Building up natural immunity with vitamins and herbs can help fight off the flu

• As the temperature dips lower in January and February we often encounter an expected but not exactly welcome house guest -- the winter cold, or the even more demanding and obnoxious visitor, the flu.
• These viruses evolve and mutate from one season to the next, which is why it's impossible to develop a single vaccine effective against them all.
• Over-the-counter medications can't prevent the common cold or flu either.
• Thankfully, there are natural ways to strengthen your immune system and shorten a cold's duration and severity.
• Echinacea Echinacea, or purple coneflower, has been used by Native American Indians for hundreds of years.
• It lost its popularity with the arrival of antibiotics, which, ironically, only work against infections caused by bacteria -- viruses, not bacteria, cause the common cold.
• Echinacea increases the "nonspecific" activity of the immune system; unlike a vaccine, which is active against a specific disease, echinacea stimulates the overall activity of the cells responsible for fighting all kinds of infections.
• Echinacea purpurea has the best supporting evidence for effectiveness in treating colds and flus.
• Vitamin C Everyone's need for vitamin C goes up dramatically when you get a cold.
• Zinc If vitamin C is the "super immunity" vitamin, then zinc may just be the super immunity mineral.
• Ginseng For 5,000 years Asians have revered ginseng as a longevity tonic.
• An extract of ginseng was given to people who usually suffered colds, and it resulted in significantly less colds, with less severe symptoms, than the placebo group.
• Andrographis Andrographis (Andrographis paniculata) is a shrub found throughout India and other Asian countries.
• Oscillococcinum Many people swear by the homeopathic remedy "oscillococcinum" for the flu.
• Sleep and de-stress Colds and flus strike when people are under stress, overworked or sleep deprived.