How effective are flu shots, elderberry, echinacea and cranberries?
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that everyone over six months get a daily shot of flu every year, unless there is any contraindication, such as allergies to vaccine ingredients. The CDC recommends getting vaccinated by the end of October, but it may even be beneficial if received after December. How effective is the influenza vaccine? It depends on the year, but as you can see below, at 0:33 on my video’s Friday Favorite: Benefits and Side Effects of Elderberry: Does it help with colds and flu?
So, in healthy adults, we can Say with mild certainty that the risk of influenza can be reduced from about 2% to just under 1% each year. That may be the case for the elderly obtain A similar relative risk reduction, but the absolute benefits are also greater as the baseline risk is higher and the results are greater. In children, flu vaccine Shine;There is a high degree of certainty of evidence that the risk has been significantly reduced. But even in this type of best-case scenario, vaccinations still have risks, but what else can you do?
In the US alone, every year Americans experience millions of cases of flu and hundreds of millions of colds. What about Elderberry supplements? In test tubes, elderberry extracts can inhibit pathogens, including influenza viruses. Petri dishes can rotate the production of influenza-fighting molecules from human immune system cells, such as tumor necrosis factor, nearly 45 times. Elderberry juice can help mice fight the flu. But what about the real people?
The first clinical trial was published in the 1990s. This is a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial to treat flu-like symptoms. The researchers found that the possibility of improvement five days before the treatment group was odds of 20 times greater than participants in the control group (P <0.001). As can be seen in my video, two double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trials showed similar accelerated cures in the Elderberry group.
I was excited to see this study (Elderberry Supply Reduces Cold Time and Symptoms in Air Travelers) and watched the book tour of 200 cities that I embarked on. It was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial with passengers in 312 economic classes. While taking Elderberry, people didn’t appear to have cold symptoms, but the duration and severity of symptoms in people with colds seemed to have reduced, suffering on an average of about 5 days rather than seven days.
A similar study using herbal echinacea found a decrease in symptom scores, but only statistical significance of the boundary line. Nevertheless, most of the individual trials found no statistically significant improvements, but when all such studies were compiled, the incidence of colds could be reduced by about 20%, as seen at 2:50 in my video.
However, please note that there are concerns about publication bias and selective reporting. Many findings and some whole research appear to be MIA, suggesting that negative research could have been quietly shelved. So, although we are not very sure about echinacea, all elderberry studies appear to have positive results, suggesting that elderberry supplementation “provides effective treatment options when advanced or more invasive care (more serious treatment) is not justified.” However, this conclusion came from someone with an obvious conflict of interest. In fact, each of the four Elderberry studies was funded by the Elderberry product companies themselves.
Are there other berries that might be helpful? A randomized, placebo-controlled intervention study (as expected, funding through marine spray) appears to have gamma-delta T cells in people drinking low-calorie cranberry juice drinks for 10 weeks, growing at almost five times faster. These immune cells “act as a first row of defense.” The study participants did not have a cold, but appeared to be suffering, but as shown in my video, it was not sufficient to prevent the day they missed out on work or activity disorders, as shown here.
At least cranberries have never been reported to cause pancreatitis. The man taking the elderberry extract not only suffered from an attack of acute pancreatitis, an attack of sudden, painful inflammation of the pancreas, but disappeared when it stopped, and reappeared again a few years later. Why take elderberry extract when you can eat it yourself? Well, cooked is fine, but “consuming uncooked blue or black elderberry can cause nausea and vomiting.”
As explained in the answer to the question “What was the worst day of your life?”, I found the difficult way. In my London, in a genuine interview about my How To Die To Die Book Tour. It turns out that the elderberry fruits were forming cyanide, so after someone gathered and brought them freshly squeezed elderberry juice, they had to avoid the eight.
Doctor’s notes:
Here is the real London interview I mentioned.
What else can I do for a cold? See related posts below.
And speaking of cranberries, can cranberry juice treat bladder infections? Watch the video.
