I know that people get sick with the flu. I know that some people die from it. I know that the flu shots are supposed to prevent it. But I’m glad that now that I’m out of the military I don’t have to get the flu shots and so the present shortage doesn’t bother me personally.

Here’s how I think about it. Normally you would get the flu via dirty hands or a sneeze in the face or contact with someone who has it or whatever. So why is that we bypass all those natural defenses and jam the disease under the skin to trick the body into fighting it? It seems to me that this only weakens the body’s defensive systems and makes us more susceptible to the dreaded thing.

Second, once we get it our bodies try to get rid of it by developing itchy eyes and runny noses. We sneeze, our body temperature goes up and we need more rest. This is the natural course of action our body takes once it has lost the first round to the dreaded bug. But what we do once we get to this state is take antihistamines to shut down the sneezing and the runny nose. We take Tylenol to bring down the fever and we take Nyquil to put us to sleep.

In the end we’ve bypassed our natural defenses with the shot and then we take medications to inhibit our body’s method of fighting the infection. Drug companies are making money on this entire enterprise. Sure, we’ve greatly diminished many life threatening illnesses, but I wonder about the general health when it comes to non-life threatening illnesses. I wonder if we are really any better.

I prefer not to get the shot and let me natural defenses do what they can. If they fail me, which they have in the past, I chose to use natural methods to fight it. I have found Oscillococcinum to be excellent against the flu if you take it at the first sign of symptoms. If you miss it, you need to take remedies that follow the symptoms. They don’t shut down the symptoms, they try to help your body do what it is trying to do better.

Drug companies hate homeopathy because they can’t patent the ingredients. Scientific studies have found homeopathy to be no more effective than a placebo, but I’m not persuaded. I think they may have treated them as they would a drug; you have this symptom you take this pill, the symptom either goes away or it doesn’t. With homeopathy, the symptom may actually get worse before it goes away. Also, different types of people respond better to different remedies, there isn’t that one-to-one correspondence there is with other medicines. It has done wonders for me.

Gee, can you tell I work at Whole Foods Market?