The Swine Flu Diet

May 4, 2009

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Creative Commons License photo credit: kasthor

While I’m sure having the swine flu causes weight loss, I’m not referring to a new diet craze. I want to talk about how to avoid getting the swine flu with good diet.

The same things that will prevent the swine flu are what prevent any illness:

Hand Washing and Good Nutrition

The point is to be a bad host. It’s not about “the illness”. It’s about your body, your choices, your habits.

Are you a good host for a pathogen, or are you a bad host?

Noone in the media is talking about this, but the truth is that the swine flu has conventional farming to blame. That’s why it’s so important to know where your meat comes from, and to eat grass fed and pastured meats.

Today I got an email from the Weston A. Price foundation about this topic of “Natural Immunity”. It read, in part:

Vitamins A and D in cod liver oil offer strong protection against infection of all types, as well as against environmental toxins.

Vitamin C is important-either from vitamin C-rich foods like sauerkraut, or from one of the natural vitamin C supplements recommended in our Shopping Guide.

Healthy gut flora provide 85 percent of our protection against disease.  Be sure to consume healthy lacto-fermented foods and beverages every day and avoid the foods that disrupt gut flora, especially refined carbohydrates.

Bone broth plays a double role of supporting the immune system and helping the body detoxify.

COCONUT OIL
We are grateful to Beth Beisel, registered dietitian and WAPF member for reminding us about the protective factors in coconut oil. Swine flu is a lipid coated virus (http://www.pnas.org/content/98/5/2115.full.pdf+html), and thus is inactivated by sufficient amounts of monolaurin.   (Our bodies convert lauric acid, found in coconut oil, to monolaurin).

According to our own Dr. Mary Enig, two to three tablespoons of coconut oil per day appears to be an adequate dosage to fight infection, even from virulent antibiotic-resistant organisms such as MSRA.”

I find the hysteria so interesting, especially since the regular old garden variety influenza kills thousands of people in the US every year. Yet you don’t see people buying surgical masks to protect themselves against that.

Are you taking any extra precautions to protect yourself from swine flu?

More:

Coconut oil seems to have magical properties
Health benefits of kefir (lacto-fermented beverage)
My homemade lacto-fermented salsa recipe

More Posts By Carrie:

Comments

4 Responses to “The Swine Flu Diet”

  1. QuietMom on May 4th, 2009 5:13 pm

    Yep, agreed. Love my kefir, sauerkraut and probiotics and we use coconut oil for almost everything now. YUM!

  2. Nell on May 4th, 2009 5:47 pm

    Coconut oil and garlic rock my world… they keep candida overgrowth at bay. But, my problem is keeping up with eating healthy like I should. I’m suffering, AGAIN, from the damn yeast beast. Gotta get it back under control.

    Nell

  3. Sid on May 6th, 2009 5:26 pm

    I’m a big advocate of “home-grown”, including beef, pork, chicken and fish. I’m a true carnivore, and don’t quite get enough veggies in my diet, so I can’t say I’ve been an active ingestor of organic veggies, but nearly all the pork and beef I’ve eaten in my life has been bought at auction in my hometown to support not only the students of 4-H & FFA groups, but also to support the local economy. I’ve eaten pork from the same family farm for 20+ years of my life now, and I think that’s why I can laugh off most of the health threats that get heaved my way for being such a red and white meat fan.

    Small scale farming, local economies, and healthy raw veggies from the soil are nature’s original preventative medicines.

  4. Emily on May 7th, 2009 12:15 pm

    Amen to everything Carrie said!

    We already eat as healthy as we can, and this winter we managed not to contract any of the viruses going around, so I figure we’re doing well to avoid the newest flu.

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