How To Deal With A Cold

How To Deal With A Cold

Coronavirus is really nothing more than a common cold, a different strain, perhaps, but a cold none the less. With what is going on in the world today, it's vital you know how to deal with a cold. This article will help you.

It is not true that colds are caused by viruses; that there really isn’t anything you can do to not cause a cold; or that there isn’t anything you can do for a cold once you get it except treat the symptoms (admittedly with scant success).

My grandchildren have known what to do about colds since they were just a few years old. They know that the way to avoid colds is to avoid junk foods and overeating; and they know that a cold can be eliminated by withholding food completely when the first symptoms appear. They know that if one fasts for 36 or 48 hours (or, at the most, three days), the symptoms will usually disappear, and it will not be necessary to contend with a seven- to fourteen-day period of suffering nor the organic damage that can be caused to the respiratory organs or other parts of the body by a prolongation of the causes and the symptoms.

Such cooperation with the self-healing power of one’s own body enables the necessary elimination of toxins to proceed with a minimum of discomfort, a procedure which is quickly consummated.

Food Must Be Withheld During Acute Stages

“Laboratory experiments have demonstrated that digestion is impaired during the acute stages of a cold, and indigestion and decomposition are inevitable … Feeding in a cold, when indigestion is inevitable, insures that putrefactive poisons will be absorbed into the system where they will increase toxemia. Continued eating when there is no power of digestion necessitates a supplementary eliminating crisis to expel the noxious material before vital tissues are harmed. Hence, a common cold may develop into other more serious diseases if eating is not discontinued.”

It is not what we eat, but what we digest and assimilate that produces health and strength. Conditions which disturb or impair digestion produce decomposition, thus poisoning the body instead of supplying it with nutritional elements from the food eaten. Whether or not the individual is aware of overt symptoms of such decomposition, insidious damage occurs.

Health and Disease

Health and disease are interrelated. Hygienists think of health and disease as fluctuating qualities of the living organism, as a continuum with health at the top. As health becomes less, disease occurs, and, of course, at the bottom of the scale is death. Between health and death are all varieties and conditions.

In a modern environment, it is probably not possible to attain perfect health. The human body is exposed to many toxins daily. Under normal circumstances, it should be possible to eliminate them from the body rapidly. This is the function of the organs of elimination: the kidneys, the liver, the lungs, even the skin. But when the normal level of toxins rises above a certain point, the body is overloaded and the vital energy drops below normal. The organs of depuration, which are regulated by the nervous system, are then unable to maintain their functional efficiency, and the internal environment becomes less stable.

At this point, the condition may be considered a mild functional disturbance, but some remedial steps must be taken to reduce the toxemia. If the individual recognizes the condition and decides to fast and rest, the efficiency and integrity of the body is speedily restored; otherwise, the organism itself takes remedial steps.

Vicarious Elimination

First, the actions of the normal channels of elimination are intensified. Next, channels of vicarious elimination are employed—most commonly, the mucous membranes, with a deluge of mucus in the upper respiratory tract. When a full-blown remedial activity is in progress, fasting and resting are even more certainly indicated, but recuperation of the body’s energies will now require more time.

Acute Diseases Are Self-Limiting

Acute diseases, such as colds, are debilitating, but they are self-limiting. Most people eventually recover without any treatment, or in spite of the treatment. For that reason, almost anything seems to be a “cure.”

When it is fully understood that a cold, or any disease, is body action and not an attack by an external entity, attempts are not instituted to suppress the body’s own defensive and remedial processes.

If the body is allowed to continue its cleansing actions, the person will feel much better afterwards. The only helpful means of aborting or shortening the duration of a cold is through fasting, keeping warm, getting plenty of fresh air and as much bed rest as possible.

This methodology will increase elimination of toxic materials through the regular channels of excretion, and will decrease the necessity for vicarious elimination through the nose, throat, eyes, etc. The headache and fever will subside and the other uncomfortable symptoms will be reduced and gradually disappear.

Too Many Housecleaning Episodes Are Exhausting

People who have frequent colds are conducting beneficial and necessary eliminative processes. Other people, equally toxic (or more toxic) may not have the energy to conduct such housecleaning and may, instead, undergo insidious degeneration.

The wise Hygienist will avoid toxemia, and avoid the necessity for so many housecleaning episodes. If such episodes are too frequent, damage to the channels of vicarious elimination will be inevitable.

Dr. Sidhwa says, “It must be pointed out that too frequent use of the same paths of vicarious elimination will lead to atrophy and degeneration of any path of elimination, as well as a gradual wearing down of the strength of the glands themselves. Although disease, especially acute disease, is a life-saving process, it is also a life-consuming process. Frequent stimulation leads to exhaustion, leading to further enervation of the whole system.”

Rationale of Modern Medicine

The medical profession, for the most part, regards diseases as organized entities that attack the body from without and that must be destroyed. That is why medical students spend such a great percentage of their time studying the pharmacopoeia, the thousands of drugs which are the weapons of choice against the little beasties—the “disease germs” and the mysterious viruses (the drugs that destroy the kidneys, that threaten life itself).

Modern medicine employs the word “virus” to mean an ultra-minute form of life that infects cells and causes maladies. They know not exactly what the viruses are—plants, chemicals, animals or parasites?

Boyd’s medical textbook states that “the virus seems to exist in the dim borderland between living things and chemical compounds. It is a submicroscopic unit containing nucleic acid and protein. Unlike bacteria, viruses are “not capable of supporting” life on their own, owing to a lack of enzymes. In order to exist and multiply, they must occupy living cells which provide them with necessary material and energy. It is evident that a virus is a perfect example of a parasite.”

Boyd admits that most normal persons can harbor viruses without developing the disease the viruses are supposed to cause, and that enervating influences overcome the body’s protective functions and “permit the viruses to usurp the biological activities within the cell.”

Interferon

Interferon, manufactured within the organism in response to colds and other so-called “virus diseases,” is the body’s means of protecting itself, but it can only operate when we supply the necessary materials and influences which promote health and protection.

In recent years, interferon has been publicized as the bright new hope to fight cancer and “virus diseases.” But, although pharmaceutical firms invested millions in synthesizing interferon, the results (as with other magic bullets) have been disappointing and inconclusive.

In 1978, scientists were hailing interferon as a true miracle drug, a century after it was identified. But it has not lived up to its advance billing. Although the price tag for interferon research has hit four hundred million dollars, an FDA spokesman said (May 1983), “There are no real answers yet … This drug affects a lot of systems in the body and has produced some side effects that include nausea, vomiting, flu-like pains, fevers and chills, confusion and high blood pressure.”

Boyd’s writings exemplify the medical attitude. Instead of thinking in terms of health improvement, so that the cells can heal themselves, they are seeking a chemical panacea to destroy the virus. Chemicals only make the host more susceptible and less able to deal with toxins in the organism.

Bacteria and Viruses Are Secondary or Tertiary Factors in Disease

When the body is undergoing a crisis of elimination, virulent bacteria (or viruses) may become involved as secondary or tertiary factors. The use of drugs may produce mutant, more resistant strains. Edwin W. Schultz, M.D., in an article in the Cyclopedia of Medicine, states, “It is well established that viruses do undergo variations … in virulence, in antigenic structure, and in the character of lesions induced … sometimes of a stable mutation type.”

All the newer knowledge about bacteria and viruses substantiate the Hygienic viewpoint: A healthy body will eliminate virulent or threatening influences, making disease unnecessary. Hygienists understand that disease originates inside the body as a result of poor eating and living habits; of physical, mental and emotional practices which subtly and insidiously weaken the organism.”

The true role of germs is as scavengers, breaking up and consuming dead and dying cells and other debris. Bacteria perform the same function in the toxic body as they do everywhere in nature.

Viruses, which the medical profession has been incriminating more and more as the cause of so many diseases, are not even living entities in the same sense as bacteria. Bacteria are microorganisms which have the ability to act. A Virus on the other hand, is not a living entity.

The poisonous materials called viruses have no existence apart from a living organism. They are actually the debris of spent cells—the genetic material or nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) from these spent cells. Viruses are in no sense alive, nor do they have any ability to act, but their presence in the body is as toxic as any other retained body waste material, favoring the surfacing and multiplication of bacteria.

Actually, humans live symbiotically with bacteria. We adapt to, and are dependent on, bacterial flora. Health and disease are not antagonistic to each other. Disease does not attack the body, but rather is produced by it as a means of restoring health.

It was clearly demonstrated that bacteria do not produce disease; that there are no “disease-producing” bacteria, germs, microbes, bacilli or viruses; and that the opposite is the fact. It is the environment—the host—the disease condition—that determines the type of bacteria that proliferate. The germ does not produce the disease. The disease produces the germ by changing nontoxic bacteria into toxic bacteria in a septic environment. This concept is discussed in detail in

Lesson No. 66.

No Bacteria in Early Stages of a Cold

During the early stages of a cold, the nasal secretions are completely void of bacteria. None are found in the thin watery secretion the first two or three days of the cold. When the thick purulent secretion begins, then pneumococci, staphylococci, or streptococci make their appearance.

Dr. Vetrano says, “Since bacteria are so conspicuously absent at the beginning of a cold, another cause had to be found. The unpopular idea that a person could change his life habits and not develop colds was too preposterous to entertain. The virus saved the day.” People don’t have to change their ways of life as long as they believe their colds are caused because they “picked up” a very malignant virus.

Why More Colds Develop in Cold Weather

Colds may develop at any time of the year, but the summer months show fewer colds because most people get more fresh air, sunshine, and exercise, and commonly eat less. As indicated in Lesson 66, the first colds of early winter are not “caught” from someone else with a cold but develop in those most susceptible because of the way they have been living and eating. The added stress of cold temperatures further checks elimination, adds to the general toxemia and enervated condition, and precipitates a crisis.

Leslie Thomson says, “To many people a ‘chill’ and a ‘cold’ are almost synonymous. It is an easy error, all the more so because it is not a complete fallacy; rather it is a seriously misplaced emphasis. Many people do develop a cold after an unpleasant incident in bad weather, but one should ask a few questions. In most cases the feelings of chill and the development of a cold are only different aspects—or successive stages—of a bodily springcleaning. When the body reaches a state in which retained wastes seriously impede normal vital functioning, the process has been so slow that the individual is only dimly aware of being substandard. Then some circumstance presents his system with an unusual challenge and the tolerance of his vital system is exceeded.” There is an inability to keep warm because the normal physical and chemical processes are so retarded that the heart is unable to maintain adequately free circulation. The body must, and does, organize for a thorough cleansing and rejuvenating “crisis”—uncomfortable, to be sure—but necessary—and eminently worthwhile. If no stupid interference occurs, “this wonderfully complex process achieves in a few days a massive ejection of waste and a burning up of combustible rubbish.”

The True Cause of Colds

A summation by Dr. Vetrano is concise and eloquent: “Colds develop and are not ‘caught.’ Bacteria and viruses have nothing to do with the development of coryza. They may be complicating features or function as saprophytes feeding on the debris. They arrive on the scene when tissues and fluids are abnormal and survive as long as the tissues remains abnormal. They help clean up the debris. Our enervating way of life is the true cause of colds.”