Wednesday, February 6, 2013

FLU FIGHTERS


 
It’s flu season again, and there’s no shortage of advice on how to avoid it or manage it. It’s no wonder, either, because the flu is a health hazard to be reckoned with. Some flu seasons are worse than others, but on average each year, five to 20 percent of the U.S. population will contract the flu, and more than 200,000 will be hospitalized with flu-related complications. Unfortunately, approximately 51,000 people also die from all causes related to the flu.
Practical suggestions such as washing your hands frequently, coughing or sneezing into the fold of your arm by your elbow, eating right and getting adequate exercise and sleep are all helpful.
However, you may be interested in these nutrients and studies surrounding them, too, this flu season.
For starters, probiotics are helpful to your health year-round, but a medical journal study presented results that one strain of probiotics, Bacillus coagulans, when tested, increased the body’s immune response to the flu virus. The study indicated significant increases—to the tune of 1,709 percent—in T-cell production of TNF-alpha, a key immune marker, upon exposure to influenza A in healthy adults who consumed Bacillus coagulans for 30 days. While more research is needed to see if these findings also translate into fewer hospitalizations or deaths from the flu, the researchers agree that Bacillus coagulans is a low-cost, healthy and proactive measure people can take against the flu—and it has no risks associated with it.
Interestingly, Bacillus coagulans has a strong ability to survive typical conditions—such as adverse manufacturing conditions, extreme temperature variations, and the harsh journey through the stomach and digestive tract—that can potentially kill other probiotics before their beneficial effects take place. In short, probiotics must arrive at their destination alive in order to produce their health benefits—and Bacillus coagulans is among those that can do that.
Next up is vitamin D. In the past, it’s been thought that a deficiency in vitamin D— which about 75 percent of our population has—might contribute to susceptibility to infections, including the flu. Likewise, it's known that vitamin D is what activates our immune system's T cells so that they can destroy infectious agents. Without adequate vitamin D levels, those T cells remain inactive—with no immune response—and those invaders can march right on in and gain a foothold.
Japanese researchers have taken these findings a step further and have found, in a double-blind, placebo-controlled study trial, that supplementing with vitamin D dramatically cuts the incidence of seasonal flu (influenza A) among children.
Vitamin D boosts production in white blood cells of an antimicrobial compound, called cathelicidin, which defends the body against germs, including bacteria, viruses and fungi. Cathelicidin literally “targets the bad guys,” by killing them—punching holes in the external membrane of a microbe, making its insides leak out. That’s what researchers suspect helps guard people from the flu. One researcher puts it this way: In our experiments with the white blood cells, “nothing turned on the cathelicidin gene to any degree except vitamin D. And it really turned that gene on—just cranked it up.”
More studies, of course, need to be conducted on vitamin D and its relation to the flu, but vitamin D also poses no risks to people.
In the meantime, those are just a couple of “flu fighters” you might want to look further into.


Copyright © 2013 <%PortalName%>

This information is intended for educational and informational purposes only. It should not be used in place of an individual consultation or examination or replace the advice of your health care professional and should not be relied upon to determine diagnosis or course of treatment.

Garden of Life- Jordan Rubin
http://www.extraordinaryhealth.com/Article-Landing-Page/Extraordinary-Health-Newsletter-February-6-2013/ContentPubID/974.aspx

How to Use Baking Soda and Vinegar TOGETHER to Get Great Cleaning Results

I failed to mention in my post yesterday the awesome power of baking soda and vinegar in drain cleaning.
The plan was to mention that today as some big surprise. (Surprise!)
Instead, some of you got all ahead of things and started telling the secrets. Thus, I share as a bit of a lag-behind. You people are so crunchy, I can’t even keep up with you.

Unclog Your Drain With Baking Soda and Vinegar

In my last apartment, we had a super finicky bathtub drain. Going one week between “maintenance cleaning outs” was enough to land me in ankle-deep water before I even had a chance to shave my legs.
I sadly say that this is not a way to unclog very troublesome drains. But it is a great way to keep on top of a slow-moving drain or after you’ve used an oil/sugar scrub (which I’ve noticed tends to increase the likelihood of future clogging).
Don’t even get me started, though, on how ecofriendly baking soda and vinegar drain cleaner is, compared to
DranoLiquid Plumranything you buy at the store. And with a little bit of extra elbow grease and a plunger, you can use them to unclog the toughest drains. It just takes a while.
But here’s how you do it the easy way (before your drain becomes a clog monster):
How to Unclog A Drain With Baking Soda and Vinegar
  • Pour a pot of boiling hot water down your drain.
  • Dump in about 1/2 c. baking soda. Let that sit for a few minutes.
  • Then, pour a mixture of 1 c. vinegar and 1. c very hot water down on top of the baking soda.
  • Cover with a drain plug (to keep the reaction down below the drain surface) if you have one and let it sit for 5-10 minutes.
  • Flush one more time with a pot of boiling water.
Why this works: The baking soda and hot water treatment will loosen up any grimy sludge that’s hanging out at the bottom of your drain, and the explosive chemical reaction with the vinegar will jolt it all loose. Then one final super hot-water rinse will make all the bad stuff go bye-bye.


Baking Soda and Vinegar Garbage Disposal Magic

Tossing citrus peels in your garbage disposal keeps it smelling like freshly poured sunshine, but every once in a while, when someone puts onions in there and leaves them when they’re not supposed to, you might need a little extra help.
This is where you utilize the baking soda and vinegar goodness, as well.
How to freshen and clean your garbage disposal with BS/V:
  • Start by running hot water through your garbage disposal for a minute.
  • Pour about 1/4 c. baking soda into the drain.
  • Flip the garbage disposal on for 2 seconds, just to whirl the baking soda inside, and then leave it alone for 10-15 minutes.
  • Follow with 1 c. of vinegar. Watch the bubbles erupt out of your drain. (Yay!)
  • Rinse through one last time with very hot water and run your garbage disposal for 5 seconds.
Why this works: The baking soda and hot water (left in to soak for 15-20 minutes) will deodorize your drain like nobody’s business. And the vinegar volcano on top of all that will help dislodge any stuck pieces of food in the crevices, thereby releasing any potential future stinkiness.

The Baking Soda/Vinegar Issue In a Nutshell

The hard and fast rule to remember when cleaning with baking soda and vinegar:
Don’t mix baking soda and vinegar together, store them, and then expect them to work. But DO harness their explosive chemical reaction when immediate fizzy bubbles are needed to do some deep, impossible-to-reach drain scrubbing.
And I think that concludes everything we need to know about working with alkaline baking soda and acidic vinegar in cleaning.

Source: http://www.crunchybetty.com/clean-your-drains-with-baking-soda-and-vinegar-surprise