Symptoms of flu include sore throat, cough, runny nose, aches and pains, fever, fatigue, and loss of appetite. A sore throat benefits from the soothing effects of juice, which also provides essential vitamin С and beta-carotene.

Juices should be drunk diluted if you have flu and are not eating – this is because the high levels of natural sugar contained in fruits and some vegetables can make you feel a little dizzy if drunk on an empty stomach.

Here are some excellent anti-flu juices:

2 large carrots
1/2 leek
2oz/50g parsley

or

2oz/50g Brussels sprouts
2 tomatoes
1/4 cucumber

Or

4 tangerines
1 papaya

or

small bunch of grapes
2 kiwi-fruit 1 apple

Each recipe makes approx. one 8fl oz/230ml glass of juice. Adults can drink up to three glasses daily, but do vary the juice combinations for maxiumum benefit (for children see page 186). Dilute with water if you prefer. Juice each ingredient then blend using a spoon.

1. Try to drink as much water as possible. It’s advisable to drink 2-2,5 litres of water a day.

2. Take in 2,5 gr of ascorbic acid on the first day of the disease. Then, the doze should make just 1 gr a day. Remember that ascorbic acid collapses very easily in case of high temperature, agitation and excessive light.

3. Such antiviral agents as remantadin, arbidol and others should be taken in from the very beginning when you have been diagnosed with flu. Anyways, it will do only good. Remember the saying ‘prevention is better than cure’?

4. A dose of febrifuges for adults should depend not only on high temperature, but on the general condition of the patient. If your fever ends pretty soon, don’t hasten to take in febrifuges.

Most various diseases can hide under the mask of flu: a hepatites, measles, AIDS, etc. In these cases self-treatment is fraught with serious risks for you health.

In fact, it is well-known that the flu virus has a huge number of subtypes. And it continues mutating all the time. A vaccine efficient against one subtype today can become absolutely useless against another flu type tomorrow.

An efficiency fight agains influenza is annually denied, however, due to some optimistic anti-flu ads there’s always somebody who is ready to be a guinea pig in new experiments and investigations. Some peopel relly want to test on themselves injections which make them go off the rails for a week and which have no real guarantees of safety and efficiency. It’s a pathetic attempt and a doublful experiment.

But there is a set of ways of nonspecific preventive measures that have proved to be quite effective against flu. The most simple of them is a wearing gauze bandage during the flashes of infection. Besides, you can try tempering, taking vitamins, micro- and macrocells, natural and synthetic immunomudulators, interferons, etc.

It quickly perishes in a dry room, under the influence of disinfectants, heating and the sun. But at low temperatures (-25C up to -70C) it can survive for several years.

During a contact to the patient the virus gets into the respiratory system through inhaling and takes root in epithelium cells (mainly in tracheas and large bronchial tubes).

The flu virus has ability to reproduce very quickly, therefore, the beginning of illness is usually sudden, in 12-48 hours from the moment of infection.

1. Virus parts reproduce, destroy the struck cell and go out immediately infecting next cells. That’s the reason of pain and smarts behind the sternum and dry coughing.

2. At the same time the virus results in the allocation of biologically active substances and products of cell disintegration, many of which are toxic for nervous, cardiovascular and other systems of the organism. The symptoms of intoxication are weakness, weariness, head and eyeball aches, especially when moving them and pressing on them; ache in muscles and joints, photophobia. High temperature, palpitations, tachypnoe, low blood pressure, puffiness are bleeding sickness are the other disturbing symptoms of the flue.

3. Virus attack results in decrease of immunity, occurrence of “holes” in the defensive systems of the organism. That’s why the flu frequently comes together with exacerbation of chronic diseases, bacterial complications such as cold, pneumonia, antritis, kidney defeat, etc. Quite often flu is accompanied with herpes and thrush.

In typical cases these symptoms start to regress after 5-7 days of illness and gradually disappear.

Everyone of us knows not by hearsay, what kind of illness it is. The flu is highly widespread and causes epidemics annually.

It is known that the flu affects first of all elderly people, children and people with the weakened immune system (having serious chronic diseases, immunodeficiencies, etc.). It often result in severe complications among them.

The flu is not so dangerous for others: a few days of fever, headache, muscle and joint aches, but all this quickly eventually goes away, and the person is ready to come to work again.

However nobody wants to take a sick-list, to toil in bed and to jeopardize family because of this influenzal monster.

You always want to avoid illness by hook or by crook! And if you fall ill nevertheless – to make a miracle, and to overcome flu for a couple of days instead of usual seven or ten days. But for this purpose it is necessary to know the face of your enemy.