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Every winter people ask me what they should do to get over colds and flus. In the past I’ve written long lists of all sorts of interventions, including numerous herbs and supplements. I still think those things are useful (and I’ll share a revised list later in the article) but 12 years of parenthood has helped to evolve my thinking on the matter. Having daily contact with small humans who think nothing of sneezing directly into my mouth, I know that exposure is inevitable.
If I now had to rank the value of immune-supporting interventions, number one would be REDUCE YOUR ACTIVITY. I know it’s kind of like announcing that tonight’s dessert is prunes.
Most people either don’t want to slow down or don’t feel they have the time to slow down. But I believe that being always engaged takes a big toll on us, both physically and psychologically. And there’s no supplement that comes close to the restorative value of REST.
So learn to recognize your first symptoms of infection. Maybe it’s a certain quality of lethargy – you’re tired in a way that feels different from just a poor night of sleep. Maybe it’s a sore throat or just a tickle. Maybe it’s a headache or a stiff neck. Maybe it’s a runny nose while you still feel otherwise fine. When you notice this, it’s a message – not just that a foreign critter has taken up residence in you, but that you are out of sync with what your being needs. If you honor this message and reduce your activity immediately, you will almost never get sick.
“Reduce your activity” implies a few different things. Most often it means: sleep. If you check in – you can close your eyes and ask internally, “Should I sleep now?” – you’ll be able to feel if the answer is yes. Often, when you perceive your first symptom of infection and you respond by taking a nap, you’ll wake up and that symptom will be gone. Easy.
But if you’ve been feeling like you’re constantly staving off infections or you’re always operating at less than 100%, reducing your activity may mean lessening your overall expenditure of energy. For optimal health it’s good to aim to consume less energy than we generate. That may sound overly simplistic, and it can sometimes be hard to gauge, but it’s basic economics.
If you generate lots of energy through ample deep sleep, high quality food, loving and supportive community, spiritual practice, and other forms of nourishing self-care, you can burn more energy without needing to tap into your reserves. If you don’t sleep much and/or it isn’t restful, if you don’t eat great food (or you have digestive problems that impair your ability to extract the nutrients from it), if you don’t engage with community in a supportive way, etc., you will have less energy available to you, and unless you curb your activity level, your immune system (and other systems) will flag.
Besides reducing your activity, you can support yourself even more by tuning in when you slow down and asking, “What needs my attention?” Our susceptibility to infection is often higher during times of transition – such as transitions between seasons – because there’s a demand for attention and adaptive energy. If we don’t give any direct attention to finding our balance amidst change, we’ll unconsciously expend more adaptive energy to restore balance. Or, said in a more positive way, if we proactively slow down and tune in during challenging times so that we’re able to recognize how to adapt, we save energy in the process and usually avoid getting sick.
When you reduce your activity at the first sign of a cold, you can avoid getting sick and that’s good. But I’d really like to encourage you to voluntarily slow down even when it’s not motivated by the desire to avoid something unpleasant. This practice actually yields real, tangible, measurable improvements in calmness, happiness, and life satisfaction. So don’t wait for that sore throat.
Now, I said I’d tell you some of the other interventions I recommend for colds and flus. They’re grouped for simplicity.
Dietary:
- Avoid sugar (it suppresses immune function).
- Eat lightly and stick to whole, natural, unprocessed, and easy-to-digest foods (which usually means cooked).
- Drink plenty of room-temperature or warm fluids (water, broth, electrolytes, tea).
- Almost all aromatic herbs (such as thyme, mint, ginger, garlic, oregano, sage, etc.) have immune supportive effects, so use them liberally in your soup and tea.
- Make it easy for your body to get the nutrients it needs with a minimal expenditure of energy.
Lifestyle:
- Don’t touch your face. Just make a rule with yourself that you don’t put your fingers in your ears, eyes, nose, or mouth unless you just washed them.
- Keep the surfaces you touch clean (cell phone, computer, counters, door knobs, sponges, etc.)
- Stay warm. Research shows there isn’t much truth to the longstanding notion that cold weather makes us sick – at least not in a direct way – but it does play a role. If you’re feeling too cold, chances are you’re using adaptive energy to keep yourself warm, and this means less energy that’s available for immune function. Also, cold weather is usually dry too, and dry mucus membranes are less effective at trapping viruses. Finally, viruses are more stable, and therefore survive longer on surfaces, in cold weather than in warm.
- Reduce stress.
- Get enough good-quality sleep.
- Get acupuncture and massage.
- Exercise (not when you’re actively sick though)
Supplements:
- Whatever you do, do it fast. Almost all immune-enhancing supplements have the best chance of success when taken at the absolute first sign of illness.
- Herbs: There are lots of great immune enhancing herbs, and many are specific as to when and how they’re best utilized. It’s beyond the scope of this article to get into those specifics, so I encourage you to consult a trained herbalist or do your own reading on the nuances of these herbs, but here are some of my favorites: lemon balm leaf (gentle anti-viral), echinacea root (I like the tincture form best), umckaloabo root (umcka for short), osha root, olive leaf, fresh ginger, andrographis (exceedingly bitter, so best taken as a pill), elder berry and flower, and the Chinese pill formulas Yin Qiao [Yin Chiao] and Gan Mao Ling.
- Mushrooms. Nearly all edible mushrooms have immune enhancing properties. Some of the most potent include: ganoderma (reishi), maitake, shiitake, coriolus, chaga, agaricus blazeii, turkey tail (trametes), agarikon (fomitopsis), lion’s mane, and mesima. I believe these strengthening fungi are best taken before you get sick, but they can also be taken while you’re sick (especially if it’s a prolonged illness).
- Vitamin D. I generally recommend 35 units per pound of your body weight as a maintenance dose, though for myself, I double or triple this when I’m fighting an infection.
- Vitamin A has anti-viral activity in high doses, though it can be toxic to the liver over time and it isn’t safe for pregnant women. For non-pregnant individuals with healthy livers, you can take 100,000 to 200,000 units of vitamin A for the first several days of an illness. Often a single big dose is enough to stop an early infection.
- Vitamin C is a great, safe immune enhancer. All forms are useful, though I prefer the kind that’s bound in a layer of fat for better absorption. This is sometimes called “lipospheric” or “lypospheric” vitamin C. A similar form is known as ascorbyl palmitate. I recommend about 500 mg of vitamin C per hour when actively fighting an infection (or just below the dose that gives you loose bowels).
- Zinc lozenges, specifically in the form zinc gluconate, has been proven to reduce to the duration of a cold. It’s best to suck on one slowly, repeatedly throughout the day. The downside is that, especially on an empty stomach, zinc can give you a stomach ache.
- Glandular extracts. If you don’t have a problem with animal products, some have potent immune supportive effects. They are mostly derived from otherwise discarded organs from the meat industry (beef, pork, and lamb), except in the case of the company Standard Process which raises them on their own century-old organic farm. The most common glandular extract for immune support is thymus, the gland in your chest that produces T lymphocytes. Some of the products my patients have had the most success with include Pro-Boost, X-Viromin, and Congaplex.
There are two last points I want to make. One: when you start to feel better, keep taking good care of yourself and reducing activity for at least one more day. A major rookie move is to respond to the message from your body, see positive results, and then jump right back in to high activity and crappy diet, just to get hit hard with a relapse you can’t immediately clear.
Two: nothing wastes energy like fighting with reality. I’ve been able to sail through a cold by focusing inward, finding my feelings of resistance to being sick, and letting them go. I believe anyone can do this. Think about your illness and notice the feelings in your body – particularly the lack of ease. Often there will be a feeling of tightness, tension, or bracing somewhere, or some other unpleasant feeling that isn’t due to the virus itself, but to your reaction to it. If you just keep bringing yourself back to your body and letting go of this resistance, your whole experience of being sick can change. Let your cells do the fighting, not your mind.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
[post_title] => Colds, Flus, and the Incomparable Value of Rest and Calibration
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During a particularly hard break-up in my 20s, a friend advised me, “The more present you are during this process, the bigger the present you’ll get out of it.” And though I barely understood what that meant, I gave it a try and an odd thing happened. I saw that I was choosing the big, dramatic grieving process I was going through. And that meant it was optional.
In The Art of Presence, Eckhart Tolle says, “Through thought you cannot possibly grasp what presence is.” But he gives some clues to point us in the right direction. He says it’s there, “when you’re not thinking about the last moment, or looking to the next one.” And he uses phrases like “a state of relaxed alertness” and “a spacious stillness,” to describe it.
Thich Nhat Hanh said, “The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence.”
Our presence is tremendously rare and hugely valuable. Especially in this age of epidemic distraction, it’s increasingly difficult and uncommon to choose a voluntary time-out from technology, data, and our own mental analysis. But unlike the artificial value of a coin that accidentally got stamped with a head on both sides, our presence can do for us what nothing else can. And we can make it more abundant by simply choosing it.
Although it may not put food in our belly, most other problems disappear with presence. The need to fix or relive the past disappears. The need to avoid certain unwanted events in the future disappears. Even if we're working on something now that will benefit us in the future, with our presence, we work on it now in order to work on it now. And that’s enough.
The allure of distraction, which so often threatens our presence, dissolves when we practice being present. Do you know the word obviate? I like to write using words that almost everyone understands, but there’s only one word I can think of that means “to make unnecessary,” and that word is obviate. Learning to deepen our presence obviates the urge for distraction and mental departure from our current reality.
With presence, we perceive all kinds of intelligence and detail that we’re otherwise deaf and blind to. We know when to eat and when to stop eating. We know how to move our body in a way that doesn’t cause pain or injury. Our work becomes more interesting. Our relationships become healthier. We listen better and we feel heard.
With two kids, my presence is requested almost incessantly. I hear the word Papa at least 100 times a day. Often, I hear it ten or more times in quick succession. We all yearn for someone’s total presence with us. These are the moments of connection between what is the same in both of us. Presence uncovers what’s real in this moment. And that’s refreshing, exciting, and affirming.
When we’re all so busy that we see time as a commodity, it can seem that giving our presence to someone else is like giving away our treasure. But are we actually giving something away?
Of course not. When we “give” our presence we gain the present. To withhold our presence means both we and the other person miss out.
So, how can you learn to be more present? It takes practice. If you’re new to this, I don’t recommend making a goal like, “I’m going to be more present from now on.” I don’t want to discourage you, I just want you to be realistic about what you’re up against – a lifetime of habits and a sea of tantalizing distractions.
Try something a bit less ambitious, such as this: Once a day, as you begin some activity – whether it’s buying groceries, playing Candyland, eating a meal, and listening to a friend’s problems – select this activity as an exercise in presence. In your mind, identify what exactly you’re doing – “I’m vacuuming the floor” – and devote yourself to that. Don’t run away in the middle of the activity. This means don’t pick up your phone, don’t depart in your mind to explore other thoughts and ideas, don’t visit the past, don’t anticipate what’s next, don’t judge. Just dwell in the present. Be saturated by the present. Feel everything. Accept everything. And let each next moment come.
Over time, quicker than you might think, you’ll start regaining your attention. You’ll be able to focus on something for more than five seconds. You’ll begin to yearn for this, which will make your practice much easier. And as you start willingly selecting more and more moments to be completely present, you’ll experience an unending offering of presents.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
[post_title] => A Free Pile of Presents Just for You
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If you’re interested in health and breathing, you’ve probably heard of Wim Hof, AKA the Iceman. He’s best known as that crazy Dutch guy who has broken all sorts of world records for exposure to cold, such as fastest barefoot half marathon in snow, longest swim under ice, and longest time in direct, full-body contact with ice. His secret is a special breathing method based on a Tibetan Buddhist practice called tummo. In one study, monks practicing tummo were able to raise the temperature of their fingers and toes by as much as 14.9 degrees Fahrenheit!
Dramatic impacts from breathing are also common among anyone who’s done “hypnobirthing” or Lamaze. The Lamaze Technique was developed by French doctor Fernand Lamaze about 70 years ago as a method for giving birth more naturally. It was based on earlier techniques used by women for centuries to manage – or even completely transform – the pain of childbirth with breathing techniques and reframing.
Since he founded the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in 1979, Jon Kabat-Zinn has been guiding people to get out of pain using mindfulness techniques, of which intentional focus on the breath is central. Moreover, many of the patients in this clinic are dealing with terminal illness and the majority report experiencing greater peace about their condition through these practices.
There’s an abundance of evidence that simply changing the way we breathe can have a dramatic impact on pain – whether it’s the pain of prolonged exposure to extreme cold, the pain of childbirth, or the pain of cancer. In my online pain management course, Live Pain Free, I teach many breathing techniques for pain relief.
A good place to start is by simply bringing your attention to your breath throughout the day. Breathing can be completely unconscious, which, for most modern humans, means it’s shallow and rapid – a terrible combination for pain and its associated stress. As soon as we notice it, the breath becomes longer and deeper, even without intending it.
If we do bring some intention to it, the breath becomes a magnificent always-available tool for shifting consciousness and altering sensory perception. Take a moment to bring all of your attention to a single breath. See how well you can give the whole of your focus to that breath. I’ll wait.
Isn’t it amazing (and unfortunate) how the mind can wander during the space of one breath?! It’s a tricky but simple practice: pay complete attention to the inhale and exhale. Then keep going. If you notice you’re distracted, bring yourself back to the breath. Spend no time or energy following the trains of thought that arise or pondering they keep showing up. It’s just the nature of the mind. This in itself is enough of a practice to calm your whole system, to expand your awareness, and to alleviate pain.
As an optional second step, try inviting the experience of whatever pain you may be experiencing – physical pain, emotional pain, the pain of worrisome thoughts about the world, etc. – into the space of your breath. Let your pain be here without fighting it. As you inhale, intend that you’re becoming more and more open (you can even try mentally repeating “open… open… open… open…”. As you exhale, intend that you’re releasing any pain, resistance, or stagnation. Be curious about what you find and feel. Refrain from judging or resisting. Just “turn toward” whatever you discover, and keep breathing slow and deep. Allow the inhale to draw breath way down into the base of the belly. Allow the exhale to carry out the air from the deepest pockets of your lungs – and all the little nooks of your being.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
[post_title] => Mind (Breath) Over Pain
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Every winter people ask me what they should do to get over colds and flus. In the past I’ve written long lists of all sorts of interventions, including numerous herbs and supplements. I still think those things are useful (and I’ll share a revised list later in the article) but 12 years of parenthood has helped to evolve my thinking on the matter. Having daily contact with small humans who think nothing of sneezing directly into my mouth, I know that exposure is inevitable.
If I now had to rank the value of immune-supporting interventions, number one would be REDUCE YOUR ACTIVITY. I know it’s kind of like announcing that tonight’s dessert is prunes.
Most people either don’t want to slow down or don’t feel they have the time to slow down. But I believe that being always engaged takes a big toll on us, both physically and psychologically. And there’s no supplement that comes close to the restorative value of REST.
So learn to recognize your first symptoms of infection. Maybe it’s a certain quality of lethargy – you’re tired in a way that feels different from just a poor night of sleep. Maybe it’s a sore throat or just a tickle. Maybe it’s a headache or a stiff neck. Maybe it’s a runny nose while you still feel otherwise fine. When you notice this, it’s a message – not just that a foreign critter has taken up residence in you, but that you are out of sync with what your being needs. If you honor this message and reduce your activity immediately, you will almost never get sick.
“Reduce your activity” implies a few different things. Most often it means: sleep. If you check in – you can close your eyes and ask internally, “Should I sleep now?” – you’ll be able to feel if the answer is yes. Often, when you perceive your first symptom of infection and you respond by taking a nap, you’ll wake up and that symptom will be gone. Easy.
But if you’ve been feeling like you’re constantly staving off infections or you’re always operating at less than 100%, reducing your activity may mean lessening your overall expenditure of energy. For optimal health it’s good to aim to consume less energy than we generate. That may sound overly simplistic, and it can sometimes be hard to gauge, but it’s basic economics.
If you generate lots of energy through ample deep sleep, high quality food, loving and supportive community, spiritual practice, and other forms of nourishing self-care, you can burn more energy without needing to tap into your reserves. If you don’t sleep much and/or it isn’t restful, if you don’t eat great food (or you have digestive problems that impair your ability to extract the nutrients from it), if you don’t engage with community in a supportive way, etc., you will have less energy available to you, and unless you curb your activity level, your immune system (and other systems) will flag.
Besides reducing your activity, you can support yourself even more by tuning in when you slow down and asking, “What needs my attention?” Our susceptibility to infection is often higher during times of transition – such as transitions between seasons – because there’s a demand for attention and adaptive energy. If we don’t give any direct attention to finding our balance amidst change, we’ll unconsciously expend more adaptive energy to restore balance. Or, said in a more positive way, if we proactively slow down and tune in during challenging times so that we’re able to recognize how to adapt, we save energy in the process and usually avoid getting sick.
When you reduce your activity at the first sign of a cold, you can avoid getting sick and that’s good. But I’d really like to encourage you to voluntarily slow down even when it’s not motivated by the desire to avoid something unpleasant. This practice actually yields real, tangible, measurable improvements in calmness, happiness, and life satisfaction. So don’t wait for that sore throat.
Now, I said I’d tell you some of the other interventions I recommend for colds and flus. They’re grouped for simplicity.
Dietary:
- Avoid sugar (it suppresses immune function).
- Eat lightly and stick to whole, natural, unprocessed, and easy-to-digest foods (which usually means cooked).
- Drink plenty of room-temperature or warm fluids (water, broth, electrolytes, tea).
- Almost all aromatic herbs (such as thyme, mint, ginger, garlic, oregano, sage, etc.) have immune supportive effects, so use them liberally in your soup and tea.
- Make it easy for your body to get the nutrients it needs with a minimal expenditure of energy.
Lifestyle:
- Don’t touch your face. Just make a rule with yourself that you don’t put your fingers in your ears, eyes, nose, or mouth unless you just washed them.
- Keep the surfaces you touch clean (cell phone, computer, counters, door knobs, sponges, etc.)
- Stay warm. Research shows there isn’t much truth to the longstanding notion that cold weather makes us sick – at least not in a direct way – but it does play a role. If you’re feeling too cold, chances are you’re using adaptive energy to keep yourself warm, and this means less energy that’s available for immune function. Also, cold weather is usually dry too, and dry mucus membranes are less effective at trapping viruses. Finally, viruses are more stable, and therefore survive longer on surfaces, in cold weather than in warm.
- Reduce stress.
- Get enough good-quality sleep.
- Get acupuncture and massage.
- Exercise (not when you’re actively sick though)
Supplements:
- Whatever you do, do it fast. Almost all immune-enhancing supplements have the best chance of success when taken at the absolute first sign of illness.
- Herbs: There are lots of great immune enhancing herbs, and many are specific as to when and how they’re best utilized. It’s beyond the scope of this article to get into those specifics, so I encourage you to consult a trained herbalist or do your own reading on the nuances of these herbs, but here are some of my favorites: lemon balm leaf (gentle anti-viral), echinacea root (I like the tincture form best), umckaloabo root (umcka for short), osha root, olive leaf, fresh ginger, andrographis (exceedingly bitter, so best taken as a pill), elder berry and flower, and the Chinese pill formulas Yin Qiao [Yin Chiao] and Gan Mao Ling.
- Mushrooms. Nearly all edible mushrooms have immune enhancing properties. Some of the most potent include: ganoderma (reishi), maitake, shiitake, coriolus, chaga, agaricus blazeii, turkey tail (trametes), agarikon (fomitopsis), lion’s mane, and mesima. I believe these strengthening fungi are best taken before you get sick, but they can also be taken while you’re sick (especially if it’s a prolonged illness).
- Vitamin D. I generally recommend 35 units per pound of your body weight as a maintenance dose, though for myself, I double or triple this when I’m fighting an infection.
- Vitamin A has anti-viral activity in high doses, though it can be toxic to the liver over time and it isn’t safe for pregnant women. For non-pregnant individuals with healthy livers, you can take 100,000 to 200,000 units of vitamin A for the first several days of an illness. Often a single big dose is enough to stop an early infection.
- Vitamin C is a great, safe immune enhancer. All forms are useful, though I prefer the kind that’s bound in a layer of fat for better absorption. This is sometimes called “lipospheric” or “lypospheric” vitamin C. A similar form is known as ascorbyl palmitate. I recommend about 500 mg of vitamin C per hour when actively fighting an infection (or just below the dose that gives you loose bowels).
- Zinc lozenges, specifically in the form zinc gluconate, has been proven to reduce to the duration of a cold. It’s best to suck on one slowly, repeatedly throughout the day. The downside is that, especially on an empty stomach, zinc can give you a stomach ache.
- Glandular extracts. If you don’t have a problem with animal products, some have potent immune supportive effects. They are mostly derived from otherwise discarded organs from the meat industry (beef, pork, and lamb), except in the case of the company Standard Process which raises them on their own century-old organic farm. The most common glandular extract for immune support is thymus, the gland in your chest that produces T lymphocytes. Some of the products my patients have had the most success with include Pro-Boost, X-Viromin, and Congaplex.
There are two last points I want to make. One: when you start to feel better, keep taking good care of yourself and reducing activity for at least one more day. A major rookie move is to respond to the message from your body, see positive results, and then jump right back in to high activity and crappy diet, just to get hit hard with a relapse you can’t immediately clear.
Two: nothing wastes energy like fighting with reality. I’ve been able to sail through a cold by focusing inward, finding my feelings of resistance to being sick, and letting them go. I believe anyone can do this. Think about your illness and notice the feelings in your body – particularly the lack of ease. Often there will be a feeling of tightness, tension, or bracing somewhere, or some other unpleasant feeling that isn’t due to the virus itself, but to your reaction to it. If you just keep bringing yourself back to your body and letting go of this resistance, your whole experience of being sick can change. Let your cells do the fighting, not your mind.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
[post_title] => Colds, Flus, and the Incomparable Value of Rest and Calibration
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