We’d like to welcome new contributor, Maeve Smith onto the VentnorBlog team. Maeve, who lives in Newport, is registered as a homeopath and passionate about natural therapies. Here, she offers some great advice on how to deal with the dreaded ‘flu. Ed
It’s that time of year again and we all have enough to worry about without getting the flu. There is some good news though.
Homeopathy, a natural system of medicine is effective at treating flu quickly. Below are some of the most common remedies I use every year to treat symptoms of the flu.
If you would like more information, advice or would like to buy an individualised flu remedy pack, please feel free to give me a call (contact details at the bottom).
Flu – What is it?
Influenza (flu) is caused by many different types of virus and spread by droplet infection such as sneezing and coughing. Viruses do NOT respond to antibiotics and viruses naturally mutate and evolve making them impossible to destroy completely.
Flu affects the respiratory tract and causes sore throat, cough, sometimes chest pain, muscle and bone pains, chills, fever, and headache. The symptoms can feel very strong and the person can feel very ill.
Incubation period is usually a couple of days. It can start with fever/chills and this stage can last for around 2/3 days. Full recovery can take one to two weeks and some people complain of never being the same since having flu.
Bronchitis and Pneumonia are two possible complications of flu and some people, the very young, the very old and people suffering from chronic respiratory problems such as asthma can be more vulnerable than others to a sever bout of flu.
Not everyone will succumb to flu because it is very dependent on our individual susceptibilities.
Antibiotics will not help because the symptoms of flu are viral based.
Herbal preparations and vitamins
Echinacea tincture can be very useful if taken as a immune boost one week a month throughout the flu season along with Hydrastis (Golden seal) and Cats claw. Once flu has set in these immune boosting herbs will speed up recovery but will not relieve the symptoms.
Vitamins
Vit C with bioflavanoids and zinc is also a useful immune boost helping to speed recovery but will not relieve the symptoms
Homeopathic self help options
If you take the right remedy for your symptoms it will both shorten the duration of the illness and relieve the symptoms in the same way as allopathic analgesics do. Homeopathic remedies can be taken along side herbal preparations and or conventional analgesics safely and without contraindications.
If you worry about being susceptible to a bout of flu, homeopathy has prophylactics to offer although they are no substitute to seeing a qualified homeopath and receiving individualised treatment they are helpful in many cases but not all cases because the treatment has not been individualised, to buy these you need to contact a homeopathic pharmacy such as Helios or Ainsworths and ask them for their flu prophylaxis remedy.
Alternatively you could go see a local homeopath, this also means that if you were to succumb to flu you would receive the best homeopathic care as they would already know you as a patient.
Homeopathy can work very quickly in acute cases such as flu and results can be felt soon after treatment.
In part two, we will focus on the various remedies for treating the causes of flu.
Maeve Smith LCCH RShom (Licensed & Registered with the Society of Homeopaths)
Natural Wisdom Homeopathic Practice. Tel : 01983 559006.
Images:
Influenza Virus: Cynthia Goldsmith/Content Providers: CDC/ Dr. Terrence Tumpey
Echinacea Flower: tanakawho
