I've sprinkled this topic around various areas of Lumigrate for more than one reason. 

1) It's a really strong topic and particularly good information, which applies to almost everyone in 'the world', so I want to increase the odds of people seeing it. 

2) For those who would be looking in the blog, or in the forum and section about illness and colds, flu, allergies, etc., as well as those who would be looking at the overall wellness, holistic, such as in this forum. 

3) By having similar information in a few places, you get a sense of where people are looking at topics, and that's helpful to developing and posting new information as I go along. 

And now it's mid November 2016, this topic has been on Lumigrate for seven years and a couple of months.  I found some fabulous information I wanted to add about influenza and iodine, so am putting some time in at the moment to how these topics are on Lumigrate.  I'm deciding that it's best to put the sprinkles around to mirror topics sometimes, but then figuring out after a while where most of the readers, aka YOUsers at Lumigrate, are finding it, and then embellishing ONLY at that place, but link from the other sprinkles to the 'mother ship' topic. 

Here's the link to what I'm now considering that primary thread, it's in the forum higher up in the list intended to catch the mainstream people's attention as the information is applicable to what's most popular overall -- colds, flu in this case. 

www.lumigrate.com/forum/mardy-ross-drinking-poison-cocktails-h1n1influenza-prevention-herald-tribune-reports [1]

(The Denver Post article ran on Labor Day 2009, The Herald Tribune ran it on the 22nd of September). 

This was originally a blog from October 2009, which in 2 years had well over 1,000 reads). I transferred it here in 2010 for the 2010/11 flu season so people could find it in the forums -- putting it in two different places since forums are organized by topics and this information has to do with influenza ('illness model') and overall wellness model/lifestyle.  

Now, September of 2011, we're now looking to the 2011/12 flu season and so I'm calling upon all the providers of information at Lumigrate.com to update/amend, or add to what is here!  I find it interesting to see the "adding on" of information and how things shift from one year to the next so am going to, for the time being at least, leave this as the multi-year 'stream' for people to follow.  I hope this information is read, embraced, and acted upon in terms of what YOU believe to be the way for YOU to go about the flu season and impacting or creating the wellness/illness level for yourself and those who YOU have influence with! With each provider who writes, their signature information allows you to ACT/link out to follow more about them or initiate utilizing them for individual consultations and products/services if you wish.

Please also realize how much impact YOU can have on 'health care reform' by reaching out and being an educator at one level or another to employees, family, friends, community organization members, other entities which do education and care about their productivity and availability through the winter season. IF information is good quality and something of benefit to providers to know about, the public/consumer taking that to the provider, who can then integrate that into their practice, is how Lumigrate hopes to have a significant and strong impact on health care in the long run.  Thank you for your assistance with that, if take action in that way as well as for your own health benefit. ~~ Mardy

It is mid October (2009) now and I'm hearing reports of MANY people ill with viruses: cold or flu.  I spoke with an ER provider last week who said they're seeing 3x the usual number of people and are frustrated by people coming in who didn't need to come into the ER because they had a cold virus or secondary infection from a 'cold', and not an influenza virus.  So for all: contact your local health department by phone or website if you wonder about the symptoms of influenza versus cold viruses and then what 'secondary' illnesses can happen that might need treatment if you chose to go that route (such as antibiotics).  Other clinics may have helpful websites:  Our local Primary Care Partners has a website that I was told was updated regularly about 'what we're seeing in our area (Grand Junction, Colorado), for instance.  

Let's get back to focusing on influenza (and cold) viruses.  So far what we are hearing is that H1N1 in it's current form (that has not mutated) is not being any more problematic to any one person statistically than the influenza viruses that go around every year.  There are a lot of people who have it and it does appear to be more problematic for younger than older people, which is unusual historically.  

There also are cold viruses going around, and the strategies below can work on your behalf for any type of virus.  If a person has a cold virus it is not appropriate to treat it with antibiotics unless it has gone into a 'secondary infection' such as bronchitis or there is a sinus infection; and then antibiotics are just an 'option' that is more from the 'conventional, Western medicine' aspect of health care (ConMed). There are many good resources online about ConMed you likely know if (WebMD, for instance).   CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) offers many additional things to consider which we focus on here as Lumigrate is about 'integrative medicine' and functional causes for wellness/illness.   Consult your medical provider and local health information sources (such as health department) if you have questions about any health related concerns, including influenza.

It's great if people read this BEFORE they get exposed, as these are somewhat preventative or you'll want to have them on hand.  Milton Hammerly, MD (who has taken down his website 'HealingPartners' as he is concentrating his professional efforts in a NEW direction related to hospital/medical administration and mediation), provided this information related to an article about influenza virus.  Since I can no longer give him the 'benefit' of linking to his website, I do want to deeply thank him for his input over the years; he was my FIRST 'integrative medicine' MD in Denver back in 1997 -- I'd read an article about him in The Rocky Mountain News (which is no longer in Business, The Denver Post is the only daily paper in Denver now), and he was extremely influential on how I went about health care from there forwards, and direction of my career path, which lead to my creating Lumigrate.com a decade later.  While I had done ConMed initially when getting CFS, I rapidly turned to CAM and excluded ConMed, and Dr Hammerly was the first to show me 'integration' of the two.  "Integrate" means to bring together, Lumen is to shine light upon, hence the word "Lumigrate".

Dr Hammerly wrote the following in an email to me:

"It goes without saying that the usual recommendations for good hygiene and preventive immunizations (if available, effective & safe) will reduce the likelihood of getting sick during flu season.  I'm glad to hear you're writing something that will share additional steps people can take to improve their odds of staying healthy this coming flu season.  ... Any self-care measures people can use to prevent or minimize illness could be very valuable. 

In the bigger scheme of things, self-care has an important role to play in health care reform.  Continuing down the path of passive treatments for illness, after the fact, is unsustainable and illogical."

The five interventions Dr. Hammerly suggests are:

1. Relaxation techniques lower stress response/cortisol and improve immune function
2. Vit D 1,000-2,000 IU per day compensates for the seasonal decline in sunshine we receive in fall/winter that reduces immune function
3. Umcka at the first sign of infectious symptoms to stimulate immune function, if there is no underlying autoimmune disease, shortens both duration & severity of symptoms*
4. Colostrum during flu season for passive immune support
5. It is also important to make sure you get adequate rest (7-8 hours of sleep per night) for optimal immune function.  Insufficient sleep has been shown to raise cortisol levels and lower immune function.**

Thanks, Dr. Hammerly!  Now, for people reading this, please help other people learn about this by forwarding this link to people, posting on your facebook, "Tweeting", PRINTING and taking to YOUR provider's offices to share with them and being part of the education process with the medical community, and good old-fashioned 'talking it up'!  Let's hope people stay as well as possible this flu season!  

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Mardy's notes on the above from Dr Hammerly specific to the followers of Lumigrate, from my experience:

* Umcka is a homeopathic remedy and since the time of this original posting has been included in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), I am told by a resident who suggests it to people often "particularly for kids since it's homeopathic and cannot have side effects like other medications we typically suggest and prescribe". 

Update, I was corrected on this -- I was told by the afore-mentioned resident MD that it was homeopathic, it is not, per a former homeopath who became an osteopath and leader in The Cranial Academy approach to health and wellness, teaching with Dr. Andrew Weil for the first seven years of his program at University of Arizona medical school.  She felt it would be considered more a 'tincture'.  We're all on the learning curve!

** Since sleep disruption is part of the fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue syndrome 'package', this would explain why the cold and flu seasons are particularly difficult for those who are on the spectrum for having these disorders.  In my opinion, if you're experiencing a lot of illness and that is not your 'baseline', you might want to take heed and realize YOU might be inching your way from wellness to chronic and disabling illness and look at the colds/flu as a blessing in disguise which alerts you to this and allows you to problem solve and reverse things and 'nip things in the bud', so to speak.  

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Link to the previous/first blog about flu I wrote on Lumigrate.com: 

www.lumigrate.com/blog/news-coverage-h1n1-and-health-care-generally [2]

Link to The Denver Post article by Nancy Lofholf, Western Slope Bureau Staff Writer:

www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_13284305 [3] --

Update November 13, 2016 - This article was written by the amazing reporter, Nancy Loftholm, who retired from being the western slope staff reporter for TDP in 2015.  Please take the link and read the topic on their website.  I'd happened to be introduced to her in the late summer of 2009 by someone I'd just met but she'd known in the past -- he pointed her out to me and said who she was at an event.  I was then inside near where she was purchasing items and struck up a conversation in order to get her business card -- it was just what my gut told me to do. 

Then when I saw the way mainstream media was covering the H1N1 "story" (my choice of word on that is intentional and snide, so please take it as such), I contacted her to say there was the whole other dimension of how to approach illness.  She has a particular way of writing her stories, as you'll see by going to the link to The Denver Post and reading other things she'd covered while working for them.  And my story of iodine and 'poison cocktails' was woven as the lead in and lead out of the story, or that's the way I remember it.   Now, over seven years later, what's online is different than I remember it. 

Thankfully, someone got me a paper copy of the article -- it was published on a Monday, which was Labor Day but The Post had just gone to only having papers delivered to the western slope on Sundays.  Someone I knew via Facebook was in Denver, bought a paper to read on the ride back, and provided the paper to me.  Maybe I'm wrong -- I hope so. Either way, moral to the story is don't rely upon what's electronic to not be changed.  Many in the truth movement buy old books to preserve them from being 'buried or burned' by those wanting to misinform the masses.

I'm copying and pasting the story here, or what's left of it at their website, because the wonderful reality today, in the first week after the 2016 election, is the mainstream people are increasingly realizing the mainstream media is not telling them the truth.  Or they alter the truth -- in this case, the comments that used to be on this topic are no longer there, and the story ends at a point it didn't used to end -- there was a wrap up where Nancy had asked me if I was going to take poison cocktails / iodine for the flu season, and I'd said I wasn't sure.  That's no longer there.  I regret having not 'mirrored' the article here before now. 

The mainstream media is owned by a handfull or two of mega-corporations now, having gradually bought up and therefore gotten control of what the mainstream masses are told via print, television, radio, and their Internet platforms and places.  By putting out a lot of correct information, and mixing in the misleading, incorrect information, people had to 'wake up' over the years and realize what had happened. 

The truth and information people seek, if they seek it, is on the Internet being put out by people, like me, who are striving to make TRUTH be told. But it's a learning curve, it's not as easy as turning on the radio knob or television remote button or reading a newspaper.  I was saddened to see The Denver Post take the turn it did, but am grateful that in 2009 I had an influence on this being part of what was made available to people before they changed their tune on what they included in their newspaper. 

My family of origin had a subscription to The Denver Post, it was delivered to our rural mountain box by our mailbox at the end of our long driveway, and my first recollection of seeing it was when my mother was eager for it to arrive the day after President John F Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.  She read out loud parts of it to me, and I'd look at the pictures and wish that I understood the words and asked to learn to read.  Which she accommodated. 

I feel so old, and hopefully wise or wiser now, having come 'full circle' to see this point in history and having experienced over five decades ago!  The truth community, agrees with each other on a lot of things, and one is that JFK was our last true President, who was not under the control of Those Who Should Not Be In Charge, the Cabal, the shadow government, the boys, or whatever YOU call them -- I call them 'the monkeys and their monkeybusinesses' to keep it light.  This I did not even halfway understand when I struck out to create Lumigrate, which became an Internet resource in 2009.  And this was ALL part of my process of discovery and learning.  I hope by sharing candidly with YOUsers at Lumigrate about my learning, it will help encourage any YOUsers.      

Note: I'm not updating this because of the election / media awareness, but rather I happened to find an incredible website about iodine and information about influenza last night when studying around the Internet.  And I about fell out of my chair when I saw when the research article was published -- the exact timeframe that I was being introduced to Nancy, and just prior to her writing this article!

Link to Dr. Hammerly's website: {removed by Mardy, fall of 2011, website's no longer available, see explanation, above}

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The daily glasses of milk spiked with a few drops of iodine worked in 1918 when her physician great-grandfather was treating patients during the Spanish flu epidemic.

So what’s to say they won’t help ward off H1N1?

As this quirky flu of unknown severity bears down and a vaccine remains weeks or months away from distribution, proactive people like Ross are going beyond the standard hand-washing and cough-avoiding recommendations.

They are turning to natural remedies ranging from garlic and goji berries to “swamp tea” and duck liver dilutions to fend off a flu that some still call “swine flu” because it originates in pigs.

The Internet is buzzing with remedies and concoctions from around the world:

• In Canada, the elixir of choice is swamp tea, a drink first made by aboriginal people from an herb that grows in cold climes.

• In France, it is a homeopathic dilution of duck liver that has been made there for nearly 70 years and is sold under the name oscillococcinum.

• In England, there was a recent flap over quackery when the company that supplies medicine to the royal family began selling pills labeled Swine Flu Formula. The British Medical Association warned people away from them.

Even if some of the methods are unproven or questionable, the focus on prevention is not at all misguided, say physicians who believe in using complementary medicine like vitamins and herbs along with practicing relaxation techniques like meditation and yoga.

“Chronic elevation of stress hormones makes you more susceptible to illness,” said Dr. Milton Hammerly, a medical doctor who practices integrative medicine in Denver and also coordinates integrative practices for a Denver hospital chain.

Hammerly has his own list of useful flu-ward-off supplements to go along with stress reduction.

He recommends daily doses of 1,000 to 2,000 mg of vitamin D to compensate for the fall and winter seasonal dips in that vitamin. Those dips can reduce immune function.

For those without dairy allergies, he also favors a daily dose of the bovine antibody colostrum during flu season. And if a bug takes hold anyway, at the first sign of infectious symptoms, Hammerly recommends an herbal extract formula called Umcka.

It can lessen the severity and duration of symptoms, he said, but should not be taken by people with autoimmune disorders.

“It has been shown to have a dramatic effect in real-life scenarios. And anecdotally, I can say I’ve seen good responses,” Hammerly said.

Dr. Scott Rollins, a physician specializing in integrative medicine in Grand Junction, likes astragalus, a root that has been used in China for centuries.

“It’s a great remedy,” he said of astragalus, one of many natural remedies once included in the Merck Manual, a physicians’ drug guide, before manufactured compounds took over.

Rollins also believes in the link between flu and adrenal fatigue, a theory that is still controversial among the majority of physicians.

During the 1918 flu epidemic, autopsies showed a high incidence of victims had adrenal glands that were “blown out,” Rollins said.

His partner, naturopathic physician Dr. Chris Lepisto, said there also are berry syrups, spices and roots, including turmeric and ginger, and many homeopathic remedies, including oscillococcinum, that can give the immune system a boost.

Probiotics, the bacteria that are all the rage in dairy cases and also can be found in pill form, are also a wise choice, Rollins and Lepisto say, because so much of the immune system is located in the intestines.

Finding nonprescription flu-avoidance supplements can be taxing, but Rollins recommends looking for the letters “USP,” “GNP” or “ISO” to indicate supplements have been tested by a third party and actually contain what they advertise.

In the Internet and advertising world, simply sorting through anti-flu remedies can be dicier.

As for poison cocktails using iodine?

“It does kill viruses and bacteria very well,” Rollins said. “But I just don’t know. It’s all theoretical in my mind.”

Supplements said to fight flu

All of these supplements can be found in health-food stores and in most pharmacies:

Vitamin D

Actually a hormone. Too little vitamin D can lower the immune system as well as increase the risk of heart disease, certain cancers and diabetes. Take up to 2,000 units of D in capsule form throughout cold and flu season.

Umcka

Otherwise known as pelargonium sidoides, comes from a South African geranium-family plant. This supplement should be taken at the first sign of cold or flu symptoms to lessen the severity and duration. It comes in lozenges, tinctures and powders and is suitable for children.

Colostrum

An antibody-rich secretion produced by cows following birth and prior to the production of milk. The active hormones in colostrum provide passive immune support. It should be taken in capsule or powder form during cold and flu season. Those with dairy allergies may not be able to take colostrum.

Astragalus

An immune system support supplement. It is a root extract, also called Huang qi, that has been used in China for centuries. Astragalus is believed to boost the immune system and also to have mild anti-viral properties. It is sold in capsules. People with autoimmune disorders should not take this supplement.

Oscillococcinum

A homeopathic alternative medicine developed in France more than 65 years ago. It is derived from an extremely weak dilution of duck livers. The dilution comes in a tincture or small pellets dissolved under the tongue and should be taken at the first sign of flu symptoms to lessen severity.

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The Denver Post article was also provided at The Herald Tribune on September 22, 2009, here's the link: (And there are some minor differences between what was at the Denver Post source article and what they provide -- they took out the details of what to look for in supplements per Dr Rollins as in The Denver Post article.  And since I was at the interview with Dr Rollins and Dr Lepisto, and suggested Dr Hammerly as a resource from the Front Range / other side of the mountains in the state of Colorado, since it was going to be a state-wide 'appeal' story, I wonder why they took that part out at The Herald.  Just sayin' what I'm seein'! 

 www.heraldtribune.com/news/20090922/with-h1n1-come-the-home-remedies [5]