Understanding How Viruses Work
This is our first year homeschooling. In previous years all three of our girls have attended school or daycare. If you are a parent, you know that means endless colds and flus that kids pass back and forth. Except our children almost never get sick, no matter how many bugs would go around their school. In this article, I want to share with you how thinking differently about cold and flus can help you keep your kids healthy and avoid the endless doctor visits and missed days of school. Understanding viruses such as colds, flus, and ear infections differently is the key to building health regardless of your surroundings.
Let’s Talk About Viruses
We are surrounded by viruses. These tiny microorganisms are in the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink. We absorb them through our skin when we shake hands. When we have a conversation with people, we pass viruses back and forth. When we walk in the dirt, we absorb them through our skin. There are hundreds of millions of different kinds of them, and they are literally everywhere. Viruses are little packets of information or DNA data that the cells in your body can read. When you breathe in a virus into your body, it enters a cell and then begins to reproduce to other cells. This happens with thousands of viruses every day, all at the same time within our bodies.
We’ve all been taught by friends, family, and doctors that viruses make us sick. Today I would like to suggest that this is not true. There is far more going on under the surface, and 99.99% of the time, viruses are doing important work to keep us healthy. Let me give you an example to help explain what I mean. About a month ago, we spent a weekend in upstate NY with my wife’s extended family. We are normally pretty careful with what we allow our children to eat, this weekend not so much. Different family members had brought all kinds of snacks and sweets. Our kids were eating a lot more sugar and processed food than usual. Sunday evening, our youngest, Amelia, wasn't feeling well. She had a fever of 101 degrees, and that night she ended up throwing up two times. The next morning she had a slight fever and was feeling much better, and by that evening, she was back to normal. I share this story because it illustrates some important points about how viruses work. Her little body could tell that the sugar and junk food that she had been eating was bad for her, and she threw it up, and her body sweated out the toxins. In this case, a virus was just the tool her body used to eliminate the overload of toxic junk food.
It’s often said that viruses are opportunistic, meaning they appear to affect people more when their system is struggling. For example, imagine you are going through a stressful time in your life and not sleeping well. All a sudden, you come down with a cold. When your body is stressed it does not function or detox as well as it normally does. A virus notices the situation and starts to take out the garbage or toxins created by your stress and lack of sleep. You develop a fever and start to sweat; you might throw up or have diarrhea. Your energy levels drop, and you get more rest. The virus stepped in to interrupt a negative pattern that was causing health problems and could have led to other health problems. Some researchers even believe that viruses may play an important role in preventing dangerous diseases such as arthritis or even cancer. The problem is today we have vaccines that aim to train our bodies to avoid viruses. Even though vaccines’ effectiveness at preventing viruses is highly debated, the question remains, is avoiding the virus leading to much worse health situations down the road. Another danger is that when we do have a bad cold, we are encouraged to take medications that suppress the virus’s natural cleansing symptoms, such as fever or vomiting.
When we change how we think about viruses, we go from thinking about how do I block or get rid of the virus, to how do I improve my health so that I feel well. How do I help the virus in its mission to make me healthier? When our children get sick, it is not because they caught something. It’s because their system was struggling, and the virus stepped in to help your body deal with the situation.
You might be thinking, well if viruses help make us healthy why do they spread from one person to another. The reason that viruses spread from person to person within a household or throughout a community is because our health is much more intertwined than we realize. We respond to factors in the environment, such as the foods we eat, the air we breathe, the products we use, or other things we are exposed to. The reason why colds go around in the winter is because people are inside breathing stale air, are less active, and eating less foods. We all are doing the same thing creating the same health issues, and so a virus spreads from one person to the next, correcting the situation. That doesn't mean that everyone catches it, just the ones whose bodies are struggling to deal with their environment. This is also one of the reasons why a virus can affect people differently. Their system had different needs or weaknesses, and so their body responded differently.
When Viruses Can Be Dangerous
Thousands of people die of viruses every year. Years ago, dying of viruses was one of the most common causes of death, but because something can kill you does not mean that it is inherently bad for you. Water is good for you, but it is also possible to drown in. The key to benefiting from something rather than being hurt by it is understanding how it works and how to use it. I like to think of a virus as a sign of a health issue, not a health issue on its own. We have to learn to listen to what the sickness is telling us is wrong with our health and focus on building our health.
If you experience sickness, the first thing you want to do is help your body eliminate the toxins and rebuild its health. The only cure that exists anywhere in the world for any virus is your body. If you ignore what a virus is trying to tell you or suppress it as most pharmaceutical medication does, it eliminates that only cure for the virus—your own immune system.
How We Deal With a Virus Naturally
When one of our children has a virus, instead of trying to suppress it by cooling the fever, we bundle them up or have them take a hot shower. We get them drinking extra water so they can flush out built-up toxins. If they are not hungry, we don’t make them eat. Their body wants to rest and detox. If they are hungry, we only allow them to eat fresh fruits and vegetables until they recover. We respond quickly at the first sign of a cold or flu and have them take herbs that help the body detox and increase the immune system response. We let their immune system do its job, and the virus goes away quickly almost every time, usually in less than a day. Their body comes out of the virus stronger than it went in.
This natural approach is literally the opposite of what we are taught to do, even by conventional doctors. Most people take Tylenol to reduce the fever. They might bathe their child's forehead with cool water to try and bring down the fever or drink sugar-laden drinks like Gatorade. Because they are viewed as only a bad thing, we are taught to relieve the symptoms rather than help the virus do its job. Even though there is no drug for any virus, your doctor or pediatrician might even prescribe medication or antibiotics to relieve the symptoms. This leaves you without help and burdened with those medications’ side effects, leaving you more susceptible to becoming infected again in the future.
One of the main reasons children get sick repeatedly is that instead of making the body stronger and more able to deal with future viruses, mainstream doctors focus on fighting the symptoms. But like we talked about earlier, the symptoms are there for a reason. The disease is the cure, and by not allowing and encouraging the virus to do it’s work, we leave the body still somewhat sick. The antibiotics kill important bacteria and microorganisms that the body desperately needs to protect itself from future sickness. When your immune system is suppressed, it leaves you open to every little thing that comes around.
We recover from and avoid viruses in the same way by focusing on improving our health and listening to your body. When you listen to the small signs that your body gives you, such as a runny nose, achy bones, or diarrhea and respond quickly; you can avoid becoming seriously infected. Take a minute and appreciate the incredible machine your body is. It gives you signals when something is not right and mends and repairs when given the tools to do so.