Kickoff the Weekend: Sun Prevents the Flu from Getting You!

Want to know what you can start doing NOW to have the best shot at being healthy this fall and winter?  We have some things to get you started on....

In the US, this is the weekend that is the 'grand finale' of the summer -- Labor Day.  We want to wish everyone a great weekend (and elsewhere in the world too!) and just start everyone thinking about getting in gear with us for learning about this together in the next days, weeks and months.  We'll provide interesting specifics about the effectiveness historically of people obtaining homeopathy, osteopathy/chiropractic manipulations in the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic.  And if you can safely get sun this weekend, you'll be more likely to withstand a bug that comes around in a month!  How can that be?

Lumigrate's experts, Dr. Christopher Lepisto and Dr. Scott Rollins (ND and MD, respectively) met with me and a reporter from the Denver Post last week related to integrative medicine and alternative or complimentary strategies for addressing the H1N1 influenza, which, at the least is a legitimate concern to most people right now.  As always, they had a lot of great information -- including the MOST important thing for you this weekend: Prevention is worth a pound of cure. Hygiene (hand washing, cough/sneeze into your sleeve ... there are school districts suggesting no more body bumps and high fives in school, so perhaps I suggest we quit shaking hands and doing a Mork impression and saying 'NaNo NaNo' perhaps .. or 'FooFlu FooFlu'!?  (Am I dating myself referencing a 1970's Robin Williams TV show?).  Wash your hands (soaping as long as it takes to sing 'Row Your Boat' is what I was trained in the medical world as a way to get to 20 seconds in a fun way.)

Interestingly, Dr. Rollins' stated that in the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, it was shown that mortalities had a high rate of adrenal fatigue. If you've been following Lumigrate, you know I've been suggesting a book on the subject in a previous blog, so please refer to it for more information (link below).  So this weekend, let's start working on restoring our adrenals and not draining them.... (I am actually listening to myself on that, believe it or not!).  After getting some clarification frm Dr. Rollins', I'll have more specifics for you on this.

Dr. Lepisto suggested the 'therapeutic order': "Prevention is best: Water, Sleep, Foods".  And as always with him -- organic when possible, and sustainably grown preferably.  I'll bring you more details from the IMC interview in the future, and hopefully a link to the newspaper article.  We're certainly hoping the information here or in papers that pick it up help 'spread the word' about progressive health concepts that can save lives.

Since it is a state-wide story, the reporter needed a source from the other side of the mountains from us here in Colorado and I connected her with Milton Hammerly, MD, who has been a leader in Denver in integrative medicine since the 1990s, when he was my physician.  He reported that there is evidence that vitamin D deficiency has been shown to be a factor in cases of influenza which have bad outcomes. Vitamin D deficiency has become rampant and is finally getting some real attention -- partly because of our use of sunscreen and our busy lives.  So THAT is a contributing factor, per Dr. Hammerly's information, why influenza historically sweeps bigger in the winter months. The concern with H1N1 is it's atypical in hitting hardest people in their 20s and 30s.  I'll do something with more specifics, but for today if you are taking a good (pure) fish oil, vitamin Bs, C (and D) you're on your way already to having your immune system in order.  Again, there will be more details in the near future.

And what was Dr. Lepisto's first suggestion related to flu prevention? Using a neti pot (Dr. Rollins likes the sinus rinse bottles as well).   If you've never used these, they can be quite entertaining until you get used to them -- but they are now available commercially at grocery stores and drug stores.  I was encouraged to start using the sinus rinse bottle by an ENT a few years back and I believe it really has changed my health a great deal, as I have chronic sinus problems, and infections have been an issue in the years since developing chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia (also now less problem as I'm improving).  Sinus hygiene was covered in a yoga book my father gave my sister when she was in college in the 70's and I can't believe I laughed at it instead of incorporating it: it makes sense -- why NOT irrigate out your sinuses?  Proving we ALL always have more to learn and sometimes the simplest things are the best. (Though it also suggested 'flossing' the sinuses and I can't 'wrap my brain around that' (pun intended).

Hope that gets you started on your interest in this and as always, email here through the website any questions or comments. Now go outside and get some sun and take a neti pot with you and have some fun working on your health!

Link to my previous Adrenal Fatigue blog: www.lumigrate.com/blog/tired-all-time-ever-heard-adrenal-fatigue

Link to Integrative Medicine Center of Western Colorado where you can find more about Dr. Rollins and Dr. Lepisto, newsletters etc.: www.imcwc.com