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November 08, 2005
Anti-Flu Muffins
I agree with an article in the Chicago Tribune by Julie Deardorff, who recommends a sound nutritional offense as the best defense against the flu, and for that matter, I would add, against other respiratory viral ailments.
Obviously, the first line of defense against colds and flu (about which I have blogged before) is frequent handwashing. Ms. Deardorff agrees and adds the old sneeze into your elbow technique to prevent hand-to-hand contamination. Having grown up in the cover-your-mouth-with-your-hand-when-you-cough or sneeze era, I remember being mildly disgusted when our grandsons' pre-school teachers instructed them to cover it with their elbow, but it does make sense in limiting spread of cold/flu viruses by hand-to-hand or hand-to-toy/table/doorknob/whatever contact. It does leave me wondering about the impact of snotty elbows on all your clothes, but what the hey, they're washable.
I must take Ms. Deardorff to task, however, when she quotes Alan Zelicoff's book Microbe: Are We Ready for the Next Plague? to impune doctors' offices and doctors' hygeine
Avoid the doctor's office. Not only are waiting rooms friendly breeding grounds for germs, but "physicians don't wash their hands (very often), and they're a primary vector for influenza
When we ran our clinics, we washed our hands after every patient we saw, which during flu season might have been 80 or 90 a day. We also wiped down all door knobs, exam tables, and chairs with disinfectant solution. At least, in our series of 1, the doctor's office wasn't the primary vector. The same philosophy should hold true at your home or office to prevent the spread of colds and flu: wash your hands often or use a waterless hand disinfectant and keep handy a canister of disposable antimicrobial wipes convenient to all to wipe down shared phones, door knobs, office machine control panels, and other common use items.
But beyond common sense and cleanliness, Ms. Deardorff correctly goes on to tout such foods as cranberries, which contain an organic acid that impairs the ability of the flu virus (and other microbes) to stick to your cells and infect you, and red wine, which contains resveretrol, a potent antioxidant that seems to block the ability of the virus to take command of your cells' duplicating machinery to make xerox copies of itself. All of which I heartily agree with, but would modify her advice by adding to that regimen a stout serving of good quality whey protein each day to boost immune function as well.
We have a great recipe in our newest cookbook
Posted by mdeades at 09:02 AM | Comments (1)
November 02, 2005
Elephants in the yard
I haven't been at the blog works in several weeks, but there's a reason for that. Two actually. You see, a while ago, we decided to simplify our lives by divesting ourselves of two part time homes and consolidating their contents into another one. While the idea was and still is a good and sensible one, as it turned out, the two moves wound up happening back to back. When we made up our minds to do it, from the nebulous perspective that distance lends to a future event, emptying one house of furniture and belongings and then three days later turning right around and doing it all over again with another one didn't seem such a daunting prospect. We could do it; sure we could. (While at this point we're a few days away from having it all behind us, I can catagorically say that I don't recommend it.)
We have always been given to over-committing ourselves to future projects with the firm belief that we'd get it all done somehow and we usually do, but not without angst. It gets back to that nebulous perspective notion. In our house, we call it the 'elephant on the horizon' phenomenon, which refers to the fact that even an elephant looks small at a great distance; as it gets closer and closer, the reality of its immenseness dawns, but by then it's too late to get out its way without getting trampled.
These two moves were like a whole herd of elephants, which for the last three weeks have been not on the horizon, but in our back yard. As soon as they have trundled on by and the dust of their passing settles, we'll head back down to the watering hole and get busy blogging once more.
Posted by mdeades at 09:59 PM | Comments (0)