Maintaining A Healthy Immunity Against The Swine Flu

by Jim Sugihara

On May 20, 2009 The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) 'confirmed' almost 5,700 cases of the H1N1 Influenza, or 'Swine Flu,' in the US. Of the 5,700 cases, at least eight people have died. At this time the CDC can no longer keep up with the growing number of infected people and have chosen to make estimates based on statistical modeling.

This modeling indicates that the flu is at a pandemic level, and will eventually infect one-third to one-half of the world population. The number of deaths in the northern hemisphere is relatively low due to the positive health effects of the sun and higher vitamin D (naturally anti-viral) levels in the spring and coming summer. This is expected to change in the winter, a traditional time for flu outbreaks with the lower levels of vitamin D.

As the infection rate approaches one in three, millions of us may become carriers of the virus. While the level of infection may not be fatal for all of us, we will still be mixing H1N1 with other flu strains, causing a constant mutation. The mutations can give the H1N1 an infinite number of different characteristics. As the virus becomes more diversified, we will have more difficulty in creating an effective and timely vaccine. If the virus becomes too mutated, it may become impossible to create a permanent vaccine. A great way to fight the flu is by maintaining a healthy immune system. Doing so will reduce our susceptibility to disease.

An easy step that we can all make toward maximizing our own health is through Ionic Detox. Regular sessions can help boost your immune system because they are effectively maintaining a healthy pH balance within the body. Negative ions entering the body work to neutralize acids and heavy metals. This results in an improvement in the body's ability to detoxify itself. According to M. Amin, PhD, Doctor of Natural Medicine, "Ion Detox will strengthen the immune system to fight any invading germs, bacteria or viruses. I am a classic example. I do not take any medication including flu shots since 1989. Do I get the flu? Never! Sometimes I feel my body fighting the attacking viruses. My entire family follows the same lifestyle: Regular ionic detox, high quality supplements, eating properly, exercise, prayer and positive thinking."

A healthy digestive system is key in maintaining a healthy immune system. Each of our bodies contain trillions of bacteria that help us break down and process the food we eat. So long as we have a good supply of digestive bacteria, our bodies will maintain a healthy immune system which will help protect us from toxins, viruses, and attack from parasites. Unfortunately, antibiotics, poor diet, drugs, stress and old age can lead to a reduction in the 'healthy' bacteria in our digestive system. So, in order to prevent loss of this bacteria, it is important to take a good probiotic supplement which provides us with the bacteria we may not be consuming with our food. One of the very best probiotic supplements that we have found is Primal Defense ULTRA by Garden of Life.

In addition to healthy digestive function, it is important to maintain a healthy dose of fiber in your diet. While the recommended daily intake for adults is only 25-30 grams, many of us fall short of ingesting enough fiber. If you keep track of your fiber consumption and fall short of meeting the recommended daily value, consider taking a high quality, natural fiber supplement. Garden of Life's 'DetoxiFiber' is an organic supplement that provides 5 grams of soluble and insoluble fiber in a balanced ratio. It consists of 100% certified organically grown flax seed and pea hull fiber, alfalfa and barley grasses, and chia seed.

Along with carefully monitoring your digestive health and fiber intake, consider your body's pH balance. Studies have found that much of the American diet consists of foods that test low on the pH scale. These highly acidic foods come from high doses of fatty acids and sugar, which can inhibit the body's immune system and keep it from working its best. Our bodies contain more than 75 trillion cells. Imagine these cells are acidic elements which are swimming in an alkaline sea. A balance must be maintained for normal metabolic processing. If we reduce the concentration of alkaline in our body by subjecting ourselves to a highly acidic diet, the balance will be shifted. Improving or maintaining the right balance of alkaline to acid should be done with multiple methods, the most important of which is a balanced diet with a roughly 60/40 ratio of alkaline foods to acid, even higher if the body is too acidic.

Dehydration is a harmful condition which can open your body up to infections and disease. A lack of hydration creates an environment where toxins can thrive. In order to condition your body to fight off attacks from harmful toxins, it is important to stay properly hydrated. Along with helping the body eliminate toxins, proper hydration can help the body eliminate fatty acids and can help facilitate metabolic functions. Through the basic practice of hydration, we can alkalize our bodies by treating pure water with an alkaline supplement in order to boost the pH. Adding the product 'pH Booster' to drinking water is an excellent way to raise the pH level. As an added bonus, it also works to ionize with minerals as well as oxygenate the water. As your body becomes more balanced you should boost your mineral intake with a concentrated mineral supplement. 'ConcenTrace' Trace Mineral Drops is a great, natural vegan product which will help maintain a proper mineral balance within the body.

Acidic conditions within the body can cause heavy metals like mercury to stay in the system. This creates situations which can lead to stress in the body. In a normal reaction to the stress, the body will then create more acids in order to cope. It does not take long for a vicious cycle to develop where the acids and metals lead to the stress which creates them. Reducing toxins, increasing alkalinity and reducing acids in the system is a key step towards creating a healthy body.

Let us recap: How can we get the best flu protection?

1 - Eat Right - Reduce acids (sugar and high fructose sweeteners major offender) and increase level of alkaline foods. Supplement with alkalized water. 2 - Get Enough Sleep - The body does its best healing at full rest. 3 - Digestion - Take care of the gut and the whole GI with probiotic foods and supplements. 4 - Exercise - Stimulates cleansing blood flow and stress-reducing hormones. 5 - Exposure to Sunshine - The best source of vitamin D, a natural anti-viral vitamin. 6 - Ionic Foot Detox - Also reduce acid levels, neutralize toxins making them easily excreted.

About the Author:

To find out more about the products discussed in this commentary and how they can boost protection to the swine flu, check out HEALTHandMED.com

Yoga For Weight Loss

by Jane Lee

Could someone use yoga for weight loss? They definitely could. It's widely believed that yoga is just stretching, but you should try attending a class at your gym and see what you can find out about yoga as exercise. Such a class could use up the same number of calories as another more cardio-focused exercise.

You are doing resistance exercise when you do yoga, believe it or not. You may picture weight lifting when you think of resistance training. you are actually picking up your own body weight and this can be a good workout. You can strengthen your muscles with this type of exercise in the same way that could happen with other resistance activity.

You can find in yoga the same types of exercises you would do in other typical resistance routines. There are movements like push-ups, squats or lunges as well as many others. Yoga makes for a better and more enjoyable workout because the poses are so unique and not what we're used to necessarily. Some people think of yoga as a form of art. If you do your poses in front of a mirror, you can gain a new appreciation for the beauty of your body reflected back to you.

Yoga can be a helpful aid to weight loss in that it works subtly in the mind as well as physically. As a way to begin your day, you can find some peace of mind that will cut down on your need for ineffective coping techniques. That is, the "emotional eating" that some people do. Whenever one is eating for reasons other than hunger, there is an issue to address.

Cutting back on eating for reasons other than hunger will decrease overall caloric intake. This in itself means that weight reduction can happen. By doing yoga, you can take some time to take a mental break. If you can do this during your yoga routine, you can apply the skill to your everyday life too.

You can get positive weight loss results from just a few days of yoga a week. Very positive physical outcomes are possible from yoga. Although it may not strike you as the type of activity that can really change your body, you could be pleasantly surprised. Contrary to what you might believe, you don't have to despise exercise for it to really work for you. Your body need not be tormented for positive results. Being kind and gentle to it can work even better.

About the Author:

Learn yoga for stress relief and feel better. You can also consider the beginners guide to meditation to improve your stress management.

Growing Your Own Herbs

By James

Most of you love your plants and talk to your plants. You like to keep them happy indoors or outdoors. You can make herbs just from a seed. You will be able to know about how to grow your very own herbs after reading this informative article.

You can seed indoors and then transplant seedlings. Thyme, marjoram, oregano, catnip and chamomile might be selected for this purpose. You can seed straight into herb gardens such as dill, garden cress, basil, savory, sage, chervil, fennel, borage, caraway, sorrel, pot marigold, salad burnet and anise.

Tarragon, lavender, winter savory, lemon thyme, purple sage, rosemary, peppermint, pennyroyal and oregano start from cuttings. You could start from greenhouse or separation including yarrow, chives, tansy, peppermint, tarragon, bee balm, hyssop, sweet woodruff, and horseradish. You might solid to commence from seeds such as oregano, lavender, tarragon, and rosemary.

Now, you should obtain seeds from a sound, dependable seed catalog for buying fresh seeds each and every year. You should be patient because herbs usually grow slowly and choosing the plants which age is not less than six week and seed every assortment in a different container. Rich soil is not prerequisite for starting seed and can transplant the seedlings into wealthier soil. Read directions from the package carefully while purchasing soil and follow the instructions of the manufacturer. Apply any container for seeding but plastic container is preferable and metal containers might be risky as it might be leak or rust.

Sow herb seeds in a row and dont coat them and do it calmly to not to be bunch up. You should not put water just after sowing and you have to wait for the next day for watering. There should not be any mold and if have you should remove it. Don't put water after sowing immediately. Wait for the next day to put water. Mold should be removed if presents.

You have to wait for few days after developing the seeds and when leaves will come out you can transplant into a separate pot which size could be into 2 1/2 inch. Then you can transplant it into the soil. So, now any one will be able to do this from selecting seeds to make new herbs successfully after selecting this valuable article.

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To learn more about growing your own herbs be sure to check out our sites today.

Successfully Starting To Run

By Jonathan Blood Smyth

The weather in the northern hemisphere is beginning to warm up and spring turns people's minds to thoughts of fitness and sport. They look out their running shoes from the back of the wardrobe and get out on the road. After all, it's easy to do, it doesn't cost anything and you can't go wrong, can you? However, spring is just the time when all of us, having got lazy and overweight over the winter, overdo things and suffer injuries. Physiotherapists all over the country brace themselves for the surge in strains and sprains which occur at this time of year as our unprepared bodies are put through stresses which are too much for them. The commonest injuries tend to be foot pains, back pain and knee pain.

The typical mistake all runners tend to make at this time of year, not just novices, is to run too far and too hard to start with, or to run too often and try and progress the distances and speeds too fast and within too short a time window. Our tissues all have tolerances for physical stresses, which depend on our age, history of exercise, physical fitness and many other factors. If we overstep our tolerances we suffer from the typical symptoms and conditions of overuse injuries: delayed onset muscle soreness, muscle sprains, joint strains, iliotibial band syndrome, patellofemoral syndrome, bursitis and tendonitis. In extreme cases the body can suffer a stress fracture, common in the small bones of the foot, as the skeleton struggles to cope with the great forces that running puts upon it.

The solution to these problems is to take a graded approach to the initial training or to reduce one of the components such as the duration, intensity or frequency of training. If the problem is already apparent then reducing just one of the components may be enough to improve the situation so that training can recommence or improvement in fitness continues. A common problem with runners is to let small injuries linger without doing anything about them, leading to more difficult treatment problems later. Experiencing a new pain or ache should be a signal there is a problem to be addressed as soon as possible, and if it has not improved or settled within 10 days by treatment, analgesia or activity modification then help should be sought.

New and inexperienced runners can try a walking and running routine, and I have used this myself due to back pain experienced in running. I went for a ten minute run to get back into the swing of things and afterwards felt some back ache which got worse until the next day it was quite troublesome. Since it lasted for a week at a moderate level I was not very keen to continue and stopped for a while. Then I got keen again and went for a ten minute run again, with predictable and unpleasant results.

On a friend's suggestion I tried a running walking regime and it worked so well that I could run continuously for forty minutes before long, and without back pain. To start off the runner can do one minute's running and then walk for four minutes, repeating the process up to five times. The number of running minutes is increased and the walking ones decreased until the person can do an uninterrupted run.

The usual way of sticking your shoes on and then doing a bit of stretching before you set off for your run may be unwise as stretching before exercise may make injury more likely rather than less. Starting off by walking initially and then walking faster with longer strides can get you warmed up and get blood pumping into the muscles.

Starting off the running session with some stretches, bending over and knee bends may be quite traditional but may be the worst approach as there is some evidence that it may increase the injury risk. Warm up to increase muscle blood throughput may be best achieved by walking initially and then speeding up with faster walking and bigger strides.

About the Author:

Jonathan Blood Smyth, editor of the Physiotherapy Site, writes articles about Physiotherapists, physiotherapy, physiotherapists in Manchester, back pain, musculo-skeletal conditions, neck pain and injury management. Jonathan is a superintendant physiotherapist at an NHS hospital in the South-West of the UK.