Unless you’ve been living under a rock this week, you can’t escape hearing the words “swine flu.” Everybody’s talking about it. Sometimes, there’s a whole lot more fiction going around than fact, and it can be hard to separate the two. Headlines are getting pretty sensationalistic, talking about global epidemics and pandemics and whether or not you can eat pork and whether or not you can travel to Mexico.
In my humble opinion, it’s probably not as big as it seems. People like to panic about things. We’ve been there before – remember West Nile? and Anthrax? And I think there was a small pox scare a few years back?
Regardless, if I were you, focus on staying healthy and try to filter through the plethora of news out there about swine flu and stick to reading what’s important. I did find one gem today in the HUffington Post about alternative health remedies for protecting yourself from swine flu and other viruses. According to Matthew Stein,
“The good news is that there are many alternative medicines, herbs, and treatments that can be quite effective in the fight against a wide variety of viruses and antibiotic-resistant bacteria, to which mainstream high-tech Western medicine has little or nothing to offer. The bad news is that 99 percent of the doctors in our hospitals are not trained in these alternatives, and don’t have a clue about what to do when their pharmaceutical high-tech medicines fail to heal. If you wait until a pandemic starts, you will have only a slim chance for locating an available health practitioner familiar with alternative herbs, medicines, and methods. In the words of Robert Saum, Ph D, the typical attitude amongst most of his medical colleagues in this country is, “If I didn’t learn it in medical school, it can’t be true.”
“During Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, which killed up to 50 million people worldwide, homeopathic physicians in the U.S. reported very low mortality rates among their patients, while flu patients treated by conventional physicians faced mortality rates of around 30 percent. W. A. Dewey, M.D., gathered data from homeopathic physicians treating flu patients around the country in 1918 and published his findings in the Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy in 1920. Homeopathic physicians in Philadelphia, for example, reported a mortality rate of just over one percent for the more than 26,000 flu patients they treated during the pandemic. Today, a number of homeopathic remedies for the flu are available, including oscillo, or oscillococcinum, which has been shown to shorten the duration of symptoms when taken within 48 hours of onset. Homeopaths have been given this remedy since 1925. Interestingly, it’s made from the heart and liver of ducks, which carry flu viruses in their digestive tracts.” –Excerpted from “Could Homeopathy Prevent a Pandemic?” by Tijn Touber and Kim Ridley, Ode Magazine, January 2006, issue 30.
When it comes to antibiotic-resistant bacteria and deadly viruses, so-called “alternative medicine,” including herbs and a variety of other treatments, may well be your most effective form of treatment and prevention.”
Food for thought, no? Maybe the answer isn’t to freak out and run to the store and buy out all their Tamiflu, but to focus on alternative methods of treating these problems. Check out the full article here.
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