Influenza refers to numerous viral illnesses more intense than the common cold and typically causes fever, muscle aches, headache, and fatigue. Some kinds of flu have cold-like symptoms with a sore throat or respiratory involvement, while others focus on the digestive tract with diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. If a strain of flu with a characteristic set of symptoms is “going around,” a homeopathic remedy that matches those symptoms can be used as prevention. When a person is ill, a homeopathic remedy should be chosen to match his or her specific symptoms.
Remember: wash your hands, eat lots of whole foods, and get plenty of fresh air, exercise, and rest. And please, do not panic over the flu. You will be just fine! Fear is the worst enemy of health!
PLEASE NOTE: If you're already taking a constitutional homeopathic remedy recommended by a homeopath, please don't try the following medicines. They may actually cancel out your remedies. Suggest these to friends or family. Because your constitutional homeopathic remedy strengthens your entire system, it's your perfect match to help you prevent and sail through the flu. However, in cases of severe, acute outbreaks, taking another remedy might help to restore health before resuming your normal constitutional remedy.
Useful Remedies
Ferrum Phos is always a good remedy to use in the first stages of flu. Ferrum Phos can be taken in the 30c potency. Even the 6x potency, sold as a tissue salt, can stop the flu in its tracks. Ferrum Phos can be alternated with Natrum Sulf during the first days of the flu.
Dulcamara is useful at the onset of a high fever. The Dulcamara cough hurts from muscular soreness. This flu is frequently brought on by cold, damp weather. This is one of our best remedies in the acute form; the eyes are suffused, the throat is sore, and the cough hurts because of muscular soreness.
Nux vomica treats a flu with chills and pains in bones and joints. The irritability and chills are very marked.
Gelsemium treats a low fever. It's also a good remedy if you have not been well since the onset of flu. Gelsemium patients experience weakness with shivering. This remedy corresponds to the commencement of sickness when the patient is weak, tired and has body aches. It quickly removes intense aching and muscular soreness. There is constant chilliness and the patient “hugs the fire.” The fever is less acute than that of Aconite, and the cough is hard and painful. There are paroxysms of sneezing with excoriating discharge, and great torpor and apathy. Extensive experience with this remedy in the great Epidemic of 1918 proved its usefulness. Simple cases were speedily cured. Aconite will sometimes prove the better remedy for children, but the drug will never be a prominent one in influenza. Still, it may be prescribed when indicated. It will, perhaps, soothe and moderate a subsequent attack, but its action is not quick here as in simple fevers, as we have to deal with a blood infection.
Arsenicum treats a burning fever accompanied with chills, restlessness, and anxiety. People needing Arsenicum are usually thirsty but only drink small quantities at a time. They may have burning pains. This remedy covers more phases of flu than perhaps any other. Hughes believes that it will cut an attack short, especially when there is copious flow, prostration, and paroxysmal coryza. Its periodicity makes it suitable to epidemics, and it suits the early symptoms when the infection is in the upper portion of the respiratory tract. A burning dryness, copious watery excoriating secretion, and the involvement of the conjunctiva are unmistakable indications. Languor and prostration are prominent symptoms.
Bryonia is good for the type of flu where the person doesn't want to move. The mouth is dry but they're still thirsty. The trouble here is largely bronchial and going downward. When a person is very grumpy and feels miserable with the flu, wanting only to lie still and be left alone, this remedy is likely to be useful. A headache, muscle aches, and cough or stomach pain may be the major symptoms. Everything feels worse from even the slightest motion. The person’s mouth usually is dry, with a thirst for large cold drinks.
Rhus-T: This flu can be accompanied with aching bones, restlessness, and a red-tipped tongue. This is another remedy that's useful when the flu is brought on by damp weather. This influenza manifests severe aching in all the bones, with sneezing and coughing. A cough is worse in the evening and is caused by a tickling behind the upper part of the sternum. It's especially useful in cases brought on by exposure to dampness. There are much prostration and depression, and the patient may have some symptoms which are suspicious as pointing towards typhoid fever, such as burning tongue, stupor and delirium. Aching pains and nightly restlessness are keynoted symptoms. Causticum, like both Rhus and Eupatorium, creates a tired, sore, bruised sensation all over the body and soreness in the chest when coughing, but it also provokes involuntary urination when coughing.
Belladonna treats the high fevers that come on suddenly. Other accompanying symptoms of Belladonna include heat and redness.
Eupatorium perfoliatum manifests severe bone pains with great thirst. This remedy has soreness and aching of the entire body, hoarseness, and cough with great soreness of the larynx and upper respiratory tract. Coryza with thirst. Drinking causes vomiting. A cough is a very shattering one, hurts the head and chest, and as in Drosera, the patient holds his chest with his hands. Sharp pains are characteristic of this remedy. Add to these symptoms acute bilious derangements, and the remedy is all the more indicated. Many physicians rely on this remedy for influenza almost exclusively in the early stages.
Baptisia is a good remedy for flu, especially if it's centered in the gastrointestinal tract. This remedy can be helpful in the early stages of the flu. The person needing Baptisia can be weak, listless, and feel sore. Influenza with marked gastrointestinal symptoms may demand this remedy, especially when there are putrid diarrhea stools. Clarke considers this remedy the nearest specific remedy for the disease and prefers the 30th potency. Hughes also praises it but uses it in the 1x and 2x dilutions, which seem to have more extensive testimony as to their efficacy.
Sabadilla: [Sabad] Sneezing is the great keynote of this remedy, along with the eyes welling up with tears when going into the open air. The throat is swollen and pain is worse on empty swallowing. Sneezing is excessive, shaking the whole body. Shuddering, with gooseflesh chills creeping upwards, is also prominent. A frontal headache, dryness of mouth without thirst and cough, and worse feelings upon lying down are all additional symptoms. It suits well many cases of the catarrhal form of flu. Other remedies involving sneezing are Cyclamen and Euphorbia. Copious watery excoriating secretion and the involvement of the conjunctiva are unmistakable indications. Languor and prostration are prominent symptoms.
Arsenicum iodide: Chills, flushes of heat and severe fluent coryza, irritating and corrosive discharge, sneezing and prostration. It corresponds to true influenza and is highly recommended by Hale. Sanguinaria nitrate is especially valuable when the trachea and larynx are affected. Phytolacca is specific when the throat is inflamed and spotty, with great hardness and tenderness of the glands.
Allium cepa: [All-c] Profuse catarrhal coryza: the nose runs freely, there is sneezing, irritability, cough, the face is swollen and looks inflamed. Camphora. This remedy is often sufficient at the outset to cut short an attack, or at least to modify the severity.
Sticta: [Stict] Nasal catarrh, headache, thirst, nightly expectoration, great watering of eyes, running at the nose, hoarseness of voice, frontal headache, and depression of the whole system. Tuberculous subjects attacked by influenza. "There is no better remedy," says Dr. Fornias," for the incessant wearing, wracking cough of this class of patients." Tuberculinum is an excellent preventive of influenza in those who suffer recurring attacks.
Ipecac is adapted to cases where the gastric symptoms predominate. The tongue is clean or slightly coated. Nausea with profuse saliva, vomiting of white, glairy mucus in large quantities without relief, sleepiness afterward, feel worse from stooping. Low thirst. A cough: dry spasmodic, constricted, asthmatic. Difficulty breathing from the least exercise. Violent dyspnoea, with wheezing and anxiety about the stomach. A cough, with the rattling of mucus in the bronchi when breathing in, threatened suffocation from mucus. Pains as if bones were all torn to pieces.
Veratrum album is adapted to diseases with rapid sinking of the vital forces, complete prostration, and collapse. Cold perspiration on the forehead (over the entire body, Tab.) with nearly all complaints. Thirst: intense, unquenchable, for large quantities of very cold water and acid drinks, wants everything cold. Frequent diarrhea, greenish, watery, gushing, mixed with flakes. Cutting colic, with cramps commencing in hands and feet and spreading all over. Prostrating after fright, feeling worse from the least movement. Vomiting, cold sweat on the forehead during and after prostration. Vomiting is excessive with nausea and great prostration, made worse by drinking ( Ars. ); by least motion ( Tab. ); great weakness after.
If such symptoms present themselves in the current pandemic, the remedies that may prove useful would be Arsenicum, Cantharis, Phosphorus, Cuprum-met, Camphora, Veratrum-album, Ipecac or Carbo-veg.
If you are just not sure, you can take Oscillococcinum® every few hours as needed at the onset of flu. If you are still unsure give us a call at (800) 669-0358 and schedule your appointment to start prophylactic treatment before the fall season starts
The only way to stop the spread of the epidemic is to spread awareness. To your health!
