Fight the Flu – The Missing Link Nobody Talks About

Here is another health blog brought to you by the Queen of Nutrition Ann Louise Gittleman. This is by far the most important piece and everyone should take this into account when trying to fight the flu.

Sleep Is Critical to Healthy Immunity.

People exposed to a respiratory virus are three times more likely to get sick if they get less than seven hours of sleep at night, a recent study finds. Trouble is most Americans only sleep about six and a half hours—one hour less a night than we slept in the ’50s.

News from scientists at the University of Chicago and at NIH in Washington DC is even more sobering. We actually need nine and a half hours of sleep at night for at least seven months out of the year—preferably between October and June—for healthy immunity.

“Maintaining the immune system may be the reason sleep has evolved,” explains Brian Preston, PhD, a researcher at Germany’s Max Planck Institute. Mammals that sleep the longest have six times the immune cells as those that sleep less.

Besides fighting the flu, nature’s “missing link”—sleep—helps your immune system ward off diabetes, heart disease, cancer, obesity, and severe depression. Lack of sleep even disturbs normal brain activity and vision, causing over 100,000 car accidents a year.

Now that we’re plugged in 24/7 with our iPhones and iPods, who wants to sleep when you can check your emails, chat with friends, and text the world—anytime of night? Talk about unremitting stress!

When we turn our clocks back next week to end daylight savings, we also disturb the body’s internal clock. This throws off our natural sleep-wake cycle and impacts hormones like cortisol and melatonin that influence this critical “missing link.”

Dr. Ann Louise’s Take:

The most dramatic event humans have experienced happened less than 80 years ago. Electricity and bright lights at night have changed us forever.

When it’s dark, the body naturally produces the hormone melatonin to ready your system for sleep and help you snooze through the night. Five times stronger than vitamin C, melatonin is a potent antioxidant that controls immunity.

What to Do?

Exercise outdoors in the sun to boost melatonin. Start dimming lights when the sun goes down to ready your body for sleep. I even wear special amber glasses to knock out the melatonin-blocking rays from blue light.

When I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I use special nightlights that block blue rays. Don’t flick on those strong overhead lights because they’ll zap your melatonin and you won’t be able to get back to sleep. Taking 3 to 15 mg of melatonin a night can also be helpful.

Balance Hormones

Other hormones also impact how well women sleep. Starting in puberty, fluctuating hormone levels make females two and a half times more likely than males to suffer insomnia.

During perimenopause and menopause hot flashes disrupt women’s sleep. (We all sleep more soundly when we’re slightly cool.) Progesterone is the hormone that helps women sleep well in the first and second trimesters of pregnancy—before heartburn, leg cramps, and frequent urination disturb sleep.

Chill Out

Unfortunately, the female hormone estrogen raises levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Women have higher levels of this stress hormone when estrogen rises during their menstrual cycle—but progesterone helps even cortisol out and improves sleep.

It’s important to relax at night for sound sleep—so turn off those scary news stories about swine flu. I also recommend Adrenal Formula to combat stress in today’s 24/7 lifestyle.

The Bottom Line

Stack those Zzz’s to stay healthy—especially in cold and flu season when your immune system needs all the help it can get. Take 400 mg of Magnesium before you go to bed. I rotate between melatonin, tryptophan—the precursor for relaxing serotonin—and magnesium.

Sources:

http://www.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=632118
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19840243
http://discovermagazine.com/2009/apr/22-new-theory-about-why-sleep-maintain-immune-system

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Another View of the Flu

posted by Wendy Strgar Oct 26, 2009 1:10 pm

The fear of the swine flu epidemic is gradually being replaced by the reality of it landing at home. I am not proud to admit that my children were the first to be diagnosed at their school in the first weeks of school and the last weeks of our Oregon Indian summer. As the final days of warm sunny weather teased, my children lay in bed too sick to notice. Thus far we have been through three versions of the swine, and the varied symptoms have taken on the colloquial “he’s swining big time” as all of their friends fall like dominoes to the illness. And although most of October is a blur of home remedies, I am relieved to not be worried about getting it anymore.

This is not to make light of the rare cases in which immune deficiency has real and frightening costs. There are enough exceptions to the typical swine course and an alarming number of secondary infections that warrant careful attention. Still, with the continuous mass media warnings and the mass of flu shots being distributed without full testing, it is easy to see how panic can build.

Treating this new illness with love, which is to say the opposite of fear, might provide some insights and maybe even make the experience a teacher. This flu infection moves fast and goes into the chest deeply. This is a time to protect and love the immune system by applying all of the standard wellness advice about eating well, sleeping enough and getting regular exercise and fresh air. Supplementing with multi-vitamins, Vitamin C and Vitamin D3 as well as herbal formulas like Echinacea is another effective way to support your immune system. My three favorite natural remedies for this flu which were really effective for all my kids included Nature’s Way Umcka (preferred flavors were cherry and berry), Boiron’s Oscillococccinum homeopathic formula, and Wellness Formula. For the record, I have never gotten any free bottles of these products for all the support I give them–they just work.

Yet, even with all the remedies I had on hand, once in the system, the flu progressed and all my kids got sicker. Their fevers spiked high for the first couple of days and our home became the center of life again in the way it is on holidays. The schedule was off, no one was going anywhere and they all wanted company and assurances. It had been years since I lay in bed for an afternoon nap with any of my children as they are all in their teens, but this week the swine flu had us in bed falling asleep in the early afternoon light of autumn.

I welled up with the tenderness of the moment, as I lay next to my son, his hand in mine, and reflected that this might well be the last time I held my adolescent son’s hand as he fell asleep beside me. Even my high school senior had all his hard edges soften as we went through several linen changes per day. He was contemplative and wanted to share his thoughts, giving me a chance to hear him as I hadn’t in months. My youngest daughter curled around me and held onto me like an anchor to life through her feverish nights.

Don’t get me wrong, the swine flu is a tenacious and lively virus. It takes days after you are well to really get over it and doing too much can easily lead to relapse, but given its proper respect, this flu can also put things in perspective.

Dealing with any illness forces you recognize that the central axis of life is health. There really is nothing else that life can give us or that we can give it, without the amazing and often taken for granted experience of well being. The day my 13-year-old son left the house again after five days of confinement, he exclaimed at the color of the trees, the bigness of the fields and skies. It was like watching him see it for the first time. Illness reorganizes our priorities and focuses our attention on the pieces of life that matter most. The tenderness of life is always right next to us. Illness sets that tenderness apart, holds it up to the light of day. If we are lucky we don’t just get well, we get fresh eyes to see how well we really are.

For more on H1N1, see the Care2 Swine Flu Project.

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