"How much is your day worth?": Fighting the Flu

Above:  Vitamin C, PC, Echinacea, StJohnsWort, Eleuthero, OnGuard and hiding in back... elderberry tea (notice how dark it is!)

Let's be honest.  You are going to get the flu at some point.  Even the best research points to a 50% reduction in risk with the flu vaccine, which is not a 100% risk reduction.  Case in point, 2014-2015 when the flu variant drifted.  To understand more about antigenic drift and antigenic shift, read this.  What this means is that if you had 100 lives to live, each year your baseline risk of flu is about 10 out of 100.  With a flu vaccine you cut this to 5 out of 100.  It is also important to note that the flu vaccine takes several weeks to display protection. 

So to me the first idea is to accept that no matter what you do, there is always a risk of getting the flu.  The real question is, are there herbs, supplements, and practices that can enhance recover?  Remember influenza is accompanied with a significant amount of fatigue which can last 3-4 weeks to fully recover from.  3 to 4 week?  1/12 of a year?  Are you kidding me?  This is not acceptable to me.  One reason is that I value and appreciate every day that I have on this planet and prefer not to spend anymore days being in a lower energy state than is absolutely required.  The second is that as a Doctor, I want to be there for my patients and when I am sick I can't help them get strong and healthy.  Sick Doctors can't help sick people.  

So what's in my tool bag to fight of influenza and the related fatigue?  Before we get to the list, I want to acknowledge that there are many herbs, supplements etc. which can fight off influenza and the related fatigue associated with it.  What I don't like doing is giving the false illusion that I am doing EVERY SINGLE THING in the world and if you don't do every herb, supplement etc to fight the flu than you are not trying hard enough.  That's silly and not productive.  Therefore I like to keep my list concise and honest.  

Here's what I am using and here is a review article that hits on a few of the mechanisms

Liposomal vitamin C -  8- 16 grams per day

AlliMAX- 3 (180mg caps) 2x per day

MediHerb Echinacea - 1tsp 6x per day #notatypo 

MediHerb St. Johns Wort 1tsp TID

MediHerb Eleuthro- 1 tsp TID

OnGuard by Doterra 5 drops TID

Elderberry, green tea, or marsala chai

Low Carb, high fat, moderate protein diet.  

Sleep, Rest and non-stressful environment

Obviously there are other things I could be using like Chinese skullcap etc.  But this is what I am currently using.   

Lead and ADHD

Let me be honest, we are exposed to more chemicals at sub-lethal doses than any generation in the history of the planet.  We are not receiving acute, high-level doses, like soldiers of World War I did with mustard gas, but this slow accumulation of metals, flame retardants and other chemicals is negatively effecting our health.  One reaction that I commonly see among my patients is to be afraid of the toxicity present in the environment.  I definitely am not a Doctor who believes that we should live in fear and be paralyzed in this world because everything is so "TOXIC".  What I do hope to achieve is to inspire people to take reasonable steps toward reducing their total body burden, as well as inspire those with the dream to take political action to create stricter regulations and laws for the use of these chemicals.  

Heavy metals are associated with a magnitude of diseases.  One disease that has risen quite dramatically in the past 20 years but appears to be stabilizing in its prevalence is ADHD.  ADHD displays a hyper-active type, an in-attentive type, and an impulsive type.   

Children are more susceptible to heavy metals as their ability to eliminate toxins is reduced.  This paper by huang et al. assessed blood lead levels in over 500 Mexican children.  The mean blood level for these children was 3.4 micrograms/deci-liter.  It's important to know that no blood level of lead is safe and any level of exposure can cause neurological symptoms like fatigue, sluggishness, learning delays, and more.  The research team showed that levels less than 5 micrograms/deci-Liter were positively associated with hyperactive and impulsive behaviors.    

This study was not an RCT and must be taken with a grain of salt.  Therefore we can't say that lead causes ADHD.  In reality it will be very hard to create such a study to prove this as it would be unethical to give lead to one group of children and no-lead to another and assess ADHD outcomes.  What we do have though is a tragedy that can provide us with insight.  The children of Flint, Michigan.   There are literally hundreds of stories to select from but the results all cluster around leads effects on the brain.

It's important to remember that lead is not meant to stay in the blood, but would be sequestered predominantly in the bones and other tissues to protect the body.  One thing that mobilizes lead from the body is sweat making exercise and sauna extremely effective solutions for reducing total body burden for the more chronic patient, however if a patient has much higher levels, specific treatment is indicated, including finding the exposure and stopping it.

If you have a loved one who you are concerned about regarding their neurological health, from ADHD to dementia, consider having them ask their doctor to check their blood lead levels as a simple heavy metal screen could be life-saving.