CASE STUDY: Beating or Avoiding the Flu – Family Style

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Battling the Flu as a family with an Effective, natural strategy

MEDICAL WARNING: The following content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.

As a parent with young kids under 10, we are surrounded by families and school children who are constantly sick and expose us repeatedly to every virus which comes along locally. By using our simple immune boasting strategy and good flu season hygiene practices, our family is rarely sick in comparison to our peers. We are able to effectively avoid getting sick in the first place. In the rare occasion a family member does feel cold/flu symptoms, we are typically able to eliminate these symptoms in hours/days vs. weeks/months of spreading it from one family member to the next. This is our attempt to share our strategy with you.

This is soccer season for my two boys ages 9 and 6. This means lots of kids, birthday parties, and of course, a lot of shared sickness among the teammates. This is just normal life and to be expected. While most of the time, the illness will pass by us leaving us unaffected, this time it was the flu and caught hold. First it was my youngest who got the sniffles and woke up in the morning with a stuffy nose and sore throat. We had that licked by that evening. Within a couple days myself and my oldest felt an immune hit. We fixed that too within 24 hours. Then it was my wife’s turn feeling affected. It took a couple days to turn hers around, but she felt good enough with our strategy that she never got sick enough to require further attention. So while we all felt the flu ramping up our immune system – the flu never took us down. We had a typical enjoyable day while isolating at home. The worst part was only a slightly stuffy nose as our immune system eliminated any virus remnants from our system. At no time did anyone have to lay in a sick bed…and this is typical if we ever have a virus serious enough for us to feel it at all. In the last 10 years, I can count on one hand the number of time any of us had been sick enough to go to a sick bed – one hand for all four of us. This is thanks to the immune strategy that my wife had developed for us.

Our immune strategy

Our immune strategy is first, don’t get sick by maintaining a strong immune system through a healthy diet, exercise, and great sleep. Secondly, we ramp up our immunities with immune boosters as an extra precaution when there is an illness going around or when we enter flu season. Finally, at the first sign of illness or symptoms, we bring in our immune support protocol and enhance our anti-viral strategies with surface, hands, body, and air cleaning strategies to prevent the spread.

Strong mind, strong body, strong immunities

While this is just common sense, common sense is not so common anymore so it is worth saying. To stay healthy, you have to be healthy to begin with. In the era of junk food, obesity, and obsessive smart phone use, TV watching, or video game playing, people are more prone to becoming sick as many were never healthy to begin with. If you don’t want to be sick, it is imperative to start by living a healthy lifestyle. Otherwise, you will be much more dependent on the next strategies as you will be sick more often. Please parents, teach your kids a healthy lifestyle at an early age while it is not too late as habits are hard to change later in life.

LIFESTYLE: While diet and exercise that comes next are critical, lifestyle weighs heavily in those choices and habits. The number one bad habit that leads to bad health is sitting. The more you sit, the less you exercise and the more likely you are to eat a poor or excessive diet. Everything should be in moderation including phone use, TV watching, and computer game playing. Perhaps you can earn time at these things by doing something heathy first. Go for a family walk before TV rather than TV binging at night to change things up and to encourage face-to-face family conversations. It is also important to point out that social distancing reduces your immunities, not strengthens them. To avoid getting sick, we do need to be exposed regularly to other humans to keep our immunities strong, but when in doubt, you can always combine with immune boosting to ensure optimal results.

DIET: You cannot get fat on apples as you get full too quickly to eat an excessive amount. The biggest issue with today’s weaponized foods is that you no longer get full…even worse, they are created to be addictive. This leads to obesity. Have you ever wondered why foods only come in instant boxed formats now and the ingredients rarely list anything you would recognize as actual food? I don’t think the FDA has a recommended daily allowance of the industrial chemicals listed on these boxes, but that is what you are eating. Perhaps start easy and fill up on things you recognize as foods first before eating from a chemical box. For those that want to get serious on their diet, balance your diet with your exercise and seek professional guidance if needed. Some rules of thumb for illustration purposes – if you want to lose weight, then if you burn 2000 calories through exercise – only eat 1500 calories for a net loss of 500 calories. Do the opposite for gaining weight. Equalize them to maintain your weight. Here is an advanced option…IF YOU DON’T EXERCISE, DON’T EAT.  This is what we do at our house.

EXERCISE: This can mean anything from walking to bike riding to gym workouts to yoga. Whatever you can do, figure out how many calories you are burning and base your diet on your exercise to support your fitness/weight goals. There are lots of experts to help you here as well as online guides. Start small and work your way up as needed, but have a plan. Kids are naturally exercising unless they have excessive TV or gaming privileges. As mentioned earlier, make them earn the junk time or junk food and refer to it as that so that they know the difference. My oldest at 9 is now getting up and doing weight training for 20 minutes every morning and is already looking muscular and enjoying the results. I started at age 12 and weight training has stuck for me as a forever way of life. Sports are also a wonderful way to get your kids active in an enjoyable way. If the traditional team sports are not for them, there are lots of options including tennis, golf, gymnastics, and more. BTW, sports are not just for kids, sports are a great way for adults to get exercise as well. Start your kids in exercising young and they will live better, healthier, happier, more active lives.

CONFIDENCE: Being strong and fit offers a great sense of confidence that will fill your life with happiness. Strong people look better and smile more and are given more opportunities than the weak and the out of shape. Start your kids early going the right direction by being a good example. A healthy lifestyle, even getting out and doing family walks leads to social interaction and a feeling of belonging that offer more confidence and enhanced happiness. By limiting the TV and game time to a minimum, you are forced to have real experiences in life that again builds more confidence and provides a reason to get healthy. Kids that read rather than watch TV also have a better more well-rounded education that brings even more confidence and also something to talk about with the rest of the family. Encourage learning and asking questions as they become the foundation for a strong mind and wisdom. In terms of immunity, confidence reduces stress which kills your immune system. Be happy, be well.

SLEEP: This is one of the most important aspects of being heathy, a heathy sleep cycle. We have all had a stressful period of no sleep where we ended up becoming sick so everyone can relate to this. A good healthy 8 hours of nightly sleep will do more than anything else for avoiding illness. Healthy sleep should be consistent in sleep/wake times, in a dark room without electronics, and in a quiet and relaxing environment for undisturbed slumber. Children have greater sleep requirements than adults which when ignored can disturb their development mentally and physically. 

While all this is common sense, a balanced, healthy and happy lifestyle is key to a great foundational immune system. While some may be born with immune challenges, we all want to start with the best foundation possible regardless of these challenges. 

Immunity booster strategy

You don’t have to look to far to find yet another article about boosting your immunities through some basic supplementation. It is common knowledge that our immunities can easily be boosted during the flu season by taking a few common supplements. Our family immune booster kit includes these three supplements:

  • Vitamin C: Our current favorite is a bulk Vitamin C from BulkSupplements on Amazon. Please follow our affiliate link below to support our website when purchasing this product. We like to add this product to our daily smoothies, but will also mix into orange or apple juice for the kids. It is also easy for adults to take by mixing in water. While we find Liposomal Vitamin C to be a superior format, in practice it is harder to stomach which limits our intake. Thrival Labs is now experimenting with formulas for better tasting products as well as coming up with our own bulk Vitamin C soon as well.
  • Vitamin D3: Our current favorite is NatureWise found on Amazon. Please follow our affiliate link below to support our website when purchasing this product. 
  • Zinc: Our current favorite is Mother Earth Angstrom Minerals, Zinc found on Amazon. Please follow our affiliate link below to support our website when purchasing this product. Thrival Labs is currently working on its own colloidal zinc product which will be launched soon.          

That’s it. When we enter the flu season, or there is a virus going around, or when anyone in our family has an immune response, we immediately start our immunity booster strategy. Every morning, we take our supplements until either the immune symptoms pass as a family or the flu season is over.

Stop the spread

I have always been somewhat of a germaphobe, so I have followed a lot of these tactics regardless, but as a family, this takes on a whole new level of participation and awareness. 

HANDS: The number one attack vector for a pathogen is your hands. By touching infected surfaces and then touching your face, you are implanting the pathogen into your system. Throughout the day, everyone repeatedly touches their eyes, ears, mouth, nose, and other moist parts of your body which offer an optimal entry point into your system to create the initial infection. So…don’t do that! However, we can insure that we don’t infect ourselves by simply washing our hands….repeatedly….throughout the day….whenever coming home from outside the house where you have come into contact with other humans. Wash with soap and water for at least twenty seconds. Watch your kids to make sure they don’t take any shortcuts. Be sure to use our upcoming SilverSOAP to add an extra layer of silver disinfectant protection to your hand washing practices. 

BODY: Take a bath or shower more often that usual when you are feeling an immune hit. At first sign of trouble, consider an immunity bath with soap and anti-viral essential oils in the tub. Bathe first thing in the morning to get rid of any toxin buildup from your nights sleep. Coming home from a potentially contaminated area such as a grocery store is a great time to take a shower. A couple showers or baths a day when not feeling well is not too much. Take advantage of tub time to add anti-viral strategies to the water including clove for adults or lavender for kids. Please don’t give kids clove as it is too strong for them and can cause burns. 

AIR: Your essential oil strategy and colloidal silver can be added to diffuser on your night stand next to your sickest to eliminate pathogens from the air and the surfaces where they land. This is a great way to keep the sheets from building up toxins. Eucalyptus can be added to open nasal passages for easier breathing. Colloidal silver can be added to maximize your pathogen attack and to sanitize rooms and perhaps your kitchen. We feel that disinfecting the air is an essential tool for the cold and flu season and is also important in your kitchen to keep your eating and cooking surfaces clean. In fact, we are in the process of adding a new SilverAIR product to our Thrival Labs product lineup to address this requirement.

SURFACES: As mentioned in the previous section, a diffuser in your kitchen can eliminate all types of pathogens in your kitchen to sanitize for food preparation. There are also ozone machines that offer a way to clean both the air and the room surfaces. This should be applied to any sick room, the kitchen, bathrooms, and any common areas that are a concern. Surface cleaners will be discussed deeper in other blogs, but should be part of your “stop the spread” strategy. Again, Thrival Labs is addressing this surface cleaning need with silver infused cleaners in our upcoming SilverCLEAN product line.

By attacking germs at each level, we not only stop the spread, but we limit the attack vectors that can overwhelm even the best strategy. Again, this is common sense, but taken up a level. By understanding your opponent, you are better equipped to optimize the outcome.

Immune support with Colloidal Silver

We have done everything correctly, great healthy lifestyle, immunity building, a great “stop the spread” strategy, and yet the illness still gets through our defenses and someone starts to feel sick…what do we do? Drum roll please…..colloidal silver. Colloidal silver is your immune system reinforcements. Your immune system has been well trained and is strong, but is taking on overwhelming forces – there are too many bad guys to be managed by your white blood cells. Colloidal silver is your fresh reinforcements that are brought in at any size necessary to wipe out the rest of the bad guys so your immune system can go straight to clean up. War over. 🙂

Obviously, it is not as simple as that and the story varies depending on the pathogen, your level of infection, and the state of your immune system, but for my family, this has been the results. Since we took on the colloidal silver strategy for dealing with illness, the symptoms have never lasted more than a couple of days and we have never been incapacitated or bed bound. This strategy has been a life changer for us.

OUR DOSAGE: Our strategy for colloidal silver is to take our own product TruSILVER at 20PPM as seen below – twice to three times a day until symptoms disappear. TruSILVER is optimized for internal use to pass through your stomach acids and into your blood serum to deal with flu viruses and other pathogens. We have an FDA approved safe dosage that we are allowed to recommend for you on the bottle. For our own family, my wife and I take a maximum of 2 ounces and my kids a maximum of 1 ounce per dose. We take two, maybe three doses per day until symptoms disappear. After two days, if the symptoms linger or get worse, we are required to suggest seeking medical assistance. However, use common sense from day one and always error on the side of safety.

For chest colds, we also use our BioSILVER ionic silver to inhale using our nebulizers – we will be launching our SilverINHALER product soon. We also add BioSILVER to our cleaners and sanitizers plus soaps and shampoos to add extra antibacterial support. We also use BioSILVER for sore throats and as a mouth wash to keep our mouths clean as well as for toothaches and gum infections. BioSILVER is also great for topical treatment for wounds or critical surface cleaning such as on cutting boards.

BONUS TIP: While lavender/eucalyptus baths are great for kids and clove/eucalyptus baths are great for adults to eliminate germs on surface areas, they are also great chest rubs at night before bed to help manage germ elimination from the pores at night as well as to open the sinuses. 

How colloidal silver works

Silver has been used safely and effectively in medicine since Hippocrates first wrote about its properties in 400 BC. Since ancient history, silver has been extensively used as a therapeutic agent for bacterial infections prior to the clinical introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s. As a naturally occurring element, the ionized form of silver (Ag+1) is known for its antimicrobial properties.

As seen in the image below, silver ions have the ability to kill bacteria, and then kill their friends through a sneak attack. As mentioned above, this has been used effectively as the antibiotic of choice until the 1940s when John Rockefeller discovered that many pharmaceutical drugs could be made from oil and founded big pharma. Since then, inexpensive natural medicine has been under attack in favor of patented more profitable petrol-based options. While out of favor in the media and medical industrial complex for obvious profit driven reasons, it is still as effective and safe as ever.

My family to yours

Health is our passion. We have helped many families through the years as the opportunity arises and have often been told that we should go into business to bring proactive health to the masses. We finally took this to heart and have established Thrival Labs to champion the concept of proactive self-health to help people take their life back from the medical hamster wheel for “heath in abundance”. Our company offers health and beauty products, strategies, community, and support to those that are willing to take back control.

Our first product offering is a double offering of both colloidal silver and ionic silver to end the debate on which one is better. Both are optimized to fit the proper use case as seen in the graphics below. Our ionic silver called BioSILVER is optimized for external use or as an aerosol while our colloidal silver called TruSILVER is optimized for internal use. Our immunity boosting and environment cleaning kits are both works in progress and will be available as soon as we can offer the best, most optimized products possible.

TS Optimization

TruSILVER

TS Formula 1

BioSILVER

BS Formula 1

Let’s start you immunity support kit now

2 thoughts on “CASE STUDY: Beating or Avoiding the Flu – Family Style

  1. Pingback: Understanding Colloidal Silver – What does it have to do with the Flu? – Thrival Labs

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