Fight the flu

Fight flu

Research by Dr Peter Palese, microbiologist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, USA, appears to have cleared up the mystery of why flu runs rife in winter.

Through tests on guinea pigs – the twitchy whiskered ones which also have a rare animal ability to pass on the flu virus – Palese and his team found that the flu bug literally hangs in cold, dry air for a lethal amount of time.

Palese’s work – reported in science publication PLoS Pathogens – revealed that flu germs die as the temperature rises. The virus was found to be at its most potent when temperatures were around 41 degrees F (five degrees C) – but it was not transmitted at all when the temperature was around 86 degrees F (29C).

To fight off the flu this winter you could crank up the office heating to “Swelter” or else take the following evasive action:

Hit the hot tub

German studies have shown that people who steamed in a sauna twice a week got half as many colds as those who didn’t. When you take a sauna you inhale air hotter than 80 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature too hot for cold and flu viruses to survive in.

Run for your lungs

Aerobic workouts speed up the heart to pump larger quantities of blood – making you breathe faster to help transfer oxygen from your lungs to your blood. The result of all this exertion is that your increasing body temperature promotes the multiplication of the body’s natural virus-killing cells, too.

Soup it up

An old mother’s cure perhaps, but a few young boffins recently put the hot-broth cold treatment to the test – and found that soup can cure your ills. Chest specialists in Nebraska, USA, found that chicken soup especially has anti-inflammatory powers, which could stem the flow of mucus that accumulates in the lungs and nasal passages. We just hope you’re not eating some right now.

Words by Rob Kemp