Every year the public is warned to get flu vaccinations, but alas! The benefits of flu shots are doubtful at best, and they are potentially harmful especially for the most susceptible populations—children and the elderly. Vaccinations made from the previous year’s flu strains offer no protection against this year’s new strain. The best proof is that public health authorities admitted this year that the flu vaccine “did not take.” Guess what they recommended? Revaccination! Isn’t there something better we can do?

After many years of homeopathic practice, I have found nothing easier than solving each year’s upcoming colds and flus. No flu vaccinations are necessary, and the well-indicated remedy will resolve a flu within a few days if taken at the onset. Readers hesitant to go without their flu shot may be reminded of the success of homeopathy in treating the virulent Spanish flu pandemic (worldwide epidemic) in 1918. Studies done in British hospitals showed that patients treated homeopathically had only a 5% death rate compared to a 45% fatality rate among those treated with drugs.

Granted, this was before antibiotics were discovered—but what medical authority recommends antibiotics for viral illnesses like the flu? None, yet flu patients are inundated with antibiotics—adding to the problems of candida yeast overgrowth and increasingly resistant micro-organisms.

So how does a homeopathic physician go about preventing and treating each year’s flu? After seeing 10 to 20 patients we can establish the leading remedy of the current epidemic. We record all these patients’ symptoms and among them we immediately see what we call the cardinal symptoms, indicating the remedy for the epidemic. The Asian flu which began to make inroads in December of ‘96 typically begins with a sore throat, quickly evolving into extreme fatigue and muscle weakness (“as if a truck ran over me”), putting the patient into bed in a debilitated, weak state with a temperature of 102 degrees. The patient feels dull, has no thirst or appetite, and has a severe headache. All these symptoms point to a Gelsemium flu. Patients taking GELSEMIUM every two hours usually recuperate from this flu the same day or at most two days.

Patients who haven’t been treated with Gelsemium will come to the second stage of this flu: the accumulation of stringy, thick yellow mucus collecting in the sinuses and ears and causing post-nasal drip. KALI BICH. is the remedy at this stage, as well as Gelsemium. Use the same dose but dissolve the two remedies in separate cups and give at least 10 minutes apart.

“Walking pneumonia”, as it is called in Western medicine, is the third stage of this particular flu. It includes a severe dry cough, worse at night and when lying down, so bad that I have had patients break ribs from coughing so hard. Yet BRYONIA brings relief immediately and no antibiotics are necessary.

One cent a day is the cost of this procedure! Think of the schools that have had to close because of this flu. But if each student could get one teaspoon of Gelsemium daily as a preventive during this epidemic, most of them would never get the flu! And this without any side effects.

So Gelsemium is definitely the remedy of the present epidemic—not necessarily the remedy for the next flu. What can you do to protect yourself from further flus now and next season? Once solved, coughs and colds even of long duration will disappear with the well-chosen remedy. This is the magic of the minimum dose (homeopathy’s highly-diluted remedies).

The most popular cold remedy is ARSENICUM. Any beginning cold with a clear runny nose can be aborted with a few doses. It stops the cold in the early stages — sneezing from a change in weather, and a cold that starts in the nose and tends to go down to the throat. The patient is restless, anxious and thirsty for cold drinks which he usually drinks in little sips. Often there is a burning of the throat, improving with warm drinks.

ACONITUM is unparalleled for sudden onset of a cold with high fever typically coming on at midnight. Often the child has been running around during the day when there was a dry cold wind. The child goes to bed with no problems but suddenly wakes up around midnight screaming, restless, with a high fever making the whole body hot and asking for cold water to drink. It is amazing how a couple of teaspoons of Aconite will bring down the fever and let the child fall asleep peacefully. The next morning the child will get up as if nothing happened. The storm of illness has been calmed by the marvel that is Aconite.

It might well be that the child suddenly gets a high fever (105¼) around 3 in the afternoon, with a bright red face, ice cold extremities and the rest of the body cold as well. All the blood in the body seems to be collected in the face. The pupils are large and there is a severe, very painful headache. The child can have a wild look in its face. If there is a cough, it is a dry, explosive “machine-gun” cough, a sharp, violent, repetitive cough. BELLADONNA will tame the fever, the headache and the cough.

For a totally different kind of cold, sometimes a patient tells you that he coughs from the throat because of an ever-present postnasal drip. He has difficulty bringing up the mucus because it is ropy and sticky. When he finally brings it up, it is yellowish-green. “When it sticks, use KALI BICH!” is our motto. This sticky mucus can also cause sinus headaches and ear pains mimicking acute ear infections in children, so Kali bich. also works well for these conditions.

I remember the case of a lady who always fell ill with sudden chills and coughs. One particular time she had a hard time recuperating. This severe ongoing cold seemed to get the best of her, until I discovered that she always got worse around 11 pm, had a severe tickle in the throat, the trachea or windpipe was raw inside and sore to any pressure, while her exhausting cough hardly brought any mucus up. All these symptoms combined indicated RUMEX as a remedy, which miraculously gave this lady back her life. After one week on Rumex this suffocating cough and cold of two months disappeared. Coincidence? It happens so many times that it is no lucky fluke. The well-selected homeopathic remedy cures any common cold, chill or cough time and time again.

Everyone knows how your eyes water when cutting an onion. This means you are practicing crude homeopathy! ALLIUM CEPA, the red onion, is indicated for a cold with the eyes running, not burning tears but bland, and a copious stream of burning water from the nose like a faucet running, with the skin beneath the nostrils raw, red and burning. The throat is raw and the rawness quickly extends into the chest, which makes you cough from inhaling cold air. The cold usually comes on from exposure to cold damp winds and is worse in the evening and in a warm room. If you get these symptoms, you will love red onion in homeopathic doses!

For harsh, choking coughs, in addition to Belladonna already mentioned, every mother should have SPONGIA TOSTA on hand. This miracle of nature, made from sea sponge, is the number one remedy for croup and those painful, barking, choking coughs which torture the patient day and night. The cough sounds like sawing wood and there is an immense fear of suffocating since there is a feeling of a plug in the throat.

There are many more remedies for coughs, colds and flus depending on the details as outlined above. Observing your symptoms will help your homeopath to find the right remedy, or you can find it yourself from one of the many good books on homeopathic remedies available in health food stores. When you see your symptoms clear up in one day while others are suffering for weeks, you will see for yourself the power of homeopathy!