Dr. Valerie Phillips, N.D.

William Li: Can we eat to starve cancer?

The common cold and flu survival guide- part one

December is here, the season of chilly winds and holiday dinners. As we brace against the cold, inside with our hot cocoa and sniffly noses we increase our susceptibility to catching one of the many seasonal colds and flus that cycle through our society every year.  These diseases, often mild and self limited can occasionally become very problematic.  The recent concern over the H1N1 virus (Swine Flu) gives us the opportunity to discuss viral infections and how to win this age old battle between virus and human.

The parts of H1N1 (swine flu) photo.

PB2 is an avian polymerase. PB1 is avian and human polymerase. PA is an avian polymerase. HA is human or swine origin. NP is swine origin. NA is a human or swine origin. M and NS are swine origin.

Viruses are tiny microscopic organisms, little more than genetic material in a sophisticated sack, that attach to our cells with specific landing gear and inject their DNA (or RNA) into our cells.  The genetic material of the virus either splices itself into our DNA where it lays in wait to burst forth and make us uncomfortable. An example of this is the Herpes virus which lives in your facial nerve cells or the skin around your mouth until stress suppresses your immune system or a variety of other triggers (sunlight, hormonal changes) allow the virus to replicate in your cell eventually resulting in the cell dying and releasing numerous viral particles, resulting in active infection and a “cold sore.”  Along with the often quite aggravating sore people may experience symptoms of a viral cold, such as sore throat, sniffles, slight fever, achy and tired.

Between cold sore eruptions, the herpes simplex 1 virus lies dormant, presumably in the skin or in nearby nerve tissue. www.mckinley.illinois.edu/…/herpes.jpg

In the case of Herpes virus the organism is already within you, dormant until it sees a chance to replicate, other viruses such as those that cause colds and flus come and go. These viruses infect the mucus lining of our airways through respiratory droplets, ie someone sneezes on you or you touch a doorknob that someone sneezed on and the virus makes its way to your mucous membranes, your mouth, nose, throat etc The result is known as a URI or upper respiratory infection.

http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/attachment

When a virus particle infects a cell the cell will place alerts on its surface to tell the immune system that it has been taken hostage.  The immune system will then systematically kill those cells with a coordinated and specific response. The response is made up by a combination of inflammatory hormones called interferons (because they interfere with viral replication) and immune cells called Macrophages, Natural Killer Cells and Cytotoxic T cells. The result of this system of inflammation as far as most of us are concerned is feeling poorly.

www.bulldogblog.net/…/uploads/2009/04/flu3.jpg

Every year we face a slightly different series of colds and flus. They look similar enough to our defensive cells that they are easily recognized and dealt with in a timely fashion by our coordinated immune response. The immune system works via pattern recognition.  Viruses and bacteria all have distinct shapes on their surfaces that fit like keys into locks with shapes on our immune cells.  Once the proper signals are sent from a bacteria or a viral infected cell to the immune system surveillance cells it turns that cell on, starting the immune response. That cell will then replicate, cloning itself into a huge army to fight this particular invader.  The body will never forget that invader because this army will never completely go away.  This is why you most likely will not get the same flu a second time in one year, or chicken pox twice. This function of the immune system is utilized by vaccine designers to protect us from the dangers associated with microbial infection.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_helper_cell. This graphic depicts the cell cloning process that enables our immune system to fight off invaders.  The memory cells are what allow our body to keep us from getting sick twice from the same microbe.

The flus and colds that we get each year are slightly different.  The virus mutates a little. When the flu virus mutates more than usual and looks significantly different to our immune system, that is when we have “flu epidemics.” The reason for this is because it just takes a few days longer for the virus to be recognized by our immune system, so it gets a stronger foothold.  The immune response to it then ends up being larger and we end up feeling worse. If someone is in this situation and their immune system is suppressed for some reason ie Pregnancy, HIV, chronic illness of some sort, then they are at risk for serious complications from the flu.

Vaccines

Vaccines are designed to activate the immune response to a particular virus without causing an infection. In order to be effective they have to cause inflammation in some way and associate it with a killed virus or a virus particle. This is life saving technology especially in cases of deadly or crippling viruses such as polio. There was a time when it was common to see children paralyzed from a young age due to polio which is almost non-existent now because of vaccines. Despite the vast contribution vaccines have made to our quality of life, there is some controversy with their use and overuse. Our bodies evolved alongside viruses and various other small entities that affect us and stimulate our immune system. When our immune system is not up to the task, that is when medicine should come in and help. It seems however that modern medicine, like a smothering parental figure is doing too much for us. If we never fight off our viruses on our own, our ability to do so is weakened.

Seasonal colds and flus may keep us home from work for a few days but they very rarely cause serious harm. If an individual is in a delicate condition, pregnant or very ill, we may elect to protect them from possible complications. In these cases the good may outweigh the harm that vaccines can bring. Yes vaccines can cause harm, the preservatives or adjuvants (chemicals used to increase the inflammatory response to the vaccine, making it work better) can cause allergies. Vaccines are often grown in chicken eggs, or mixed with peanut oil causing the vaccinated to have a subsequent immune reaction to these common foods. Influenza vaccines are still preserved with thimerosol a mercury containing substance that is thought to cause neurological inflammation in some and is associated with autism (http://www.melisa.org/thimerosal.php).

Vaccines are designed to produce inflammation without infection, their adverse effects are associated with allergies and autoimmune diseases that are caused by inflammation without infection.

We can enhance the efficiency of our immune system in order to handle these infections better. Everything that happens in your body is dependent on your enzymes.  Enzymes are large molecules that make things happen in your body.  For example, when you eat a piece of bread, there is an enzyme in your mouth that breaks down the starch in the bread to sugar. If you hold the bread in your mouth it will taste sweeter just because of the action of that enzyme. These enzymes do everything that needs to be done in your body, but they have requirements. Vitamins and minerals are necessary to make the enzymes run. They are called co-factors because they are necessary for the enzyme to run. If you have a shortage of these items, you can slow down the process enough that it might result in illness.

If you envision an enzyme like a pac-man, whose purpose is to eat things and convert them into something else, pac-mans teeth are the vitamin co-factor

Detoxification

Why you want to detox.

Our bodies have sophisticated methods of capturing and removing harmful substances, identifying and taking out the trash. Much like the sanitation systems in our homes, each of our trillions of cells has its own waste disposal and recycling system. To keep our cities, countries and world clean and orderly the sanitation systems are not unlike our bodies own organs of disposal. Our liver, lungs, skin, and colon work to expel the waste that results from simply living. With the amount of new and weird trash that is produced in this modern world, plastics and other chemicals in such abundance, our bodies like the earth on which we live has its landfills, toxic waste buried underground and islands of trash in the middle of the ocean.  Our bodies reflect the world we live in, and both are in need of some cleansing.

How you know if you need to cleanse?

Many of us have waste disposal systems that are inefficient or overwhelmed. This can happen because we are exposed to too many toxins in our daily life and/or there is a blockage in our systems of elimination. The result is illness. Toxic overload can manifest as fatigue, immune suppression, frequent or chronic illnesses of many types. You can imagine how it would be if the sanitation systems of our cities stopped. There was a sanitation worker strike in New York City 1968 that lasted nine days.  The health implications of 100,000 tons of garbage on the streets of an intensely populated city quickly escalated into a major public health crisis, with garbage rotting in the streets and rats circulating diseases. The result was a toxic environment. A similar situation occurs in the human body when we are constipated.

To read more about the NYC garbage strike -http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,837855,00.html

The way the sanitation department of our body is organized, most of the toxins we are exposed to or that our body creates on its own are processed by our liver. The liver transforms these chemicals and makes them ready for disposal through the intestines then dumps the trash into the small intestine along with bile. In the small intestine the bile and toxic waste mixes with the food and binds to soluble fiber particles and is taken out with the poop. If the poop disposal process in slow or stopped those toxins get reabsorbed! This is bad because it increases your body’s toxic load; it is like living in a house cluttered with useless things that you keep stubbing your toe on. You are not likely to be living the most efficient and vibrant of lives when surrounded by trash. Your body realizes this and does everything it can to get these toxins out some other way. Bad breath can be attributed to waste products being discharged through the lungs. Analysis of organic compounds present in halitosis found products of colonic bacteria, namely putrescine and cadaverine. Skin problems are also improved by cleansing, as well as chronic inflammatory disorders.

Making sure that the pathways of elimination are open is essential to optimal health as well as the first step to recovering from any illness.