Online there is a staggering amount of ignorance and misinformation about the Flu. Not to mention colossal, mind-numbing stupidity. I got this gem from the Times – there’s more complete bollocks were this came from:-
If you want to prevent the flu, then drink clear fluids, get rest, and eat a balanced meal thrice daily. If you have it, don’t go out, but get your most trusted mate to come make sure you’re okay. If he or she brings homemade chicken soup, even better!
Prevent!? Pure idiocy – apart from don’t go out – the rest is total bullshit (getting a friend to come and check on you is a good way of passing it on – work out a routine where you phone them with a status update; much safer). And amazingly, just because the flu isn’t serious yet, people, like me, who suggest taking sensible precautions, are being derided wherever you look. And always, the smart-arse pricks who dismiss this flu as less serious than a cold – ignoring the fact that it could mutate at the drop of a hat into something far more lethal – are men.
Look, numb-nuts, put aside the macho posturing for a minute, and consider that there is one thing that flu viruses do amazingly well. They change – mutate – and they occasionally mutate into something that can kill you faster than you can say “Flu, what fl…” and the thing is, nobody can say what this flu will do. All anyone knows for sure it that it will mutate – that’s what flu viruses do best – it’s just a matter of when. The flu we have this month may not be the flu we have next month. Clear? Good.
And also bear in mind that, even with just 30 UK deaths, this flu variant has a proven record of killing people with pre-existing conditions.
By the way, unless it becomes absolutely necessary, I don’t fancy being hauled off to hospital. Every time I’ve been admitted I’ve picked up a respiratory infection I didn’t go in with; if I alread have flu, I seriosuly don’t need that. And I do better is I can keep myself occupied, too – being confined to bed, with your lungs full of crap, isn’t always the best thing.
Drinking, resting and eating might prevent you being thirsty, tired and hungry, it sure as hell won’t prevent the flu. Nor will it cure it once you’ve got it. Neither will chicken soup (pace, my Jewish readers!).
If you do get the flu, and assuming you don’t live alone, go to bed (if you do live alone, rest the best way you can – if you have a pre-existing condition, think very seriously about getting yourself into hospital), keep up your fluid levels – it doesn’t really matter what with – apart from booze – (the clear fluids thing only applies with diarrhoea) as long as you stay hydrated, and eat what you can, when you can; you won’t feel like much. You won’t feel like doing much either, so ensure that you’re well supplied with food which is easy to eat.
If you live alone, as I found out the winter before last when I got flu, it’s a whole different ball game, and you can wind up dependent upon anyone whose attention you an catch. My intention, this time, is to be self-sufficient, to stock up on squashes and energy drinks, canned rice pudding (I lived on that, cold, for weeks last time), canned soup, and anything else I can think of that’s easy to eat. Bottled, not canned, fruit, for example, as it can be resealed.
Noodles are good – a pack of Batchelor’s Super Noodles will give you around 500 kcals of easily-prepared, reasonably tasty food; add some peas and the combo will give you some protein, too. A bottle of sweet-chilli sauce is good for sparking a jaded appetite.
It’s worth having some canned fish in stock. I’d go for high-quality sardines, or skinned and boned. With both you can eat them without having to scale and de-fin them, as you will with cheaper ones. Then there’s tuna, or canned mackerel in a variety of sauces, and any canned fish can be added to noodles for a bigger meal.
Pot Noodles shouldn’t be ignored either – if you’re feeling as sick as a dog, something you just have to pour boiling water on can be invaluable, and nutritionally, they’re actually pretty sound, despite the snobbery of many people. I used to take them backpacking.
I also get through a lot of milk, so I’ll stash some 4-pinters in the freezer – 6-pinters take too long to thaw (semi-skimmed and skimmed freeze well), and lay in some powdered milk as well. Not to mention a few frozen pies, some biscuits and, maybe, sausages – things I usually get a craving for when I’m sick.
Stock up, too, with plenty of tissues, toilet roll, kitchen towel – whatever your preferred snot disposal system is. You’ll need it.
My aim is to be self-sufficient for maybe two weeks, so it needn’t cost a fortune, and I’ll not need to ask anyone to bring me stuff, as I did last time. That way, I won’t spread it. Or catch a secondary infection.
The risk is real that I might die, but I’m going to do my damndest not to!
This post has been about what I can do on a practical, day to day basis, the medical aspects of how I intend to tackle pandemic flu and my COPD are covered here and here.
One thing I haven’t mentioned. With COPD, using cooled, bloiled water in your nebuliser, or normal saline, if you can buy any, will help clear crap from your lungs. It’s soothing, too, if you have a coughing fit.
“Drinking, resting and eating might prevent you being thirsty, tired and hungry, it sure as hell won’t prevent the flu. Nor will it cure it once you’ve got it. Neither will chicken soup (pace, my Jewish readers!).”
The idea, Ron, is to keep yourself (you immune system) strong so you won’t get the flu. Lack of adequate rest is tied to immune system suppression, weight gain, irritability, poor decision-making skills, slow metabolism, increases susceptibility to acute and chronic diseases, and much more.
Adequate rest is *crucial* for a healthy, strong mind and body. Anyone who cannot rest properly is more susceptible not only to flu but to many other health problems – and by being inadequately rested – either through their own actions or thanks to circumstances beyond their control – they also increase the chances of the rest of us becoming sick.
As someone who waited tables during synagogues feasts in my native LI, NY, I can assure you chicken soup not only prevents cold and flu but is like liquid gold – especially when made to exacting Jewish standards. (I make one that would knock your socks off, BTW- from scratch). My Jewish grandmother is turning in her grave even as I write this…for shame, Ron (“google” “chicken soup colds flu” for the health benefits – seriously)!
My point was – which you seem to have missed (not like you) – is that it was touted as a cast-iron preventative and cure for the flu – which it’s not. But really, no matter how much chicken soup you down, or how much sleep you get, if your immune system is susceptible to a particular virus, then down you go.
My immune system, such as it is, and sans chicken soup, is as good as it can be. And as for rest, I’m practically housebound – I’m getting more rest than any sane person needs. And food. None of which is going to stop me, or anyone else, catching a virus they’ve never encountered before and have no immunity to. There is only one thing that will stop you catching a virus (or, if you catch it, being damaged by it), and that’s not an immune system “fortified” by chicken soup or anything else – it’s an actual immunity, either from a vaccine, or from a previous encounter with the virus.
I think the reason the current virus is killing young people is that old farts like me have encountered the main component of this portmanteau virus – Human Type A, H1N1 – several times in the past, in various forms (flu mutates pretty much at will), and thus have a degree of immunity to that part of the virus. None at all to the bird and swine flu components, though, so it’s still dangerous.
Chicken soup has only sketchy medical support (as opposed to pages and pages of apocryphal support, though I came across a Jewish atheist who thinks it’s rubbish), and that seems to be for the onions and garlic in the soup, rather than the chicken, and that’s something for which there is a lot of medical evidence. I accept chicken soup as an important component of the Jewish tradition, but when it comes to “Jewish Penicillin” I feel just a tad cynical. I mean, how does it work? You get sick, the doctor ministers to you with the best drugs available, and the chicken soup gets the credit?
Steinbeck had one of his characters say, in East of Eden “And Tom brought him chicken soup until he wanted to kill him. The lore has not died out of the world, and you will still find people who believe that soup will cure any hurt or illness and is no bad thing to have for the funeral either.”
By the way, I have a couple of Jewish friends and they’re pretty scathing about the whole chicken soup thing, and I have a Sephardic cookery book which, in its recipe for Golden Chicken Soup, while it looks good, makes no claims for it at all. And vegetarian Jews, of whom there are many (Israel is home to one of the major producers of vegetarian meat-analogue foods – Tivall), manage to get by without chicken soup without coming to any harm.
I think, with the chicken soup soup tradition, the fact that you don’t have to do anything, as it’s provided for you when you’re ill so you rarher naturally feel better (if you had to get up and make it yourself, when ill, I’m sure it would have quite the opposite effect). You mother, or whoever, feeds you chicken soup, you feel better. With the golden fat floating on it, it’ll be soothing too. But I suspect French onion soup, with its freight of onions, garlic, butter and, traditionally, goose fat, would have much the same effect. The onions and garlic in both soups have a proven medicinal benefit. Like most Goyim, though, I’m cynical about the chicken soup thing and we’re not going to agree on this one, I’m afraid.
Most societies have their chicken soup analogues, though. Where I was brought up it was traditional to fight things like bronchitis and flu – even pneumonia – with poultices of goose fat and brown paper (rub the chest with goose fat, slap on the brown paper and tie with string). It did actually stop you passing on your infection – but only because the stink kept people away from you… To this day, in rural areas, there are people who still believe in it. Putting a slice of onion in your shoe was once popular, too, for staving of, well, pretty much anything (that actually has a scientific basis – the sulphurous compounds absorbed from the onion have anti-bacterial properties).
When it comes to my health (I’m seriously ill – putting my faith in soup – any soup – isn’t an option), I’ll always put drugs and vaccines first, the more so with the pandemic flu which, for people in my condition, is potentially lethal. Any flu is, but this one affects the lungs more severely than previous versions.