Let Food Be Thy Healer This Flu Season

Hippocrates, the person the Hippocratic Oath that doctors take is named after, said, "Let food be your medicine, and medicine be your food." There is profound wisdom in that simple phrase. Modern Americans do not eat enough whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, even amidst the cheap abundance of such foods. But added to that, is the eating of foods that actually tax the system and lessen immunity, such as fast foods with little to no nutritional content. These foods take energy from the body to digest and give little back in return, depleting vitamins, not building them up. We also have a problematic, profit-driven health care crisis in America. From scheduled C-section births in conveyor belt succession, to doctors receiving drug company kickbacks, American health care is often lacking integrity. Corporate drug mogul motives have robbed essential plant and food healing knowledge, as well as health care knowledge, from the common people in an effort to capitalize on a health care monopoly based on greed. It is a revolutionary act for people to learn how to identify plants and herbs, and to learn how to use these plants and herbs. It is also revolutionary to learn how to avoid eating the foods that make us sick, regardless of what the advertising says, so we do not need the chemical prescriptions they feed us later to get "better."

Since the 1970's, the self-help DIY healthcare movement has made great strides. As a teen in Seattle and Los Angeles, I grew up around excellent examples of healthy eating and responsible community-based health care. I was taught by the Source Family that food was an essential part of a conscious person's life focus. Where your food came from, how it was grown in accordance with nature and human rights standards, etc. mattered as "food karma" you were taking in. The Source (also known for their famous health food restaurant on Sunset Blvd.) taught us, as a community, to eat healthy food to balance the earth, our bodies, and our communities. Practices such as avoiding pesticides and buying organics, growing our own food cooperatively, eating local foods when in season, and eating unrefined grains, became a lifestyle that replaced donuts for breakfast and McDonald's hamburgers for lunch, as my parents had taught me. Since leaving the Source Family in my teens, a series of naturopathic doctors, lay midwives, herbalists, and feminist reproduction rights activists have been my primary health care providers for myself and son, not medical doctors. I have grave distrust in most medical doctors. If nothing else, the drug companies giving medical doctors kickbacks for pushing chemical drugs is an unconscionable arrangement. So I promote food as medicine. In this article, I will share some tips for the flu season that are more holistic than flu shots, prescription drugs, and chemical relief from flu symptoms.

One of the wildest things I realized in the Source regarding food was that it was as much the bad food you ate that killed you, your teeth, and the earth, as the good food you did not eat. My mom had hated cooking, feeling it was a woman's slavery, and her bible was the "I Hate to Cookbook." She thought TV dinners were straight from heaven. My dad took me out to restaurants and never cooked. By my teens, I had grown up on a lot of frozen food with chemicals and fast food and very little whole foods such as whole wheat bread, grains, fresh fruits and vegetables. Everything was canned or frozen or processed it seems. Not until the 1970's, when my sister became a vegetarian while attending UCBerkeley, did I begin to understand the difference between whole and processed foods. And then, eating whole foods became a rebellion against my parents and their generation, honestly. I began to see my food as political. I began to eat some foods and not eat others. Additionally, I began to picket stores in solidarity with the United Farm Worker struggles, and work against food irradiation, pesticide pollution, etc. I began to see the food I ate, and the industries I supported regarding my food, actually impacted the planet, not just my personal health.

Ben Franklin said "I saw few die of hunger, of eating, 100,000." Someone said that people dig their graves with fork and spoon. And as I watch the world, I think that it is true. I hear that Ronald McDonald now has an aerobics video out for children. I saw a huge hot air balloon of Ronald McDonald that was several stories high, sitting in a lotus position, swear to god, in front of a McDonald's in a country outside of America, trying to breach those cultures, now that it has conquered America. What you eat affects an incredible amount of things: your long term health, your daily functioning and mental clarity, your environment, free trade, corporate power…food is power. Use it. "2,4,6,8, organize and smash the state! Kick the ass of the ruling class! Push 'em back, push 'em back, waaayy back! Use the food as a weapon, use the medicine as a weapon…," as Rob Brezsny says.

Bastyr University (www.bastyr.edu), outside of Seattle, Wa. has been a leader in credentialized naturopathic medical study for decades now. (Even in 2004, they remain leaders, having just unveiled the first reflexology foot path in the United States). Much of the DIY health philosophy I have grown up with is in part due to this university's presence in my town. Bastyr showed me that not only is food political, but health care itself is political, as well. And who you use for medical advice and what you use as treatments, is also a political statement. The underground health community in Seattle has been substantial for decades based on this premise. Seattle has long had medical activists who believe in people before profits, as a form of anti-capitalist political action.

Bastyr University offers some suggestions for surviving the flu season that I would like to share with you. They, too , promote whole foods as medicine. They say that "The immune system is a network of organs and cells throughout the entire body. The parts of the system work with each other to keep the body toned against illness. And all the energy and nutrients the immune system requires can be incorporated into the body by consuming a variety of whole foods." They highly recommend eating more Vitamins A, C, E, and Selenium during flu season to help build up immunity. Bastyr University recommends, "During this flu season, throw some frozen berries into your bowl of oatmeal in the morning. Add avocado slices and a handful of seeds to your lunch salad. Snack on dried apricots and nuts. Add salsa to your dinner baked potato with a side of cooked greens. Look for deep oranges, reds, yellows and greens in your fruit and vegetable selection. And choose water or an herbal tea as you make a toast to your immune system's good health!" I would add to juice your own oranges rather than buying pre-juiced orange juice. You increase the health benefits with fresh juice. Bastyr offers recipes to help build up your immune system on their website (http://www.bastyr.edu/news/recipes/default.asp), including recipes for "Immune Booster Soup," "Immune Support Breakfast," and "Cold and Flu Tea." (Their immune booster soup uses chicken broth, so I would just replace that with veggie broth).

Bastyr's "Cold and Flu Tea" is a mixture of elderberry flowers, mint, yarrow flowers, linden leaves or yerba sante, thyme leaves, lemon grass, and ginger root. When I worked at a health food store in Venice, Ca., I worked with a German woman who said whenever anyone gets a flu or cold in the back hills of Germany where she is from, they begin to drink thyme tea immediately. I was stunned at how effective thyme tea was at helping reduce mucous, stop coughs, and at quickening healing time. I never heard anyone say thyme tea was good for you when you are sick as I grew up. I heard instead that chicken soup and 7-Up, of all things, was good for you when sick. To make thyme tea, just use thyme the way you would any tea. Steep it in hot water, strain, then drink. You can add a little mint with the thyme for flavor, and you can use honey to sweeten it, but you can almost feel the antiseptic power coming out of thyme tea as you drink it. Make it as strong as you can handle it. Even just breathing in the vapors from this tea is helpful.

There are other easy herbal remedies for flu season as well. Make a sage gargle, by making a strong sage tea out of sage leaves, sweeten it with a little honey, let cool, strain, then gargle with it often when you have a sore throat. A cough syrup can be made from thyme and peppermint. (Do not use honey syrup for babies under one year old). To make cough syrup, make a tea with 1 pint water, and 4 ounces dried thyme and 1 ounce dried mint. Steep for 20 minutes. Strain into a pan, then add a cup of honey or sugar to the tea water. Heat slowly over low heat, stirring constantly until syrup thickens. Cool. Pour into glass bottles with corks, as other tops can explode if syrup ferments. You can store this syrup in the refrigerator to extend life. Use a spoonful to help stop coughing when needed.

You can also make a homemade Vapo-Rub, out of essential oils, beeswax, and oils. Just heat up base oil in a double boiler, such as olive oil or coconut oil. Add herbs, such as thyme, mint, eucalyptus, rosemary, and any essential oils you may want to use as well. Let the herbs and essential oils heat into the base oil for a while. Strain the herbs out of the oil, and pour 3 ˝ fluid ounces of the herb-infused oil into a double boiler, and then add a small chunk of bees wax, about the size of a square Kraft's candy caramel, to the oil, and let melt into oil. Stir until it is all melted together and pour into glass jars to store. You can also make an ointment for a raw nose the same way as the Vapo-rub imitation, but just use soothing skin herbs, such as comfrey and calendula, instead of stronger herbs like eucalyptus and thyme. I find even putting a few drops of eucalyptus oil on my palm and rubbing my palms together, then cupping my hands and putting my nose inside the cupping and smelling, will help with decongestion and it is quick and easy. I have also put a bunch of oils like eucalyptus and rosemary on a handkerchief and put it in close to the front of the heater vent in my car, to give me some whiffs of those herbs as I was driving.

When I go out wildcrafting and dry herbs in spring, friends laugh at me. But then winter comes, and their nose is killing them, and I give them comfrey salve made from comfrey I collected in spring, and they are quite thankful. Part of herbal wisdom is to collect and dry enough herbs in spring to last all winter. I dried a ton of nettles last spring, as people were going to mow them down, so I would clear their fields out first. I had bags and bags of dried nettles. People thought I was nuts. But they have been useful. I mailed some to street medics at the Democratic and Republican convention protests, as well as traded some online with people for herb seeds, sage, and other herbs I wanted but did not have access to for spring drying. Yeah, in spring, when there are tons of fresh nettles, it seems odd to collect and dry them, as they are everywhere. But in winter, they are not everywhere. And that forethought is necessary for any healer, even a self-healer. Learning to identify herbs is half the battle to obtaining them. I cannot tell you how many times I have met folks who had a wealth of a medicinal herb on their land, and they never knew what it was. I found one house with a front lawn made up solely of yellow and orange calendulas. This house had no idea what they were and mowed them down regularly. I asked if I could collect them first before they mowed, regularly, and then would return with calendula salves for them. I used that house's wealth of calendula, and ignorance about what to do with them, for years.

I met a woman in Seattle who actually *bought* scotch broom every year from an herbalist. Her and I were on Bainbridge Island one year, during the Scotch Broom festival, by accident, and she and I found out that Scotch Broom is everywhere around us! She has never bought it since, now that she can recognize it growing, instead of as a ground powder or dried sticks. Saint John's Wort, Lemon Balm, Selfheal, Clover, Plantain; there are tons of herbs that are growing wild and around us, that we do not realize have medicinal qualities, and could be dried, and used all year long if we invested a little research and energy into it. When I see blackberry leaves as an ingredient on almost all Celestial Seasoning teas I have bought, I laugh out loud. I live in Seattle where blackberry brambles have a strong foothold on dictatorship of land they are so prolific. If they are selling them, perhaps I should be drying them every spring and using them in my teas.

It seems weird to store, gather, and dry, lots of herbs every spring to some. Especially when those plants seem forever prolific around us in spring. But my house is covered with strings of herbs drying across every available corner in spring. That is how it was done for a long time in nature. That was a huge unseen part of the medicine healer's job, gathering and drying the herbs. I take ferries to the San Juan Islands and pick nettles, comfrey, clover, selfheal, plantain, etc. every spring. This year I dried blackberries en masse as well during late summer. Learning how to use the food that grows locally and wild around you is a step towards health and selfsufficiency. Learning how to recognize plants' qualities is also essential, and was considered essential knowledge in almost all cultures before this refined packaged food industrialized era came. The Seattle area has maintained several medicinal herb gardens, one on the University of Washington campus and another on the Bastyr campus in Kenmore. One can visit these gardens to see what living herbs look like, to learn how to recognize them in the wild. The plants are clearly labeled with their names in these gardens, as they are educational gardens more than anything else.

As a weird side note, part of the reason traditional medicinal healers have such a mystique, is they knew to dry other plants, plants that were poisonous, as well. American Indians of the Pacific Northwest went down to the sea when it was red tide and collected the poisoned clams. They then dried the meat, ground it into powder, and put it on their arrow tips, giving them a reputation of having "magic" arrows, as theirs caused an unusually horrid death. I would assume drying nightshade and poisonous plants would have similar effects, but I do not know. So, I think part of the "evil" mythology that arose from witches, for instance, with herbal knowledge, was that indeed, it was not just that they knew about healing with herbs, they knew about herbs, altogether. They knew of that herb that looks and tastes like spinach but is deadly. They knew which things you could eat, yes, but they also knew which ones could kill. Which, during a revolution or war, could be incredibly essential and valuable information to have, I would assume.

Anyway, back to *healing* with herbs. I have found miso soup to be very helpful when sick. You can make miso soup by cutting up a 3" strip of wakame seaweed and throwing it in a pot with 2 ˝ c. water. Bring to a boil, then add ˝ c. sliced carrots, lower heat and simmer 15 minutes. Add ˝ c. sliced kale, chard or spinach, and simmer 5 more minutes. Add 1 sliced green onion, and simmer another 3 minutes. Take soup off the stove and stir in 1 T. barley miso until dissolved. Then eat! Miso has been used as a healing food in China and Japan for centuries. Miso also helps cleanse radiation from the body, and has live digestion enzymes as well.

Ginger and garlic are also a body's friend during cold season and should be used in abundance. Some have walked with garlic cloves in their shoes, which apparently can be smelled on the breath in time. And not only can you throw freshly grated ginger into stirfrys, you can also add freshly grated ginger to all baked goods, such as ginger cookies and gingerbreads. You can make ginger massage oil for aches and pains by grating 2 T. ginger, then squeezing the pulp over a cup to make 1 t. ginger juice. Then add 1 t. sesame or almond oil and mix. You can use this on either side of the spine to relieve back pain and winter aches and pains. It is said that Kukicha or Bancha twig tea will help combat oncoming colds and flus as well. You can go to www.susunweed.com and ask herbal healing questions on the Wise Woman Forum there. And any medicinal herbs you ever will need are available in bulk, online, from Seattle's apothecary for decades, Tenzing Momo at www.tenzingmomo.com.

I have found food and herbs to be much more holistic approaches to the flu season than shots, corporate doctors and chemical drugs. See if you can reduce your reliance on corporate medicine and increase your DIY health knowledge today. Remember, what you eat, and how you approach your health care, is as political as anything else you do. Think about who and what you are supporting when you buy medicines and health care. Think about how you could become more holistic and self-empowered in your eating and health practices. Food and health care are as important arenas for political activism, as street protests and free trade direct actions. Get involved with radical food and health care politics today!

Kirsten Anderberg. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint/publish, please contact Kirsten at kirstena@resist.ca.

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