Lo, how the mighty and seemingly knowledgeable can be laid low! Irony, and the flu, can strike when you least expect. All it takes is a lowly virus to put this wellness columnist’s knowledge and advice—not to mention reputation—to the test. I mean, how can a wellness advocate admit to being ill with one of the flu bugs currently making its inexorable rounds through the North Bay? Well, I candidly admit to being afflicted for the past couple weeks with a type of flu that did not make it into this year’s flu shot. With plenty of down-time to meditate upon this conundrum, I’ve decided to make the paradox of being healthy, but sick, the subject of this month’s column. A real life learning experience. When life pelts you with lemons, make lemonade!
There’s a substantial segment of the so-called wellness community that equates wellness with never getting sick. It is, however, a fact that most people succumb to disease from time to time, no matter how healthy they’ve become. We live an existence of astonishing environmental assault, in which we swim through a veritable ocean of biological particles and nanoscopic boojums including spores, animal dander, insect droppings, hairs and pollen, but mostly bacteria, viruses, parasites and the odd prion (like mad cow disease) or two. No matter how healthy you are, if you’re massively exposed to a virulent pathogen, like the current non-A-non-B flu bug, there’s a fair chance you’ll go on to develop the unpleasant symptoms of flu. Ask anyone who has a child in elementary school and thereby suffers every blessed germ that exists in a community.
One of the tenets of maintaining wellness is to obtain proper diet, rest and sleep, exercise, stress-coping and spiritual equanimity. Thus, our immune systems should be operating at tip-top efficiency at all times, warding off all forms of opportunistic organisms like bacteria, viruses and certain personal injury lawyers. There are, however, substantial limitations to what even the “wellest” immune system can achieve. Your immune system’s potential is affected by far more than exercise, diet and meditation. The bottom line is your genetic make-up. Some people inherit defective immune systems, the extreme example being the “boy in the bubble” syndrome, where the victim’s immune system is so impaired he or she will die of massive infections upon contact with the normal world.
In the normal range of inheritance, there’s a very broad spectrum of immune system potency such that no two people have quite the same ability to ward off a particular infection. This ranges from the enviable person who never so much as gets a cold or sniffles to the normal-seeming person who succumbs to every little virus that passes by to say hello. So, I believe the very first rule of sickly wellness is avoid indulging in the blame game or feeling somehow guilty or inadequate for having caught the flu. It ain’t always your fault!
Beyond genetics, it’s generally true that maintaining an excellent state of healthy balance (see my article about homeostasis) will allow—perhaps enhance—an immune system to function to its optimum innate potential. Avoiding drugs and chemicals that have been clearly shown to reduce immune system function (nicotine, excess alcohol, certain alkaloids in marijuana, high-sugar foods and many chemicals prescribed or in casual use) will certainly help. Another immune degrading factor is stress. Stress hormones are now well-known to impair immune function both in resisting the onset of disease and for fighting an established infection. Nearly the equal of stress is fatigue and lack of restful sleep in opening you up to a viral infection.
Immune system boosting has obvious appeal to health-conscious people and can be a very controversial subject (depending upon whom you’re talking to). But it’s fairly clear that certain foods, vitamins and nutritional supplements can provide a modicum of immune system enhancement that may help ward off the flu. Without offering an endorsement that any particular product will prevent or cure your flu, here’s a very brief summary.
Several studies suggest that an extract of the herb echinacea has immune- enhancing properties. Most leading complementary medical authorities, like Andrew Weil, credit echinacea with preventive powers. Effectiveness research, however, has so far shown mixed results that may be as much a problem of experimental design as it may be one of actual herbal benefit. What is fairly clear is that your body may develop tolerance to echinacea if you use it daily for more than 10 to 14 days (after which its immune system benefit is much reduced).
Another herbal remedy with immune-enhancing properties is astragalus. Less is known about its absolute immune-enhancing potency. However, both these herbs have a wide margin of safety, so it’s difficult to cause inadvertent self-harm by their use. Other herbs claimed to have immune boosting effects include ginseng, olive leaf extract, una de gato and pau d’arco. Taking a zinc mineral supplement has been shown to attenuate severity and duration of viral illness. Zinc lozenges tend to reduce the reproduction of virus in the throat, a prime incubating area for viral respiratory infections.
According to a series of articles and newsletters from the Mayo Clinic, the humble tea leaf provides immune boosting powers. Both brewed green tea and black tea contain antioxidant and immune- enhancing ingredients that several studies show to improve the body’s germ-fighting ability. Coffee appears to lack this beneficial effect.
Garlic has been in use for at least a thousand years to help bodies fight and prevent infections. Well known to have antibacterial properties, garlic was used as recently as WWI in wound dressings and as a systemic antiseptic before the era of antibiotics. Garlic is also thought to have anti-viral and/or immune enhancing effects.
Last but certainly not least, there’s something clearly beneficial about chicken soup. During the past 20 years, there have been several controlled medical experiments that show homemade chicken soup (stick a chicken in a big pot and boil it for several hours; season to taste) both decreases the severity and shortens the duration of viral respiratory illnesses by statistically significant figures.
And for those of you who feel you simply must “just say no” to chemicals that change your body (like chicken soup), there are non-chemical immune enhancers. For example, one or more controlled trials of Tai Chi exist in medical literature that seem to indicate some beneficial immune function effects of this exercise—if strictly undertaken as a daily regimen.
So you’ve followed all the rules of maintaining a high level of wellness, you took your echinacea, the zinc lozenges, plenty of orange juice and vitamin C supplements, and washed it all down with pots of tea and you still caught the flu? As an executive or, worse, a self-employed professional or business owner who doesn’t have the luxury of paid sick leave, there’s a very tough choice to make. Do you elect to take Option A and stay at home and thereby lose time, money, opportunities, money, business deals, networking and money? Or do you dose yourself with every over-the-counter remedy known to man and bravely soldier onward, perhaps infecting all who come into contact with you, including your office staff?
You may ask, why not just ask my doctor to prescribe an antibiotic to nip this flu in the bud so I can get back on track? The short answer is that, if you’re infected by a virus, no antibiotic in the world will make the least difference in the course of your disease. More, you’ll be making a personal contribution to the Darwinian breeding of super bacteria that laugh at the strongest antibiotics. So, don’t even think antibiotics should be an option unless you show unmistakable signs of bacterial infection; when in doubt, see your doctor to be examined and tested to be sure. And bacterial superinfection is the downside of Option A. By not tending to your physical needs, no matter how inconvenient or inopportune, you lay yourself open to bacterial bronchitis or to pneumonia as a complication of continuing to work while sick.
Then there’s Option B. From a wellness standpoint, you should just gracefully accept that you have a bug and remain home to let your body deal with it. Get lots of rest, lots and lots of fluids, avoid chilling, drink teas and eat that chicken soup plus whatever immune enhancers you care to try. This is really the best ticket to a reasonably prompt and uncomplicated recovery. From a wellness perspective, succumbing to a viral illness may actually indicate that your immune system is down and may, in fact, be down due to stress, fatigue, poor diet and so forth. The act of catching this disease is, in fact, a slap-upside-the-head notice that you really need an enforced rest. If so, carpe diem and take that rest! Call in sick if your body is saying you really need to and your company/business/practice can stagger along without your physical presence for a few days or a week. It’s usually possible to get at least a little work done at home in-between naps, which is what I am doing right now writing this column, blowing my nose and sipping hot chicken soup. Best of all, it’s a chance to steal a little of that good “enforced idleness” I discussed in last month’s column.
Time to recuperate. Time to think and meditate. Time just to have time for you is itself a healing act leading back toward wellness.
