Beating the Flu: The Natural Prescription for Surviving Pandemic Influenza and Bird Flu

ALSO BY J.E. WILLIAMS

   Viral Immunity

Prolonging Health

The Andean Codex

Beating

the

Flu

The Natural Prescription

for Surviving Pandemic

Influenza and Bird Flu

J.E. Williams, O.M.D.

Copyright © 2006

by J. E. Williams, O.M.D.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this

work in any form whatsoever, without permission

in writing from the publisher, except for brief passages

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Cover design by Steve Amarillo

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Williams, J. E. (James Eugene), 1949-

Beating the flu : the prescription for surviving pandemic influenza and bird flu naturally I J.E. Williams.

     p.cm.

Summary: Dr. J. E. Williams examines the bird flu and offers advice for avoiding it, as well as steps for overcoming the virus should you contract it. Dr. Williams argues that due to a shortage in antiviral pharmaceutical drugs, natural medicines will play a crucial role in minimizing the outbreak--Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references (p.    ).

ISBN 1-57174-507-6 (5 1/2 × 8 1/2 tp : alk. paper)

I. Avian influenza--Prevention. 2. Avian influenza--Treatment. 3. Avian influenza--Alternative treatment. I. Title.

RA644.I6W55 2006

614.5'18--dc22

2006016710

ISBN 1-57174-507-6

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed on acid-free paper in the United States

DISCLAIMER

This book is written as a source of information to educate the reader. It is not intended to replace medical advice or care, whether provided by a primary care physician, specialist, or other healthcare professional including a licensed alternative medical practitioner. Please consult your doctor before beginning any new medications, diet, nutrients, or any form of health program. Dosages are given in ranges for the average adult and are to be used as guidelines only. Effects from any medications can vary widely from person to person, and applications must be adjusted to meet individual requirements.

The author has spent a great deal of time and energy supporting the information contained in this book with published documentation; however, this research is not intended to be used as justification for any of the recommendations contained in this book. The author has no financial ties to any of the products, clinics, services, or medications cited in the text or listed in the resource guide.

Neither the author nor the publisher shall be liable or responsible for any adverse effects arising from the use or application of any of the information contained herein, nor do they guarantee that everyone will benefit or be healed by these techniques or practices, nor are they responsible if individuals do not so benefit.

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction: What You Will Learn in This Book

Chapter-by-Chapter Overview • Additional Material to Help You Beat the Flu • Author's Note on Citations

PART I—THE DANGER: PANDEMIC

INFLUENZA AND INADEQUATE PROTECTION

1. Phase Seven: The Makings of a Super Flu

What's a Pandemic? • The Infection of the World • What Makes a Super Flu? • Are We Prepared?

2. The Perfect Plague: Why Influenza May Be Nature's Most Successful Virus

What's Influenza? • What Causes the Flu? • Symptoms of the Flu • Is It a Cold or the Flu? • How Is the Flu Diagnosed? • What's the Conventional Medical Treatment for Flu? • What Are the Complications of the Flu?

3. Masters of Mutation: How Viruses Evolve and Make Us Sick

What's a Virus? • How and Why Do Viruses Mutate? • Pass the Genes • To Drift or Shift • How Efficient Is Influenza at Making Us Sick? • The China Connection • The Environmental Dimension

4. Prelude to a Pandemic: Why H5N1 Avian Influenza Is So Dangerous

What's the Bird Flu? • How Can a Chicken Virus Infect People? • How Sick Can You Get? • How Fast Does Bird Flu Spread? • Year of the Bird Flu

5. Run and Hide: The Shortcomings of Quarantine and the Importance of Avoidance

Are We Ready for a Pandemic Super Flu? • Quarantine • Isolation • Meeting the Global Challenge of a Super Flu Pandemic

6. Flu Wars: The Double-Edged Sword of Vaccination and Antiviral Drugs

Vaccines • From Hen to Hospital • Antiviral Drugs • Is There Anything Else? • Overkill

7. Lessons from SARS: What We Learned from an Epidemic

From Plate to People • All in the Mix • The Chinese Medicine Experience • What Did We Learn?

PART II—THE SOLUTION:

NATURAL PRESCRIPTIONS FOR SURVIVAL

8. Viral Immunity: Enhance Your Body's Defenses against the Flu

What's Viral Immunity? • Who's Most at Risk? • Bird Flu Immune Alert • Build Up Your Immunity • Natural Immune Modulators

9. The Food Factor: Kitchen Health to Beat the Flu

Chicken Soup • Umeboshi Plums • Kimchi • Garlic and Onions • Green Tea • Flu-Fighting Condiments, Flavorings, and Spices

10. Natural Flu Solutions: How to Beat the Flu Using Natural Medicines

Evidence-Based Natural Medicine • Beating the Flu Naturally • Immune-Boosting Antiviral Supplements • Vitamins and Minerals to Help Beat the Flu • Natural Antibiotics • Antiviral and Anti-inflammatory Herbal Medicines • Broadspectrum Anti-Influenza Herbal Remedies • Antiviral Homeopathic Medicines • Traditional Chinese Antiviral Herbal Medicines

11. Maximize Your Strategy to Beat the Flu: Doctor-Assisted Solutions

Opening Nature's Medicine Chest: Biological Immunotherapies • Intranasal Mists and Nebulizers • Injectable Homeopathic Medicines • Injectable Chinese Herbal Medicines • Blood Purification: The Hemopurifier

12. Outsmart the Flu: The Importance of Personal Preparedness

Personal Hygiene: Your Best Chance • Action Tips • Emergency Preparation • Prevention • Recognition of Flu Symptoms • Early Intervention • Know the Right Treatment

13. Family Matters: Taking Care of Children and Seniors

Protecting Your Children • Care and Treatment of Seniors

14. Survive and Recover: A Plan to Beat the Flu

A Comprehensive Approach • Anti-Flu Prescription 1: A Healthy Foundation • Anti-Flu Prescription 2: Early Treatment • Anti-Flu Prescription 3: Maximum Intervention • Anti-Flu Prescription 4: Full-Spectrum Therapy • Anti-Flu Prescription 5: Healing and Recovery

Acknowledgments

Resources

Glossary

Selected Bibliography

Index

PREFACE

My intention in writing this book is to teach you how to beat the flu and survive pandemic influenza. I want you to take the bird flu situation seriously, but not panic. It's important to understand that your survival is not in the hands of fate, or governments, or multinational pharmaceutical companies. It's in your own hands. If you apply the simple, concrete, evidence-based natural solutions in this book in a timely manner, you will be prepared when the plague comes.

But before I discuss how to beat the flu, I'd like to tell you about me. For 35 years, I've espoused and practiced, in my research, clinical work, teaching, and personal pursuits, a way of life that proposes that biology and the practice of medicine be tempered with a reverence for nature and respect for intuition. Deep inquiry with an open, scientific mind and a true integrative medical approach is the answer to the questions confronting us as we draw the final battle line between disease and survival.

As a doctor of Oriental medicine, I've visited and studied in China and Hong Kong, the birthplace of influenza virus, since 1986. I know the profile of the virus and how it's treated by Western and traditional Chinese medicine. With more than 20 years of clinical experience, I learned its character and how the body responds to treatment. Because I recognized the seriousness of viral respiratory illness from my studies, travels, and clinical experience, more than a decade ago I started advising the public about the perils of an influenza pandemic. To teach people about viruses, I wrote an entire book, Viral Immunity (2002), about how to enhance your immune system to prevent and treat viral infections. To inform doctors so they are better able to help their patients, I published numerous papers and lectured at medical conferences on viral illnesses, viral immunity, and how to strengthen mucosal immunity against viral infection (the mucous membranes are the major viral entry portal).

The danger is real. No longer restricted to the exaggerated plots of bestselling novels and Hollywood movies, the possibility of a super flu pandemic is well within the realm of possibility.

The possibility is frightening. A pandemic super flu (an extremely deadly flu against which no one has natural immunity) could cover the globe in 250 days and conceivably infect 20 percent or more of the world's population of 6.6 billion. Extrapolating estimated deaths from 1918 mortality rates and factoring in human fatalities in Southeast Asia from bird flu in 2005, the death toll could reach an apocalyptic 360 million. Some say higher.

The problem is complicated and frightening. Influenza virus, one of our most ancient microbial adversaries, has evolved side by side with humans and, over the millennia, has learned to exploit weaknesses in our defenses to make us sick. It can outsmart our immune system, resist the drugs we've invented to kill it, and elude vaccines we employ to stimulate our immune systems to recognize it.

Avian influenza viruses are native to southern China, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asian countries, including Thailand and Vietnam. This humid tropical region where humans and domestic farm animals have lived in close proximity for thousands of years is the perfect incubator for microbes. Even ordinary flu starts among chickens and domestic waterfowl such as ducks and geese. It doesn't stay there, however. Influenza virus can jump to pigs and horses, and even people. Once in humans, it mutates rapidly into a pathogenic virus that spreads easily from person to person. Subsistence farmers will not easily change traditional farming practices and, until they do, megaviruses will continue to brew in China.

Conventional medicine and doctors are unprepared for a powerful and deadly flu pandemic. Until recently, doctors didn't treat commonly occurring viruses that cause a cold or the flu because the body's immune system neutralizes them better than drugs do. Ordinary flu, a nuisance disease to most of us, plays itself out in the body within a few weeks. A cold is over in about one week. Seasonal flu generally retains virulence for no more than several months during the average winter cold and flu season from November to April. By summer, it's gone.

Emerging influenza strains like H5N 1 avian influenza, however, are not your ordinary flu. These new influenzas are highly contagious, cause horrific symptoms, and can kill within hours after infection.

To fight viral infections, the current biomedical paradigm uses expensive drugs and immunizations that are not effective, have potentially serious side effects, and are in short supply. The big pharmaceutical companies want us to believe that they're just a few years away from finding a cure. But can we trust the same companies that for decades have been promising a cure for cancer and an AIDS vaccine?

The solution is in our hands. Though influenza, in any of its many manifestations like the bird flu, can become a deadly human infection and there's no cure, there are ways to prevent and treat it using natural medicine. Natural medicines have a long history of successfully treating viral infections and there is now scientific evidence confirming their usefulness. Traditional Chinese medicine has been successfully treating influenza for thousands of years and in recent years has added scientifically proven antiviral herbal extracts to its medicine chest. European scientists have developed natural medicines manufactured to pharmaceutical standards. Herbs, vitamins and minerals, and natural biological compounds that activate the immune system's defenses can serve as part of an integrated prescription for beating pandemic influenza. In this way, you improve your chances of survival and those of your family and loved ones in the event of an influenza pandemic.

I care passionately about nature, the planet, global health, and the well-being of individual people. If I didn't, I wouldn't have spent decades and my own resources studying and practicing natural ways of health. My intention with this book is to share some of what I've learned and give you the power to beat the flu by putting true knowledge in your hands.

In the aftermath of a super flu pandemic, not only will individual people, perhaps even some of your family among them, require healing, but society and the entire world will need a time of recovery and introspection. It is my sincere hope that an influenza pandemic doesn't come soon, and when it does, that it's mild and not a super flu. Unfortunately, the likelihood that a pandemic will come is high. The bird flu has the potential to transform into a human flu and take pandemic form. If that happens, it is my wish that this book will have prepared you well.

To our survival and healing,

J. E. Williams, O.M.D., F.A.A.I.M.

INTRODUCTION

What You Will Learn in This Book

This book advises a sensible approach to immunization and antiviral drugs, and teaches you the best natural medicines to beat the flu. In it you will learn how to prevent infection and protect yourself and your family from the ravages of influenza.

Along the way in Beating the Flu, you will learn:

WHY THE EXPERTS AGREE THAT WE ARE IN FOR A FLU PANDEMIC AND POSSIBLY ONE OF EPIC PROPORTIONS.

WHERE INFLUENZA VIRUS ORIGINATES FROM AND WHAT TURNS A NUISANCE ILLNESS INTO A DEADLY DISEASE.

HOW VIRUSES MUTATE AND WHAT LESSONS WE'VE LEARNED FROM RECENT OUTBREAKS LIKE SARS AND PAST BIRD FLU PANDEMICS LIKE THE SPANISH FLU OF 1918.

WHAT BIRD FLU IS AND WHY IT'S SUCH AN OMINOUS DISEASE.

WHY VACCINES AND ANTIVIRAL DRUGS DON'T WORK AS WELL AS WE'RE LED TO BELIEVE, AND WHY THEY MIGHT NOT WORK AT ALL.

HOW TO STRENGTHEN YOUR BODY'S VIRAL IMMUNITY TO BEAT THE FLU.

WHICH FOODS ARE THE BEST FLU FIGHTERS.

WHAT ARE THE BEST IMMUNE-BOOSTING SUBSTANCES TO COUNTER THE FLU.

HOW TO USE THE MOST EFFECTIVE HERBAL, HOMEOPATHIC, AND OTHER NATURAL MEDICINES FOR BEATING THE FLU.

HOW TO OUTSMART THE FLU BY PERSONAL PREPAREDNESS.

WHY BIRD FLU SEEMS TO SELECT CHILDREN AND HOW TO PROTECT YOUR FAMILY FROM PANDEMIC INFLUENZA.

FIVE NATURAL PRESCRIPTIONS TO BEAT PANDEMIC INFLUENZA.

Part I explains the danger. You will learn what causes the flu and the difference between ordinary flu and pandemic influenza. I discuss bird flu and why it could potentially become a human plague. I also explain how to use antiviral drugs and vaccination wisely, but caution that they may not work as well as pharmaceutical companies want us to believe they will.

Part II provides the solution. In this section of the book, I provide detailed information on how to protect yourself and your family from getting sick, what to do should you fall ill, and the best natural treatments. Drawing on my research and clinical experience, I provide you with five natural-medicine prescriptions. I put the knowledge, tools, and resources into your hands to help you beat the flu and survive a pandemic.

CHAPTER-BY-CHAPTER OVERVIEW

Chapter 1 explains the nature of pandemics, the seriousness of the world's viral health situation, and what governments and public health agencies are doing to protect us from an influenza pandemic. Here, I discuss the potential of the appearance of a super flu, an influenza pandemic so catastrophic that it's beyond the capacity of scientists to conceive of and medical experts to deal with.

In Chapter 2, you learn about influenza virus, why viruses are becoming more lethal, and why antiviral drugs make them smarter. The difference between cold and flu is explained so you can better understand symptoms should you get sick. There's also an explanation of the difference between ordinary flu and the symptoms of a super flu.

Chapter 3 explains how influenza virus evolves and mutates into deadly strains. I discuss what a virus is, how they jump from animals to humans, and how a pandemic gets going. I also talk about the environmental dimension and ecological implications of an influenza pandemic.

Chapter 4 is specifically about avian influenza, H5Nl bird flu. I define what bird flu is and why it is the most likely virus to become a pandemic disease. In this chapter, I explain how sick you can get and just how fast a pandemic can spread globally and in your community.

In Chapter 5, you learn who the main targets and carriers of influenza are, and how to steer