Preventing and Treating the Flu with Herbs and Nutrition

By Cheryl Fromholzer, AHG

When you are cold, your body shifts its resources into keeping your body warm, and takes energy away from your immune system. In addition, as the school season starts, there are more bacteria and viruses being traded among people as they re-group. And cold, rainy weather means you spend more time indoors where viral and bacterial pathogens get trapped and swapped more readily.

A Strong Immune System Starts at Home

From a holistic standpoint, the best way to prevent the flu is to support the immune system.  I’ll start with some very simple, non-herbal ways of building immunity.

Let’s begin with sleep. The very best way to support healthy immune function is to make sure you get enough sleep. 8 hours is the minimum amount of sleep an adult should get each night. Those who are in sleep debt really need 9 or 10 hours of sleep for their bodies to function well (in our over-achieving, sleep deprived culture, that is most of the adult population).

Nourish the body with a “whole foods” diet. Eat a diet rich in whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables and good protein sources. Stay away from processed foods and sugar. (Sugar has been shown to suppress your immune system for several hours after ingesting it!) I’m a firm believer in eating a healthy diet as a way of providing the vitamins and minerals your body needs as opposed to taking handfuls of supplements (although there are exceptions to that rule, some of which I’ll talk about in a moment).

While food is the best way to get most nutrients, supplementation can play an important role in giving the body the nourishment it needs for proper immune function.

There are a few nutrients we all tend to have insufficient levels of which help support a healthy immune system.

Vitamin D is a steroid hormone essential to healthy immune function in the respiratory system. The main food sources of Vitamin D are egg yolks and cod livers, but it’s really impossible to get sufficient quantities from those foods.

The main source of Vitamin D comes from sun exposure. In modern society, there are a couple of major contributing factors to chronic insufficient Vitamin D levels:

• Most people don’t get enough sun. Mid-day sun is the optimum time for obtaining your daily dose of vitamin D – many people work in offices and receive little to no mid-day sunshine.
• In our cancer-conscious culture, many people who get sun exposure cover up or use sunscreen which minimizes our body’s ability to produce Vitamin D.
• We live in a northern latitude with a cloudy, rainy climate in the winter months. Outside of being a lifeguard, it’s nearly impossible to get enough sun exposure to produce the levels of Vitamin D we need in the winter months.
• If you start with insufficient levels in the summer, those levels drop in the winter months when you are drawn inside more often. It’s no coincidence that colds and flus are more common in the fall and winter when it’s hard to get extended full body sun exposure at northern latitudes like ours.

For optimum health, an adult needs 10,000 IU of Vitamin D a day – the equivalent of the amount the body would produce through extended full body exposure to mid-day sun.

Leading Vitamin D researcher Dr. John Jacob Cantrell recommends daily doses of

• 1,000 IU of Vitamin D3 for children under the age of 2,
• 2,000 IU of Vitamin D3 for older children, and
• 5,000 IU of Vitamin D3 a day for adolescents and adults.

Zinc and Selenium are also important for the immune system, and also deficient in most people's diets. Zinc plays a critical role in the immune system where it helps regulate the production and activity of T lymphocytes (white blood cells that help fight infection) and natural killer cells (cells that battle cancer). Oysters, beef, yogurt, and pumpkin seeds are good food sources of zinc.

Vegetarians have an especially hard time getting enough Zinc because chemicals in grains and legumes (especially unfermented soy) block Zinc absorption.

Selenium is an important antioxidant. Deficiency is mostly due to the lack of this mineral in the soil. Good dietary intake of selenium comes from meats of animals raised on selenium-rich feed and grains grown in selenium-rich soils. Walnuts and especially Brazil nuts are also excellent sources.

• According to Paul Bergner, a leading medical herbalist and nutritionist, the optimal daily dose of zinc is 40mg and 200 mcg of Selenium (note these values are much higher than the RDA recommendations).

Herbs and Mushrooms for the Immune System

Herbs, like whole foods and supplements, can help build a healthy immune system.

Echinacea is certainly the most well known herb for boosting immunity, but it is not appropriate for all people or all situations. Echinacea is an immune stimulant, kicking the immune system into action. The time to take Echinacea is at the very onset of illness. It is most effective when used in high, frequent doses. However, immune-stimulating herbs like Echinacea can be dangerous for people with auto-immune conditions like fibromyalgia or rheumatoid arthritis.

For building healthy immunity as a preventive measure, there are a number of herbs that support the immune system without overtly stimulating it. These herbs are called “immune modulators”.

Medicinal mushrooms like Reishi, Shitake, Maitake, and Chaga provide deep nourishment to the immune system and are appropriate for daily use. 

An easy way to get your medicinal mushrooms is to cook using shitake mushrooms.  Shitake has been used medicinally for hundreds if not thousands of years. You can use Shitake to increase your stamina, circulation, control cholesterol, improve your immune function and to protect yourself from viruses. Shitakes are a good source of protein and have high levels of antioxidants.

I especially like to make stir-fries with shitake mushrooms and onions, adding raw garlic at the last moment. Onions and Garlic are both anti-microbial, acting on bacteria and viruses. Cooked Onion retains these qualities but you want your garlic as raw as possible to reap the medicinal benefits.

For those of you that don’t like the smoky flavor of mushrooms, you can take mushrooms in capsule or tincture form. There are several excellent companies out there that make great mushroom formulas including Host Defense, the Herbal Apothecary and the Ancestral Apothecary.

Astragalus is used in Traditional Chinese Medicine to strengthen the body's defenses against respiratory infections. Astragalus is available as dried, sliced roots and as a tincture. The sliced roots make a wonderful addition to winter soups or a simmering crock-pot of healthy winter cider.

Astragalus should be used only for cold and flu prevention to help build a healthy immune system. Discontinue use if an acute infection sets in as it can drive the illness deeper and be harder to treat once you are ill.

American Ginseng is great for immune support in elders and others who are weak and depleted. Stay away from Chinese and Korean Ginsengs as they tend to be too stimulating for all but the very frail.

My favorite herb for both cold and flu prevention and for treatment of acute viral infections is Elderberry. The syrup is easy to make and it tastes great (compliance is sometimes an issue when getting family members to take their herbs!). I recommend taking a teaspoon of the syrup 2-3 times a day as a preventive measure, more often if you come down with the flu. Elderberries have been shown to be effective against 10 strains of influenza virus by inhibiting the virus from attaching to cells and multiplying.

If you suspect you've been exposed to a flu virus, there are further steps you can take.

• Burning aromatic herbs like Sage or Juniper
• Using essential oils of Frankincense and Myrrh in a diffuser is a great way to kill airborne pathogens in your home.
• Daily saunas will help to kill any pathogens that are beginning to make their home in your respiratory tract before they actually make you sick.

If you begin to feel that first tickle in the back of your throat that lets you know an infection is setting in, begin taking large (60-90 drop) doses of Echinacea tincture hourly, and hourly doses of Elderberry tincture or syrup as well -- and go straight to bed!

Dealing with the Flu

So, despite all your best efforts, you get the flu. What should you do?

First and foremost: go to bed. And do not get up for a week. You will feel better on the third day and be tempted to go back to work. Don't. People who don't get enough rest when they have the flu are more prone to secondary respiratory infections that can turn into pneumonia.

Secondly, reach for Elderberries. In most any form -- tincture, elixir, syrup.  Take it every hour that you are awake -- at least a teaspoon of syrup or a dropper of tincture or elixir. Elderberry not only helps shorten the duration of colds and flus when taken regularly, but is also good for coughs and lung congestion as it is mildly expectorating, especially in children.

If you are feeling nauseated, take small sips of Ginger tea. You just need a little bit of Ginger to calm your stomach. Ginger/lemon/honey –yum!

At the outset you will likely feel cold. Wrap yourself in blankets. Take warm baths. Put some Thyme in an old sock and throw it in your bath.  Drink Ginger tea.

In addition, it is important to drink lots of fluids, and “sweat” out your fever if you have one or feel one coming on. A fever is your body’s natural way of killing any virus or bacteria it encounters. If you speed-up the fever process by using herbs that make you sweat (diaphoretic herbs), you can “sweat out” the virus more quickly, and reduce the symptoms as well as the duration of your cold or flu.

In general, fevers that develop in response to infection will not rise to dangerous levels. The only reason to treat a fever is to make yourself more comfortable.

Stay hydrated, stay in bed, and do not eat until the fever breaks.

Flu Tea Recipe:

An ancient home remedy for breaking fevers is a tea of equal parts elder flowers and peppermint – especially useful for children. Whenever you are using herbs in tea form to break a fever, you want to drink it as a hot tea.

Other useful additions to this blend could be:

• Boneset is ideal for alternating fever and chills. It also helps with the general body aches that come with the flu. It’s bitter, so best included with a bit of peppermint to help mask the taste.
• Ginger – is stimulating and helps move the heat from the core of your body out to the periphery. It also helps with nausea.
• Yarrow will help raise a temperature enough to kick the virus. To kill a virus, your fever must reach 101 degrees. If you have a slight fever, below 101 degrees, consider adding yarrow to your tea blend to increase your temperature and make you sweat.
  
  

Cheryl Fromholzer is a Western Clinical Herbalist who provides a multi-faceted approach to holistic medicine combining customized organic herbal formulas with nutritional education and lifestyle guidance.   She is an active member of the American Herbalist Guild, co-owner of Gathering Thyme, creator of the organic botanical line "North Rose Botanicals" and a faculty member of the Ohlone Center for Herbal Studies in Berkeley, California.  For more information or to book an appointment with her, check out North Rose Botanicals.