Studies have shown that Fucoidan helps to activate dendritic cells within the body.  These dendritic cells have been shown to be the most effective anitigen presenting cells for naïve T-cells and initiates the process of immune system recognition of a new pathogen.

In simple terms dendritic cells help the body to identify new invaders and pass the information on to helper T-cells, killer T-cells and B cells (which all fight pathogens such as bacteria and viruses).  Dendritic cells are derived from hemopoietic bone marrow progenitor cells.  These progenitor cells initially transform into immature dendritic cells.  These immature dendritic cells, through the use of pattern recognition receptors, are constantly sampling their surrounding areas for pathogens.  Once these specialized cells come into contact with a pathogen they, through a process called “nibbling” basically take samples of the pathogen, degrade their proteins into small pieces and present those fragments at their cell surface.

Simultaneously, they upregulate cell-surface receptors that act as co-receptors in T-cell activation such as CD80 (B7.1), CD86 (B7.2), and CD40 greatly enhancing their ability to activate T-cells. They also upregulate CCR7, a chemotactic receptor that induces the dendritic cell to travel through the blood stream to the spleen or through the lymphatic system to a lymph node. Here they act as antigen-presenting cells: they activate helper T-cells and killer T-cells as well as B-cells by presenting them with antigens derived from the pathogen, alongside non-antigen specific costimulatory signals.

This, simply stated sets the immune system into motion.  The “helper T-Cells (Th)” for all intents and purposes are the traffic cops of the immune system.  Th cells are involved in activating and directing other immune cells, and are particularly important in the immune system. They are essential in determining B cell antibody class switching, in the activation and growth of cytotoxic T cells, and in maximizing bactericidal activity of phagocytes such as macrophages. It is this diversity in function and their role in influencing other cells that gives T helper cells their name.

Killer T-Cells are a type of T cell that attacks cells having specific antigens on their surface, such as cancer cells or cells infected with a virus. Also called cytotoxic T cell or CD8+ T cell.

The principal functions of B cells are to make antibodies against antigens, perform the role of Antigen Presenting Cells (APCs) and eventually develop into memory B cells after activation by antigen interaction. B cells are an essential component of the adaptive immune system.

Understanding how the immune system works and how Fucoidan sets the wheels in motion gives us a clear picture as to the potential that this important sea-derived substance may be the natural answer to H1N1 that we have all been looking for.

For information about the pure Fucoidan functional beverage Zradical  Click Here.

Although vitamin C & zinc have historically received most of the press regarding their ability to help resist cold and flu, Vitamin D is the big winner here.  In fact recent studies have shown that people with the lowest vitamin D levels are often the most susceptible to colds and flu.

“The findings of our study support an important role for vitamin D in prevention of common respiratory infections, such as colds and the flu,” says researcher Adit Ginde, MD, MPH, of the University of Colorado, Denver, Division of Emergency Medicine, in a news release. “Individuals with common lung diseases, such as asthma or emphysema, may be particularly susceptible to respiratory infections from vitamin D deficiency.”

“We are planning clinical trials to test the effectiveness of vitamin D to boost immunity and fight respiratory infection, with a focus on individuals with asthma and COPD, as well as children and older adults — groups that are at higher risk for more severe illness,” Ginde says. “While it’s too early to make any definitive recommendations, many Americans also need more vitamin D for its bone and general health benefits.”

A group of scientists from UCLA published a remarkable paper in the prestigious journal, Nature. The UCLA group confirmed two other recent studies, showing that a naturally occurring steroid hormone – a hormone most of us take for granted – was, in effect, a potent antibiotic. Instead of directly killing bacteria and viruses, the steroid hormone under question increases the body’s production of a remarkable class of proteins, called antimicrobial peptides. The 200 known antimicrobial peptides directly and rapidly destroy the cell walls of bacteria, fungi, and viruses, including the influenza virus, and play a key role in keeping the lungs free of infection. The steroid hormone that showed these remarkable antibiotic properties was plain old vitamin D.

A few years ago, I became convinced that vitamin D was unique in the vitamin world by virtue of three facts. First, it’s the only known precursor of a potent steroid hormone, calcitriol, or activated vitamin D. Most other vitamins are antioxidants or co-factors in enzyme reactions. Activated vitamin D – like all steroid hormones – damasks the genome, turning protein production on and off, as your body requires. That is, vitamin D regulates genetic expression in hundreds of tissues throughout your body. This means it has as many potential mechanisms of action as genes it damasks.

Second, vitamin D does not exist in appreciable quantities in normal human diets. True, you can get several thousand units in a day if you feast on sardines for breakfast, herring for lunch and salmon for dinner. The only people who ever regularly consumed that much fish are peoples, like the Inuit, who live at the extremes of latitude. The milk Americans depend on for their vitamin D contains no naturally occurring vitamin D; instead, the U.S. government requires fortified milk to be supplemented with vitamin D, but only with what we now know to be a paltry 100 units per eight-ounce glass.

The vitamin D steroid hormone system has always had its origins in the skin, not in the mouth. Until quite recently, when dermatologists and governments began warning us about the dangers of sunlight, humans made enormous quantities of vitamin D where humans have always made it, where naked skin meets the ultraviolet B radiation of sunlight. We just cannot get adequate amounts of vitamin D from our diet. If we don’t expose ourselves to ultraviolet light, we must get vitamin D from dietary supplements.

The third way vitamin D is different from other vitamins is the dramatic difference between natural vitamin D nutrition and the modern one. Today, most humans only make about a thousand units of vitamin D a day from sun exposure; many people, such as the elderly or African Americans, make much less than that. How much did humans normally make? A single, twenty-minute, full body exposure to summer sun will trigger the delivery of 20,000 units of vitamin D into the circulation of most people within 48 hours. Twenty thousand units, that’s the single most important fact about vitamin D. Compare that to the 100 units you get from a glass of milk, or the several hundred daily units the U.S. government recommend as “Adequate Intake.” It’s what we call an “order of magnitude” difference.

Our advice – get tested to check vitamin D levels in your body.  Take vitamin D supplements derived from natural sources.  Last and certainly not least, get 20/40 minuits of exposure to sunlight daily.  For more information Click Here about vitamin D supplementation.

Parents talking on the internet forums have expressed some concern about the H1N1 vaccine that will be offered to children and adults with underlying health conditions and pregnant women as priorities.
Fears raised include its safety for pregnant women, whether the vaccine has been tested enough and the fact one of them contains a controversial mercury preservative.

HEALTH officials have warned doctors of possible similarities between the new swine flu vaccine and a jab linked to 25 deaths in America in the 1970s.  The government’s Health Protection Agency (HPA), said in a letter to neurologists that they needed to look out for increases in cases of a brain disorder that might follow the launch of the immunization program.  In 1976, Washington rushed in a mass immunization program against a swine flu outbreak that was confined to a single military base.  Several hundred cases of a rare, lethal, paralyzing neurological disease called Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) were reported afterwards, and although no clear link was ever found to the vaccine, the incident made many people mistrustful of immunizations.

The Department of Health said: “Appropriate trials to assess safety and immune responses have been carried out on vaccines very similar to the swine flu vaccine. The vaccines have been shown to have a good safety profile.”

The World Health Organization has also said recently that the public should be “reassured” about the safety of the new vaccine. It acknowledged that “genuine adverse events directly caused by the vaccine may also occur, but cannot be predicted in advance”.

What’s going on here?  Which side of the isle is right and what are we to do in the face of conflicting opinion?  I wish I had the answer.  What I do know is that according to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius a new swine flu vaccine to be available for distribution by mid-October — fully six to seven weeks after American schoolchildren will have flocked back to the germ pools of their classrooms. Sebelius hasn’t formally approved a nationwide vaccination campaign, which would detail which populations should get priority in the use of still-scarce vaccine. But she’s expected to do so soon.

In the mean time five medical centers across the country will begin testing the H1N1 vaccine tomorrow (Wednesday – Aug.18 2008).  I am shocked and bewildered that Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Mo. expects to enroll 160 children who, with parental consent, will become human guinea pigs to test this serum.  The study is designed to determine the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine in children 6 months to 17 years old.  Each child will receive two doses of the vaccine against the H1N1 virus.  A second study is to begin next week on another group of children at other medical centers across the country including St. Louis University.

What if I get swine flu?

You can’t know for sure if you have the new H1N1 flu unless you get a test. But rapid flu tests haven’t proven reliable at pinpointing cases of the new disease; only a lab test can confirm whether you have it.
Treatment is similar to that for seasonal flu.  Most people get well by resting, staying hydrated and taking medicines to reduce fever. Stay home and keep your distance from others for at least 24 hours after your fever is gone.

Children under 18 years old shouldn’t be given aspirin due to a risk of Reye’s Syndrome, a rare but potentially life-threatening illness. Don’t give cold medicines to children under four without first talking with a pediatrician.

You should call the doctor if you have trouble breathing, chest or abdominal pain, dizziness, confusion or persistent vomiting, or if your flu symptoms worsen after improving, the CDC says. Call the pediatrician if your child has those symptoms, isn’t drinking enough fluids, or is irritable or sluggish.

Do not Panic!

I have said it before and I will state it again.  Hundreds of millions of people lose their lives to the seasonal flu every year.  I know that every life is very important and I honestly wish that this statistic was not true.  Sadly enough however it is true and in our faces every year.  It is also true that only a small fraction of the world population have been effected by the H1N1 virus and subsequently an even smaller number of people have succumb to it’s effects.

More than two million people are believed to have contracted the new flu in the U.S.; 7,511 had been hospitalized and 477 had died as of Aug. 13, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. World-wide, 177,457 people have been confirmed with the disease, and 1,462 deaths had been reported as of Aug. 12, according to the World Health Organization.

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) pregnant women and people with asthma, diabetes, heart disease and other chronic diseases. About 70% of those hospitalized and about 80% of those who have died in the U.S. had underlying medical conditions, according to the CDC. In a study published in the Lancet, CDC scientists found pregnant women were more than four times as likely to be hospitalized with the new flu than the general population.

It isn’t clear whether obesity itself is a risk factor. Morbidly obese patients have had greater complications, but it may be due to diabetes or other chronic diseases they have, health officials say.

Public health officials initially feared a deadly scourge, after reports of dozens of deaths in Mexico. Instead, “what we are seeing looks very much like seasonal flu so far,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said earlier this month. Most people suffer unpleasant but not life-threatening symptoms, such as fever, body aches, sore throat and runny nose. Gastrointestinal problems—vomiting and diarrhea—are normally rare for adults with flu, but have been reported globally in as many as 50% of nonhospitalized patients with the virus.

Many people don’t even develop a fever, though they had other symptoms, says Richard Wenzel, chairman of the department of internal medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Medical College, who observed such cases on trips to Latin America. One academic hospital in Chile told Dr. Wenzel that only half of its outpatients infected with H1N1 swine flu had fever; some had only a runny nose, sometimes with a headache, he says.

One unusual thing: Young people are getting sick, while the elderly, who normally account for 90% of annual deaths from flu, have largely been spared. Most of those who died—generally of viral pneumonia and other complications—have ranged from 25 through 64 years old, according to a CDC analysis. CDC officials say people 60 and older may have some immunity to the new virus from exposure to H1N1 viruses that circulated between 1918 and 1957.

If you do opt to take your chances with the new vaccine be sure to tell your doctor that you want the thimerosal-free vaccine .  For those of you who don’t know, Thimerosal is a mercury-containing organic compound widely used as a preservative in a number of biological and drug products, including many vaccines, to help prevent potentially life threatening contamination with harmful microbes.  Over the past several years, because of an increasing awareness of the theoretical potential for neurotoxicity of even low levels of organomercurials and because of the increased number of thimerosal containing vaccines that had been added to the infant immunization schedule, concerns about the use of thimerosal in vaccines and other products have been raised.

The best cure is prevention

Wash your hands often with soap and water, or use hand sanitizer. Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. The virus spreads through respiratory droplets in a cough or sneeze, and people start spreading the virus a day before they develop symptoms. You can also pick it up by touching something that has flu virus on it, then touching your mouth or nose.   In addition it surely can’t hurt to begin to increase your bodies immune system function.  You can do this quite effectively naturally, without the use of drugs or untested vaccines.

Be safe, be healthy, and may good luck be with you all.

As with all disciplines you only need to be proficient at those you practice.  In the case of health and wellness people often simply wait until they become ill and even they defer to their doctors.  They do not take the time to learn about what it takes to achieve and maintain health.

Most experts in the field of nutrition agree that almost all illnesses are caused, either directly or indirectly, by poor nutrition.  The foods that we eat or lack there of, as well as the quality and the quantity of those foods are directly related to our overall health.  Lack of proper nutrition makes us susceptible to any number of malady’s.  These illnesses are a result of one simple cause.  Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

The perfect illustration of this fact can be seen when looking at the aids epidemic.   The important lesson that we learn here is that people do not die from the aids virus directly rather from a secondary illness  allowed to ravage the body because it’s natural defenses could not protect it or destroy the invader once it has penetrated our natural defenses.  Our bodies are placed under stress daily by being subjected to  environmental contaminants both chemical and biological.  This is true of everyone that does not live in a bubble.

We all need to smarten up as people and a culture and learn the facts about our bodies and our health.  We need to learn about how our body functions and the important roll that nutrition plays in those functions.  For example in the case of immune system health there are a few things that we can do to insure that our natural defenses are maximized.  As mentioned in previous articles we at Health Products Guru honestly believe, in terms of proper nutrition, that the body needs nutritional supplementation because we do not get the nutrients we need from the foods we consume.

We also believe that a person can take 4 simple steps today that will greatly improve their immune system function.  The first is to begin to detoxify your body.  It is critical to optimal health to be sure that there are no foods left in the digestive tract to putrefy and release toxins into the body.   Secondly you must eat the right foods in the qualities that we need to maintain health.  This includes vitamin and mineral supplementation. Third, we must be sure that the foods that we consume are being broken down into bio-available nutrition.  Lastly we must give our body what it needs to assure that the now bio-available nutrition can metabolized.

In terms of supplementation this adds up to taking vitamin & mineral supplements, both digestive and metabolic enzymes (to break down foods & improve metabolism) eat as much organic food as you can (to insure better nutritional value of the foods that you do consume and to avoid adding toxins such as pesticides into your body) and use a safe digestive tract cleansing product.  We believe that simply adding to your digestive enzyme intake will aid this process in a gentle but effective manner.  It is important to
remember to be careful if you decide to use colon cleansing products.  Check the ingredients carefully and be sure that they work in a slow steady and safe manner as opposed to taking a fast acting laxative product for example.

Most herbs found in the average kitchen are thought to be simply flavor enhancers.  Although these herbs do indeed add depth to the flavor of food they also offer some wonderful health benefits as well.

Chives (Allium schoenoprasum)
Chives are part of a large genus of approximately 500 species of mostly strong-smelling perennials that contain bulbs or underground stems. These allium herbs include garlic, onions, scallions, leeks, and chives, and belong to the lily family. Various allium species have been cultivated since earliest times and are universally important as vegetables, flavorings, and medicinal plants.

These allium herbs were popular among the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. The strong odor, so typical of these herbs, is due to a variety of sulfur compounds, such as alkyl sulfoxides and allyl sulfides. They are reported to have beneficial effects on the circulatory, digestive and respiratory systems.

A cousin to the onion and garlic, chives contain substantial amounts of vitamin C as well as potassium, iron, folic acid, and calcium, all necessary for a well-rounded, nutritious meal. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), chives are used to stop a runny nose or clear a stuffy one. Chives have also been helpful throughout centuries for keeping bad breath away, strengthening the muscles in the lower back, increasing circulation, and calming churning stomachaches.

Chives have similar properties to other allium vegetables, except that chives are milder, since they have fewer sulfur compounds. While garlic or onions are well documented to possess anticancer, anticlotting, hypolipidemic, antibacterial, antiviral, and decongestant properties, chives could be expected to possess similar, but substantially attenuated, characteristics.

Population studies have shown that a higher intake of allium vegetables is associated with a reduced risk of several types of cancers. The organosulfur compounds they contain inhibit tumor growth and cell proliferation, and arrest the cell cycle in tumor cells. Allium vegetables, including chives, especially have a protective effect against both esophageal and stomach cancer as well as prostate cancer. The highest antioxidant activity in chives is observed in the leaves, which are also rich in flavonoids.

There are no side effects or dangers from the use of chives. However, large quantities may cause stomach irritation.

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis)

Rosemary was well known to the ancient Greeks and Romans. In the ancient world, it had a reputation for improving memory and rejuvenating the spirits. Greek scholars wore garlands of rosemary during examinations in order to improve their memory and concentration. Shakespeare also wrote that rosemary was good for the memory.

An ancient superstition led people to bind rosemary to their legs to relieve themselves of pain from gout. It was often used at funerals, in Christmas decorations, and at weddings. Rosemary was often given to the bride with the hope that she will enjoy a happy marriage.

While rosemary is associated with various legends, it finds common use today as a fragrance in soaps, shampoos, hair conditioners, and bath lotions. The oil is used in perfumery, ointments, cosmetics, and aromatherapy. The dried leaves can also add fragrance to a potpourri.

The fresh or dried leaves and flowering tops of rosemary are used for a variety of medicinal benefits. In traditional European medicine, rosemary has been used internally as a tonic, stimulant, and as a carminative to treat flatulence. It is also used to treat dyspepsia, mild gastrointestinal upsets, colds, headaches, and nervous tension. In India and China, rosemary leaves are used to treat headaches.

Early in American history rosemary was used as an antispasmodic, to stimulate the appetite and improve digestion. Today, rosemary is recognized for its ability to stimulate bile secretion and for its anti-inflammatory properties. People gargle rosemary tea to help heal mouth ulcers and canker sores.

Rosemary oil can be distilled from the leaves of the plant, mixed with a vegetable oil, and used for massage. Applied externally this oil is used for relief from muscular and arthritic pain. In Europe, rosemary oil is used to treat rheumatic conditions, bruises, and circulatory problems. When applied externally the oil appears to stimulate an increased blood supply. In addition, rosemary oil or some freshly cut sprigs can be added to bath water to soothe aching muscles and joints.

Rosemary leaf contains important phenolic components such as rosmarinic, chlorogenic, and caffeic acids, and a host of health-promoting flavonoids that possess strong antioxidant properties. The terpenoids in rosemary, such as rosmarinic acid, rosmanol, carnosol and ursolic acid provide effective anti-inflammatory benefits, while ursolic acid conveys anti-tumor properties.

The volatile oil of rosemary has some antiseptic properties. It contains a high percentage of 1,8-cineole (providing the fresh eucalyptus-like fragrance), and other major terpenoid components including “-pinene, “-terpineol, and camphor. The pleasant fragrance of rosemary is due largely to the presence of verbenone.

Rosemary extract has been shown to produce a significant decrease in the incidence of breast tumors that were induced in laboratory animals. Dr Dannenberg recently discovered that carnosol in rosemary extract can protect against cancer. Carnosol blocks the expression of the human gene responsible for making the enzyme COX-2. This enzyme normally plays an important role in the development of colon, breast and other cancers.

The British Herbal Pharmacopoeia reports that rosemary has antibacterial and antispasmodic action. An extract of rosemary can also produce an increase in bile secretion, thus aiding in fat digestion. The German Commission E approves the internal use of rosemary leaf for dyspeptic complaints and the external use as supportive therapy for rheumatic conditions and peripheral circulatory disorders.