More Important Articles on Flu Vaccination

These two articles contain a great deal of information on H1N1 flu, seasonal flu, and vaccinations in general. The first is from Dr. Mercola and you can find it here. It's very interesting. There's also an interview with Dr. Russel Blaylock. Check it out.

The second article is from Natural News, by Mike Adams. It contains some historical facts about vaccination, and what a mess they can cause.

So what can we do about the flu? I can tell you what we're doing daily, all immune-boosting stuff:

• Vitamin C (1000 mg) daily
• Vitamin D3 (5,000 mg) daily
• A teaspoon of Elderberry tincture (we will up this to a tablespoon a few times a day if we start feeling ill with flu. For more on Elderberries and flu, you could read some entries in this blog from last fall. Just click here and especially here.)
• Clove of garlic daily
• A serving of kimchi or other fermented food. This will provide probiotics in the gut, which is a big part of your immune system.
• Eating a minimum of white flour or sugar foods. Eating lots of good veggies, fruits and meat.
• Echinacea/Goldenseal tincture with some cayenne tincture to boost it.
• Washing hands a lot.
• Getting out in the sunshine and brisk exercise.

Personally, I think it is important to remain cheerful and optimistic. Easy to do on a gorgeous sunny day like today, not quite so easy when my dear husband insists on reading horrible news aloud to me. Or on a rainy, cold day. Still, it is better to be cheerful. One thing I do is visit LOL Cats nearly daily. I Can Has Cheeseburger is a hoot!

Onwards, all

HM

Our Flu Protocol

My husband and I have decided to do these things every day (or as near as possible), in order to give ourselves a growling good immune system and to combat whatever flu bugs might accidentally wander into our environs.

Take:
Vitamin C (1000 mg base amount, more if needed)
Vitamin D3 (1000 - 50000 mg base amount)
2-4 droppers of elderberry extract (more if needed)
Multivitamin/mineral mix (Michael takes this; I skip it as I prefer to get my nutritional needs met via eating wild plants. I just go outside an nibble on whatever I find--wood sorrel, plantain leaves, yellow dock leaves, gnaw on some sassafrass leaves, a couple of spice berries here, couple of wild grapes there, the classic nibbler diet)

Eat:
Clove garlic a day
Kimchi at least one serving a day
The usual good diet of meat with veggies galore, a minimum of sugar or white flour products, very little to none processed foods

If necessary/as needed
Goldenseal/Echinacea extract with a Cayenne extract for booster

And getting out into sunshine, getting some exercise, swinging our arms, praising God's gifts. The last mentioned is without a doubt the most important, praising God and being grateful. And if by chance we get a flu--we normally don't, nor have we ever taken flu shots, then we'll live with it and let the elderberry extract deal with it.

Another fairly important element in this is to avoid those who are ill. Be very careful when you go to stores, wash your hands so often you'll feel obsessive/compulsive, all the usual stuff.

I put by a lot of elderberry extract this year. I filled quart jars 1/2 to 3/4 full with elderberries, then add vodka to top it all off. The six weeks I usually allow for extracts is nearly over. I have offered the extract to everyone in the valley, and I hope they'll use it and wisely. I don't charge $$ for this, but donations will be accepted to cover the cost of the vodka.

I've also laid in some OTC pharmaceuticals--mucinex and sudafed in particular. Someone who'd already had the swine flu recommended those. So, on a just in case basis, I got a few of those. We also have gloves and masks, and somewhere I have a whole biochem suit (complete with gas mask) that someone once gave me. It'd make a great Halloween costume...

So that's our basic flu protocol. I don't know if we'll need it, but it can't hurt to give your body extra nutrients for combatting illness. It's very important also to detoxify--try to get rid of the crap in your system, fast one to three days every once in a while, take hot baths and sweat out toxins, don't eat processed "food" poisons, and move around a bunch.

If anyone has other/different ideas, I'd be glad to hear them. Thanks,
HM

More on Elderberries

It occurs to me that I should write more about why elderberries are so good for you come flu/cold season. Some of the links in the following article, Elderberries Galore, will lead you to good information on this. I could write it all down here, but they've already done it better and I've other things to do. I am NOT an expert in anything--I just go and do what I think needs to be done for my family. So I research and read and study the books and then go and do. So you should do also, time and life permitting. This is the place for pointers to good info, at least that's my hope.

Anyway, Elderberries. Here's a mention of an Israeli study on the effectiveness of elderberries on flu:

There has been one small study in Israel (1992), testing the use of Elderberry syrup in people with the flu. These patients were showing the first symptoms of influenza. Half of the group was given elderberry syrup and the other half received a placebo (no medication or herb). In those receiving the elderberry, fever, cough, muscle aches were reduced in one-fifth of the patients in 24 hours. The 2nd day 75% of the patients were feeling better and by 3 days, 90% of them felt completely cured. While those on the placebo - 8% felt better in 24 hours and it was 6 days before 90% of that group was cured.

I don't know if this was a "scientific" study or not--but it did include a placebo group and the results were certainly good. And, as I've said elsewhere, I've used Sambucol for flu with good success--it cut the symptoms and severity of symptoms and got me better faster. That's all I need to know.

Both the elder flowers and the berries are very good for you. Read the pages of material on elder at botanical.com and you'll have more information than you'll know what to do with. What a magnificent resource that website is. I read it for fun and in the hope that dollops of good info will enter my brain (and stay there).

In the past the leaves, stems, bark and root of the elder were also used medicinally, but it is not recommended today. The leaves, bark and root of the elder contain cyanidin glycosides and can be poisonous. Or so it is said. Steve Brill discusses this in the section on elderberry on his webpage:

Many older herb books recommend using elderberry leaves, roots, or bark medicinally, probably because Indian herbal experts used them. This doesn’t guarantee safety: Never use these parts of the elderberry. They’re poisonous. They contain a bitter alkaloid and glycoside that may change into cyanide. Children have been poisoned using elderberry twig peashooters, and adults have been poisoned using hollowed twigs to tap maple trees. However, there is a benefit to the toxicity: People use dried, crumbled elderberry leaves in their gardens as a natural insecticide.

Be that as it may, sometimes tiny doses of something poisonous can be used medicinally. I don't recommend it--but say you were terribly constipated in a wilderness survival situation--I would nibble some elder leaves as a laxative, figuring it would do the trick but not kill me. And I'd bet I'd be right--but that's me. The body I'd be taking chances with is mine--so you make up your own mind when it comes to things like that. I can only be responsible for my own idiocy, not yours.

Do find and use some elderberries if you can. After you've taken the berries from the stems, the rest is quite easy and it will be great to have the syrups and tinctures on hand. Here is just a bit more information on the medicinal properties of the berries to entice you into berry-picking.

Good hunting, and, as Michael says, stay alive.

Handmaiden

Elderberries Galore!

Here in Southern Indiana it is elderberry harvest time. The best place I’ve found to gather them so far is on a little-traveled road on the way to the Amish farm I go to every week. The bushes are set back from the road a bit, which is perfect--they don’t get all the car exhaust fumes. The last two Saturdays I’ve stopped on our way back from Lydia’s and Joaz’s place and harvested the ripe berries. These bushes are prolific. Even so, it is always necessary to leave a goodly portion of berries on the bush. You want the bush to survive and thrive. Say thank you while you harvest--expressing your gratitude for this wonderful food and medicine is good for your soul.

Elderberries are reported to be an excellent agent to use for flu and colds. There is even talk that elderberries could be used to treat bird flu, the dreaded H5N1 virus, and tinctures containing elderberries and other immune-boosting herbs are being marketed. I know from personal use that elderberry tincture is effective in lessening the effects of the flu, for I’ve used Sambucol for years. This is not necessarily an endorsement for the stuff, by the way. If you can find elder bushes around you, then pick your own berries. It’ll save you scads of money and making the syrup and tinctures is easy, as you will see. However, sambucol has worked for me when I’ve had touches of the flu in the past, so I’ve provided the commercial link.

Picking the berries is easy, the real labor comes later. Just take your handy clipper tool with you as you clamber around the bushes and clip off the whole umbrel. (See the pix in the link in the first paragraph. The umbrella-looking cluster of berries is the umbrel.) I have filled up 4 to 5 bags of the berry clusters so far, and that’s given me a lot of berries. The honest-to-goodness work comes when you get the berries home. There are two ways of removing the stubborn little berries from their umbrels. The first is to use a comb or a fork and patiently work the berries off of the stems. This will take the rest of your life, or at least a loooong time, but it will give you nice berries without stems. This is what you want to do if you’re making something that will have the berries in it--say a sauce for ice cream or elderberry pie.

The other way is to freeze the berries overnight, and then remove the frozen berries the next day. I picked this tip from a video by HerbMentor. Watch the video--it’ll tell you what you need to know. Freezing the berries does make it less time-consuming to pick the berries off the stem, but it is not as easy as the man says. The frozen berries do not easily come off the stems, but if you are careful, you can remove them without getting too many stems in with the berries. Gently use your hand and fingers to roll the berries off their stems. I then remove whatever stems got in the mix by hand. This also gives a fairly clean bunch of berries.

Wash the berries. To make the syrup, use 1 cup berries to 3 cups water. Put them in a pot and heat gently on the stove. Don’t boil--you don’t want to kill the active antiviral stuff, just simmer gently for 45 minutes or so. Then mash the berries as much as you can to get as much juice out of them as possible. Strain the juice through a jelly bag (recommended) or do what I do, use cheesecloth and a sieve. I pour the berries and juice through the cheesecloth and then squeeze the cheesecloth full of berries with my hands. Once you have the juice, add 1 cup honey (or 1 cup sugar--I used honey) as it is back warming on the stove. Bottle it in mason jars or whatever jars or bottles you have handy. I add a bit of alcohol to help preserve the syrup, which I then label and date, and keep in the fridge.

Making an elderberry tincture is the easiest thing: just fill a sterilized mason jar with berries and pour vodka or brandy over to cover the berries. Cap the jar and put it in a cool, dark place for a month. Shake the jar daily or whenever you remember. After the month is up, strain the berries out and bottle the tincture in little amber colored glass jars with eyedroppers (if you can get your hands on some). Amber jars keep out the light, which can deteriorate the tincture over time. I’ve got 2 quarts of tincture already. I’ll make more as soon as I get more vodka.

I’ve just made another batch of syrup, but this time, I added an equal ratio of sugar to berries. Four cups berries, 4 cups sugar. This should enable me to keep the syrup without refrigeration. I also added vodka as a preservative, 4 tablespoons to the quart. This stuff is sweet--much sweeter than I like, but we’ll use it as a medicine, or give it to friends here who get flu symptoms.

For the most part, my husband and I do not get colds or flu. At the first sign of anything like a cold or flu, we immediately eat cloves of garlic and take 5 grams or so of vitamin C and a Goldenseal and Echinacea combination. And I usually make chicken broth loaded with garlic. I stop eating anything but the soup. That usually does it for either of us. In the winter, we take a clove of garlic a day each (or do when I remember). I use a garlic press for Michael, but I just chew it and swallow with water. It is certainly pungent, enough to take your breath away. The allicin in the garlic is what you want, and it is the allicin that makes the rich garlic smell and taste. Garlic is great stuff--I don’t think I could cook without onions and garlic.

Last year I noticed that lots of valley folks got the flu and had it for a long time. I always tell them to eat garlic, but a lot of times, it is all the other crap that people eat and drink that causes the problems and wreaks havoc with the immune system. (Have you ever noticed that havoc is the only thing wreaked? If you can think of anything else that gets wreaked, let me know….) Junk food, which, to me, is anything processed, soft drinks, too much sugar and white flour foods. All are bad for you and slowly destroy your health. Ah, but this is a separate topic altogether. Suffice it to say that I hope to have enough elderberry syrup and tincture to dose the whole valley come flu time. Maybe it will even work for H5N1--we’ll see. In the meantime, good luck with your elderberries!