simplest, nature-cure: rest, water, simple diet and hydrotherapy
Rest and Stress Reduction-• It helps compliance if you write a prescription for REST.
Increase Water Intake-Recommended that patients to drink water, in ounces, equivalent to half of their body weight (i.e. an adult weighing 160 lbs. 80 ounces of water, or 10 cups).
Diet
VRI should be emphasize foods such as fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, seeds, and nuts which are nutrient rich, low in fats and refined sugars and contain adequate, but not excessive, amounts of protein. In particular, participants in the trial should assiduously avoid simple carbohydrates i.e. glucose, fructose, sucrose, honey since as little as 100 gram portions significantly reduces neutrophil phagocytosis, from 30 minutes after ingestion continuing to 5 hours.
Short-term fasting or eating a very light simple to digest diet could be encouraged, particularly during the first 24 to 48 hours of an acute infectious illness, because it results in a significant (up to 50%) increase in phagocytic index. Fasting should not be continued for longer than 48 hours because eventually the leukocytes’ energy and substrate sources will become depleted. The light diet should avoid common antigenic foods, since common allergens like dairy, wheat, peanuts increase inflammatory cytokines IL-1 beta, IL-8, and IL-6- which correlate with viral URI symptoms.
HYDROTHERAPY – Hydrotherapy treatments for VRIs are based on treatments developed in the 19th century by Father Sebastian Kneipp and the early 20th century by J.H. Kellogg, M.D. The hydrotherapy techniques are intended to improve tissue hygiene, increase circulation and stimulate fever. hydrotherapy induced fever would have a similar effect on cytokines. Hydrotherapy stimulated fever in patients with VRI generates a reciprocal feedback loop that induces heat shock proteins (hsp), stimulating innate and adaptive immunity.
• Constitutional hydrotherapy is very beneficial for VRI’s.
• Hot fomentations can be used if bronchitis is present.
• Consider colonics, enema or 42s if constipated.
• Carrot/ginger poultices are indicated for swollen lymph nodes.
FEVER THERAPY – take as hot a bath as possible, then right to bed with lots of blankets. Double the WBC count via diapedesis. Moist saunas help open up the mucous membranes. Cool air vaporizers help a lot
Nasal lavage with salt water, 1/2 tsp./cup warm water ≈ normal saline
or half teaspoon hydrastis/1 pint
Supportive Treatments at the first sign of VRI
• Ocillococcinum – at first signs of cold or flu
Don’t take suggested dosage!
• Yin chiao – 2 tablets QID
This is Chinese aconite (after a cold wind, symptoms come on rapidly
with heat and redness. Good during initial stages of URI after an External
pernicious influence (EPI) .
• Herbal Ed’s remedy, a shot of Echinacea – not for the timid.
Specific extract of Echinacea, 10 gtt q 2 hours
• Esberitox: Echinacea purpurea and pallida (purple coneflower), Thuja
(white cedar), and Baptisia (wild indigo) has been studied in Germany
and was shown to reduce symptom severity and duration by 39 %,
particularly if dosed at the onset of symptoms. Esberitox has also been
shown to improve outcomes in the treatment of bacterial exacerbation of chronic bronchitis (esberitox patients improved in 5.7 days compared to 12.8 days in the
placebo group.
