'Feed a cold' is good advice

No I'm not unfortunate to become sick just yet with a cold. But my niece, nephew, older brother, cousin became ill with it now. I had a fairly good sleep last night and slept 10 hours with just waking up once after about 4 hours. Sleeping is an excellent idea if you are run down with something. Otherwise I've been throwing down garlic to see if that helps. If it doesn't work to kill the virus or boost immune system, maybe it will keep people away for a short while because of the odor coming from my body haha :)

Here is another interesting article I found a while back. The advice that one should feed a cold seems quite valid according to this study.

Dutch scientists have conducted small-scale experiments which suggest that both approaches are the best way of priming the immune system to cope with different infections. The research, reported on the New Scientist website, found that the different approaches may activate different types of immune cell.

Viral Infections
After the liquid meal, levels of a body chemical called Gamma interferon had multiplied by four. This chemical indicates that the body is using a type of immune response designed to kill cells which have become infected, and tends to be directed at viral infections.

Bacterial Infections
The water-only diet, however, produced almost a fourfold increase in levels of a different chemical, called interleukin-4. This is a sign of an immune response which launches attacks on invaders lurking outside the cells. Most bacterial infections require this kind of response.


However one of the things you might get from this advice is more cold symptoms, if you think about it, increasing levels of interferon while fighting a viral infection might cause an increase in temperature, fatigue, tiredness etc... but you might get over it quicker? I don't know :p

Back after the new year

I haven't been posting lately because I've been quite busy and generally away from the computer... but will post more often after the new year, and I hope everyone has a good time over the holiday's. Christmas in a couple days and I love this time of year, even though I'm an athiest, I still call it Christmas lol. This anti religious stuff is just dumb if you ask me, people should be allowed to celebrate and have freedom of expression in whatever they believe in. I just wish I was a kid again and believed in all this 'magical' stuff, got lots of presents and generally enjoyed 25th of December much more than I do now, but it is still a nice day.

A lot of people having miserable holidays around here though because everyone has got this cold or flu that is going around, you can never know because people say they got the flu and they haven't. Everyone has been ill with it in my house, I know at least 12 close family members with it, a few friends are ill... It's also a rarity that my father gets ill and last night he came down with the cold too! Maybe it is to do with the lack of Vitamin D this summer, because err, we had no summer in the UK! I am doing what I can to avoid the thing because of my tinnitus will just go insanely loud if I get it! I've been eating garlic regularly ( see BBC:Garlic prevents common cold

"Over a 90-day period during the winter when most colds occur, just 24 colds were recorded among those taking the supplement, compared to 65 amongst those taking the placebo."

That is a 'HUGE' reduction in the colds, and those that caught it also experienced fewer symptoms and the cold didn't last as long, and they were less likely to get re infected! Few chances of secondary bacterial sinusitis I assume too.

There are also other things I've been doing to help like regularly steam inhalation (twice a day), regular washing of hands for 30 seconds. 10 cups of green tea per day /with ginger. I've ran out of my Vitamin D3 but it lasts a long(ish) time in the body anyway so should be ok until I can afford to get some more. I was taking in around 5000-7000 IU of it over the last couple months, and 2000IU for over 2 years so I should be OK! Another good thing is that my sinusitis hasn't come back and my last cold was the week that got *cured* oddly by a cold virus itself! lol. I think I might have been catching colds regularly before because the lining of my nose was broken, bleeding and clogged up. Viruses would easily get pats the barrier and infect me. 7 months and not caught a viral infection yet, I hope this continues !


Anyway enough rambling on from me, have a nice holiday everyone. See you in 2008!

New CR video

A video with mostly Liza May in, some conference video footage and Michael saying a few words too. Although Liza doesn't seem to weigh anything, so I'd be surprised if her calorie count is accurate. Though she says she's healthy and she looks quite healthy for her age and thats important.


FoxTV Calorie Restriction Video

Finally!

So after I printed out the report and gave it to my father he probably spoke to my mum and it seems she is now willing to eat properly! So she asked for some advice on what foods to eat and so I'll help her -- as I've always wanted to! Just really hope she can stick to it. I'll keep you updated :)