According to ayurveda, it is necessary to develop a healthy immune system to prevent the body from getting affected by viral attacks. If the body develops a high level of immunity, then even if one is exposed to viruses, the body will not be affected. The same concept is applied by the ayurveda line of treatment in dealing with the swine flu H1N1 virus. It promotes the intake of decoctions made of special herbs to help patients increase their immunity levels. Ayurveda has identified some unique herbs that are believed to be highly effective in preventing swine flu. For persons already affected by the virus, the treatment can be used to provide quick relief from the symptoms and, at the same time, boost the immunity system.

Basil is one of the herbs identified by ayurveda as effective in keeping the swine flu virus away from the body. When consumed in fresh form, it has shown to greatly reduce the symptoms of the disease in affected persons. A paste made from medium-size basil leaves is recommended at least twice daily to prevent the swine flu virus from spreading. Another equally effective natural remedy is ginger. While its ability to fight fever, cold, and flu conditions has been recorded in ayurveda a few centuries ago, it has proven to be a highly effective natural treatment to keep the H1N1 virus at bay. When mixed with a few cloves of garlic, their effects are greatly enhanced.

Oils, such as camphor and eucalyptus oil, have great ability to keep air-borne diseases under control according to ayurveda. Inhaling the steam of camphor and eucalyptus oil is extremely good for the body. It not only promotes the health of the respiratory tracks and the lungs but also helps in keeping the body in fighting shape to take on the might of the swine flu virus.

Other effective ayurveda forms of treatment include using gooseberry and aloe vera, both known to help the body boost immunity levels even when the chips are down.

However, it is important not to ignore the H1N1 virus as it is going to be circulating in and around us this winter. For this reason, it has been included in the seasonal flu vaccine in the year 2010-11. WHO recommends that people who are identified as being in the high-risk groups be vaccinated against the swine flu virus. Pregnant women are also included by WHO in this high-risk group.

Others who are identified as being in this group include those individuals who suffer from chronic lung disease and heart disease. People who have a history of liver and neurological diseases are also considered vulnerable to attacks from the H1N1 virus. Another high-risk group is those who suffer from diabetes mellitus. Because there is an inherent risk of swine flu attack among these groups, it is very difficult to say with a measure of certainty that the virus is well and truly behind us.

It is important to take all precautions necessary to keep the swine flu virus under control. Developing a good, strong respiratory system and maintaining a high degree of hygiene, especially of the hands, are necessary to mitigate the risk of attacks. As it is very difficult to distinguish between ordinary flu and swine flu at the onset of the disease, it is important to get yourself tested at special swine flu testing centers to remove any element of doubt.

Physicians usually recommend temperature-regulating drugs, such as paracetamol, to relieve symptoms and reduce body temperature. Swine flu cannot be said to be a thing of the past, especially when it has been proved that the virus is capable of remaining in a dormant state for long periods until the conditions become favorable for it to become dominant and enter the human body. The antiviral medications, such as oseltamivir and zanamivir, must therefore be used with a lot of discretion.

It is important to counsel physicians, especially those practicing in public health centers in rural areas of developing countries, to use these drugs only when there is a confirmed case of swine flu. We have only a small armory in the form of these valuable medications to fight genuine cases of H1N1 virus. Using them rampantly or in a manner other than as prescribed by WHO can lead to the virus developing resistance to these drugs.

In many cases, antivirals are used by physicians to treat symptoms of swine flu. While they are not a cure for swine flu, they can definitely help by reducing the time of illness by at least one day. They are also able to relieve the symptoms and mitigate the potential of developing serious complications. Antibiotics are also useful to treat patients who have developed complications, such as pneumonia or other bacterial infections.

Swine flu is certainly not a thing of the past, though that is what most of us would like to believe. The virus can strike a vulnerable group of individuals anytime, whenever conditions become favorable for them to become active again. We must ensure that we maintain proper hygiene of our bodies and the surroundings to prevent a pandemic attack from swine flu in the future.

It is important to know about the viruses and where they are currently circulating. All of the United States has “wide-spread” outbreaks according to the CDC web site. They have an excellent site for Flu Activity and Surveillance.

Another issue worth monitoring is the vaccine availability in your area. Swine Flu 911 is providing relevant information as much as possible, but it is also good to check directly with your own state’s web site. In addition, you can check with your doctor to make sure you are on an appropriate wait list if you would like to be vaccinated.

In addition to keeping informed, keep communication channels open with your children to help them digest flu facts and rumors to help alleviate panic and answer questions. Flu.gov has a section devoted to Talking to Your Children about The Flu.

In addition, The National Association of School Physiologists (NASP) has partnered with the National Association of School Nurses (NASN) and the National Parent Teacher Association (NPTA) to develop and disseminate a handout for parents on talking to their children about the flu virus. “Talking to Children About the Flu (Novel H1N1): A Parent Resource” is available to parents and educators to be copied and distributed without specific permission. You can also listen to this handout as a podcast, read the Spanish handout, or listen to the Spanish version. All links for these resources can be found at Nasponline.org/resources/swineflu.aspx.

Whether or not you choose to vaccinate your family, another set of information to consider covers natural cold and flu prevention and remedies. A relatively new site focused on these areas is Yeahtips.com. Here are some recent related articles:

Natural Cold and Flu Prevention and Remedies

Do it Yourself Flu Prevention

Stay tuned at Swine Flu 911 for more breaking news and information. We are here to help you stay informed and healthy.

For the rest of the population, more vaccine will be available in mid-November at pharmacies, health care provider offices,  schools  and local health departments.

Whether you fall into the category of being a priority or not, the Virginia Department of  Health (VDH) website has a complete list of public vaccination sites, including pharmacies and local health departments.  At the top of this page, you can type in your city and postal code to narrow the search considerably.

There is also a page for  schools that will be hosting vaccination clinics.  If your child’s school is on this list, you are advised to check with the school for vaccination schedules. Phone numbers are listed on the page.

Local health departments and phone numbers are available as well. Simply type in a Health District OR a Location OR a Zip Code OR the City you would like to locate, in the box at the top of the page to bring up results relevant to you and your family.

The VDH  website has a swine flu hotline, as well.  Contact them at 877-ASK-VDH3 (877-275-8343.)

For the seasonal flu, a  link on the Flu.gov web page for Virginia, takes you to the American Lung Association website where you are asked to enter your zip code into the Flu Clinic Locator on the right-hand side of the page. This will give you the date, times, address, and phone number of the clinics offering seasonal flu shots near you, as well as a map showing where the clinic is located. The flu clinic locator is updated daily, so you will always get the most up-to-date  information.

Both kinds of  vaccines are made the same way. The virus is injected into chicken eggs and grown into larger quantities. If you have a known allergy to chicken eggs or a compromised immune system due to some other medical condition, talk to your doctor about whether flu vaccination is even an option for you.

For the vaccine that is administered by needle, the virus is harvested from the eggs, killed and chopped into segments. When it is injected into you, it activates your body’s immune system to produce the antibodies that will kill the actual flu virus should you become exposed to it.

When making the nasal-spray vaccine, the virus is grown in the eggs at lower temperatures, which weakens it so that it can only survive in the nose. The nasal vaccine infects the mucosal cells that are closely monitored by your immune system and once this system detects the vaccine, it produces permanent immunity to the flu virus.

Only healthy people ages 2 to 49 and who aren’t pregnant can receive the nasal-spray vaccine. If you fall into this category and cringe at the thought of having to get a  needle, the nasal spray might be the way to go. However, if you are getting both the seasonal and the swine flu shots, you will need to wait four weeks in between the two nasal-spray vaccines.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), you can’t get the flu from either the injectable vaccine  or the nasal-spray, because the viruses have been inactivated. With the flu shot, minor side effects can occur, including soreness, redness or swelling where the shot is given, low grade fever, aches and nausea. These problems could occur soon after the shot is given and last from 1 to 2 days.

The nasal spray can cause the following side effects in children:

• runny nose
• wheezing
• headache
• vomiting
• muscle aches
• fever

In adults, side effects, if they occur include:

• runny nose
• headache
• sore throat
• cough

There can be serious side effects from either vaccine but these are very rare. One such side effect is Guillian-Barre Syndrome, a rare disorder in which the person’s own immune system damages nerve cells. Visit the CDC website for questions and answers about this condition.

The Flu.gov website has links to Q & A’s about both the H1N1 nasal spray and the needle that answers questions about what symptons to look for in the event of any kind of severe reaction and how to proceed.

Experts argue that the swine flu vaccine is actually the result of a 60-year-old tried-and-true process of making  flu vaccine  that was tested on thousands of people, including some volunteer researchers, before being scheduled for distribution.

The first testing of both the arm-shot and nasal-spray vaccines was performed on 3,000 volunteers in eight laboratories at Baylor University, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Emory University, Seattle Group Heath Cooperative, St. Louis University, University of Iowa, University of Maryland and Vanderbilt University.

It’s also being tested by the five firms licensed to make up to 250 million doses of the vaccine by next spring for the U.S. market. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt, was one of the volunteers and says that the vaccine is tested for safety and to see if it produces the level of anti-body production in the blood that reaches FDA standards.

Kenneth Alexander, an infectious disease expert at the University of Chicago, says there is no reason to believe this flu vaccine will be any less safe than the seasonal flu shots because the only difference between the two is the virus it’s made from.

The FDA’s acting deputy commissioner for public health, Jesse Goodman, says that there’s a lot of misinformation being spread around and added that it’s important to have all the facts before making up your mind about whether or not to get the vaccine.

The Tribune article goes on to detail how the vaccine is made:

Last April, when the H1N1 virus was first identified by federal health officials in Mexico and California, they sent it to the pharmaceutical companies  they contract so that each of them could formulate their version of the vaccine for field testing before mass production. That process took a month.

The only FDA-approved method for making flu vaccines dates back to the 1940′s.  This involves injecting the virus into chicken eggs to be grown into larger quantities. Like many everyday foods and medicines, the ingredients contain a number of vital chemical substances that could be toxic in large doses but are included in the vaccine in harmless, trace amounts.

For instance, the active ingredient in aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid which, taken in proper doses, is effective in reducing fever and relieving headaches. However, if aspirin where to be swallowed in large doses, there would be serious consequences.

A preservative added in trace amounts, thirmerosal, which contains ethyl mercury, is the ingredient that anti-vaccine activists question the most. Critics allege that it can cause autism and other neurological disorders but researches insist that it is present in such a small amount that it poses no harm. Still, single-shot doses can be ordered without thimerosal and there is none of this ingredient in the nasal spray. The U.S. does not add “adjuvants,” another compound raising concerns and sometimes added to vaccines to stimulate the immune response in recipients.

Here’s a list from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of groups who have been prioritized to receive the 2009 H1N1 vaccine first:

• Pregnant women
• People who live with or care for children younger than 6 months of age
• Health care and emergency medical services personnel
• People between the ages of 25 and 64 years old who are at high risk for H1N1 because of chronic health disorders or compromised immune systems

The CDC reports that, of the 27 states reporting hospitalizations from September 1st to October 10th this year, more than half were people age 24 and younger and about 23 percent of deaths reported from 28 states during this time were in this age bracket.

About 90 percent of hospitalizations and deaths from the swine flu are in people age 64 and younger. This is the reverse of what we see with the seasonal flu, where 60 percent of hospitalizations and 90 percent of deaths are in people age 65 and up.

Another group that is at high risk for the swine flu includes people with immune systems compromised by diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. These folks are at risk for complications from both types of flu, that is, seasonal and H1N1, and should get both vaccinations as soon as they become available to them. For more information about inflammatory arthritis and the flu shot, visit the CDC website.

Even healthy pregnant women can have medical complications from both the seasonal and swine flu. It is recommended that you get both of these shots as soon as possible. However, you should not be given the nasal spray flu vaccine.

It seems that the flu poses added risks to pregnant women because pregnancy weakens a woman’s immune system and makes her more likely to suffer pneumonia when she catches the flu. The CDC says that, in earlier flu pandemics, infection also raised the risk of premature birth.

It’s a double dilema for pregnant women with asthma and some other health conditions. These women are particularly at risk for complications. The CDC recommends that pregnant women take prescription flu medicines if they are diagnosed with the swine flu. It is believed that the virus poses a greater risk to the unborn baby than the unknown risks of the drugs Tamiflu and Relenza. These anti-viral drugs can help lessen or avert complications, according to Dr. Anne Schuchat of the CDC.

The website Flu.gov has more information for pregnant and nursing moms.

Swine flu is quite another story. This is a particularly nasty virus that can be fatal and it’s recommended that every last one of us get a shot in the arm against it, especially the over 65 crowd, children, pregnant women and those with health concerns such as diabetes, asthma, cancer, HIV/Aids, heart or kidney disease. That means some of us will have to endure two needles.

The next step is finding out where and when to go to get these shots. Government health-related web sites are good places to start. In the U.S. go to Flu.gov. There’s a map at the top of the page. Simply click on your state and it will take you to a page with a heading near the top of the page that says “Flu shot locat0r.” Click the appropriate button and get a listing flu shot locations and the dates they will be in operation. Looks to me like all of the states have the same page set up.

In Canada, go to the Public Health Agency of Canada website and you will find a similar map about half way down the page. Click on your Province or Territory to arrive at a page with flu information from your Provincial or Territorial Government. Look for a button to click that will take you to clinic schedules. For example, Ontario’s page has a button to click on near the bottom left-hand side of the page that says “Important information about scheduling your flu shots this year.” That will take you to the clinic information. For B.C. a box near the top right-hand side of the page says “Find your local flu clinic.”

So, I guess in Canada each of the Provinces and Territories were told to come up with their own pages. That makes it harder to tell you where to look, but the information is there.

Both Flu.gov and the Public Health Agency of Canada have a ton of information about the flu, including how to protect yourself and others, frequently asked questions about the H1N1 vaccine and knowing the difference between the seasonal flu and Swine flu.

NOTE: Always Talk to your doctor before starting any treatment and serious symptoms require professional medical treatment please consult your doctor if you are experiencing serious flu like systems.

Ok with that being said I have been using two grate liquid supplements with great results in weight loss and immunity building. These are all natural vegetarian and come in recyclable containers and taste great !

The taste is great and these a very easy to digest and you will see the benefits immediately.

Source of Life Liquid by Nature’s Plus

TwinLab Liquid C, 16 Ounces (Pack of 2)

Besides These fantastic supplements you must also follow the following steps for a Healthy immunity

Step 1

One of the first things that all individuals can do throughout the year is to remain hydrated. Drinking the proper amount of water appropriate for your weight, as well as drinking to replenish electrolytes, in the summer months especially, will boost a body’s immunity against the common cold as well as the Swine Flu. Even if infected with the Swine Flu or any other flu, hydration is key to fighting it.

There are many useful things in the store to consume for hydration such as vitamin water and life water and gatorade just in case plain water gets boring. Keep it even funner with sparkling water! Just remain hydrated.

Step 2

Give your body plenty rest in and out of flu season. The human body was made to rest and recover, not work continuously. Therefore, begin to pace yourself and set a schedule for bed. This will help your body be more alert while also making you safer and more careful about protecting yourself against harmful bacteria and viruses.

Step 3

Another thing that one can do is reduce sugar in your diet. Viruses, bacteria, you name it, love sugar! Therefore, the less sugar in your diet, the more likely your precious body can fight an invader like the Swine Flu.

Step 4

When infected with a deadly virus such as the Swine flu, eating healthy and regularly gives your body the strength that it may need in the event of an attack against itself. A poorly nourished body only adds the stress that your body will come against if invaded by the Swine flu, therefore, help your body against extra stresses by putting the necessary vitamins and minerals in it through not just the pill form, but real healthy food as well. Many times, vitamins go straight through your system and come out the other way. Because of this, it is necessary to eat well balanced meals every day. All of these things will boost your body’s defenses against not just any flu, but also the Swine flu.

Step 5

Finally, remember to pray. Prayer works miracles, and this isn’t a fake saying. God created the body, and He can fix the body, restoring it through any and all things. Therefore, let fear go, and with faith, combat illnesses. Faith reduces all the stress put on yourself and gives the issue to God to handle. Trust Him and live well.

Read more about building a healthy immunity naturally here :

http://www.ehow.com/how_4947465_defenses-immunity-against-swine-flu.html

The symptoms are fairly similar with coughing, fever, lack of energy, discharge from the nose and a decrease in appetite.  In order to limit the transmission of the flu virus from pigs to people and people to pigs, the following steps can be taken:

• Vaccination of pigs. By administering influenza virus vaccinations to pigs, farmers can help to eliminate the potential spread of infection.
• Vaccination of farm workers. By making sure that all workers who come in contact with pigs are vaccinated, companies and farm owners can decrease the chances of pigs spreading the virus to workers and vice versa.
• Avoid contact. If you are infected with the influenza virus or any other infectious illness, avoid contact with as many people as possible and stay home.  In contrast, if you see that others are not feeling well, try to avoid them, as well.
• Practice good hygiene. Always cover your mouth and nose when you sneeze and wash your hands with soap often.
• Maintain healthy habits. Remember to get enough sleep, eat healthy meals full of fruits and vegetables and drink plenty of water.
• Do not pet pigs. You cannot get the swine virus from eating pork, but you could get it if you have direct contact with a pig, so stay clear until you know that it is safe to be around them again.

For now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are issuing a travel health warning for Mexico, advising people to avoid all non-essential travel to Mexico.  If you must travel to Mexico, the CDC recommends that you be up-to-date on all of your current vaccinations, including seasonal influenza vaccines.  They also advise you to do your homework and know where healthcare facilities are located in the area you will be traveling.

Be sure to pay attention to healthcare announcements being made while you are in the country and always follow the local public health guidelines.

Image via stock.xchng.