The Swine Flu and How to Deal With It

Regular swine flu is a contagious respiratory disease, caused by a type-A influenza virus that affects pigs. The current strain, A(H1N1), is a new variation of an H1N1 virus -- which causes seasonal flu outbreaks in humans -- that also contains genetic material of bird and pig versions of the flu.

A virus is much smaller than a bacteria. In fact, bacteria can be infected with a virus and "catch the flu." It's important to understand that antibiotics will not be effective in the case of a viral infection.

This new virus has been talked of as being on the verge of causing a pandemic. Vaccines do not provide guaranteed protection against catching the flu and in some cases may do more harm than good, especially when given to children. The talk is that it will take six months or more for it to be available anyway. The question is: what can you do to protect yourself? Are there any effective natural anti-flu strategies that you can begin using now to strengthen your immunity and get prepared?

First, don't get in a panic. The regular seasonal flu that comes every year already kills thousand of people per year and we don't panic over that. The vast majority of people who contract the flu recover within a week or two. To add some perspective, malaria kills on average, about 3,000 people every day.

To help see where we are in the development of this disease here is the World Health Organization's (WHO) pandemic alert phases:

1. Phase 1: A virus in animals has caused no known infections in humans.
2. Phase 2: An animal flu virus has caused infection in humans.
3. Phase 3: Sporadic cases or small clusters of disease occur in humans. Human-to-human transmission, if any, is insufficient to cause community-level outbreaks.
4. Phase 4: The risk for a pandemic is greatly increased but not certain. The disease-causing virus is able to cause community-level outbreaks.
5. Phase 5: Still not a pandemic, but spread of disease between humans is occurring in more than one country of one WHO region.
6. Phase 6: This is the pandemic level. Community-level outbreaks are in at least one additional country in a different WHO region from phase 5. A global pandemic is under way.

The flu information compiled from a number of sources and presented here and in the pages linked to below is to help you hopefully, avoid the flu altogether or, if you do come down with it, to minimize the pain, discomfort and inconvenience. It is divided into the following categories:

Swine Flu Symptoms, Diagnosis and Complications
How to Build Up Immune System Resistance to the Swine Flu
Handwashing and other Preventive Measures.
Natural Swine Flu Treatments.
Effectiveness of Tamiflu
Swine Flu Vaccine Dangers

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