We are all different biochemically. Some of you may catch every cold that comes around; others may have 1 cold every 5 years. Why is this? The answer is... it's not the microbe, it's the terrain. In other words, the viruses are everywhere but if the terrain of your body is in a healthy state, your immune system can be proactive and do its job, eliminating the virus. Some people have compromised immune systems…not only do they catch every little cold or flu that is out there, but an auto-immune disorder like asthma, allergies, lupus, eczema or rheumatoid arthritis may be present. We all have one thing in common however,we want to avoid the flu. To do this, we need to prepare and strengthen the terrain of our bodies by supporting our immune system with good lifestyle choices and the proper supplements.

Prevention
The best defense is to practice prevention, ensuring your body is in top shape to fight off viruses and stop bacterial infections from settling in. Lifestyle changes are vital in supporting your immune system and the following steps are a good start.
Wash hands constantly - when you wake up, before you eat, before you sleep and in between.
Stay hydrated - Drink half your weight in ounces of pure filtered water per day between meals starting with a glass first thing in the morning.
Regular exercise  - Your lymph system clears your body of pathogens.  Vigorous movement and deep breathing pumps your lymph system. Breathing exercises, walking, swimming and anything that moves your arms and legs works wonders. Rebounding is excellent!
Eat Antioxidants - A minimum of 50% of your diet should be raw fruits and veggies. Every meal you eat, make sure half of it is raw – that's easy! Eat a rainbow of colors and remember the blues, reds and purples!
Eat Clean - Avoid sugar, caffeine and processed food. Sugar suppresses the immune system. White blood cells are depleted by 50% after just 1 teaspoon of sugar and take several hours to recover. Caffeine robs your body of water, minerals and vitamins, dehydrating and malnourishing your body. If you drink coffee, make sure you add an additional two glasses to your water intake per cup of coffee. Processed Food - these food products contain hundreds of chemicals that are not recognizable to the body as food. This means that they are perceived by the immune system as foreign invaders that must be dealt with. When the immune system is tied up battling the invaders you have willingly put into your body, it is not available to do the job it was created to do.
Adequate Sleep and Rest - Sleeping less than 8 hours a night depletes your immune system.
Stress Management - Try yoga, breathing exercises, meditation, gardening, listening to music – whatever you love doing that relaxes you. Make it a part of every day.

Supplement Support
Probiotics. Normalize your intestinal flora by taking a high potency supplement with a minimum of 2 billion live bacteria per capsule. It will assist in restoring intestinal immunity by hindering the growth of harmful bacteria such as candida, molds, yeasts and fungi. These helpful microfloras not only assist digestion, they exert antimicrobial activity against pathogens and boosts immunity be encouraging immune cells to proliferate, and reduce inflammatory cytokines. Food Source: plain yogurt, miso, kefir, sauerkraut daily
Vitamin D. Your adaptive immune system (the cells that activate in the presence of an invader and retains antibodies and immunity for the future) cannot function without the presence of Vitamin D. Most people are deficient. Make sure you are taking the D3 form which is the most active and natural form. Take 4000 – 6000 IU daily for adults and 400 – 800 IU for children, aiming for the higher range in the winter months. Must be taken in or with a multi containing Calcium and/or a Calcium formula to aid absorption. Food Source: mackerel, salmon, oysters, sardines, tuna, eggs, butter, chanterelle and shitake mushrooms, oatmeal and parsley and…. SUNSHINE!! Get a minimum of 20 minutes of sunshine on your skin each day during late spring, summer and early fall.
Vitamin C makes your immune system more active and is a powerful antioxidant. Take a supplement that includes bioflavonoids (plant chemicals that enhance Vit C's effectiveness.) Supplementary range is 1000 to 10,000 mg daily. Take 1000 mg every hour until you experience loose bowels, and then back off 500 – 1000 mg. This will be your optimal intake. Food Source: citrus fruits, berries, green and leafy vegetables, tomatoes, green peppers, papaya, raw onions, rose hips, alfalfa, cayenne pepper.
High Quality Multi Vitamin Mineral in an Antioxidant Formula with Vitamins A, C and E with zinc. Food Source: Raw fruits and veggies especially red, green and orange colored and lots of leafy greens, raw nuts and seeds.
Omega 3 Fatty Acids in the form of fish body oils or flax seed oil. Carlson's Laboratories makes a good lemon flavored one with NO fishy taste and flax seed oil has a slight nutty taste, you can mix it into fruit juice, yogurt or smoothies. Food Source: Eat cold water fish a minimum of twice per week, and a handful of raw (refrigerated, unsalted, unprocessed) nuts/seeds per day.

Pathogen Destroyers
If you do come down with something, reducing the initial viral load when the first symptoms are felt is effective at staving off or limiting the severity of an illness.
Gargle and rinse sinuses with saline. Cold and flu viruses multiply in the sinuses and at the back of the throat. Use ¼ tsp kosher or pure sea salt in a neti pot or soft squeeze bottle full of lukewarm water. Heat the water in a kettle; don't use warm water from the tap. Do this several times a day for gargling and at least once a day for sinus rinsing – this alone can make a huge difference in getting back on your feet quicker.
Oil of Wild Mountain Oregano – you can find this essential oil in the health food store. MUST be Origanum Vulgare and must be a minimum of 20% Carvacrol FINISHED. 40% is better. Wild Oil of Oregano is anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-parasitic plus boosts the immune system and is rich in minerals and Vitamin C. A, C and minerals. Put 5-6 drops in a shot glass of orange juice (or water if you can stand it) 3 – 4 times per day with meals. Most kids can't stomach the taste so try putting the drops in an empty gel cap if they can swallow them. Will destroy beneficial gut bacteria also so must be followed up with a course of therapeutic probiotics to replenish friendly microflora in the intestines.
Olive leaf extract - OLE is a member of a group of antioxidant plant compounds called flavonoids. In laboratory tests OLE effectively eliminated a wide range of organisms including bacteria, viruses, parasites, and yeast/mold/fungus.
Aged Garlic is one of the best infection fighters available for both bacterial and viral infections while being kind to beneficial bacteria. Stimulates the activity of macrophages (which engulf foreign organisms), helps clear mucous from the lungs, making garlic particularly helpful in treating upper respiratory viral infections, effective against strep and staph bacteria.
Homeopathic Remedies - There are flu and cold formulas that if taken immediately at the sign of symptoms, can reduce the length of sickness by 75%!  Something to keep in your medicine cabinet.
*If you are pregnant or nursing or on medications, check contraindications with your naturopath or medical doctor.

Some Final Tips
Eat lightly. When your body is put to task fighting illness, don't tax it further by overeating. Eat lightly and choose foods that are easy to digest and drink lots of liquids. Water and 50/50 diluted apple juice are great.
Avoid Tylenol / Advil. When you are fighting a fever, don't take Tylenol for fevers below 103 degrees. A fever is an expression of the immune system working at its best. Fever increases the amount of interferon (a natural antiviral and anticancer substance) in the blood. A mild fever also increases the white blood cells ability to destroy viruses, fungi, bacteria while impairing the replication of many bacteria and viruses. Use cool head cloths, and avoid sugary drinks and traditional snacks such as jello and ginger ale…the sugar does more harm than good.

A Natural Alternative to Vaccinations
Because we all have varying risk factors, I believe the choice of whether to vaccinate or not is very personal, with both sides containing risks, depending on your individual situation. I have opted for an oral homeopathic immunization (Influenzinum 9CH) for my family which is very inexpensive ($28 per person) with absolutely none of the side effects of a traditional vaccine such as death and permanent disability. Influenzinum is a homeopathic formula made with the current year's flu strains but doesn't contain the live virus or the many chemical toxins found in traditional vaccines which include ethylene glycol (antifreeze), formaldehyde, phenol (carbolic acid), aluminum, antibiotics such as Neomycin and streptomycin. It is also free of squalene which has been linked to the devastating autoimmune diseases suffered by countless Gulf War vets.  Taking Influenzimun by Boiron Labs each autumn is easy - it dissolves in your mouth, tastes great and is an inexpensive step in preventing the flu.

The ideas and suggestions in this handout are not intended as a substitute for appropriate care of a licensed health care practitioner. They are meant for educational purposes only.

Yesterday, my daughter came home from school asking about the vaccinations being offered at school for Grade Six pupils. Knowing that I not only disbelieve the proposed efficacy of vaccinations but also feel they are highly dangerous to our health, she had some questions.  From talking with her fellow students, she had the impression that these vaccinations are mandatory. I explained they are not and that parents who researched the topic for themselves and weighed the evidence for and against vaccinations, could make an informed choice and decide not to vaccinate their children. The following is an article from Vaccination Risk Awareness Network found online at www.vran.org. It explains how vaccinations impair our immune system and the types of complications that can occur, which far outweigh any benefits, in this reader's opinion.  Stay tuned for more information on homeopathic immunizations that are safe and effective, how to prevent the flu and boosting you immune system naturally.

VACCINATION BASICS
 
North American children are now the most vaccinated on earth. Since 1980, Canadian vaccine schedules have more than doubled the types of vaccines given; for the first 4-6 yrs of life alone, Public Health now recommends 46-47 doses of fourteen different vaccines. The first 8 doses are given in three or four shots at two months.

It’s been declared that today’s children are the first generation whose parents will outlive them. Today, 10% of Canadian children have life threatening afflictions. In the last 25 years, concurrent with vaccine increase, there’ve been huge declines in children’s health in many categories:

• Autism – increased over 1000 times in less than one generation; 1/91 in USA
• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) – 10%
• Learning Disability – 1/6
• Severe Mood Dysregulation (eg bipolar disorder) – 1/30
• Ear Infections – 50% of Canadian 2-3 yr olds since birth
• All types of Allergies – increased six times since 1980
• Anaphylactic Food Allergies – doubled in the last decade
• Allergic Eczema – 1/5
• Asthma – 1/8 or more; 10% of Canadians 2-7 yrs old
• Obesity – tripled since 1980; 25% of Canadian children overweight or obese
• Juvenile Diabetes – more than 100% increase since 1980

In contrast, Chicago-based Homefirst Medical Clinic, run by a group of doctors including medical director Mayer Eisenstein MD,JD,MPH, have no known autism and super-scarce allergies in their children, most of whom have had no vaccinations. Two studies done in New Zealand in 1992 and 1995 show that the unvaccinated children clearly have less allergies, less otitis (ear infections), less tonsillitis, less running noses, less epilepsies and less ADHD.

"For the first time in history…children are sicker than the generation before them. They’re not just a little worse off, they are precipitously worse off, physically, emotionally, educationally and developmentally."
- Judy Converse, MPH, RD, LD; Why Do Pediatricians Deny The Obvious?, 2006

Vaccinations may cause significantly more injuries and deaths than they prevent. The medical establishment considers vaccines effective if they suppress a few targeted illnesses – but at what expense? An emerging body of evidence indicates that vaccines can damage a child’s developing immune system and brain, leading to life-threatening or debilitating disorders like autism, ADHD, asthma, peanut allergy, juvenile diabetes, etc or to SIDS, death itself. If this is true, the number of vaccine-related deaths per year outnumbers deaths from so-called “vaccine-preventable” illnesses.

Historical trends show that deaths caused by illnesses targeted by vaccines had already declined by as much as 98% before mass vaccination programs for them began. Statistical tampering and incomplete and selective reporting over the last sixty years has made vaccination appear more effective than it truly is. For instance, the seemingly dramatic decline in polio cases after introduction of polio vaccine coincided with a change in diagnostic criteria from paralysis lasting 24 hrs or more to paralysis lasting at least 60 days. Polio incidence actually increased after vaccine was introduced; the oral polio vaccine became the sole cause of paralytic polio in North America until it was discontinued here.

Infectious diseases can be made worse by fever-suppressing drugs and antibiotics. Fever is part of the immune process; if it is stifled, infections that would otherwise be merely inconvenient can become dangerous, even deadly. Routine use of fever suppressants during illness and after vaccination is inadvisable.

Antibiotics increase the number of bacterial toxins released into the body by killing other bacteria not targeted. Some also diminish Vitamin C, thereby inhibiting the immune system.

Vaccine injuries are drastically underreported. Although there is a government system in place for reporting vaccine reactions and injuries, most incidents go unreported. Doctors, who naturally do not want to admit to participating in a practice that injures a child, often choose to deny or disregard even the most obvious connection between a sudden health issue and vaccination. As a result, it is believed that fewer than 10% of vaccine injuries are actually reported; it’s impossible to know exactly how many children are injured each year.

Vaccines damage the immune system. A healthy immune system has two main parts, Th1 and Th2. Th1 leads with the first and most important immune response, to sense and eliminate incoming disease-associated organisms and particles. Th2 then creates antibodies and a memory of the disease. Babies are born with immature immune systems in which Th2 dominates. As their immune systems mature, dominance switches permanently to Th1. Usually, infectious agents enter the body through the nose and mouth, triggering Th1 which normally combats them effectively. But vaccines injected into the body bypass Th1 and over-stimulate Th2. This confuses the normal maturation and skews the functioning of the immune system; Th2 becomes dominant and the crucial Th1, suppressed. The result can be autoimmune disease (eg juvenile diabetes), allergic disorders (eg eczema, asthma and life threatening anaphylactic allergies to everyday foods like peanuts) and frequent infections (eg colds and ear infections).

Vaccine ingredients are risky. They include dangerous preservatives and adjuvants (chemicals which increase immune response) and other potentially harmful substances: aluminum phosphate, phenol (carbolic acid), MSG, formaldehyde, gelatin, etc. The flu shot still contains mercury. This and other toxins can accumulate and eventually suppress the immune system, cause brain damage, and lead to a myriad of health issues and developmental disorders. Exposure to toxins during the critical stages of development before age two is especially dangerous to the brain.

Some vaccines are made using tissue cultures: monkey kidney, foetal calf blood, chick embryos, aborted human foetal lung, yeast, etc. It’s impossible to remove all contaminating viruses and proteins left from this process. Injected contaminants can create immune problems including anaphylaxis. Other vaccines have genetically engineered or artificially fragmented active ingredients. These could result in injuries as yet unrecognized.

Vaccine safety has never been proven. Studies to compare the overall long-term health of vaccinated versus unvaccinated people have never been done, nor have studies to discover the combined and cumulative effects of so many vaccines. Safety studies prior to vaccine licensing are typically inadequate and limit follow-up to a few days or weeks.

Vaccinations are given indiscriminately. There are no tests to determine which children are likely to respond adversely to vaccinations. Little concern is given to innate health and family health history. Underweight babies are routinely given the same dosage using the same schedule as babies of normal weight. Unlike other drugs, vaccines are administered using a one-size-fits-all policy.

The wholistic approach treats the body with care. Immunity is and can be acquired naturally. A foetus receives antibodies acquired by its mother from infections she’s previously had. After birth, breastfeeding provides multiple immune factors and optimum nutrition to the baby’s body and brain. Breastfeeding is so exquisitely refined that it continually changes and adapts to the baby’s needs as they change.

Immunity derived from exposure to infections can last a lifetime. Any immunity provided by a vaccine wanes over time and puts the child at risk of a more dangerous infection later in life. Infections contracted in childhood encourage optimal balance of Th1 and Th2 and may actually accelerate development and learning.

A healthy lifestyle continues the immunity established by breastfeeding. Excellent nutrition, avoidance of toxins of all kinds, sufficient rest, and being part of a loving family all contribute to freedom from disease of any kind.

"The very young (babies and small children) are at high risk because their brains are undergoing the most rapid development at the very time they receive the greatest number of vaccinations…they receive many inoculations (up to 9 inoculations) in one office visit. This is insane and in my estimation, criminal."
- Russell L Blaylock, MD, CCN; How Vaccines Can Damage Your Brain, 2008

Vaccination is based on fear. Vaccination ignores our evolutionary history. We have survived in co-habitation with multitudes of germs. There’s a balance between immune enhancement and immune depletion. We can encourage the former by acknowledging the power and competence of our bodies to heal themselves. Those administering vaccines rarely, if ever, provide full information on the vaccines being injected; they exaggerate risks of infection and don’t explain that vaccines may be just as risky or worse.

Vaccinations are NOT mandatory in Canada. “Unlike some countries, immunization is not mandatory in Canada; it cannot be made mandatory because of the Canadian Constitution. Three provinces require proof of immunization for school entrance: Ontario and New Brunswick for diphtheria, tetanus, polio, measles, mumps, and rubella immunization; Manitoba for measles. But, exceptions are permitted on medical or religious grounds and reasons of conscience; legislation and regulations must not be interpreted to imply compulsory immunization.” (Immunization in Canada; May, 1997; Vol 23S4