Arm Yourself Against Winter's Dangers

In most parts of the country, snowy, windy, bone-chilling days and feverish, congested, stuffy nights signify the beginning of winter and the height of cold and flu season, which runs from October to March.

The National Council on Patient Information and Education says flu symptoms can include fever, chills, congestion, headache, dry cough and muscle aches. But unlike other common respiratory infections, such as the common cold, the flu can cause extreme fatigue lasting several days or weeks. Although nausea, vomiting and diarrhea can accompany influenza infection, especially in children, gastrointestinal symptoms are rarely prominent.

Local and national health experts say you can arm your body's personal defense mechanism against infection and disease.

There are things you can do to support your immune system and help to build it up, Among the suggestions:

Drink lots of fluid. Keeping plenty of fluids coming through your body triggers the flushing effect. It moves a lot through your urinary tract.

Water is recommended over caffeinated drinks, she says, because caffeine acts as a mild diuretic, which pulls more water out than it puts in.

Breathe deeply. When you challenge your respiratory system to breathe deeply, it expands your lung volume and actually helps to avoid respiratory infections.

Take your vitamins. Vitamin supplements, such as vitamin A, B6, C, E and zinc, offer a vital boost, but cold dodgers must use them wisely. Most vitamins can be attained in adequate supply by eating a balanced diet. But some can be toxic when taken in large doses.

For optimum health, everything should be done in moderation, including exercise.

Minimize stress. Those who are exposed to stress without coping measures have been shown to have a diminished immune response. If we could snap our fingers and make it go away, that would be wonderful, but we can't. The thing is to recognize stress and walk away from things that you can't change.

Get some R and R. Lack of rest affects the immune system. There's not a lot of research that really details how sleep affects the immune system, but scientists do suspect there is a link.

During the cold and flu season, it's important that one continues to eat a good diet and get plenty of sleep and avoid being excessively run-down, because when the body is physically run-down, it's not as able to fight off infection.

When we come home physically tired, we don't feel good. We want to sit around and not do too much or get exercise. And those sorts of things will lead to problems because we need to maintain activity.

A tired, worn-out body, makes the immune system work twice as hard as usual.

If our immune system is working on one organism, and another one comes along that is fairly invasive, the immune system is split between which way to go.

Bundle up against the cold. When you go outside and you're breathing in cold air and you're not bundled up, what happens is the little cilia in the lungs, which normally move particles up and out of the lungs, aren't moving as readily and can become infected because of that invasive, barrier process being knocked down by the cold.

Avoid people who have the cold or flu. One thing the old settlers knew was that one of the best ways to prevent infection was to stay away from someone with an infection.

Wash your hands. Good hygiene is important to good health.

Enjoy an active life. If you have a good outlook, you'll be in good shape. Whatever you do to stay in shape, keep doing it. Don't let yourself become a couch potato.

Give herbs a try. Echinacea is a proven herbal drug that can be used to boost the immune system. A derivative of the purple coneflower, echinacea is available at most drugstores in either a powdered capsule or extract.

But even this wonder herb has limitations. If you don't take it just at the time you start to feel the symptoms of a cold, it won't do much good. It's a drug you can use as a preventive agent to help to limit the extent of the symptoms.

Doctors also advise cold sufferers not to take echinacea longer than 14 days because it may overstimulate the immune system. For that same reason, he says, children under age 12 shouldn't use it at all.

See your doctor as soon as symptoms appear. Prescription drugs such as Relenza (zanamivir) and Tamiflu (oseltamivir) can boost the immune system and clear up common cold and flu symptoms if taken within two days of the infection's onset.

While these tips can help, nothing works 100 percent of the time.