Is the infection caused by the virus or is catching a cold a matter of susceptibility?
Conventional medicine is built on a notion that colds are caused by viruses and bacteria invades our bodies, but this theory only tells half the story. When the conventional medical system say that an infection causes a cold, they’re missing the point.
Although it is true that microorganisms can infect our body and make us ill, they can only in certain environments. If the microorganism is given an environment where it can grow and flourish it will. On the other hand if one has a strong immune system then the microorganism will not be able to grow and will simply die off.
For example the latest cold/flu may be doing the rounds in the office but for some reason Jo never gets sick, even though she is surrounded by everyone in the office who is coughing and spluttering over her. Or little Jimmy, all of his playmate friends are constantly sick or have ear infections but for some reason he is always fine.
When you start to feel the early signs of a cold and you have all those ‘annoying’ symptoms like a runny nose, sneezing, coughing, phlegm and sweating, know that these are your immune systems natural detoxification methods and is your bodies attempt to fight off the infection.
My Personal Story
On Wednesday night it hit me, my muscles started to ache, nose started to run and I knew a cold was on its way. Now my normal approach to the early signs of a cold is to take a high dose of vitamin C, rest up a little more and think positive. A ski trip was planned for the Friday so I knew it wasn’t good timing and I needed to rid this cold as quickly as I could. Because my focus was on getting better as fast as I could I decided to do something I haven’t done in years….. LEMSIP
After buying some LEMSIP at the local store, I got home boiled the kettle and made a mug. What followed was an excruciatingly painful head. That night I couldn’t get any sleep, my brain was racing with random thoughts and my head felt like it was in a vice. I truly felt awful, a racing brain, nausea, headache and anxiety were just a few off the symptoms I had.
In the morning I felt worse than ever and took a look at the ingredients of the LEMSIP – Paracetamol, aspartame, saccharin and sucrose.
I hadn’t had paracetamol in over a year, maybe two and I certainly hadn’t had aspartame or saccharine in many years.
I am not saying that it was these drugs and artificial sweeteners that made me feel so bad as correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation BUT it certainly may have been
Paraceptamol (Acetaminophen)
Has been proven to cause liver damage, liver failure and death. Each year there are over 100,000 calls to poison control centres, 56,000 emergency room visits, 26,000 hospitalisations and more than 450 deaths from liver failure from people taking Paracetamol.
Aspartame
A 1988 survey reported in the Journal of Applied Nutrition stated that according to 551 people, the most common side effects of aspartame included headaches, dizziness, confusion, memory loss, blurred vision, depression, irritability and anxiety attacks.
A Monsanto study had the plug pulled after preliminary data emerged showing possible birth defects associated with aspartame
In 1981, a statistician at the FDA stated that data on brain tumours was so ‘worrisome’ that he could not recommend approval of NutraSweet
Saccharine
The main ingredient in Saccharine is benzoic sulfimide. Saccharine is an artificial sweetener that is 300 times sweeter than sugar yet contains no calories
Reported side effects include nausea, skin problems and other allergy related symptoms
Saccharine has been shown to cause bladder cancer in rats and is a probable carcinogen.
A lesson learned
As I said before it may not have been the LEMSIP but there sure is a correlation with some of the symptoms. I really should have known better but even I was suckered into the marketing of a ‘get rid of your cold quick’ campaign.
The next time you get a cold don’t just treat the symptom, get to the root cause. Getting a cold is nature’s way of telling you that you’re overdoing it. For me it was a handful of bad night’s sleep caused by stress. I was tired, a little run down but still wanted to push hard in my training sessions and be as productive as I could in the office.
We live in a society where we constantly push ourselves, whether it be to get through all the paper work piling up on our desks or to get the six pack body. Now there is nothing wrong with pushing yourself as hard as you can providing you take the time to recover.
Two things of opposite nature seem to depend on one another, as man depends on woman, day on night, the imagined on the real, positive and the negative. One cannot exist without the other
The point I am making is that in life you have to have balance. Too much pushing and not enough recovering will result in burn out. This burn out may start in the form of a cold, then it may be adrenal fatigue, then it just keeps going until you haven’t been feeling well for some time so you go to the doctors only to be told after some testing that you have heart disease or cancer.
So the next time you get a cold take some time out to realise what it means, what’s the root cause and what do you need to do in order to realign balance.
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