The holiday season is upon us and it comes with warm gatherings with family and friends, tons of travel, and don’t forget about fortifying your immune system!
Here are some tips to prevent and treat colds and the flu:
First and foremost, wash your hands, and your kids’ hands frequently. Catching a cold or the flu happens when the virus comes in contact with the mucus membranes of our nose, eyes and mouth, so keeping your hands clean and away from our face is crucial!
Optimize your immune system with these easy steps:
- Get adequate exercise
- Spend time outside in sunshine and fresh air
- Drink plenty of water
- Eat your veggies
- Sleep deeply
- Love someone, even more 🙂
If you start to feel run down, or can feel something coming on, here are the steps I like to recommend to my patients to reduce the chances of getting sick:
1. Increase your Vitamin D intake — I like to see Vitamin D levels over 60 on lab results during the winter season. If you start to feel sick, take 30,000 – 50,000 IU for the first three days, then it’s ok to go back to a maintenance dose of ~5,000 daily. Here is the link to the Vit D3 drops we use at Boulder Holistic.
If you are over 40, it is best to balance Vitamin D intake with Vitamin K2. Here is a link to Genestra D3 K2 or Orthomolecular D3 K2.
2. Take Vitamin A — 20,000 IU (even up to 50,000 – 100,000 IU for 2 doses) if you are around someone sick or feel like you are coming down with something. High doses of Vitamin A (as Vitamin A palmotate, not beta carotene forms) are safe for a short time, like when you are trying to fight off a virus. Here is a link to a great Vitamin A supplement. You can read about the safety of short-term high doses of Vitamin A at
Vitamin A High Dose Safety.
3. Zinc 50 — 150mg with food – It can make some people nauseous, so take as much as you can tolerate. It is one of the only things that has been shown in the literature to decrease the frequency and severity of a cold. We also carry a Thorne zinc product in our office that is great for immune support.
4. Vitamin C — As much as you can tolerate: up to 2,000 – 6,000mg. It can give some people a tummy ache or diarrhea if you take too much, so you have to experiment with your dosage. Here is a link to two products I recommend. Or, for those with allergies/sensitivities to corn, here is a guaranteed non-corn version.
5. Probiotics — The gut contains 70% of our immune system, so adding in probiotics helps to boost our whole immune system. When recommending high dose probiotics, I like getting over 200 billion CFU’s, ideally with a wide variety of strains. Probiotics are one of the few things I recommend buying physician grade, third-party tested. Most of the probiotics out there don’t have much of anything in them. Because the supplement industry is not regulated by the FDA, they can write whatever they want on the bottle. And it’s pretty hard to make high quality benefcial bacteria and have them live through the stomach acid designed to kill them and make it to the colon and actually do anything.
Some of my favorites are Xymogen Probiomax 350, Orthomolecular 225, and megasporebiotic. The se are all available in our offce, or you can find some on our Fullscripts account. (Remember Thorne and Xymogen products are not available on Fullscripts, but we are happy to ship to you from the office)
Here are links to our Fullscripts account for: Orthobiotic 225 Orthobiotic 100 Megaspore Probiotic
6. Allimed — One of my favorites is taking Allimed if you feel like you are coming down with something or someone in your home is sick. Allimed is a high dose, high potency allicin – the active ingredient in garlic. This brand is particularly strong and effective. The dosage is 1 cap, 3 times per day. It’s expensive, but it works!
7. Finally, one of the most powerful and effective things you can do is get an IV Meyer’s Cocktail. I find it works best at the beginning of a cold or flu and can help you kick it right away. It’s also amazing at getting rid of the annoying, lingering cold symptoms. It’s an energy and immunity boost. Be proactive and get one pre-emptively.
What’s in a Meyer’s Cocktail?
It contains high dose Vitamin C 17,000 – 25,000mg, depending on what you’re treating. By putting large doses into the venous system, you bypass gut absorption. In large doses, Vitamin C is antiviral, antibacterial, anti-carcinogenic, and incredibly immune boosting!
The “Meyer’s Cocktail” also contains:
- Magnesium
- Calcium
- Zinc
- Trace minerals
- Selenium
- B Complex
- Vitamin B6
- Vitamin B12