Gut microbes can prevent severe flu infections in mice, likely by breaking down naturally occurring compounds—called flavonoids—commonly found in foods such as black tea, red wine, and blueberries, new research shows.
Flu season is right around the corner. For people over 50, this means a dramatically increased risk of pneumonia, heart attack, and dying. It also means an onslaught of advertising from the flu vaccine industry. But you don’t need a vaccine to stop the flu. In fact, researchers have found another great way to protect your body against influenza that doesn’t require a shot.
I say another because we already know how great vitamin D is at protecting us against the flu. If you slow down on vitamin D during the summer months, now is the time to start taking it more regularly. Even though vitamin D can stop most cases of the flu, we all like to have a little extra protection. And now there’s a combination of nutrients we can take with vitamin D to stop the flu from happening.
This particular research was conducted on mice. But there’s every reason to believe it will work on humans as well. That’s because previous studies have shown that these two nutrients work very effectively on their own to fight the flu. But this study found that they work together even better.
You see, we’ve known for some time that microbes in your gut help fight infection. That’s because they have far-reaching effects on the immune system. We’ve also seen that flavonoids have protective properties that help regulate the immune system to fight infections. When the researchers in this study combined the two, they found something very interesting.
The researchers discovered that when you give flavonoids along with probiotics, the probiotics help to break down the flavonoids to supercharge your immune system. The study’s senior author, Thaddeus S. Stappenbeck, MD, PhD, and the Conan Professor of Pathology & Immunology, said, “It’s not only having a diet rich in flavonoids, our results show you also need the right microbes in the intestine to use those flavonoids to control the immune response.”
What was interesting about the discovery was that the researchers found that when they gave the flu bug to the mice, the microbe/flavonoid combination didn’t kill the bug. But it did prevent the bug from causing as much damage. In other words, the mice still had the flu, but the symptoms and the damage were mitigated. The lungs of treated mice didn’t have as much flu damage.
So if you want to stop the flu, start taking probiotics and flavonoids now before the flu season hits. I’ve taken probiotics and resveratrol for years and rarely get the flu. I also take at least 5,000 IU of vitamin D for top-notch protection.
Reference:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170803141048.htm