What Most Doctors Won't Tell You About Colds and Flus

[Guest guest]

http://drbenkim.com/cold-flu-difference-health.html

 

This was taken from a newsletter at Dr Ben Kim's website at: -

http://drbenkim.com/ - where there are many other interesting articles

on alternative health including recipes and personal observations about

life, etc. from Dr Kim! I've found this site to be less " Commercialized "

than Dr Mercola's (which I also recommend). Hope you like his site, if

you haven't visited there already!

 

 

 

What Most Doctors Won't Tell You About Colds and Flus

 

By Dr. Ben Kim on March 17, 2007 General Health Information

<http://drbenkim.com/taxonomy/term/6>

 

" The next time that you experience a cold or the flu, remember this:

giving your body plenty of rest while allowing the cold or flu to run

its course is good for your health.

 

Conventional medicine and the pharmaceutical industry would have you

believe that there is no " cure " for the common cold, that you should

protect yourself against the flu with a vaccine that is laden with toxic

chemicals, and that during the midst of a cold or flu, it is favorable

to ease your discomfort with a variety of medications that can suppress

your symptoms.

 

Unfortunately, all three of these positions represent a lack of

understanding of what colds and flus really are, and what they mean to

your body.

 

Colds and flus are causes by viruses. So to understand what colds and

flus do at a cellular level, you have to understand what viruses do at a

cellular level.

 

First, do you remember learning about cellular division in grade seven

science class? Each of your cells are called parent cells, and through

processes of genetic duplication (mitosis) and cellular division

(cytokinesis), each of your parent cells divides into two daughter

cells. Each daughter cell is then considered a parent cell that will

divide into two more daughter cells, and so on, and so on, and so on.

 

Viruses are different from your cells in that they cannot duplicate

themselves through mitosis and cytokinesis. Viruses are nothing but

microscopic particles of genetic material, each coated by a thin layer

of protein.

 

Due to their design, viruses are not able to reproduce on their own. The

only way that viruses can flourish in your body is by using the

machinery and metabolism of your cells to produce multiple copies of

themselves.

 

Once a virus has gained access to one of your cells, depending on the

type of virus involved, one of two things can happen:

 

1. The virus uses your cell's resources to replicate itself many

times over and then breaks open (lyses) the cell so that the newly

replicated viruses can leave in search of new cells to infect.

Lysis effectively kills your cell.

2. The virus incorporates itself into the DNA of your cell, which

allows the virus to be passed on to each daughter cell that stems

from this cell. Later on, the virus in each daughter cell can

begin replicating itself as described above. Once multiple copies

of the virus have been produced, the cell is lysed.

 

Both possibilities lead to the same result: eventually, the infected

cell can die due to lysis.

 

*Here is the key to understanding why colds and flus, when allowed to

run their course while you rest, can be good for you:*

 

By and large, the viruses that cause the common cold and the flu

infect mainly your weakest cells; cells that are already burdened

with excessive waste products and toxins are most likely to allow

viruses to infect them. These are cells that you want to get rid of

anyway, to be replaced by new, healthy cells.

 

So in the big scheme of things, a cold or flu is a truly natural tool

that can allow your body to purge itself of old and damaged cells that,

in the absence of viral infection, would normally take much longer to

identify, destroy, and eliminate.

 

Have you ever been amazed by how much " stuff " you could blow out of your

nose while you had a cold or the flu? Embedded within all of that mucous

are countless dead cells that your body is saying good bye to, largely

due to the lytic effect of viruses.

 

So you see, there never needs to be a cure for the common cold, since

the common cold is nature's way of keeping you healthy over the long

term. And so long as you get plenty of rest and strive to stay hydrated

and properly nourished during a cold or flu, there is no need to get

vaccinated or to take medications that suppress congested sinuses, a

fever, or coughing. All of these uncomfortable symptoms are actually

ways in which your body works to eliminate waste products and/or help

your body get through a cold or flu. It's fine to use over-the-counter

pain medication like acetaminophen if your discomfort becomes

intolerable or if such meds can help you get a good night's rest. But

it's best to avoid medications that aim to suppress helpful processes

such as fever, coughing, and a runny nose.

 

It's important to note that just because colds and flus can be helpful

to your body doesn't mean that you need to experience them to be at your

best. If you take good care of your health and immune system by getting

plenty of rest and consistently making health-promoting dietary and

lifestyle choices, your cells may stay strong enough to avoid getting

infected by viruses that come knocking on their membranes. In this

scenario, you won't have enough weak and extraneous cells to require a

cold or the flu to work its way through your body to identify and lyse

them.

 

Curious about how to differentiate the common cold and the flu? Here is

an excellent summary of the differences from cbc.ca:

 

A cold usually comes on gradually --- over the course of a day or

two. Generally, it leaves you feeling tired, sneezing, coughing and

plagued by a running nose. You often don't have a fever, but when

you do, it's only slightly higher than normal. Colds usually last

three to four days, but can hang around for 10 days to two weeks.

 

Flu, on the other hand, comes on suddenly and hits hard. You will

feel weak and tired and you could run a fever as high as 40 C. Your

muscles and joints will probably ache, you will feel chilled and

could have a severe headache and sore throat. Getting off the couch

or out of bed will be a chore. The fever may last three to five

days, but you could feel weak and tired for two to three weeks.

 

One final note on this topic: because the common cold and the flu are

both causes by viruses, antibiotics are not necessary. People who take

antibiotics while suffering with a cold or flu often feel slightly

better because antibiotics have a mild anti-inflammatory effect. But

this benefit is far outweighed by the negative impact that antibiotics

have on friendly bacteria that live throughout your digestive tract. In

this light, if you really need help with pain management during a cold

or flu, it is usually better to take a small dose of acetaminophen than

it is to take antibiotics.

 

Please share this basic health information on colds and flus with family

and friends; although it isn't readily available from the annals of

conventional medicine, this information can save you and your loved ones

significant time, money, and angst. "

 

 

I like to make some personal observations regarding what I consider to

be the two basic premises of this article. The first one is the idea

that only " weaken " cells are subject to viral infection. The second

premise is that a cold or flu provides the means for the " purging " of

these weak or defective cells from the body by the immune system through

the discharging processes that accompany these type of viral infections.

Even though not much is said in the article about what specific types of

food one should eat during this period, other than getting proper

nutrition, I would suggest that you heed your body's lack of appetite

and stay away from solid food as much as possible so that your digestive

system does not divert precious resources away from the healing process!

 

These two basic premises are not actually new, many natural hygienists

have suggested the same mechanism in explaining the common cold as a

natural process of cleansing the body of excess toxins through discharge

and rest(fasting). However there are a couple of questions that I find

troubling regarding this issue... why would babies and young children,

who would be for the most part less toxic than adults, get so many

colds? Viral infections are not limited to colds and flu, there are

hundreds of diseases involving viruses, including the common wart; Are

we to believe that only weaken skin cells are susceptible to the virus

that causes warts and that the abnormal and unsightly growth of a wart

is an attempt by the body to purge these cells out? What about the fact

that infections can be transmitted to other parts on the surface of the

body by physical contact with the affected area?! I don't think that in

this case, the toxin purge theory is a plausible explanation, do you?

 

Unless we can prove that the common cold involves a special case of a

" scavenging " Rhinovirus that evolved with humans in a symbiotic

relationship, the theory of " virus as broom " seems to fall apart when

applied to viruses at large. While I agree that masking symptoms or

shorting out beneficial mechanism like fevers and coughing is not the

best way to " treat " a cold, I am not at all convinced that colds and the

flu are natural mechanism for cleansing the body of morbid material! We

should do everything we can to enhance our immune system before, during

and after any infection, regardless of its causative mechanism!

Finally, from a very high perspective, all infections are opportunistic

and yes they do " exercise " our immune system to either tune it to some

homeostatic balance or to eliminate particular organisms that fail to

develop the the proper immunity in a process of natural selection of the

fittest!

 

Domingo

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Thanks for this Domingo. Like you, I am not sure I totally agree

with everything said, however, the perspective is certainly very

interesting. I am just getting over [i hope so at least] a humdinger

of a flue/cold/whatever and had never really thought of flues in this

context before.

best wishes

Shan

, Domingo Pichardo

<dpichardo3 wrote:

>

> http://drbenkim.com/cold-flu-difference-health.html

>

> This was taken from a newsletter at Dr Ben Kim's website at: -

> http://drbenkim.com/ - where there are many other interesting

articles

> on alternative health including recipes and personal observations

about

> life, etc. from Dr Kim! I've found this site to be

less " Commercialized "

> than Dr Mercola's (which I also recommend). Hope you like his

site, if

> you haven't visited there already!