks cold/flu butt

What is a cold?

The infamous bugger known as the rhinovirus typically makes your head stuffy, your throat raw or sore.  A cold that ends up in your chest is a very bad thing as it can turn into bronchitis or pneumonia. For me a chest cold is particularly dangerous as I am a cancer survivor and have a scarred left lung from both disease and treatment. However, I do not panic as long as I can get chlorophyll in me and get plenty of rest. More than once, chlorophyll has spared me from full blown pneumonia! It just works like an expectorant and I find it very palatable and soothing when taken with raw honey in hot water like tea.

What about the flu shots and pneumonia shots? Do I do those? The simple answer is no. Thankfully I have a very open minded doctor who doesn't bother persuading me to do either. I may get into my reasons for opting out of vaccinations in another post, but for now. I will simply say I do not get them.

Only once in the 8 years that I've been post treatment, have I had a flu and only a few times a cold. I find that as long as I am smart about the foods I eat, staying hydrated and away from sugar which flat lines the immune system, I can quickly bounce back from a cold and usually avoid the flu completely. That's my experience. Again, I urge you to make your own informed decisions about this and every other health issue. Please take care of yourself this season and have a happy, healthy new year!