Flu Fear Fighters

A Natural MD's Opinion

Worried about Avian Flu? Don't be. As a physician and a scientist, I want to share the best news of this flu season: You can prevent or treat the Avian Flu (IF it develops the ability to infect humans) easily, simply, cheaply, safely and naturally. And I know that there are things you can do to make the problem much, much worse. The choices are yours. Please share what you are about to read with everyone you know. This information could save huge numbers of lives.

Please remember, though, that this information is not a diagnosis or a treatment plan. It is educational material intended to help you develop your own personalized disease prevention or treatment strategy. You might want to consult a nutritional professional or natural physician to help you personalize it for you and your family.

How does the Avian Flu do its damage? Birds (or humans if the virus mutates spontaneously - or is mutated in a lab) die because the H5N1 virus depletes Vitamin C stores so quickly that the cause of death is fulminate scurvy. Scurvy is the same disease that killed seamen on long voyages because unless we get enough Vitamin C from our diet or our supplements, we get sick or die Humans cannot make Vitamin C but we need it for a great many vital processes including immune function and vascular integrity. This particular type of virus uses up Vitamin C stores so quickly that the immune system is overwhelmed and the blood vessels loose their structural integrity: they leak so badly that infected animals literally bleed to death through those damaged vessels.

Prevention? Vitamin C: lots and lots and lots of Vitamin C. Treatment? Lots and lots and lots of vitamin C.

Vitamin C is not toxic. Under stress (like a viral infection), your need for Vitamin C is increased. When your body has had enough, your body will tell you by soft stools or diarrhea. This is not a sign of toxicity: it is a sign that you have reached "Bowel Tolerance" (BT). Once you get there (and it can be at 1 gram or 20 grams: your body will tell you), cut back to 75% of the dose that represents BT for you and keep taking that dose EVERY DAY.

Write down each of the 4 daily doses of Vitamin C that you take each day because you will be increasing your intake gradually until you find the amount that you need for immune support. This dosage information is important enough that it could literally save your life so it is worth taking the time to record this information carefully and stick to the dosing schedule precisely. If you mess up, don't quit, but do make your best effort to stick to it.

You will start with 1 gram per dose so, for example, on Day 1, suppose that you take 1000 mg (= 1 gram) of Vitamin C every 4 hours for a total of 4 grams. On Day 2, increase the first dose to 2 grams and then take 1 gram for your other 3 doses. (You will take 4 doses per day). On day 3, take 2 grams for your first and second doses and 1 gram for the remaining two doses. On Day 3, you would take 2 grams for the first three doses and 1 gram for the next dose. You would continue increasing your dosage in that way until your body lets you know via your GI tract that you've reach the level you need. Now multiply that total daily dose by 0.75 and you've got your daily dose.

For example, suppose you reach Bowel Tolerance at 10 doses. Multiply by 0.75 and you now know that you need 7.5 grams of Vitamin C a day for immune system support. You would do well to take reasonable doses of Vitamins E and A along with Zinc and reduced L-Glutathione since they work together with Vitamin C. How much? That depends upon your weight, health, etc. I would also recommend that you take a good Multivitamin along with the preventive levels of Vitamin C described above. The Multivitamins I recommend have so much in them that a full adult dose requires 6 capsules or tablets to get all the nutrients in. A single multivitamin cap is just not potent enough to provide serious immune support, no matter what the company tells you.

And I hope it goes without saying that the more processed foods you eat, the more chemicals, flavors, preservatives, pesticides, sugar and artificial sweeteners, in short, the more junk you put into your body, the more acidic your body will be and the less resistant to viral infection it will be. So now would be a great time to switch over to a diet rich in fruits, dark and brightly colored veggies, free range animal protein and organic everything. Those are food choices that build your immune capacity, not bang it around.

Selenium blocks deadly mutations in the Avian Flu virus (J American College Nutrition 20: 384-88S, 2001; FASEB Journal 15: 1846-48, 2001; Journal Nutrition 133: 1463-67S, 2003) while elderberry syrup has been shown to be an effective flu remedy (J International Med Research 32:132-40, 2004; Israeli Medical Assoc Journal 4:919-22, 2002; European Cytokine Network 12:290-6, 2001; J Alternative Complement Medicine 1:361-9, 1995). Garlic is a highly effective anti viral substance which should be part of your diet (Planta Medica 58:417-23, 1992).

Children's doses should be titrated the same way taking the weight of the child into account.

That part is important: this part is even more important: at the very first indication of anything that might be viral disease, increase your Vitamin C immediately. DO NOT WAIT TO SEE IF THINGS GET WORSE! INCREASE YOUR VITAMIN C TO YOUR NEW BOWEL TOLERANCE LEVEL. That level might be very, very high. Vitamin C is not toxic. Unlike drugs, which poison enzymes and are thus capable of severe toxicity, nutrients, especially water soluble ones like Vitamin C, have no meaningful level of toxicity. Your body knows what you need. Pay close attention to it.

In the event that you think you may have the flu, take the amino acids l-lysine, l-proline and l-glycine. An average size adult can take up to 3 grams of each one 4 times a day since they help prevent the spread of the virus in your body.

My personal regimen for immune health includes high dose Vitamin C and Vitamins A and E along with zinc and L-Glutathione:

I travel with Olive Leaf Extract, Oil of Oregano (not to be taken by pregnant women since it can cause abortions), goldenseal, Echinacea, curcumin (from turmeric), probiotics, B complex, fish oil and alpha lipoic acid. I drink organic green tea and I do not eat any sugar whatsoever.

If you do become ill, the best thing you can do is contact a physician who practices natural and nutritional medicine and begin a regimen of Intravenous Vitamin C treatments (you may need between 100 and 200 grams (not milligrams) for a short time since the Avian Flu is so good at using up your urgently needed Vitamin C.

Here's what not to do:

Do not take Tamiflu (oseltamivir). The widely touted antiviral drug (like its cousin Relenza or zanamivir) produced drug resistant viruses in 18% of children treated with the drug and a drug resistant strain has been found in a Vietnamese girl treated with the drug. A drug resistant strain would be a far more dangerous virus than one which had not learned how to evade the drug's effect. Viruses can not become resistant to Vitamin C.

Do not take FluMist

FluMist is a live virus vaccine which introduces between 10 and 100 million viruses into the nose. Those viruses are not the same as the Avian Flu and therefore do not confer immunity against it since only the identical virus could do that. FluMist is based on last years viruses which were not effective against last year's viruses. They are certainly not effective against the Avian Flu virus which has not yet become infective to humans so no vaccine exists against it in its infective form.

However, once treated with FluMist, people shed live, infective viruses for up to 3 weeks which can give people flu In fact, immuno-compromised people, nursing babies, people with eczema, HIV, taking steroids, chemotherapy, radiation treatment (or the 60% of the American population which is chemically immuno-suppressed) are at significant danger if they come into contact with anyone who has been inoculated with FluMist.

FluMist is delivered into the nostrils by a forceful squirt. This puts infective viruses very close to the brain where they can pass through the thin cribiform plate at the top of the nostrils and enter the brain. It is not known if such treatment causes encephalitis. Only time will tell but the risk is a serious one considering the morbidity (sickness) and mortality (death) caused by encephalitis.

Each of the three viruses in FluMist can mutate and can cause mutations in the Avian Flu. Those mutations can supply the Avian Flu virus as it currently exists with the genetic sequences it needs to become a pandemic virus. The FluMist live virus nasal inoculation can assist the much feared Avian Flu virus to transform into the very pandemic we are being told to fear

Flu Vaccines for a pandemic version of the Avian Flu do not exist. The only way to make a vaccine against a particular virus is to have the virus available and then make a toxic brew filled with poisons (mercury, aluminum, squalene), foreign particles (egg, chick, and other proteins) and contaminants (stealth viruses, etc.)That flu virus does not yet exist, we are told. Assuming that it is not already manufactured and waiting for release in a lab somewhere, it would be 6 months before an Avian Flu vaccine could be ready. Vaccination with anything else would not help a bit with the Avian Flu strain which we are supposedly facing disaster from.

But, assuming that we already had a vaccine for the right flu strain, and assuming that vaccines were safe enough to use (which I do not believe they are since vaccines are very dangerous treatments which should be approached with the gravest reservations) the fact is that they do not produce immunity most of the time. We have been ballyhooed and mislead about the efficacy and safety of vaccination.

It is neither efficacious nor safe. And to ask the American people to submit to vaccinations which are infective (because they spread live vaccines), ineffective (because they are not vaccines against the real danger which does not exist yet and vaccines take 6 months to make) and dangerous (disease rises sharply with vaccination) and for which manufacturer liability is being removed is not good medicine, good policy or good sense.

Please safeguard your life and that of your loved ones. Pass this information to everyone you know so that they can delve further and make their own choices.

And please visit www.HealthFreedomUSA.org to sign to new Citizen's Petition which contains the Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline which can make the US Codex Compliant and preserve your rights to optimal health through nutrition. If you have signed it before, you can sign it again since the original Citizen's Petition has been revised.

Yours in health and freedom,

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director Natural Solutions Foundation

The opinions expressed above are solely those of Dr. Laibow, but are certainly worthy of consideration.