Halloween is pretty much the perfect recipe for being a kick-ass team player in flu season. Pretty much everything about it is the equivalent of suiting up to be team captain, or maybe lead cheerleader of team flu. So if you want to play, dust off those pom poms, air out the jock, here are 5 easy ways to get you and your familicious on that team this month.
1. Eat Candy and/or Booze It Up
Now I am not talking about one or two candy bars or drinks the night of Halloween, maybe a treat the next day and then being done with it. If you want on the flu team, you should think about having a piece of candy/cake/alchy bevvy with or after every meal, tucked in to your lunch bag, a little sweet greeting when you arrive home, and maybe a night cap of a Kit Kat. You worked hard on Halloween to collect all that candy, so you better eat it and kick that immune system to the ground!
In the 1970′s researchers found out that vitamin C was needed by white blood cells so that they could devour viruses and bacteria. White blood cells require a 50 times higher concentration inside the cell as outside so they have to accumulate vitamin C. Glucose (aka sugar) and vitamin C have similar chemical structures, so when the sugar levels go up in the body, they compete for entry into the cell. What regulates the entry of glucose into the cells is the same thing that regulates the entry of vitamin C. If there is more glucose around, there is going to be less vitamin C allowed in and it doesn’t take much: a blood sugar value of 120 reduces the phagocytic index by 75%. So when you eat sugar, think of your immune system slowing down to a crawl.
2. Stay Out Really Late and Lose Sleep
You can’t make up sleep. Not really. You can sleep in, you can rest, but insufficient sleep has already begun to weaken immune function. When we have the flu, we feel our best in the morning, after we have “rested.” Symptoms tend to worsen by afternoon and then we improve again after good sleep. Does sleep actually supress infection and boost immune function? As it turns out when animals are sleep deprived, a protein known as di-muramyl peptide, derived from bacteria in the body, accumulates in their spinal fluid. This suggests that sleep deprivation could enable bacterial growth. An additional IYC (if you care) on the matter is that these di-muramyl peptides also cause fever. (If you want to read more about the peptides and B Lymphocytes, all things fascinating to me but maybe not to you, check it out here).
You might of course be saying, but Meghan! The flu is a virus, not a bacteria. True but weakened immune function is weakened immune function no matter how it gets weakened. So the best thing you can do is stay out late drinking, which will strip your body of vital nutrient, let the sugars in alcohol displace the vitamin C, then get as few hours of sleep as possible and follow it up with a coffee and some fried foods and starch. This might earn you a spot as MVP on the Sicky Sick Flu Team!
3. Take On More Than You Can Handle
This is my personal speciality. It seems that chronic stress impairs the immune system’s capacity to respond to glucocorticoid hormones that normally are responsible for terminating an inflammatory response following infection and/or injury. Psychological stress (which, lets face it, is largely self-induced) raises catecholamine (‘fight or flight’ hormones), which suppresses the immune system, thus raising the risk of viral infection. Why stop there? “Stress also leads to the release of histamines, which can trigger severe broncoconstriction in asthmatics. Stress increases the risk for diabetes mellitus, especially in overweight individuals, since psychological stress alters insulin needs. Psychological stress also alters the acid concentration in the stomach, which can lead to peptic ulcers, stress ulcers, or ulcerative colitis. Chronic stress can also lead to plaque buildup in the arteries, especially if combined with a high-fat diet. This buildup is called atherosclerosis, and is often responsible for angina or heart attacks, which are usually brought on by acute stress themselves”. (http://www.econ.uiuc.edu/~hanko/Bio/stress.html).
So keep saying yes to everything, do more than anyone believes is humanly possibly and then continue telling everyone all about how stressed you are and about the drama in your life so you can continue to relive the stress and you are shoe-in to win the Flu Season Olympics.
4. Forgo All Hygiene Practices
Right so basically for this easy step to catching the flu, the idea is to touch as much stuff as you can- hand railings, door handles (especially the bathroom kind), handles on public transit vehicles- you get the idea. You also want to do your best to breathe deeply when in confined spaces with lots of people, invade others’ personal space and a really great one, eat a lot of raw food from questionably clean restaurants (or perhaps all of them for that matter, at this time). So do all these things, and never wash your hands. You also want to never blow your nose or even worse would be rinsing your nasal passages with warm water and salt, nettie pot style. Take notes my friends, touch lots of stuff, then touch yourself all over, especially mouth, nose, eyes and ears.
5. Line Up for Hours on End In The Rain with Other People Who Believe Themselves To Be High Risk of The Flu in Order to Receive a Vaccine for a Pandemic That Is Neither Pan Nor Demic But Has Simply Been Awesomely Hyped By The Media Using The Usual Flavour of The Month: Scare Tactics.
I was in a little fender bender earlier in the week (not my fault at all) and the advice form my insurance company was to go get a report written by my family doctor. You know I tied my shoes up right then, got myself under-dressed for cold rainy, autumn weather and ran over to her office so I could hang around with thousands of people, who had likely been up since dawn, lining up for their flu vaccine. Nothing better to help us ensure we catch the flu than by spending extended periods of time, while under slept, eating convenience snack foods, standing in the rain, and using overused public toilets with crowds of people. Bring on the flu!
(Comic courtesy of http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/archive/2009/10/30/live-blogging-from-the-h1n1-lineup-the-wait-began-for-some-at-4-a-m.aspx
This is such a great post Meghan. It’s been amazing to me since I’ve been doing a plant-based diet for 3 months that my “want” for sweet stuff has decreased SO much!! A blessing in disguise that I didn’t even realize would happen! I had 2 peices of halloween candy that night, and honestly even that seemed like too much afterwards!
I’m learning so much from you!!
oh, so true.
Hehe, I’m posting this everywhere!
#5 especially. I can’t believe how many people I saw lining up the other morning in the cold and wind and rain to stand around for hours! The worst part was, the majority of them had small children in strollers with them. I mean come on people!
Brilliant!
amazing post- really breaks it down! i don’t think i am going to get the vaccine- too new and too hyped.
Thank goodness someone said it! Seriously.
Thank you Meghan!
Very good perspective. I enjoyed it thoroughly!
Love this!!
You are great!
P.S. I was in a little fender bender last week as well, not my fault either! I was hit by a new driver..
FANTASTIC post Meghan…common sense delivered in a way that is not at all overwhelming! I am posting it on facebook and twitter right now! Thanks.
Haha, nice. It’s a funny holiday, isn’t it? It’s one of my faves (I love dressing up), but I agree that the pillowcase FULL of candy is a little excessive. Interesting about vitamin C and glucose competing…I never knew that and I think that’s one of those things you can tell people/clients that makes a lightbulb go off and gives a clear incentive to eat less sugar.
I also did a post on H1N1/immune boosting…I wanted to stay away from the topic because it is SOO hyped up, but people are getting so much from the other side that I wanted to speak up and share my opinion too. I think it’s great that you’re doing so too, but in an ironic, humourous way
Hope you had a happy Halloween!
Love it, love it, love it! Your humorous writing style is awesome! I posted this on my facebook page. Will be interesting to see who joins the “flu team” in a few days, with all the loads of candy people got from Halloween.
In my neighborhood, many parents take their kids to another neighborhood to trick or treat where the houses are closer together (we are on 1 acre lots here) — after all, it’s ALL about the candy, isnt’ it?? (LOL!!)
Fabulous post! And soooo true. Hope you got the insurance business sorted out even if you didn’t compete w/ the crowds!
Love it.
Love this post Meghan!
My son went trick-or-treating but since he’s vegan he gets rid of all his chocolate which left him with very little candy. YAY! I was so happy about this.
Regarding the swine flu a friend of mine e-mailed a great article on the swine flu vaccination read it at http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/08/11/Swine-Flu-is-NOT-the-Problem—It-is-the-Vaccine-that-May-Harm-or-Kill-You.aspx
[...] How to Catch the Flu in 5 Easy Steps: [...]
i haven’t done any of these things but I have
6) a weak immune system. voila, flu.
Love this post! I have a 3 yr old who can now trick or treat. she has had a little candy, and now it is almost all (mysteriously) gone. I’m not going to counteract everything I do to keep our immunity up for the sake of some Smarties! hello garbage can. I thought many times this week about what a recipe for disaster Halloween is during flu season…. thanks for describing in a funny way.
Ironically I caught a cold at the very last part of Hallowe’en and I didn’t have a titch of candy. I did have 2 cookies though earlier in the day. My healthy but candy-eating-on-Hallowe’en children although are still healthy. But we are waiting for their lowered immune system to kick in and sickness to reveal itself.
Well written and love the comic, nice touch
Meghan, this is an awesome post. Can you point me towards some primary sources on vitamin C and sugar competing for the same receptors?
Bravo, Bravo
[...] sick (no, I don't know why – big event that you're dreading, too much stress at work…) apparently eating lots and lots of candy will do the trick. [National Post - The [...]
i eat candy every day, have one drink a few times a month, hope for a fender bender every 3 to 5 years, never get the flu shot, avoid sleep and hygene whenever possible and demand forgiveness for all the mistakes i do from overburdening myself. what am i? a genius. advice from an insurance company is to stressfull to figure out.
[...] of all, yesterday i mentioned about how sugar cause H1N1 to cozy up to you. I read about it here and the gist is that white blood cells need Vitamin C to go battle infections. The problem lies in [...]
Hhmmm… number 2 and 3, especially 3, is my specialty… which is why I’m here. Changing how I eat, changing how I think… but you know… it’s oh so stressful. I have so much to do, and then this thing came up… can’t say no…. cousin’s husband’s sister’s god-daughter…. everyone counting on me…. honestly, I tell you, the world would fall to pieces if I wasn’t carrying it on my shoulders… *cough*, geez, I’m always getting sick, *sneeze*… so tired… I’m not doing that much… just need to finish a few more things…
Yep, I’m not doing that much at all. Funny story. One of my “friends” (a very toxic person. Meghan, I think you should also do a blog on toxic people in your life and how they can make you just a sick as toxic food) stopped talking to me because she said I did too much, was always getting run down and was always stressed and sick. She isn’t someone I want in my life (for other reasons) but I guess she was right about me over doing things.
Great blog!
Hi Meghan – sorry, not sure I am reading this sentence right “You also want to never blow your nose or even worse would be rinsing your nasal passages with warm water and salt, nettie pot style.”
Are you saying that rinsing with a nettie pot is good or bad? and if bad……..why? (you may have already covered this in another post……)
Thanks!
Awesome post. You’re my hero.
(Yep, I’m catching up again… although I was going to go to sleep to keep up my immune system.)
This is my first time visiting your blog, can’t even remember which tangent on Twitter brought me here, but I love this post. And the colors, design, and humor you’ve put into your site make it really fun to visit. I’m trying to be more funny in my blog posts about natural health, and you’ve got it down.
People really underestimate the impact of daily habits on daily health. I agree with you that it’s our lifestyle that makes us susceptible to imbalance, more than anything.
My tirade is against the food coloring in the Halloween candy that totally destroys most kids. I’ve convinced my kids to trade in their candy for cash and we go to the toy store and he picks something out. He is so much more excited for that. Food coloring is not only carcinogenic, but it sabotages every kids who’s trying to sit still and learn. Never underestimate the power of an M & M.
This winter our family took a homeopathic H1N1 vaccine, that we’re alternating each month over the winter with the standard flu homeopathic. I’ve heard it’s totally effective, so we’re glad it was available here in Santa Fe.
Looking forward to sharing such great information!
I think this post is great!
If only more people read and understood these basic principles.
Yes, but why is your immune system weak to start with?
http://www.healingdaily.com/detoxification-diet/sugar.htm They list references at the bottom too if you need to go back further.
Great idea for a post! Will do!!!
That comment made me smile when I saw it in my inbox.
Did you know that florescent lighting (e.g. in a classroom) can also mess with a kid’s attention span and ability to learn? A woman I know experimented with this. She observed children in a classroom and saw that the row of kids beneath the lights were having trouble. She moved them by the window, problem solved. That’s the simplified version as I remember her telling it a couple of weeks ago.