By Allison Tannis
Fighting Flu
The flu – it`s like one hundred pounds pulling on your muscles urging you to collapse to the floor.
It’s the feeling that your bones ache, a fire was lit on your forehead and small demons are using pickaxes on the back of your throat. The flu is definitely not a desirable infection and great strides are made to try to find ways to avoid it.
There are two common types of flu experienced by Canadians: influenza A and B. These flu bugs cause the miserable symptoms mentioned above, force you off your feet, and tie you to the bed for typically more days than your company’s policy allows.
Defeating the flu is a goal for all Canadians this winter as we turn up our coat collars and huddle together inside—where we just so happen to create a perfect breeding ground for these horrid viruses.
These tiny species turn our cells into vicious manufacturing plants. Viruses such as flu enter our body commonly through the nose. Viruses are very simple species. They contain two proteins, neuraminidase and hemagglutinin, which allow them to attach to a cell and enter it. Inside, a virus forces the cell to replicate the virus’ RNA. Eventually, this will kill the cell and hundreds of new viruses are released into the body to invade more cells.
How do you stop this fierce cycle? Your body contains two lines of defense. The first line of defense tries to stop viruses from entering the body. This defense line includes the skin, mucosal layers (in your nose and throat), hair and stomach acid. The second line of defense is what most people think of as the immune system – the white blood cell team and collaborators (tonsils, spleen).
Keeping your skin healthy and your mucosal layers moist is helpful in reducing the ability of viruses to get within close proximity of their desired host cells. However, this is commonly not enough. Vaccines are used in allopathic medicine to help our second line of defense augment a quick and effective counter attack on the foreign invader. Yet, this is not always a solution because vaccines only offer counterintelligence for three strains of the flu to your immune system. The flu season, however, involves many strains of the flu, any one of which could try to infect you.
Natural approaches to the flu fight involve strengthening the immune system with the hope that, if infected, our bodies will be able to march an effective counterattack. Multivitamins and antioxidants are typically used. However, some medical experts say that the strength of your immune system at the time of infection may not determine whether or not you will get sick from flu.
Research from Israel has discovered a plant extract, Sambucus nigra L. (elderberry extract) that appears to stop the influenza virus from attaching to desired host cells. In other words, it reduces the ability of the virus to infect a host. Elderberry extract has been studied in two human clinical trials to see if its virus inhibiting action works to reduce flu symptoms in humans.
A randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled trial in Norway gave 60 male and female patients with influenza A or B a standardized black elderberry syrup or placebo. Within 48 hours of symptom onset patients took 15 millilitres of the syrup four times daily for five days. There was a significant difference in the elderberry group, which felt well after 3.1 days, yet the placebo group did not report similar results until 7.1 days.
In another trial, 27 adults and children took 4 tablespoons (2 tablespoons for children under 12) of elderberry extract. In this study, within two days a significant improvement in symptoms, including fever, was seen in 93 percent of the subjects.
The scientific literature, although based on small clinical trials, supports the use of Sambucus nigra L. extract for the treatment of symptoms associated with influenza A and B in otherwise healthy adults and children. There are multiple black elderberry products available in Canada but the extract is the only one clinically proven to reduce the severity and duration of flu.
Other types of flu
SARS and the Avian flu are two flu-like illnesses that have recently been of great concern to Canadians. SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) is a virus that causes flu-like symptoms and infected over 8,000 people in the early 2000s. In May 2005, the disease itself was declared eradicated by the WHO and it became the second disease in mankind to receive this label; the other was smallpox. The Avian flu, H5N1, is a type of influenza A that has the potential to mutate into a strain that can be transmitted from human-to-human. Experts around the world are working to develop vaccines for this virus. To date, there is no known effective prevention or cure for H5N1.
Reduce your chances of getting the flu this season by keeping your body healthy – load up on antioxidants by eating whole foods, and take whole food multivitamins. And, if you become unlucky and catch flu, be sure to have some elderberry extract on hand to help you conquer vicious viruses.
Allison Tannis
Allison Tannis, BSc, MSc is a nutritional scientist and educator. She is the author of Vitality: Quest for a Healthy Diet, and loving aunt to three school-aged, flu-catching boys.
