It's Not Too Late To Get Ready For Flu Season

Throughout the United States, flu is at epidemic levels. Forty-seven of the fifty states report widespread cases of the flu, and hundreds of thousands of people are flooding emergency rooms and hospitals for treatment. Flu vaccine is in short supply everywhere and completely unavailable in some cities, and even standard medications like Tamiflu are hard to find.

If you have not caught the flu yet, however, there are at least five things you can do to avoid coming down with an infection. And even if you have the flu, there are at least seven things you can to do get well faster. Here's the rundown.

Five Things You Can Do to Avoid Catching the Flu

1. Wipe your desk, landline telephone receiver, door knobs, and counter tops every time you use them.

Surprisingly, a single wipe with a clean cloth moistened with water, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control in the Netherlands tell us, removes 99.99% of influenza viruses. A second wipe with a moist clean cloth removes 99.9% of any viruses that may remain.

Water, it turns out, is just as effective for virus control as liquid soap or Clorox (chlorine bleach). Just remember that once a cloth has been used to sanitize a surface, it is no longer clean.

2. Don't worry about surfaces that were contaminated more than 24 hours ago. Focus on cleaning surfaces that have been recently contaminated.

3. Keep your distance after someone who has the flu sneezes without covering his or her face.

Researchers at Virginia Tech University in the USA tell us that the aerosol released by a sneeze can remain suspended in the air around someone who is sick for up to 24 hours, surviving on the microscopic particles of mucus floating in the air. The scientists estimate that a non-infected person standing in the vicinity of the sneeze breathes in enough flu virus to have a 50% chance of catching the flu in just two minutes.

Someone who spends an hour in the area of a sick person who sneezes inhales 30 times as much virus as is needed to cause the flu. Someone who spends all day (8 hours) in the same room as someone who has the flu inhales nearly 250 times as much virus as is needed to cause him or her to come down with the flu. The sooner you get away from a sneezy, wheezy person who isn't concerned about sanitation, the better. There is far more flu virus in the air than on surfaces in a sick room.

4. Be especially vigilant with your flu precautions just before a cold snap and just after.

The reason the flu virus goes around during the winter rather than during the summer is that almost all strains of influenza are killed by air temperatures over 20 degrees C (68 degrees F). The virus literally goes south during the North Hemisphere's summer to cause epidemics in Africa, Australia, and South America, and then spreads to the North America, Europe, and Asia six months later. 

Freezing air also deactivates the virus. You are most likely to catch the virus when the weather is changing, or in a cool, but not hot, room indoors.

5. Don't be overly concerned about shaking hands during flu season.

Seven Things To Do If You Can't Get Tamiflu

1. Take vitamin C.

According to doctors writing in the medical journal Canadian Family Physician, taking up to 2,000 mg of vitamin C will reduce your risk of coming down to the flu, especially if you are also experiencing cold stress, that is, if you are exposed to the virus after spending time outdoors in the cold or your furnace is not working very well.

Taking more than 2,000 mg of vitamin C won't really do you any additional good.

It's best to take vitamin C on a regular basis or at least as soon as you suspect you have been exposed to flu. Ideally, you should take a lozenge form of vitamin C, which ensures that the vitamin coats your mucous membranes, as well as a vitamin C pill.

2. Take echinacea.

3. Skip the zinc.

4. Take elderberry (Sambucus nigra L.) extract from the very beginning of flu season.

Elderberry extract contains polysaccharides that have a unique molecular configuration that blocks the receptor sites the flu virus uses to get inside cells in the nose and throat. Taking Sambucol can both reduce your chances of getting the flu and help you get well faster if you do.

If you live in the European Union, you can get a product called Sinupret, which contains elder flower and other herbs. This product isn't quite as useful for preventing and treating influenza, but it helps protect you from a wide range of other common winter viruses.

5. Eat button mushrooms.

6. Eat chicken soup.

Eating chicken soup to treat colds and flu isn't just an old wife's tale. If the chicken stock is slowly simmered with herbs and vegetables on the stove for at least 8 hours, it forms unique, colloidal particles that activate a kind of white blood cell known as a neutrophil. These white blood cells help "clean out" the sinuses and bronchial passages after infection sets in. Unfortunately, eating chicken soup won't keep you from coming down with either a cold or the flu.

7. Don't feed a cold, and don't starve a fever - or vice versa.