@Baldy,

You sound like you have a case of Walking Pneumonia.
Please go to your doc or a walk-in clinic. It will never heal on it's own. You will spread it.
But a 5-7 day course of anti's will set you straight.

It is contagious, so everyone must be treated.

Anyone heard any updates?


Are we all going to die yet?


Seriously though, isn't this comparatively late as far as flu seasons go to start getting nasty surprises?

Frat,
It is kinda late for flu season, but far from unheard of... 1918 is thought to have started in April... though there was some anecdotal reports of that bug popping around in the fall of 1917...

BTW, haven't heard any new reports from this cluster...

From India:

Quote:

Agartala: Bird flu influenza has resurfaced in Tripura after one-and-a-half months, an official said here on Sunday.

http://zeenews.india.com/news/north-east....

Quote:

BTW, haven't heard any new reports from this cluster...

we don't.

really odd we havn't heard anything on the final results...usually a cover up involved

is there a flu thread ?

friends in So Cal still have the flu- all 4 in the family are sick now with the oldest son running a fever for a week

My friend did have the flu shot this year—so the flu shot did not work

http://www.haverford.edu/biology/edwards....

It started off slowly in the spring of 1918 and then that fall...

A white blood cell requires ascorbate to neutralize a virus. Every animal on earth does the same thing in responce to a viral attack except the few who can't synthesize it... up convert glucose to ascorbate. Most animals will never get a simple cold or even a flu... they require very aggressive viral attacks tilting the body into an oxidizing redox potential wiping out ascorbate locally such that it can gain a foothold and spread.

Ascorbate does a one two punch... it brings the body back into a reducing redox potential and it directly enables white blood cells to attack the virus.

You have to go all the way with it... to bowl tolerance... which exponentially increases with the viracity of the viral attack.

Also note ascorbic acid is roughly twice as effective as any of the ascorbate salts for this purpose... gram for gram lipospheric C is as effective as IV C as the ascorbate is bound within phospholipids which bypass ascorbate transporters.

Note: It should be referred to as "bowel intolerance".

Don't ask me why I think so.

Quote:

gram for gram lipospheric C is as effective as IV C as the ascorbate is bound within phospholipids which bypass ascorbate transporters

I've read all sorts of good stuff about that, but it's expensive as all get out. You figure you need 100 to 200 grams of the stuff a day in an emergency (highly lethal) flu situation, so you'd have to store/stock 200 packets a day, times, what, 3-5 days minimum, right? So that's $1000 right there. Would be OK if you could hold on to it for ten years but it expires after 12 months.

The odds of most of us being able to persuade our local hospitals to give us megadoses of vitamin C intravenously are roughly nil. Maybe even less. So you really do have to stock it yourself if you want to even have it as an option.

The problem with regular vitamin C tablets when you get up to megadoses (50-75-100g a day or whatever) is that you hit bowel (in)tolerance early because your bowels can't handle the binders that hold the pills together. So you think you've hit vitamin C bowel tolerance, but in fact you haven't.

So I keep a bottle of the crystals around too for exactly that reason, but that stuff is NASTY and the acid in it rots your teeth like there's no tomorrow. Of course with a serious enough flu there really might be no tomorrow for you if you don't chug that vitamin C....

You can get 3 lbs of ascorbic acid powder for about $30.00 and it has a very long shelf life.

I like to make my favorite tea and add ascorbic acid powder to it - tastes just like adding lemon juice.

Chimichanga wrote..

the acid in it rots your teeth like there's no tomorrow

Could you could mix it into a liquid and drink it with a straw to minimize the contact it has with your teeth?

Just rinsing your mouth afterward is sufficient...but a straw isn't a bad idea either.

Could the acidity be neutralized with baking soda without affecting the usefulness? Many people drink apple cider vinegar with baking soda to keep it from rotting their teeth out...

Your teeth enamel are made of a calcium-phosphate mineral called apatite. They will dissolve in acid, but it will take a long time to do so. If you rinse your mouth like Pika said or brush your teeth afterwards, you will be more than fine.

Quote:

This is the canary in the coal mine and I believe in my heart that it is down played to prevent a useless public (can't do anything about it) panic over a deadly combination of seasonal flu and a non symptomatic infectious agent (community acquired MRSA) that is on elevator buttons, grocery cart handles, in malls, movies, and your child's desk at school. Again, how many people have dormant MRSA-get the flu and die-and no one ever even knows why they drown in their own blood in the lungs a few days later.

So far it looks like the influenza part of it isn't a super-spreading strain (yet), but the digging regarding MRSA does bring up some bad omens for the future.

thanks DJ for bringing it back on topic ;)

watch IV drug users carefully.

these people shoot all sorts of **** into their veins, shoe polish, staph, plant and organic crap, talc, plastic binders and fillers, fecal matter.
A good deal of smack goes out of an ******* and into a needle. Said smack may have seen a dozen *******s during trsnsit.

So, when dopers drop like flies from staph/flu symptoms, it's here, it's big and it's now everywhere. run and hide.

Quote:

You can get 3 lbs of ascorbic acid powder for about $30.00 and it has a very long shelf life.

I like to make my favorite tea and add ascorbic acid powder to it - tastes just like adding lemon juice.

Sorry to bring the thread back to this, but the stuff Lemonaid mentioned is in a totally different league from what you mentioned here. It is stuff that has been used successfully in treating "this is very quickly heading towards a possible fatality" level infections. It got especially good street cred in I think it was Australia during the swine flu infections a couple of years ago.

You really would hope for IV intervention when it gets to that point, but not a lot of doctors believe in vitamin C treatment, so it's said to be quite hard to actually get that treatment even if you basically demand it.

If they refuse and you are determined to try vitamin C therapy, my understanding is it's the stuff Lemonaid mentioned (lipospheric C) that is the next best option. It has something to do with the bioavailability (when your body needs it NOW in an urgent situation, e.g. bird flu) but I am not knowledgeable enough to even start talking about that.

As for eroding your tooth enamel with the crystalline version, you might want to look into that more. There are LOTS of tooth enamel problems associated with long-term use of the crystalline version. Lots and lots and lots, although of course individuals will have different personal situations with their enamel strength.

It softens the enamel enough that you even have to be careful about brushing your teeth within X minutes of taking it, as you aren't supposed to use toothpaste (an abrasive) when your teeth are still vulnerable after having taken the crystalline C. Just type in "vitamin C tooth enamel" and read up on it. This is the same reason that many people consider chewable vitamin C tablets an absolute no-no (especially for children).

If you prefer the crystalline version, then by all means use a straw and try to keep it off your teeth.

That said, I think it's valuable to have a supply of the crystalline version on hand. It's extremely cheap, it has an extremely long shelf life as Pika said, and it is your first go-to item if you hit bowel tolerance with the tablets. (To clarify, I am talking here about a case in which you need a mega dose, let's say 75 grams/day, and you hit bowel tolerance to the binders in the vitamin C pills themselves, but not vitamin C bowel tolerance.)

Quote:

As for eroding your tooth enamel with the crystalline version, you might want to look into that more. There are LOTS of tooth enamel problems associated with long-term use of the crystalline version. Lots and lots and lots, although of course individuals will have different personal situations with their enamel strength.

Sorry, I may have misread the thread; I thought everyone was talking about short term (~2 weeks), high doses of this acid. Personally, I would definitely be concerned like you if someone is taking this long term. I can see how a medium-to-strong acid would noticeably alter your enamel over a period of months-to-years.

I've also had luck making home made lipo c. A good quality ultrasonic cleaner, some granular lecithin (not syrup form) Now Foods makes it, ascorbic acid crystals, and blender or food processor on it highest setting for pre mix.

Search for the Brooks Bradley recipe.

I got sick last year and it worked great without bowel intolerance issues.

Lecithin is a natural emulsifier and under the right agitation energy input will naturally encapsulate. One end is polor and the other is non polor so it tends to form spheres with a little encouragement.

Some are even saying just blending is enough... I haven't tried that myself though.

Why is this still pinned?

I figured it was because people were still sick or dying. A complete and quick shut-off would have people screaming COVER-UP!

Classic TF overreaction.