First off, I am not going to tell you to wash your hands and I am most defiantly NOT going to tell you to get a flu shot. What I am going to try to do is get you to use common sense. That seems to be a lost art now days. Germs have had a bad name since Louis Pasteur discovered them is 1865. He found these germs hanging around a virus and made the conclusion that these germs must be the cause of disease. Let me ask you a question? Does this make sense to you? If you saw a pile of trash with a bunch or rats hanging around the trash, would you say, “Hmmmm, those rats must have brought that trash here” Of course you wouldn’t! The rats came because the trash was there. The trash was in a nice bag. Now the trash is everywhere because the rats dug it out of the bag. Plus, the rats have left there own deposits, if you know what I mean.

Germs are everywhere. We eat and drink them. They live in the soil and water and drift on currents of air. They survive without oxygen or in the absence of sunlight. They form dense colonies on virtually any artificial surface. There have been discoveries of germs found living in volcanoes, 650 degrees F. The presence of normal germs also appears to prime the immune system into a higher state of readiness. Without germs we would not be able to survive. That being said, why do we get sick? What is the cause? I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you are the cause. You are the one that brings the trash into your body for the rats to feast on. You push your body to the limit and when your body can take any more, you end up getting sick. The first thing you say is. “Those dam germs!” It wasn’t that you went out all night drinking and smoking. It is not that you feed your body with every processed food known to man. It is those dam germs. As far as the flu shot, I challenge you to do a Google search on how the flu vaccination is made. I, personally, do NOT get one. Alright, I have preached enough. I hope you get the point.

Ok, I will give you the weapons to keep you from getting sick. These are in no particular order. They are all important. The first weapon is “Vitamin D”. In a large study, people with low blood levels of vitamin D were 55 percent more likely to develop a cold than people with three times as much D in their blood. I am not talking milk or a multivitamin. I am talking vitamin D from the sun. You don’t actually get vitamin D from the sum. The ultraviolet rays from the sun allow your body to produce its own Vitamin D. Salmon and Cod liver oil is another good contributor. The recommended daily allowance is 200 IU. But most scientists recommend between 1000-1500 IU. One tablespoon of Cod liver oil will give you 1360 IU. 3.5 ounces Salmon, cooked, 360 IU. Milk, nonfat, reduced fat, and whole, vitamin D-fortified, 1 cup, will only give you 98 IU. Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin and therefore you need to include some fat in your meals to allow absorption. I recommend almonds. They contain the good fats and are packed with energy.

Vitamin D leads me into the next weapon. “Proper nutrition”. I am learner. When I have an issue or problem, I go to the books. Since I was 15, I have been interested in fitness. One thing I neglected is “health” I studied how to be fit, but never how to be healthy. Last summer I stepped on the scale to revel a horrible truth. I had ballooned up to 240. I am 5’ 10”. I knew I had to do something. I knew that going on a diet would be temporary, so to the books and audios I went. I devoured everything I could get my hands on. I am a firm believer in common sense, so if it was BS, I knew it. I kept bumping into this alkaline food way of life. Notice I did not say alkaline diet. The more I read and started to understand the way it worked, the more I was sold. The gist of this is that foods have an alkaline or acidic base when digested into your system. Your blood has to maintain a specific ph level which is slightly alkaline of 7.??????. A ph of 1 is totally acidic. A ph of 14 is totally alkaline. Acidic food like meat, cheese and seafood make your body use its alkaline reserves of calcium and magnesium to neutralize the acid before it does damage to your blood cells. Your body ends up working overtime to do this. Your body creates cholesterol to protect the blood cells from the acid. It then takes this fat and stores it away from the vital organs. You butt and hips work just fine. Over weight people do not have a fat problem, they have an acid problem.

I did not go cold turkey, but I eased into it for about month. Just could not see giving up my coffee. I needed it!!! How could I make it through the day without coffee? Once again, this is a blog not a book. There is too much information to give you to fit in a blog. That is going to be for the book that I am writing. Yes I know, shameless plug. To make a long story short, I lost 25 pounds in 3 weeks and I am now sitting at around 190 at the time of writing this. Basically you have a diet of foods that are alive. Remember this, If it has a face, don’t eat it or eat very little of it. I am not anal about this. I do eat a little meat, and ice cream and other acidic foods. For the most part, I am an Alkalarian. You can Google that for more information. The energy I have now and the way I feel is enough to keep me doing this for life. I won’t lie, it was a pretty big change, but I got used to it very quickly.

So, what is behind door number three Monty. Yea, I know. I just dated myself there. The next gift to give yourself would be “water” I am not talking about coffee, sodas, or sports drinks. These types of drinks that have caffeine will work in the body to cause dehydration. Your body is made of 60-70 percent water. Your blood is about 90 percent water. Your body needs water to regulate your body temperature. Water also removes waste and protects your joints. Two ways your body uses water to remove waste are your urinary tract and your sweat glands.

Your body is a spectacular machine. When a toxin gets into your body, it goes into action immediately. It will use every eliminating function it has to get that toxin out of the body. When you have a virus, your body temperature rises. Your body uses the largest eliminative system you have, your skin. The toxins and waste from your body is released threw perspiration. Your kidneys go into to overdrive. Your body pushes the toxins from the blood into the kidneys which filter the toxins and finally exits your through your urinary tract. Both of these processes need a healthy supply of water to run optimally.

I want to add one of those “Duh” moments. When we get a cold or virus, we get the traditional symptoms. Runny nose, cough, sweats, diarrhea, and a multitude of other symptoms. What is happening here? It is your body trying to get rid of the toxins! What do we do? We pump our body full of pills to stop the process. Push it right back into the body. Does that sound smart to you? I will let you answer that.

My next line of defense is exercise. We all have been told by our doctors that we need to exercise for good health. What I am about to tell you will make some people in disbelief and some people will be elated? Actually it will leave most people in disbelief! When you work out too hard, it actually hurts your body. Sorry P90X fans. I can hear just about everyone else cheering. Before I go on, I want to tell you that I was a body builder most of my adult life. I did not step out of a gym unless I gave it 150% and I was normally sore from head to toe. I was in great shape on the outside. Inside was another story. My body was in a constant reconstruction mode. It was always trying to fix and eliminate the destruction that I was putting it through. As I look back, it always seemed like I was sick. And yes, I took supplements. Most of my paycheck was spent on supplements. Basically, I made expensive urine. I can here you P90X people now. All I can tell you is use your common sense.  I am not downing P90X. I only know the gist of the program. Not enough to talk intelligent about it. I can’t talk intelligent about most things. Health and personal well being is a different story. I used to work out a minimum of 2 hours a day. Now my workout is only about a half hour. The whole time my breathing is elevated. The key here is you should be able to carry on a conversation throughout your workout. The goal is to sweat. There is much more I need to say about this topic, but this article is already getting large. I will embellish in later posts.

Now for my last trick, I have to make a confession. I told you in the beginning that all five of these were equally important. Well, I lied. “Proper breathing” is by far the most important in this list. Here is some more common sense. You can go weeks without eating, you can go days without water. You can only go minutes without oxygen. So how important is oxygen to your body? I’d say it ranks pretty high. I would like to go over how your body uses oxygen, but that takes too long. I will leave that for my book. I will give you an analogy instead. You can think of your body as a car. Most of you know it needs gas to run. It also needs oxygen. Without it, the car would not start. Your cars engine uses a mixture of gas and oxygen. With a small spark it makes a small explosion of energy to keep the pistons moving and ultimately get you to your destination. You body works exactly the same way. If your car has a dirty air filter or somehow the air intake has a blockage, your car will not burn the fuel efficiently and bacically will sound like it is about to explode. You body works the same way. The more oxygen your body gets, the more efficient your body runs. Yes it is that simple.

I do an exercise called deep diaphragmatic breathing. I do this 3 or more times a day. This is how it works. You take ten deep breaths each time and hold if for about 10-15 seconds. This allows the oxygen to permeate the blood. There is a good video on youtube. Click Here.  This type of breathing stimulates movement in the Lymphatic system. For those of you that do not know what the Lymphatic system is, I can describe it as the waste system of your body. Your body uses the lymph system, which is mostly water by the way, to take impurities out of your blood and filter it to the kidneys and out the body. The Lymphatic system does not have a pump like your blood does. The only ways to move this fluid threw your body is to one, exercise, and two by deep breathing. Has your doctor ever told you that your lymph nodes were swollen? That means the system is doing what it is supposed to do. There is one specific exercise that stimulates the Lymphatic system. That is jumping on a rebounder. I do it for 5 minutes a day in the morning. I recommend this rebounder. It works very well for me.

There are several other things to do to keep from getting sick, your attitude and the way you deal with your thoughts are a big one. That is another post. For now, use these 5 weapons and enjoy your sick free cold season.