The H1N1 Flu
Coming Soon Are You Ready?
By Polyene Mburu
H1N1 human flu viruses and the new H1N1 pig flu virus.
Flu is one of the most infectious illnesses known – one cough by an infected person can transmit the virus to a roomful of people. The disease takes up to seven days to produce symptoms that are similar to ordinary human flu – cough, sudden fever, headache, muscle pains. In severe cases, it may lead to pneumonia, multi-organ failure, and death. The incubation period for ordinary human flu is two to five days. Flu moves in ways that cannot be predicted but it does leave behind a pattern. Flu normally dies away in summer, only to return the following winter. The reasons are thought to be linked with the increase in ultraviolet light from longer days, which destroys the virus, and the fact that people spend less time huddled together indoors where it is easier to transmit the infection. The worry is that if it subsides over the summer it could return with a vengeance next winter, in a more virulent form. From a lay point of view, the statement is pretty convincing.
Is the flu in a pandemic state?
At this stage, no one knows, reports the CDC. The virus that has caused the outbreak is a strain of the H1N1 type that contains bird, pig and human genes in a combination never seen before. Immunity to it will thus be limited. Scientists are working to establish the precise nature of the virus, the symptoms it causes and its capacity to cause disease and death. The unsettling aspect of the whole affair is the fact that the gene is said to be mutating and they don’t have any ideas as to when (if at all) the mutating will stop. So what is there to do to protect against this virus?
Vaccination or Prevention?
Remember bird flu (avian flu)? What really curbed its spread? We probably never will know, but this remains true. The same health precautions taken then, still apply now. Why? Because the systems affected by the flu are the same. The following statement was presented by The Independent, a health and wellbeing open forum based in the UK, on the web “Alternative health practitioners of homeopathy, herbal remedies and nutritional medicine are recommending measures to protect against the flu. They are about as useful as a water pistol against a forest fire.”
It is true that the water pistol cannot put out a forest fire, but it can put out a lone small single fire, that single fire being you and your health. Herbal remedies do work as do the preventative measures taken. If during the summer months, when the sun is up and strong, people drink plenty of liquids, exercise more, tend to eat more fresh foods, the disease virus is said to be virtually destroyed, why wouldn’t the same principles work in colder months? Even as the skeptics’ speech seems to attack these principles which work, you have nothing to lose in their application.
So get plenty of fresh air and exercise, eat fresh foods, drink plenty of liquids (water preferably) as well as practice some hydrotherapy procedures* and still get some sun unless you live in the North Pole where this may not always be possible. Stated in four words, STRENGTHEN YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM. Finally, do not panic. Trust in God to keep you safe as you do your part in prevention as far as is reasonably and humanly possible. H1N1 does not have to stop you from living.
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